Is the Monster Empire playable?

[EricW]

Just how putrid was the Lunar Empire at this stage? Was it like a very large Dorastor? Was it the Bright Empire reborn? Or were the chaos horrors more concealed, people clinging to a facade of normality, trying to avoid attracting the attention of the worsening chaotic horrors in their communities?

How many reached out to Argrath for help, or were they mostly too afraid?

[John Biles]

Given it's ruled by Ralkazark, it probably starts bad, then becomes a nightmare.

Given Argath unleashes Sheng Seleris on them, most Pelorians would assume reaching out to him for aid is like asking cholera to aid you.

[Nick Brooke]

Ask yourself which flavour(s) of apocalyptic fiction you want to model it on (zombies, mutants, plague, rapture, Mythos, Lloigor, Shadows, singularity, grey goo, reality breakdown…), and who your protagonists are. That will help. At this point in the Hero Wars, there can’t be just one answer any more (because of the RuneQuest Effect), so your story will guide you.

Edited December 15, 2024 by Nick Brooke
Moar Apocalyptica! Moar!

[soltakss]

5 hours ago, EricW said:

Just how putrid was the Lunar Empire at this stage?

I see the Monster Empire as being a restatement of Nysalor's Bright Empire under Gbaji. People have taken on arcane and exotic powers, including Chaos, to survive, partly because the Red Goddess said that they could, and partly because there is no longer a Red Emperor saying you couldn't. 

5 hours ago, EricW said:

Was it like a very large Dorastor?

Dorastor is a series of overlapping Chaos Nests, whereas the Lunar Empire doesn't look like that. The Monster Empire might have created a few Chaos Nests but they don't overlap like they do in Dorastor. So, for me, the Monster Empire is led by Krjalki with many normal people in the Empire. Some have taken on more powers but many haven't. So, it is not as bad as Dorastor.

5 hours ago, EricW said:

Or were the chaos horrors more concealed, people clinging to a facade of normality, trying to avoid attracting the attention of the worsening chaotic horrors in their communities?

Many people did not take on powers. So, the peasantry would be normal people, albeit with some who have taken on the new powers. Don't forget that the Monster Empire came about when the Red Emperor was killed permanently.

Quote

The Red Emperor, who had served the Red Goddess for so long, was gone.151 The beings who took his place were not human, and had objectives which were beyond human ken. The empire of evil did not lack supporters who sought to get whatever they could before the end of their days. Anyone with compassion was seen as a willing victim, and the oppression within the empire was far worse than the military efforts outside of it. They let the Ice come, because it suited them. KOS p27.

 

5 hours ago, EricW said:

How many reached out to Argrath for help, or were they mostly too afraid?

We know of at least one, the Shadow's Good Shadow, but there may well have been more.

Quote

[Then Shadow’s Good Shadow came and begged the High King for help. This being was a pure victim of the corruptive, life‑sapping imperial policies. She was not really female, but was called female because she was a shadow of what a man could have been without being a woman. This sort of non‑being was common within the empire at this stage of history, for the very fabric of the world was coming unwoven because so much Chaotic magic was being used.] KOS p27

The slaying of the Red Emperor and the emergence of the Monster Empire seems to have broken the Great Compromise, as the ancient deities walked beside Argrath.

Quote

The King was not the only person to be alarmed by this oncoming disaster. The dissolution of the world had progressed so far that many of the ancient gods woke into conscious action. Those beings had been forbidden by their own oaths to ever intervene directly into the world of life unless their very essence was threatened with entropic destruction¹⁵². And in the days when the Great King¹⁵³ fought against the Monster Empire, the gods walked beside him. The Great King sent messengers to all of the other great leaders of the world, and he asked all of them who loved freedom and life to send their best and bravest heroes to help him remove even the shadow of the Moon from the world. KOS p27.

Interestingly, the dragons taught Argrath the utuma secret, which he used to destroy the Red Moon. However, utuma is as much about rebirth as it is about death, so that probably brought about the White Moon.

Quote

Sh’harkazeel then shared with all beings which were present the secret of the ceremonial utuma¹⁵⁷, and there came into being from the ends of the universe the Seven Dragons. Then Argrath gave them their instructions.

 

Edited December 15, 2024 by soltakss

[Anlúan]

4 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

the RuneQuest Effect

What's this when it's at home?

