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STEVE PERRIN writes:

OCTOBER 10 is the first anniversary of the passing Chaosium founder Greg Stafford, the 'grand shaman of gaming'. As one of the greatest game designers of all time; winner of too many awards to count; and a friend, mentor, guide, and inspiration to generations of gamers, Greg Stafford influenced the universe of tabletop gaming beyond measure. To honor his legacy and with Greg's family's blessing, we encourage Chaosium fans and gamers in general to play a tabletop game from October 10 to October 31 in remembrance of Greg. On October 10 Chaosium will be releasing a set of new free adventures for all our major game systems (RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, King Arthur Pendragon, 7th Sea, HeroQuest) you can play. We'll release details about these scenarios in the coming weeks. Or play any of Greg's games, or a game he influenced (that scope is **wide**) Or play any game at all - as Greg said in his last public speech at the 2018 ENnies, the gaming industry only exists because of your enthusiasm and support. We at Chaosium recognise that countless RPG fans are fans (including us!) because of Greg Stafford and what he achieved. Feel free to share an image of your game on social media or at BRP Central, with the hashtag #WeAreAllUs. Show the "Greg Rune" (aka the Sartar Rune) in your post - copy and print the image here, or from Redbubble (all "Greg Rune" merchandise is currently available at cost, with no artist margin). What better way to honor his legacy than getting your friends together and playing a game in remembrance of him! We would like to again share the final words from the obituary by Greg Stafford's family: To honor Greg’s memory the family requests, in lieu of flowers, that you strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know, go somewhere you haven’t been, face a personal challenge head on, read about something new, and enjoy life. We are all us." #WeAreAllUs.

One of my favorite bits from the original Jonstown Compendium (in the RuneQuest Companion): "There is a great fortress far to the north amidst the wastes of Hykim and Valind; a giant valley with a humid, warm climate. Trees grow in profusion there, and flowering plants sprout amidst pleasant, warmly-watered meadows. All around this wondrous haven tower the cliffs of the glaciers, and they have brooded there since Valind first howled out of the north. But the ice demons never invade the valley. The beetling mountains of ice and their howling winds form merely an appealing contrast to the perfection of the valley. The inhabitants of this paradise live without want, hunger, or pain, spending their lives in ceaseless wonder and joy. But all these happy inhabitants are broos."

Announcing the first of the free #rpg adventures we're releasing on Oct 10 in memory of Greg Stafford. 'The Sword of Kings', a 7th Sea scenario by John Wick: https://www.chaosium.com/blogweareallus-the-sword-of-kings-free-7th-sea-adventure-to-be-released-in-memory-of-greg-stafford-on-oct-10/

As someone new to RQ and dying for material, I'm glad to see this happening.

I'm about to start an RQG campaign which is heavily based on the HQ Eleven Lights campaign, although the clan in focus will be the Hiording clan of Colymar. My players suggested that they would like to start with a low level characters, as Glorantha is not that familiar to all of them. So we decided to start the game when characters are 16-17 years old, right after their adulthood initiation, and that they would seek and apply for cult initiation in game once we get the basics of the world and culture nailed down. However, as I'm writing details of the Hiording clan, I've become lost with the meaning of lay members and initiates when it comes to cults. First of all, on the RQG GM Screen Adventure Book, there are several NPC characters who seem to be quite "low level", but are still statted as cult initiates having access to rune magic: Heortarl (pg. 91) is 16 years old and an Initiate of Orlanth Adventurous with one rune magic spell. The herders Vargast and Jareena (pg. 92, 93), are a bit older but also Initiates having access to three rune magic spells each. The HQ Coming of Storm book describes the number of initiates and devotees for all major cults in Red Cow clan. The Red Cow clan has some 830 adults in total (pg. 11), and of those 336 are initiates* of Ernalda (pg. 15). Assuming that half of the adults are women, and most women worship Ernalda, it supports the idea that all cult members are at least on initiate level. * Based on the numbers and terms, I assume that HQ Initiate == RQG Initiate, and HQ Devotee == RQG Rune Priest / Lord / God Talker. All this implies that all people join their cult as initiate right after or during their adulthood initiation... However, following quotes can be found in RQG core rule book: pg. 269 "Most who belong to a cult are lay members, without any authority or position within the cult. The way to join the hierarchy of a cult is to become an initiate." pg. 270: "Simple worshipers are called lay members. Lay members do not know the secrets of the religion, are excluded from key parts of worship, and do not gain access to the deity’s Rune magic. Lay members are casual worshipers or are children, and include anyone preparing to become an initiate. The inner members of the cult are the initiates and the Rune Masters—Rune Priests, God-talkers, and Rune Lords." This would imply that most of the people are actually lay members, without access to rune magic, and that only much smaller subset of the people are initiates of a cult. So... If 16 years old Heortarl is already an initiate of Orlanth, and almost all of the Red Cow's women are initiates of Ernalda, where and who are the lay members of the cults and why they seem not to be present at all in the RQG GM Screen Adventure Book and in Eleven Lights campaign?

