Nick Brooke

In my experience, players often like rampaging, conquering, looting and being dicks to everyone as they trash the ruins of fallen civilisations. The Storm Gods are great role models for RuneQuest adventurers!

I know! (I have published a Malkioni book myself, and another one is on the way). But the people who are noisily in favour of those books existing stay remarkably quiet about them once they've been written and published. It's bizarre!

The Emperor of the Universe, Yelm the Sun God, decreed that creation was finished when the Sky Dome covered Earth, and that there was no room in it for the upstart Storm Gods, a turbulent tribe full of violence and malice. So their chieftain, the brutish Umath, ripped the Sky and Earth apart, creating a new realm in between called the Middle Air in which his sons could rampage and conquer. This didn't go down very well with his Imperial Majesty. After Umath was punished for his temerity, his heir Orlanth challenged mighty Yelm to three contests (of dance, magic and music) -- losing every time, because those are civilised arts -- and then finally took him on in a contest of weapons. Yelm displayed his prowess with the bow and arrow; Orlanth then struck him down with the Sword that is Death (which he had stolen from his brother Humakt). This ended the Golden Age (because the light of the world went out when Yelm fell), and ushered in a period we call the Lesser Darkness, or the Storm Age. This was also a time of floods (as waters invaded the surface world), ice ages (as the glaciers advanced), trolls invading the surface world (because bright Yelm had descended to their Underworld home and they couldn't bear to stay there), and all sorts of other bad stuff happening. At first the Storm Gods thought this was awesome, because they got to rush around fighting and breaking things, looting the remnants of Yelm's Golden Age civilisation, and generally being dicks to everybody. But eventually they noticed that everything in Glorantha was increasingly shit, and that Chaos deities (led by Orlanth's nephew Wakboth the Devil) were invading, and those Chaos deities weren't happy to be told that there was no room in Glorantha for their upstart tribe and would they mind staying outside in the eternal primordial chaos? So once everything started dying, Orlanth accepted that he'd screwed up egregiously: he gathered a band of followers and headed off to the Underworld, to patch things up with Emperor Yelm in Hell. And that's the Lightbringers Quest. The full story is best told in the Cults of Terror Cosmology (complete text is free at that link!), and that narrative also forms the spine of the Theogony section of the Glorantha Sourcebook (shop link: hardcover or digital). If you're into Gloranthan myth, that book is utterly superb. There are expanded versions of all of this in King of Sartar (shop link: digital only) but I'd start with those two if I were you.

Use the version found in the Red Goddess’s cult in the Red Box (RQ3’s Gods of Glorantha, 1986) until a RQG version comes out. Lunar magicians can manipulate spirit magic spells using sorcery-like skills. There’s an example in Crimson King.

I recently enjoyed Our Flag Means Death, and now have a very different Harrek-and-Argrath relationship in mind. ("In this production, the role of Izzy Hands will be played by Jeff Richard") I also think there could be mileage in a Dread Pirate Harrek take. ("We draw lots for who has to wear the rug, every raid: it terrifies our enemies, but it's so bloody uncomfortable")

If we branch out into Orlanthi Clan Creation Questionnaires (which end up with recent history after all the mythic origins and previous Ages), there's @Ali the Helering Alistair Jones and @Tindalos Edan Jones' Heort's Legacy and Alakoring's Legacy for QuestWorlds, which do a great job of showcasing variant Heortling and Orlanthi traditions. Since we're talking history here, the Heortling book covers recent history for clans from Esrolia, Saird, Tarsh, Maniria and Sartar, while the Alakoring book covers other parts of Tarsh, the Far Point, Red Dragon Vale, the Tarsh Exiles and the benighted Aggaring dog-worshippers. There's also a whole bunch of twisty new options for the mythological questionnaires. The takeaway is, of course, that some of your neighbours believe extremely weird shit, and the foreigners over there are even worse.