[jajagappa]

21 minutes ago, Anlúan said:

What's this when it's at home?

All part of the same Effect, you just see it through one lens, not many.

[scott-martin]

6 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Lloigor

Since one of the worst things we see lloigor do is break beloved and forgotten characters from children's literature, this surfaces a crucial point. To be a really effective storytelling device, a Monster Empire needs to build on a foundation of lived experience with pre-monster people and institutions. You can always just drop players into a nightmare environment full of scary operators and things, but the thing about nightmares is people usually wake up and resume waking life with all its compensations and pleasantries. 

Monster Empire is different because it's the end of an exhausted waking life, an old system. The special horror of it is all the good things that have vanished or evolved into something alien, incomprehensible and atrocious. If things were always so atrocious that would just be normal, so the players need to be able to contrast the current situation to how bright and promising the lunar way was in its youth and feel the loss. Then the real Monster Empire is playable.

Some people are convinced the Monster Empire is already here because they find the modern lunar way alien, incomprehensible and atrocious. That's one way to go. In that scenario, just take everything that bugs them about the lunar way now and exaggerate it. Let it run to an extreme. Break the parts they like or at least tolerate at the table where they can see. All their friends and potential allies are gone or actively awful now in some way. The problem with breaking all the toys is that you can really only do it once per game in most games. 

[Nick Brooke]

6 hours ago, Anlúan said:

What's this when it's at home?

“… Your Glorantha May Vary, and Should Vary, and Will Vary, if you prefer a different take. That is in fact guaranteed by something called the RuneQuest Effect, which was among the first things I heard from Greg Stafford in person back in 1985.

“Because I am aware that, as the End of the Third Age approaches, Glorantha will inevitably fracture into multiple overlapping quantum alternate timelines, in which different deeds are achieved by different heroes at different dates, I take this sort of annoyance less seriously than people who have not been illuminated by this simple Cosmic Truth. It's because of Chaos encroaching. It's inevitable. Embrace it.”

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, scott-martin said:

[T]he thing about nightmares is people usually wake up and resume waking life with all its compensations and pleasantries …
The problem with breaking all the toys is that you can really only do it once per game in most games. 

My cruel streak says that the characters should experience successive false awakenings — free fall trapdoors; tumbling down an Escher staircase — so the same toys can be broken in many different ways. Repeat till the players break. Is that wrong?

Spoiler

Or make them watch Waking Life. The rotoscoping will do their heads in. Ralzakark Linklater.

[scott-martin]

22 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

successive false awakenings

Hidden spoilers for Zenith Phase IV

We have people in our house who hate that movie too. I didn't mind it so much at the time but yes, the cruelty is the important part of any Monster Empire scenario. Everything breaks. Everything awful. Until you can really say that everything is broken, it's just another empire.

Or if you stay with the people who go elsewhere, you're elsewhere.

[jajagappa]

7 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Monster Empire is different because it's the end of an exhausted waking life, an old system. The special horror of it is all the good things that have vanished or evolved into something alien, incomprehensible and atrocious.

My first thoughts went to a couple of Neil Gaiman's novels (putting his personal life issues aside). The Ocean at the End of the Lane I found particularly horrifying with the alternate "Mary Poppins" character (Mary Poppins being my first childhood movie) - Good Nanny is no longer there. Somewhat similar feeling with Coraline where the Good Parents have transformed into the similar but disturbingly different Button-Eyed Parents.

I also think of parts of Stephen King's Dark Tower series or Talisman/Black House novels where the world as-is has shifted and you know something has changed it, but that's now decidedly alien and destructive.

[Jens]

One take on the Monster Empire is to borrow from Camazotz in A Wrinkle In Time- on the surface everything looks normal but feels wrong, until you notice all the children move in perfect rhythm and look into their soulless red eyes. That would then cast Ralzakark as IT or The Black Thing. 

[Eff]

Can the Monster Empire exist without an intelligence midwifing it into being from outside of Glorantha? Emperor Ralzakark may well be shocking and all, but it's hard to imagine that emerging as an organic result from play without someone forcing the issue. 

[John Biles]

12 minutes ago, Eff said:

Can the Monster Empire exist without an intelligence midwifing it into being from outside of Glorantha? Emperor Ralzakark may well be shocking and all, but it's hard to imagine that emerging as an organic result from play without someone forcing the issue. 