MODERATOR'S VOICE: Knock it off. You've already let everyone know you don't like his work. You aren't engaging in the thread like a civilised adult - you are just trolling..

Medieval Swiss?

And these are the Lunars for this weekend's big battle. Not quite canon I guess but hey. The leader, who the PCs already met and hate passionately, is the left-handed one with the bun.

Nonetheless, I would not reasonably classify them as subcults of the same deity because there's no deity there. I mean, I guess you could say LM and IO are Storm and Moon variants of Buserian (he's older, he gets precedent imho), but... idk, man. It burns a little. Also, as much as it's useful to think of the monomyth, context is for kings. The details are what make the stories interesting. Sure, Irippi Ontor is a bearded dude who knows stuff, but his story is not the same as the story of Buserian and their magics reflect that fairly significantly. Buserian was meticulous, ascetic and kind, discovered astronomy, compassionately saved people in the Darkness, created comparative theology. Irippi Ontor was a power-hungry disgraced reckless thief who was tossed out of not just Buserian's priesthood, but Lhankor Mhy's as well. He's a mad scientist.

The Kickstarter for the Swedish edition of Call of Cthulhu is now live. Our friends at Eloso Förlag have created a special international collectors backer level for non-Swedes, but if you don't do anything else do watch their campaign video - its AMAZING!

Glorantha is one bubble of many within an infinite ocean of Chaos. There are doubtless other bubbles of order, some almost indistinguishable from canon Glorantha, some very different. Every time a GM starts a new campaign set in Glorantha, one of these bubbles emerges from the inchoate void.

Valare definitely had a very specific spiritual agenda and we're lucky she collected so much additional data along the way. Heroquesters can apply that stuff to non-Lunar objectives. For me these books are extremely valuable because they were never directly fed into the Jrusteli monomyth. Carmania was a closed door to the God Learners and the inner workings of Dara Happa seem to have been accessible only second hand, via whatever they were able to scrounge from post-Arkat sources. EWF got into the cities but that's a different thing . . . and even then, the western reaches remained aloof. What they feed is neither GL nor EWF but the Goddess. Sure, Greg's compositional method was largely to use the familiar monomyth constructs and then fill in the brackets when something more local came to mind. But within the setting, it takes someone like a Valare to incorporate these local rites into a more cosmopolitan context. Otherwise they might have remained [Ernalda] and [Uleria] forever and we would never have been the wiser.

Oh yeah . . . Fellini Satyricon (also on YouTube) is prime Lunar Empire. I just don't spend a lot of hobby time there these days. "If the work of Petronius is the realistic, bloody and amusing description of the customs, characters and general feel of those times, the film we want to freely adapt from it could be a fresco in a fantasy key, a powerful and evocative allegory: a satire of the world we live in today. . . science fiction of the past."

As noted, we've received an avalanche of orders after Shadow of the Crystal Palace went to air and our North American Shipping Company has been overwhelmed by the Critter Community Death Hug! Our customer support specialist Dustin outlines what we're doing to to catch up... https://www.chaosium.com/bloga-note-from-dustin-shipping-delays-death-hugs-and-your-order-status

Latest (used as a filler). The attendant-servant is armed and armored (have assumed a combat veteran) to protect the mage whilst she is in a trance, calling down chunks of the Red Moon. Now no white space. Room for more thumbnails in the Army Lists perhaps.

