MOB

FROM 'THE GREAT WINTER AND THE TIME OF TWO COUNTS' The Dragonrise ...the Dragonrise was an epic event seen across the world, causing mass panic, fear, wonder and awe. From his vantage point in the temple library, Hector the Wise surmised that something significant was about to happen when he observed the stars moving in unexpected ways that fateful night in Earth season, 1625. But even he was not prepared for the incredible sight of an immense True Dragon, obviously many miles long, rising out of the distant mountains the following day. Unknown to everyone in Prax, in a catastrophic blow for the Lunar Empire the great Brown Dragon had just destroyed the new temple of the Reaching Moon, devouring most of the Lunar army and many of the Emperor’s most important priests and officials. Great rumbling shock waves attested to the dragon’s stupendous power. As one rippled its way across the plains it toppled one of the retirement towers next to the great Sun Dome. Although the damage to the temple was slight, the unfortunate hermit inside the tower (the suspected Lunar collaborator Laertes Coatilon) was killed, and wild stories began to spread that the Sun Dome Temple itself had been destroyed. Safeguarding the County As the panic rose, the countess put her forces on high alert. Fortunately, new arrows for the spear-throwing machine at Harpoon were to hand, having been made from the many tree trunks washed down in the Great Flood. Vega ordered it to be loaded and the targeteers to be vigilant. Few remembered that the Great Ballista’s original purpose was to protect against dragons. It had been built in great fear after the Dragonkill War, when the people of the Sun Dome tore down their old temple, purged themselves of any vestiges of EWF-inspired solar draconism and returned to the unsullied, pure light of Yelmalio. The weapon originally protected the new Sun Dome Temple, but when draconic retribution never came, it was later moved to the high bluffs above the river near the village that now bears its name. Vega realized that no one now had the means or expertise to move the harpoon back to the Sun Dome. But she was able to revive another old custom – along with the Great Ballista, a network of Dragonward towers had been built across the county in the aftermath of the Dragonkill War. Like the Arm of Pavis in the Rubble, these watchtowers once provided aerial defense and also served as heliograph stations. As fear of the dragons waned, and the prosperity of Sun County declined, the expense of maintaining the Dragonwardens weighed heavily. The network of towers was slowly dismantled, and their garrisons were reassigned. The mirrors were placed in the temple treasury, and the internal timbers reused elsewhere. Some towers were demolished. Most were left as shells. Retiring priests took to using them as hermitages, and with their original purpose almost forgotten they became known only as ‘retirement towers’. To assure the people, the countess announced she was reinstating the Dragonwardens. New great mirrors would be fitted to the towers, or at least those in a fit enough condition (little heed was given to the peace and solitude of any hermits within). Sadly, long ago the Count known as Orogurri the Bison loved drink more than ceremony and had melted down all the great mirrors in the treasury to make gold cups for his warriors. To replace them, Vega organized a great requisition drive to collect gold and other metal items from across the county, gathering a huge quantity from the panicked people. Revived Energies The great dragon continued to fly in great spirals around Dragon Pass, circling Kero Fin and obscuring the Red Moon. As it did so, strange draconic energies revived that had been quiet since the days of the Empire of the Wyrms Friends. In Prax, the Old Sun Dome temple again became a true place of power, and its once-cracked dome now glistened as if covered in scales. In the Pavis Rubble, the Yelmalio garrison at Angle Fort (loyalists for Vega) were alarmed to see activity at the usually deserted Dragonewt Temple close by. Swarms of dragonewts were converging there, many more than anyone had ever anticipated living in the vicinity. It looked like the dragonewts were repairing damaged plinths and pylons, and dragging great blocks to the site to build new ones. When the dream dragon Krang was seen flying up the valley towards Pavis, far from its usual haunts around Five Eyes temple, in horror Vega Goldbreath surmised they must be preparing a ritual to summon the True Dragon to Prax! She righteously resolved to stop them. This led to the first time the two rival counts and their forces came into direct and bloody conflict with each other, Templar against Templar. Ritual in the Rubble Now back from Sartar to recruit another nomad army, Argrath White Bull himself participated in the ceremony in the Rubble, along with several of his Companions including Rurik. Clad in strange garments and headware, they joined the dragonewts in dancing around the dream dragon Krang to weird atonal music. Ringing the platform were Count Belvani and his Templars, who answered Argrath’s call to come to Pavis to defend them while they completed the ritual. Belvani first saw off an attack by the trolls, who had long resented the temple’s presence ever since their dominance of the Rubble had been broken by the Dragonewts’ Dream. Vega Goldbreath struck as soon as the trolls were driven away. Whereas the Templars of the rival counts had only weeks before striven against each other on the Shield Push field, now the fight was in deadly earnest. The forces of the countess were eventually repulsed, but not before many fell on both sides, including Count Belvani’s dragonewt servant, The Gamon. Belvani himself survived a stupendous Sunspear spell, cast by Vega, that left him blackened and smoking and her so stunned she had to be carried off the field. Meanwhile, because most of Belvani’s forces were in Pavis, the countess arranged a simultaneous surprise raid on the Old Sun Dome by her Golden Guard. This also failed: the Gold Wyrm still there saw to that. Massacre at Five Eyes The ceremony at the Dragonewt Temple continued, though at least the True Dragon never came to Prax. After a week, people were relieved to see it slowly settle below the mountains again. But following the ceremony in the Rubble, the dream dragon Krang flew back down the river valley, and was noticeably different: definitely bigger, and somehow more vital, magically resonant and threatening. Smarting from her earlier failure, the countess resolved to destroy this menace, sending a force to Five Eyes Temple. They failed to locate the dream dragon, but slaughtered every living thing they could find there, including the harmless old Trachodon priest Ruupar. The Fall of the Old Sun Dome Belvani’s prestige and power might have been weakened by the loss of Daystar in Sartar, but Vega feared moving directly against him again while the Golden Wyrm remained at large. Her chance finally came in Storm season, when Hector the Wise devised an ingenious plan to lure the wyrm to Harpoon, using the new mirrors of the Dragonward towers. When it came within range the Great Ballista shot it from the sky. With the Gold Wyrm dead, the Countess now took swift and decisive action. In a second great clash between the rival claimants, Belvani and his Sun Dragon followers were driven out of the Old Sun Dome in Sea season, 1626. Throughout the next year, Vega followed this up with a widespread and bloody purge of the Sun Dome lands, seeking to eliminate any remaining draconic influences among the people. Rescued by nomad allies, Belvani retreated to Suntown in New Pavis, where he continues to plot his return to power.