The Monster Empire is basically the result of Argath and Sheng Seleris pushing the Empire to the wall and then the messiness of the ice returning and the war that kills Sheng Seleris.  Once the Red Emperor is *eaten* by Sheng and his warlords, the era of true Red Emperors is over and whatever crazy illuminates who survive seize power and go more bonkers until Argath finally obliterates it all with the Moonfall.

The driving force midwifing the Monster Empire is Argath and Sheng Seleris.

The damage done by Sheng and Argath is what drives the leadership to do whatever bonkers things might save the Empire a little longer.  Combined with the Red Emperor dying permanently.

(It strikes me that a lot of Sartarites would have seen the end of the Kalikos expeditions as revenge for what the Lunars did to them by killing Orlanth.) 

 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

17 minutes ago, John Biles said:

The driving force midwifing the Monster Empire is Argath and Sheng Seleris.

This.  With the clarification that Argrath was literally the midwife of the rebirth of Sheng.  So it's really Argrath.

Stick with Argrath for too long and you get the Monster Empire, millions of deaths, then the end of the gods.  At some point your PCs have to decide how much more is worth it.  But still way far in the future for most campaigns.

[Soccercalle]

This is very far away from my Campaign (still in 1623) but I would love for my PCs to finally turn on Argrath and do some crazy-shit experimental heroquesting so save the world. Something like trying to resurrect Heort.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, John Biles said:

(It strikes me that a lot of Sartarites would have seen the end of the Kalikos expeditions as revenge for what the Lunars did to them by killing Orlanth.) 

Provided there still is a lot of them. Quite a few got flooded after their lands had been re-conquered by the Lunars and bloodily liberated again. The returned aurochs might have had to emigrate beyond the Dragonspine to find some habitat.

Argrath's kingdom had expanded north, and his activities had been drawn north, too.

 

The Kalikos expeditions and the huge ice floe separated from the Glacier together would have weakened Valind significantly. Stopping them was necessary to maintain the seasonal balance (and hence the Orlanth weather pattern).

[John Biles]

11 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Provided there still is a lot of them. Quite a few got flooded after their lands had been re-conquered by the Lunars and bloodily liberated again. The returned aurochs might have had to emigrate beyond the Dragonspine to find some habitat.

 

By the timeline in King of Sartar, the Great Flood happens several years after the Kalikos expeditions end.

[Eff]

4 hours ago, John Biles said:

The Monster Empire is basically the result of Argath and Sheng Seleris pushing the Empire to the wall and then the messiness of the ice returning and the war that kills Sheng Seleris.  Once the Red Emperor is *eaten* by Sheng and his warlords, the era of true Red Emperors is over and whatever crazy illuminates who survive seize power and go more bonkers until Argath finally obliterates it all with the Moonfall.

The driving force midwifing the Monster Empire is Argath and Sheng Seleris.

The damage done by Sheng and Argath is what drives the leadership to do whatever bonkers things might save the Empire a little longer.  Combined with the Red Emperor dying permanently.

(It strikes me that a lot of Sartarites would have seen the end of the Kalikos expeditions as revenge for what the Lunars did to them by killing Orlanth.) 

 

Who is "the leadership" in this scenario, that they are completely disconnected from the ostensible source of legitimacy?

[Nick Brooke]

4 hours ago, John Biles said:

(It strikes me that a lot of Sartarites would have seen the end of the Kalikos expeditions as revenge for what the Lunars did to them by killing Orlanth.) 

And we know from King of Sartar that taking disproportionate revenge against unjust acts is always a good thing, right?

"They let the Ice come, because it suited them."

[davecake]

5 hours ago, Eff said:

Can the Monster Empire exist without an intelligence midwifing it into being from outside of Glorantha?

The RuneQuest Effect is all about intelligences from outside of Glorantha - your campaign contains several of them. 