The Irish medieval law loved their fine gradations of everything. 7 grades of kings, 7 grades of sheep herders, 7 grades of poets, etc. As an aside, I recommend checking out Francis Byrne's book "Irish Kings and High-Kings", and Wolfram's "The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples," but also Trevor Bryce's books on Hittite kingship, Dumezil's "Destiny of a King," Borza's essays on Macedonian kingship, and anything you can find on Vedic India, Leik's Babylonian World, Carol Thomas's paper on the Nature of Mycenaean Kingship, and plenty else. Put it all into a blender until you can't figure out which belongs to which. And then filter that through King of Sartar. But taking any ONE of those as your source for thinking about Orlanthi kingship is likely to end up with you swapping out Greg's material for a real world culture. I've fallen into that trap - heck, Greg fell into that trap many times.

Here's all 92.

Cast a spell on yourself with 5 points of Extension, like Flight, Charisma, Truesword, Shield, Hallucinate, etc. If you didn't get a critical success, then drop the spell, or dispel or dismiss it if your mean old GM doesn't allow you to just drop a spell that you have cast. Regain the RP, if you don't have enough to cast it again. Remember to turn up to every worship ceremony for all your associate cults. Sing extra loud. Bring a step-ladder and sing right in @Joerg's ear. Try again until you get a critical success, so that the spell costs no Rune Points. You now have your spell up for a whole year, with all your RP still available to you. Do this before every worship ceremony if you have 6 or more RP available at the time. Eventually your luck will be with you, and you'll get that sweet spell for no RP. Oh, and remember to augment, and ritually prepare. 5 hours of ritual prep, that's another 2% crit chance. And take your time over that augment, you can double your chance of augmenting with an 80% skill or passion for just 16 melee rounds.

Over on the RuneQuest forum we've got a preview post up about the JONSTOWN COMPENDIUM, our forthcoming community content resource for Glorantha on DriveThruRPG (very similar to our existing Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu and Explorer's Society for 7th Sea). The post contains details if you're interested in contributing, and having your material up and ready on launch or soon after.

When we get done with this thead, I have a list of other Pelandan threads I want to start: Yargan and the Blues This will be a MESS, but I feel it'll eventually be necessary, even if it's just to establish what's going on IMG rather than absolute truth. The Once and Future Elves of Pelanda. Elves, underworld, Karresh, Skyburn, reforestation in the 1st age, reforestation of the Hero Wars. WEEEE! Gray Age & First Age Pelanda under the Lendarshi This may be folded into the Elven thread, or the Spolite Empire thread. A more detailed attempt at the history of the Spolite Empire This comes necessarily after the other two Also, um, just to be sure... is this the right forum for this? Or am I navelgazing and ranting about my glorantha too much?

As Hzark suggested, I ran a one-shot of Pendragon for my gaming group when our regular GM couldn't show to run Pathfinder. It was the introductory scenario from KAP 5.2 where the squires go on a bear hunt, fight some bandits, and then get knighted. A couple of days later, I got an email asking if I could run a bi-weekly campaign on a different day. Here comes the Great Pendragon Campaign! (I guess that also means more questions will pop up on this forum.)

Mostly trolling, I think. And contrarian for the lulz, I guess? I mean... Sfar is a wildly popular artist/creator, winning awards for his drawings & paintings, for his films... The man is clearly a genius, but <shrug> not every genius' work is to everyones' taste, eh? (sorry, Barbarian, don't mean to step on your toes there). Plenty of "great art" I don't care to look at the, "great literature" that I can't stand to read, etc. I mean... I've met people who don't like chocolate, for ArachneSolara's sake! I'm not even certain they're the same species that I am...

I can't think of any game I've stopped playing because the publisher didn't have it on an edition treadmill. I've never had someone refuse to play a game because of that reason either... though I suppose that person might be out there, "I will not play any game that has had less than three published editions!" Anyway, Superworld is on my short-list of games I want to run sometime soon. This time as a conversion for The Whispering Vault... and it seems like the Nephilim are something that could/should show up in After The Vampire Wars.