There are ten pages of Kralori Family History (more like a clan questionnaire than the RQG version) in Paul Baker's Kralori Primer, which is phenomenally good value if you are at all interested in playing RuneQuest in its mythic fantasy China analogue (still just $4.00 for over 300 pages, with more in the pipeline). There is a method for determining the caste and fate of your adventurer's previous incarnations in Paul Baker's The Houses of Teshnos. (Why don't any of the people who keep telling us they want more RQ settings outside of Dragon Pass and Prax ever discuss Paul's significant body of work? It baffles me)

Sure. The issue I had to deal with was the diversity of Sun County and especially Sandheart characters’ origins (there’s been a lot of movement in recent decades), and the nuances of local politics every time the Count changes. So for your grandparent, there are eight possible events: you roll or pick the one that had the most impact on your family, and also roll or pick to find out what that impact was. But lots of other people in Sun County weren’t significantly affected by it - and I really didn’t want everyone to roll on every table and get lots of “meh” results, I wanted to know the most interesting thing in your grandparent’s story. Things settle down for your parent: you work out their attitude to the previous Count’s innovations (he was a pro-Lunar hippie), the rise of the Red Moon in Prax, and how your family fared during Count Solanthos’ coup. Plus, in rather a nifty section on Initiation, all the schemes we came up with for the Secret History of Sun County get laid out on the table as stuff that everybody gossips about but nobody knows for sure - and your native Sun Domers get a personal link to whichever Rune Lord or Priest led their initiation ritual. And there’s guidance on inserting non-natives of Sun County into the story, when families migrate from Dragon Pass to Prax during the usual Family History process. It’s just under twenty pages, hilariously illustrated by Mark Baldwin (if you know the Chaosium principals, anyway), and contains some lovely throwaway boxouts about local abuse and slurs, how to use the “real” Sun Dome Templars in a Sun County Militia game, and so on. And all the Sandheart books are great, anyway… plus they’re dead cheap, so what are you waiting for?

That one’s called Early Family History, and is for campaigns kicking off in 1610 or earlier. There’s my Sun County Backgrounds article in Tales of the Sun County Militia, which gives a slightly different way of generating backgrounds for “Sandheart” characters starting in 1615. There’s definitely some East Isles stuff in the Korolan Islands setting book. That’s notionally set in 1613, I think. And there are notes in Six Seasons in Sartar, but nothing particularly new: you play younger-than-normal characters starting play earlier-than-normal (1619), so it kinda cancels out.

You will not be disappointed, then.

OK, this is from memory. In the first heady rush of the Jihad, the Umayyads seized the Byzantine city of Damascus and made it the capital of their new Caliphate. The administrators of Damascus both wrote and counted in Greek. Now, Greek numerals were a weird secondary application of the Greek alphabet, plus various squiggles, underlines etc. Arabic numerals (please see my earlier post before quibbling) were considerably more useful: the use of a Zero to mark varying numbers of “tens” makes numbers far more powerful and flexible. And the Arabic language and script were utterly unlike anything the Greek scribes were familiar with. So, in a decision that will surprise nobody who’s ever worked for a large organisation, the Caliphate decided that its accounts should be written in Arabic script and Greek numerals.

Copper in a day: that's rather tasty! Thank you all, friends. And please consider leaving a rating, or even a short (spoiler-free) review, once you've owned Crimson King for 24 hours. It really helps!

Ooh: what a lovely sight to wake up to.

That’s nice: my book’s the #3 overall best-seller on the biggest RPG download store on the intertubes. Note that everything else at the top end of the best-sellers list is a more expensive professional publication: DriveThruRPG’s calculations are based on revenue, not numbers. Incidentally, this is why I make (RuneQuest) part of my books’ titles these days — it helps with visibility, to entice the curious.

Please forgive my shorthand. Zero found its way to Europe via the Arab world, and we adopted it as what is popularly called an “Arabic numeral.” Previous numbering systems including the Roman and Greek methods were phenomenally crap by comparison. There is an intriguing anecdote about what happened to the Greek scribes in Damascus when it became the capital of the early Caliphate, but I fear I would annoy you by continuing, so I will stop.