5 hours ago, Eff said:

Emperor Ralzakark may well be shocking and all, but it's hard to imagine that emerging as an organic result from play

Encourage your players that only drastic actions, ones that might only be possible now the Compromise has started to break down, can possibly save the clan/kingdom/empire/universe from the current crisis. Plans that somehow result in your PCs gaining vast magical power, at least for a short time, are likely to be particularly popular. By this stage any ongoing game has likely escalated so this is a not that unlikely organic result of play. When they have done so (or before they do, if you think your players will enjoy being the ironic pawns of fate), reveal that they have saved something, much as they set out to do, but have also broken reality in some vital ways. Yes, you stopped that prophecy coming true, but somehow have broken something important about the Sky/the Compromise/Time itself etc, or caused one of the portents of the End Times to come true, or the Stars to become Right. Rinse and repeat, and/or steal as many good and interesting ideas as you can from literature, other campaigns, etc and reveal/hint that the resulting weirdness is the result of all the well meaning hero types trying to stop the world getting worse (but just making it stranger). 

Absolutely lean into:

• mystic resolutions that draw on the most confusing non-beings (like Shadows Good Shadow) and non-events of that nature - things that exist and can only be understood in terms of what they are not, or other abstract philosophical conceptions about the familiar. It's the mystic end game, as those who cling to the more mundane nature of the Empire(s) keep being on the losing side of its internal struggles. 
• the super weapons and incredible rituals they can use to defeat their enemies are of course often God Learner in nature. Once they are discovered, let the players become targets for beings like the Knowledge Assassins or the Gift Carriers - your PCs should succeed in evading them, the point is for them to know what they have become
• particularly if you use the Lunars and/or Eastern Myth and mysticism, so many of the extant powers and threats in the world are powers of Illusion (the Glamour of the Lunars, the Black Sun, Avanadur returned), so who can even tell what is real? And the mystics teach that greater secret Truth can be found within Illusion, but is that really helping you tell what is good from bad, right from wrong? 
• almost everyone is Illuminated (at least of the PCs and their enemies, and their allies too, and it always was for the elite of the Empire). The sides becoming inclusingly confused. What the mystics and Illuminates tell you is 'right' seem increasingly unmoored from conventional ideas of morality, especially traditional theist ones. Plans may depend on subverting your own cult - of defeating those who have subverted it. 
• huge world crises taking the form of continental level natural disasters abound - the only solutions are either vast and world re-shaping, or so magical they subvert reality itself. 
•  

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2024 by davecake

[metcalph]

In my vision of the Monster Empire, the Cosmos is totally ruined and time is completely broken - the best estimate of  the current year is 1725.  Sheng was cursed by Argrath to die horribly at Yara Aranis's hands and took his revenge by making a surprise assault at the battle of Gardint and killing him (yes, I know the Saga says Argrath survived  but he really doesn't do anything after that so he's good as dead).

The Sun, Stars and other planets are gone or burned out.  Only the Red Mooin remains as a fraction of its former self barely keeping the Cosmos together.  Such is its weakness that the Empire exists similtanesouly in several time zones, each featuring a version warped and dedicated to a different version of chaos.

The topmost level is the Golden Empire - the seductive version of chaos.  Ralzakark rules here.  His chief of bodyguards is Oddi the Keen and I think of the two as being like the cover of Dune Messiah.   Ralzakark has abolished death as a sign of his bounty - no-one can die and the only way out is through chaotic annihilation.    People who are mortally wounded fall to a lower hell and have to climb their way back up.   Everything is good here.

Beneath the Golden Empire is the Empire of Terror where the Devil and the Unholy Trio rule.  Armies are summoned into existence here to strive, to seek to find the outside world and ruin it entirely. The only thing preventing final victory is the great ice which surrounds the borders of the empire.

The lower one descends, the dimmer the moon becomes and the more chaotic the Empire becomes.  Travellers for example speak of giant maggots tunneling through a lifeless desert tended by ascetic broos.  

At the lowest level is the void where Sheng Seleris is.  He is the cloeset to liberation but will not move on as long as the outside world is dead to him.

The Moon is where the good guys live in crowded cities of hungry refugees.  They resist Ralzakark's rule and are tormned by hordes of flying chaos for their pains.  Only the Crimson Bat keeps them safe but every day it vomits up new people into this hell.  

The only way to end the empire is for the heroes to enact the Moonfall....  

 

 

[Nick Brooke]

18 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Ralzakark rules here.  His chief of bodyguards is Oddi the Keen and I think of the two as being like the cover of Dune Messiah.  

Which cover do you have in mind? (Not that I'm crazy keen on Dune cover art, no siree!)

[metcalph]

4 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Which cover do you have in mind? (Not that I'm crazy keen on Dune cover art, no siree!)

[Nick Brooke]

Mmmm... Pennington... 😊