An official launch event for our new Call of Cthulhu supplement BERLIN THE WICKED CITY, taking place in the Wicked City itself! Join Chaosium's Jeff Richard and Jason Durall at the Otherland Bookshop (Bergmannstraße 25 Berlin) at 6.30PM on September 7th. The book will be available, along with Berlin-themed cocktails. More details about the event here: http://otherland-berlin.blogspot.com/2019/08/release-event-cthulhu-goes-to-wicked.html

We have a finished manuscript. But we need to get the next round of RQG books out before we can try to polish up the first book of a new line. I think you all should be able appreciate that.

From a strict rules point of view - all of LMs Rune magic uses Truth. In the RQG rules, there is literally no Stasis Rune Magic at all for any cult - and I'm not really aware of any other Stasis magic except for the Mostali (counting Flintnail as Mostali) for RQG OR HQG, though there is probably something I've overlooked. It is the little Rune that couldn't. So a Lhankor Mhy who is bad at the Stasis Rune will enjoy no rules penalties at all really, it won't change their ability to cast their Gods magic in the slightest. Of course the Sages will stroke their beards disapprovingly and talk about how no one so flighty and inconstant will ever be a good sage because they will never properly write the sort of multi-volume study written over decades that shows the worth of a true scholar - but unlike all those other idiot apprentices who tried to make a name for themselves by exploring ancient ruins instead, and just got eaten by undead or whatever, your PCs intrepid explorations may be successful and recover long lost knowledge or knowledge from strange foreign sources, and so prove their worth as a sage. FWIW, I don't think it ever featured in their iconography much. LM is clearly obsessed with Truth, up to their Truth rune shaped buildings (the only other cults who feel the need to reflect their Runes in the shape of their architecture have vastly more sensible squares and domes, IIRC). I've never seen any evidence they care about the stasis connection anywhere near as much.

Lunar baddies in progress.

I like the idea of accidentally moving from your Library into Lhankor Mhy's Great Library and then having to get back again. Slipping between two bookcases, or moving between stcks of precariously-balanced scrolls would be a good way of doing this. The quitetest Storm people. Lhankor Mhy's Libraries have doughty Serpent-Amazons whose menacingly-hissed Ssssssh is enough to freeze the blood of the bravest of Sages.

The Pelorian languages are all inter-related, and BusEnari and BusErian both appear on the Gods Wall (at least according to Plentonius' interpretation). I rather see a broad Downland migration of various pastoralist groups, including the Andam Horde and the Bisosae, from the south. Prior to the Nidan uprising, there was just a hill range acting as the watershed between Ralios and Fronela, easy to cross for the herds. I would like to note that "Biso" and "Busi" may just be flections of the same stem, with Busi possibly the possessive/objective form, and Biso the active one. Tadenit was the writing founder, Kachast the speaking one (the God of the Silver Feet, really). I am willing to make Zzabur or at least the zzaburi the carriers of an alphabetic script into central Genertela. He certainly inherited the flensing knife of Tadenit. Our real world Bronze Age had literacy only in the shape of hieroglyphs reduced to a syllabary, with the alphabetic script emerging from the illiterate era of the Bronze Age collapse. Along the Oslir River, we have three alphabetic scripts Cat-scratchsin, do-scratching, and Dara Happan. Prior to the Dara Happan system we have Pelorian glyphs which appear to have evey characteristic of a syllabary. (From what we know about these three scripts, all of them include symbols for vowels, unlike the original semitic scripts, an adaptation which may have been made by the Greeks or the Lesbos folk (from whom the Etruscans appear to have descended). Basically, Zator, the sorcerer of the Planetary Sons, becomes unseen (Invisible) and makes the stars emerge. Prior to this, all the celestial folk were obscured by the Sun Dome. Zator and Zzabur don't really have the same linguistic source, but one could still be a different people's misunderstood loan word for the other. Prior to Zator releasing the stars from imprisonment behind the Sun Dome, there were no stars visible in the sky, although possibly Nestentos already was on the rise. You'd have to pass from Raibanth's Footstool up to Yuthubars, and then exit beyond the Sky Dome, or alternatively enter Senthoros to look through it. Sacrifice can be the dedication of a (reusable) item to the ritual activity, removing it temporarily from the available tools. In the time of the painters, the taking of the food from the slain prey would allow the painters to dedicate some of the stuff taken to the higher powers they were aware of. Yes, the "Pentans" really appear to be Nivorah exiles in Zarkos. (The Arcos btw. appears the only of the three rivers of Peloria who entered the land uphill, unlike the Porals or Oslira.) The Starlight Wanderers were pedestrians or at best charioteers. The Pillar of Truth appears to be a feature of Senthoros, the far eastern or eastern above city of Zaytenaras, one of the ten planetary sons who is cognate of Dayzatar as planet. Zaytenaras also bears the Truth rue, unlike Zator/Buserian. I think this is entirely on topic - Lhankor Mhy is after all the nerd among the Orlanthi deities, and esoteric research is what his heroes do. Somaria (Esus) might be sufficiently west already. But yes, the introduction of cattle should have come with the arrival of the pastoralist hill barbarian ancestors (including the Bisosae). But then, according to the Guide Murharzarm's Empire (and the creation of the Dara Happan humans) occurred some time after Umath's birth. It also coincides with the arrival of the Oslir River from the south (as the continuation of the Sshorg/Aroka invasion of the land by the rivers). The pastoralist Buserian would have been quite similar to the Praxian Waha. This lack of normal herd beasts was one reason why I speculated that the broos in the nargan needed some time of adaptation if they wanted to breed with anything other than their (quite dangerous) Doraddi foes. Baraku's/Desero's horde suffered from the same herd famine that the Six-Legged Empire did - no typical grasses or grains thrive in the Veldt. The herd beasts there are really more like browsers than they are grazers.