Sage advice from the "Grand Shaman of Games" Greg Stafford, way back in 1978... https://www.chaosium.com/blogdont-forget-in-runequest-when-adventurers-are-slaughtered-or-run-screaming-the-monsters-get-experience-rolls-too

Exciting news - Encounter Roleplay will be streaming the Premiere Twitch Event of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha—May 28th at 8pm EST! Featuring the roleplaying talents of @bluejay_712, @therealjimdavis, @JPruInc, @EncounterRP and Chaosium's own @richaje! Watch here: https://www.twitch.tv/encounterroleplay

A new RQG preview is going out! This features the official RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha character sheet. Plus exciting news from our friends Encounter Roleplay. Sign up here if you'd like to get the inside scoop on the new Chaosium edition of RuneQuest: http://eepurl.com/dtqE9T

Those on our RUNEQUEST special pre-release list just got sent their second preview post, with a whole chapter from the book! If you want to join the list to get sneak peeks at RQG sign up here: http://eepurl.com/dtqE9T

Free RPG Day is coming up in just over one month (Saturday, June 16). There are 500+ stores participating world-wide! Find the one nearest to you with the #FRPGDay retailer locator: http://www.freerpgday.com/retailers.htm?v=2018c Chaosium's offering is Scritch Scratch, by our assistant Call of Cthulhu line editor Lynne Hardy.

DOWN DARKER TRAILS was released on November 16, 2017, which was one day after the cut-off for the 2018 Awards. It will be up for consideration next year though.

Four new titles on the Miskatonic Repository: an adventure, an update, a sequel, and an all new genre for Call of Cthulhu: Anime Punk - A New Genre for Call of Cthulhu by Carl Matthews ($10.00, 32 page PDF)"Whether you like your anime with demons and supernatural elements or just straight up modern dystopia in your Cyberpunk games, it’s likely that Call of Cthulhu can help you hit that sweet spot." Hocus Pocus by Adam Gauntlet ($4.00, 22 page PDF)"pits the investigators against minions of an Outer God, and all of New York may be forfeit if they fail." (nb a sequel to The Man Downstairs, but players do not have to have played that scenario to enjoy this one.) The Scarecrow by Michael LaBossiere (pay what you want - suggested price $0.99, 14 page PDF)"...a time for mysterious murders and scarecrow legends" Down New England Town by Michael LaBossiere (pay what you want - suggested price $0.99, 7 page PDF)"Resembling a plot line from one of his classic horror movies, the body of director Roger Colwin has been stolen from a church in New England..." (nb complete rewrite and update of the 1992 original adventure)

We are delighted three Chaosium products are nominees in the 2018 Origins Awards! The Grand Grimoire (nominated for Best RPG Supplement) The Two-Headed Serpent (nominated for Best RPG Supplement) Call of Cthulhu The Coloring Book (nominated for Best Game Accessory) The Origins Awards are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design to reward excellence in game design. The 2018 Awards will be announced at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus OH on Saturday June 16, 2018. Congratulations & good luck to all the nominees!

