Thanks to King of Dragon Pass and the old HW books, many people have an impression that Sartar is overwhelmingly rural and isolated. I think that ends up being wildly misleading. About…
Tag: Sartar (homeland)
The Lightbringers and their pantheon
So let’s talk a moment about the Lightbringers and their pantheon. In Sartar, about 42% of the adult population are initiated into one of the core Lightbringer cults, and another 40% are…
Rural and Urban Populations in Sartar
About 80% of the people in rural Sartar make their living directly from food production – farming, herding, fishing, and hunting. That’s about 2/3rds of the total population in Sartar. The remaining…
Dog Rat Valley
Playing RuneQuest today with the kids. Here’s the Dog Rat Valley where they have built their stead. Clearly they are herders, not agriculturalists. One thing I love doing on hikes with kids…
Use of the old name of Elmal
Elmal is the original name of the Light god that came to Dragon Pass in the 1300s. The Light worshipers among the Sartarites began offering sacrifices to Yelm quite early – likely…
Temples in Sartar
In most of Sartar, your clan has a minor temple to Orlanth and Ernalda, and maybe a shrine to one other deity. Your tribe has at least a minor temple to Orlanth…
Notes on Humakt
Humakt is a favorite player character cult in RuneQuest and no wonder! The cult is for the professional warrior, the mercenary, the holy killer, but is also tempered by a strict code…
The Average Sartarite Clan
There are 157 clans in Sartar (not including the Telmori and Pol-Joni), with an average population of about 900 people per clan. About 600 are adults, and about 300 are children. The…
Notes on Valind in Dragon Pass
Valind does not exactly have much of a cult in Sartar. His shrines (all in great temples to Orlanth) get tended by whatever initiates wander there. Now among the Tarsh Exiles, there…
Notes on Small Cults
In all of Sartar, about 2500 people are initiates of Daka Fal and worship their ancestors and eschew other cults. That’s about the same size as the Chalana Arroy or Lhankor Mhy…
Sartarite Names
Many Sartarite names combine prefixes and suffixes as per below; the prefixes and suffixes usually relate to the names of gods or ancestors. Use them to create your name or pick a…
Sartarite communities
One way of thinking about Gloranthan communities is as confederations of local temples. So for example, most Sartarite communities can be viewed as a tight alliance of the Orlanth and Ernalda temples,…
The Kingdom of Sartar is hardly paradise
So after pointing out some of the horrors the Lunar Empire is built upon, I think it is also worth pointing out that living in the Kingdom of Sartar is hardly paradise….
Languages in Sartar
Let’s think a little bit about languages. So in Sartar pretty much everyone either speaks Sartarite (aka Heortling) or Old Tarshite as their first language. Pretty much everybody also some knows Tradetalk…
The Guardian Hills
Swenstown, like most of Eastern Sartar, is in the rain shadow of the Quivin and Storm Mountains (and of course the Rockwoods as well). No gentle summer rains there – on average…
Cinsina Flats
Was driving through Sartar this afternoon. We were east of Jonestown in the Cinsina Flats. I have always pictured Sartar as a bit greener and more forested as well. it is early…
Sartarite Inns
Inns along main trade roads go back at least to Achaemenid Persia, probably older. For example, Herodotus writes concerning the Persian Royal Road: “Now the true account of the road in question…
Sartar’s Roads & Inns
So people have asked why the Sartar route over Dragon Pass is preferred to the Grazeland route. It basically comes down to that it is much cheaper and safer to travel over…
Sartar Money and War
The Kingdom of Sartar was the wealthiest of the Dragon Pass kingdoms prior to the Lunar Conquest. Its revenues were a combination of a head tax paid by the tribes (in silver),…
Followers of the Prince of Sartar
One thing to keep in mind in dealing with any Gloranthan leader is that they generally don’t have strict organizational charts! So for example, around a Sartarite Prince we have:Household. This is the…
Choosing a Homeland
This was another fun interview with James Coquillat – this time we talked about the various Homelands in the RQ Core book. Sartar, Lunar Tarsh, Esrolia, Prax, and the Grazelands, and some…
Drivers of the Hero Wars I
Prince Argrath is one of the four big movers driving the Hero Wars forward. To get a handle on him, it is worth looking at the very first presentation of Prince Argrath…
The Guardian Hills, near Swenstown or Toena
A few glimpses of a valley in the Guardian Hills, near Swenstown or Toena. Now Prax gets about 18 inches of rain and 21 inches of snow a year, with almost all…
Notes on Oakfed
Oakfed is a major spirit in Dragon Pass and Prax. In the Lesser and Greater Darkness, Oakfed ruled much of Prax, dispelling the Darkness but burning all the remnants of the ancient…
Lhankor Mhy the Knowing God
Another remarkable Gloranthan deity is the Knowing God, Lhankor Mhy. Also found around the world, he’s generally given credit for creating writing so that mortals might store knowledge. Lhankor Mhy is the…