oop I can't find the images I'm looking for that fast because there are like 1000 Glorantha books so in the meantime, here's the non/semi-canonical but entirely entertaining Six Ages video game illustration of Alkothi raiders with both head-bound skulls and actual Shadzoring visible and a shot of a Dara Happan ambassador with a Alkothi warrior guards.

Interesting, as Irrippi Ontor used to be a Lunarised version of Lhankor Mhy. Buserian makes sense, as the Lunar Empire is also the Dara Happan Empire.

Seseine is the Pamaltelan goddess of seduction. She is connected with chaos. She fought against Pamalt's Necklace in the Demon Period. In the same confrontation Pamalt confronted Gark, Krajalk and Pocharngo. She can take any form, and seeks to corrupt the Right Footpath. Her way is contrasted with the right uses of pleasure, desire, and sexuality. In Laskal she is worshiped through Echeklihos. (Revealed Mythologies) Despite she has a demigoddess daughter in Heortland, the Guide also point her more in Pamaltela. If you are not running a Fonritian campaign, maybe you find more suitable Lemure. She is exactly the same, but she is the source of passions. Her cult is described in Lords of Terror, and that book has the subtitle "The Cults of Dorastor". So Lemure maybe is a more suitable choice for a Genertela campaign. As far as I know none of them has connections with Uleria. Vovisibor was created by the Five Evil Ones, some powerful shamans who killed Kendamalar (another way to explain the dead of the Sun). Vovisibor killed them as first action. Maybe one of the Five Evil Ones was a woman and Seseine was born from her raped broken dead body. The newborn goddess started to corrupt Artmali and Agimori spreading out the chaos in the domains of Pamalt.

Yo! I'm just wondering if anyone is aware of mods (or modders interested in doing) for Glorantha for RPG games, e.g. Mount and Blade, or others... I'd seriously love to have the money for a full Elder Scrolls mod... (Before ppl say - yes, I know KoDP, and the upcoming release. And I know one of the developers for ES was an RQ fan... Neither help the question)

I was merely correcting your implication that there was no communication about CoC until about a year ahead of launch. That simply wasn't factually true. You know, you'd expect the licensor would remember things like that, I mean ... since they're working with the developers and all?

I had a quick look at Into the Darkness. You can't compare the two, one is an AAA quality show with (voice)actors, props and people sitting at an actual table, the other is a bunch of dude-heads with headsets. Don't get me wrong, they and the story might be great, but the two are on a completely different level. And then the other thing. They are again all white males. Even I as a white male am not really interested in other (only) white males gaming. If someone does something like this, they should at least get some girls to play along.