Harrek mostly respects other people's strength. But Argrath always knows how to make him laugh. Sometimes by telling the moody pirate king the Trickster tales of his various peoples; and sometimes by the amusing way he bounces off the deck and falls overboard when he gets punched. Hilarious!

In my Glorantha, Lunar mathematicians have come up the innovative numeral "zero," much as Arab mathematicians did. Its use transforms arithmetic, except that fuddy-duddy bearded Lhankor Mhy types think it's somehow "tainted by the void of chaos" and insist on keeping their craptastic traditional numbering systems: more fool them. This insight was inspired by Sir Kay's musings in John Steinbeck's The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights (on p.269f. of the Book Club edition):

Updated on 8 January 2023 with two new RuneQuest adventures: Crimson King, by Nick Brooke, is a game of intrigue and conspiracy in the highest echelons of the Lunar Empire! Players take on the roles of the heroes and rulers of this Gloranthan superpower, confronted by treachery and betrayal on all sides. This lavishly-illustrated scenario is a sequel to The Duel at Dangerford and Black Spear, and can be used as a stand-alone adventure or in an ongoing campaign. It builds on the Lunar Empire as presented in A Rough Guide to Glamour and Life of Moonson, but GMs do not need either book to run their game. $11.95 for 71 pages (PDF) In Search of Baroshi, by Marc Robertson. Adventurers must rescue a kidnapped godling and his devotees before a fate worse than death befalls them in a cave complex off Snake Pipe Hollow. $2.95 for 27 pages (PDF) Also, to celebrate the release of Crimson King, the two volumes of our freeform game Life of Moonson have been reduced in price by five dollars in all formats, both print and digital. Book One: The Characters, Book Two: The Freeform.

To celebrate, the prices of both volumes of our Life of Moonson freeform have been cut by $5 in all formats (print and digital). NB: game masters do not need these books to run Crimson King, which is self-contained. Life of Moonson, Book One: The Characters - digital $29.95 $24.95, standard print $53.95 $48.95, premium print $69.95 $64.95 Life of Moonson, Book Two: The Freeform - digital $19.95 $14.95, standard print $44.95 $39.95, premium print $63.95 $58.95

Crimson King is a RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha adventure by Nick Brooke: a game of intrigue and conspiracy in the highest echelons of the Lunar Empire! Players take on the roles of the heroes and rulers of this Gloranthan superpower, confronted by treachery and betrayal on all sides. The lavishly-illustrated scenario is a sequel to The Duel at Dangerford and Black Spear, and can be used as a stand-alone adventure or in an ongoing campaign. It builds on the Lunar Empire as presented in A Rough Guide to Glamour and Life of Moonson, but GMs do not need either book to run their game. Cover art by John Sumrow. Illustrations by Dario Corallo, Katrin Dirim, Linnea Mast and Mike O’Connor. Maps and diagrams by Matt Ryan and Nick Brooke. Playtested at Chaosium Con in April 2022. Available now from the Jonstown Compendium: $24.95 premium colour softcover, $19.95 cheap colour softcover, $11.95 digital (PDF). Crimson King is 72 pages. "Confusion will be my epitaph!" LINK

I'll second everything @soltakss says, and give a shout-out to the artwork as well: it's phenomenal! Between the core rules (especially art for homeland cultures and all the full-page Vasana's Saga illustrations), the Red Book of Magic (showing what magic looks like) and Weapons and Equipment (for Bronze Age material culture), we have never been better served. I'm also a big fan of seasonal adventures. Once your players get used to them, they make game mastering a breeze!

Here you go: The Story of Aye and Bee.

There's a song about him in my second Gloranthan Manifesto, qv. And @Michael Cule told a phenomenal short story about her at one of our bygone conventions (more than twenty years ago? blimey!, time flies). Still sends a chill down my spine when I remember how he delivered it. (Michael, not Androgeus)