The Stars are Almost Right.

We're still building the list, but next week we'll start sharing some of the early access stuff. A couple of new images to go with the recruiting posts, (you may have seen them elsewhere): "Hill Country" by Andrey Fetisov "The Vale of Flowers" by Andrey Fetisov

The RuneQuest RPG is "one of the Great Games, a defining thing for our hobby..." says influential game design theorist Ron Edwards in Unnatural Selections: Recent Chaosium Reviews of Note #5 #RuneQuest #RQ #Ronadept #CultsOfTerror #CultsOfPrax

Our Miskatonic University: the Restricted Collection Kickstarter has come to a successful end: 3697 backers, USD$106,994 raised (of a $25K goal), and 20/20 Stretch Goals achieved. All our backers have graduated Summa Cum Laude—with the highest praise! Now we must put our efforts into the next phase of this Kickstarter - delivering all of the rewards as quickly and efficiently as we can. In the most recent update, we've outlined to our backers what those steps are. We will stay in regular communication with our backers. We delivered our previous board game Kickstarter on time and intend to do the same here. The Chaosium team would like to thank our backers for their support over the past 21 days. We're delighted to be back making Lovecraftian board games again!

Back our MU Kickstarter—even as a $1 "Student"— and get a 10% discount next time you visit Chaosium.com (on all product lines including RuneQuest). Or 15% if we make 4000 backers! But hurry, ends in FIVE HOURS... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/448333182/miskatonic-university-the-restricted-collection-bo

We made to 100K, if we make to 4000 backers we'll up the "Field Trip" discount to 15% We passed $100K earlier today, so all 20 Stretch Goals have been achieved - top marks! With just over five hours remaining, can we get to 4000 backers? If we do, we'll make the Field Trip Reward treat even better: instead of 10%, it will be a 15% discount for all backers on your next visit to Chaosium.com! Tell your friends it's still not too late to enrol at MU and graduate with honors - but they have to hurry: the Kickstarter ends at 2.05PM Eastern US time TODAY! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/448333182/miskatonic-university-the-restricted-collection-bo/posts/2181975

Last Day of the Semester and Final Stretch Goals announced in our MU Kickstarter! "We give credit for life experience" Our final "Diploma Mill" stretch goal is the highly prestigious and coveted Doctorate of Medieval Metaphysics. We originally set this at $100K (that's now for a fancier box). But we moved the doctorate forward to $95K because at MU "we give credit for life experience". (Besides, we don't want our backers to end up in the accursed academic limbo that is ABD - "all but dissertation"...)

We are at the tail-end of the semester (just over 40 hours to go!), but still in pursuit of academic excellence! Here is the next Stretch Goal: $90K—Stationery Upgrade V: Super-Deluxe Player Mats We will further increase the thickness of the Player Mats to a solid 1.5mm board with glossy dispersion varnish. (We're also going to a announce a special backer reward if/when we reach 3000 backers - 65 to go!)

Redbubble is 20% off site-wide right now. Use code THIS20 - expires May 7, 2018 at 11:59pm PT.

Added at your suggestion😎

Just don't ask the Morokanth how they make their surprisingly delicate and soft "kid" gloves...

Graduate Students are expected to sacrifice years of study (and at MU, maybe more) to learn from their esteemed academic mentors, the Professors. Fortunately, at Miskatonic University they're an endlessly renewal resource... Next Stretch Goal: $81K - GRAD STUDENT ADMISSIONS FORMS Full-size PDFs of the MU Admission Form (used on the Graduate Student cards in the game), and BLANK versions you can print and fill out yourself!

Ok, so "Don't lick the duck!" is Twitter's valiant effort at translating the Japanese, but come to think of it that is probably sensible advice too... #DontMessWithTheDucks

Comes in all SIZs including "Standard Gamer 3XL": Basic Role Playing: the "Big Gold Book" cover by Chaosium

Here you go: https://www.redbubble.com/people/chaosium/works/31614519-basic-role-playing-the-big-gold-book-cover