I am reminded of Fred Ward's Shinanju instructor in the movie Remo Williams, The Adventure Begins. Even now I can see him telling Fred "You move like a pregnant Yak!"

I think you should use whatever you find valuable in the works that draw from Greg's well. We will all be happier.

Bread would probably be part of the ration anyway, as it is easy to make. My mother remembers taking the Sunday Dinner down to the Bakehouse on Sunday mornings and fetching it back home when it was cooked. she would pick her father up from the pub on the way back. That would have been in the 40s/early 50s. So, I would expect every area to have a Bakehouse cooking of meals etc. In Birmingham, we have Baltis, which are said to have derived from inns in Pakistan that cooked food in large iron pots, called Baltis, where people came along to eat the stew with a chunk of naan bread (Or bread bread, as it can be translated). If used in a city, that would be the same thing, a communal cooking area, where everyone comes in and eats.

🔺Law Rune ⬛ Earth Rune ⬜ Dust Rune ⚪ Light Rune ⚫ Darkness Rune

I find the concepts of "Nephilim: Occult Roleplaying" very intriguing, beyond just being a game. The Nephilim game ties many elements together, and it can be allot to juggle, but it is a game that expands. You can read of Ahkenaten and Zoroaster and the other historical figures (and a-historical) in the game supplements, it you can go to the library and learn about those figures and cultures in depth. I think to really "get" the game, it helps to not just read the supplements to the game itself, but the books it references. Off into the ever weaving paths of the great occulted library labrynthine. Perhaps that is just the character of the angel manifest. Perhaps it is just speculation, after all, "this game is not Real, You are."

I've been organizing a weekend of games for many people I've played with over the years on the 26th. It's a big group of 15+ and many people who haven't played Pendragon. I'll make sure we get at least one good game of KAP in for the memory of Mr. Stafford with hopefully one of these adventures. Thanks for the great game, Greg, it's brought me and many others a lot of enjoyment and I'm happy to introduce it to even more people. Thanks to the staff of Chaosium and the folks working on the adventures. I appreciate all of the hard work.

English is a Stupid Language Seriously, English as a Second Language.

Are there myth about Seseine and Uleria?

These look great! I've occasionally considered getting into printing mini's. A few things I'm curious about (and these are general questions for any Makers, though obviously Ochoa has shown some great expertise here! ) What's the preferred material for minis' fine detail? Are there more than one? What's the cost of the media itself, the raw filament (or resin, or other material) on a (rough) per-mini basis? How many "rough draft" or "prototype" mini's do you create before settling on a "final" unit? (Obviously more-detailed ones take longer, and similar designs are quicker) How much time do you take (hours) modelling and refining a unit before you're willing to call it "done (enough)"? What stupid oversights/assumptions am I making? What do I not know that I don't know? TYVM!

Were there any relationships implied by it? E.g. Secret Heir of Sartar could simply evolve into Heir of Sartar - still a target for Lunar agents, or now a potential rival to the revealed Heir of Sartar. Were there any relationships formed from it? E.g. Secret Feeder of the Crimson Bat becomes a possible Flaw as there may be those who know the secret identity. Was it like Sureela in the Red Cow stories who might have the Secret Identity of Andarna the Peddlar who was known about in Jonstown? Could be as above - varied relationships formed because of it. Evolve the Secret Identity into something like Relationship to Anders Swenson of the Black Cat Inn, or into the associated occupation Peddlar of Jonstown. Was the secret identity good or bad? If bad, evolve it into a new Flaw based on the characteristics. If good, then transform it into a new ability such as Awareness of Stickpickers. If the ability was simply a throwaway that never got used, then determine why it was created (e.g. spying on the Lunars) and evolve it into whatever its true purpose was supposed to be. Quite a few different angles to take to make it relevant in some capacity - one of the nice flexibilities in my mind with HQG.

No I mean literally the Oceanic speakers who settled Papua-New Guinea. Two major branches of Austronesian are attested in the island of New Guinea, Oceanic (the Western Oceanic languages) and the South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages.

Yes. Magasta the Churner. Engizi the Sky River. Oslira (and probably most other River Gods). And of course Mastakos.