The next Runequest Cults book will be the Solar Pantheon, coming in early 2025.

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This post is not about the mythical origins of Glorantha but about how Greg Stafford began writing about it back in 1966.

This is from a Wayback Machine snapshot taken on )ctober 14th, 2018.

How I Discovered Glorantha

I HAVE BEEN FASCINATED with mythology for most of my life.

My first mythology book that I recall reading is Manual of Mythology, by Alexander S. Murray (published 1935). I still have that old book. It is a thick tome full of the euhemerized versions of Greek myth, with many pictures of marble statues and renaissance paintings.

Like most people, I was interested in the strange and interesting stories. I began reading other versions, like Bullfinch, which was not much different, really. And then other mythologies too — well, other mythologies readily available to a pre-teen with a library card. I was lucky in that by the time I was in sixth grade I had access to the adult library, too.

Then I started reading books about mythology. I was convinced by every book that I read. If it was about how all myths are variants of Sun Myths, then I was convinced of that. Then I read one about how they were all Seasonal Myths, and they were that; or whatever subject the book was about. It didn't take too long to realize they couldn't all be right, that none were entirely right, and that mythology was something else. So I kept reading. Hero-With-a-Thousand-Faces-cover

When I got into college I was delighted to find a huge section of even deeper books that I’d never had access to before and dove into those. We even had Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces in one of my courses.

But I always had loved reading the stories, and those were in short supply. That is, there weren’t any new.

Now, at that time I’d never seen a book of fantasy fiction. I didn’t have that outlet, which was limited at the time anyway — we're talking 1966 here.

So one day I decided, “I’ll write my own mythology.”

I wrote one document, (reproduced below).

Then I wrote a little story about a guy named Snodal fighting a demon guardian, and put some notes about what he’d be doing. And thought, well, I need to know where his people came from, and so I wrote some stuff about Loskalm. But then I had to know where those people came from, so made some notes about the destruction of Seshneg. And had to know where they came from, and so on and so on.

The earliest materials weren’t as dense or sophisticated as the later ones. I didn’t have the breadth of knowledge to pack it in. It wasn’t until college that I started cramming on archeology, history sociology and religion.

But I did start writing the stories of the earliest kings of Seshnela. The first was the reign of King Froalar, which begins at the dawn of the first New Year in the world. It is about how Hrestol broke the Seshnegi caste system and instituted the new order of knights in order to combat the Pendali barbarians at the gates of his land. the-hobbit-cover

And so it began. I felt fantastic, documenting fantasy dynasties, enchanted realms, invented history, a made-up world.

Then one day I came across a copy of this weird book called The Hobbit in a book store, and then found Lord Of The Rings. I read the cover blurb and thought, “Damn, I’m not the first guy to do this.”

Ah, sweet innocence of youth, so long fled!

As, wonderful ignorance, so long driven out…

The First Glorantha Writing

I wrote this one night in 1966, in a moment of creativity, and it bore me into Glorantha. I laer discovered hat this is the only remains of a log of travellers who were fleeing the destruction of Seshnela at the end of the Second Age by the Luathela, and they later were instrumental in the foundation of the kingdom of Fronela.

Obviously, it was written in flet tip pen which has suffered slightly from some water, but it's still here!

Glorantha was first introduced to the wider world than Greg Stafford's circle of friends with the publication of the board game White Bear and Red Moon in 1975. The game featured a war between the Sartorites and the Lunar Empire in a region of Glorantha known as Dragon Pass.

Now Chasosium has taken us back to Dragon Pass (some of us never left) with the publication of the first book in the Lands of Runequest series. No doubt others will follow, and I'd guess Prax will be next.

The book has a history of the region and provides a gazeteer of Dragon Pass and some neighbouring regions including Tarsh and The Grazelands. There are regional maps and streetplans of some of the larger settlements, some sample 'typical' NPCs, details of some local cults, rules for creating additional types of PCs (newtlings anyone?), and additional bestiary entries providing details of creatures and other encounterable beings.

Different people would want different things from a book like this, but for me the level of detail feels about right. There's enough meat on the bones to give GMs plenty of ideas for adventures while leaving enough blank space for them to flesh out their own games.

The art and production values are glorious as is the norm with the current line of Runequest publications. Nice.

The RuneQuest Starter Set contains everything you need to play RuneQuest, the world’s best roleplaying game of gods, cults, magic, family, and fantasy!

All of Chaosium's Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is currently available in PDF from Humble Bundle for £14.21.

That's everything. Which is insane value for money. You'd be mad not to.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/runequest-chaosium-inc-books

We've had to wait for it, especially in the UK since the initial shipment of hard copies seemed to go missing, but it's well worth that wait.

This is the counterpoint, the rebuttal, the answer to questions posed by the Lightbringers and Earth Goddesses cult books. The Lunars are not just baddies, they're the flip side of the coin, the pragmatists, the side with the winning perspective. I believe in the Red Goddess, Mistress of Life and Death.

Presented here are cults including the Seven Mothers, Teelo Norri, Honeel, the Crimson Bat, the Red Emperor and the Red Goddess. Also included is Nysalor/Gbaji and an introduction to Lunar illumination.

This is a must have volume if you want to run anything connected to the Hero Wars in Glorantha.

Plus, also, once again the art is breathtaking.

Martin Helsdon, the man who brought us the magisterial Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass has done it again with an even larger, even more ambitious addition to the Jonstown Compendium collection of community content for Runequest.

Focused, as the name suggests, on sea-faring it is hugely detailed and comprehensive, and blessed with some of the finest artwork ever produced for a Gloranthan book.

While it covers everything to do with ships and seaborne trade (ship-building, shiphandling and seafaring, cargo and harbours, naval warfare, nautical terminology, etc) and documents a whole flotilla of different types of vessel, in many ways the stand out is the ‘Periplus’, a first-person account of the voyages of an Issaries trader interspersed with the meat of the book, which brings the material to life.

Thoroughly recommended!

Available from the Jonstown Compendium on Drivethru, here. Note: this isn't an affiliate link or anything, just a direct link to the listing.

This is a tough one for me.

I already have the 2018 edition of the Sourcebook. This new edition has - apart from the utterly glorious cover art - an updated layout, updated visuals for dynastic genealogies, and updated maps of the Underworld and previous ages.

If you haven't got the Sourcebook, and want to understand Glorantha, then this is a must-have purchase. But if, like me, you have the previous edition then this is a purely luxury purchase. And with the Lunar cults book coming out sometime in the next couple of months, and so much great content on the Jonstown Compendium it's hard to justify the price for those updates. I make no promises though.

The long-awaited print-on-demand edition of “New Pavis: City on the Edge of Forever,” volume one of Ian Thomson’s Pavis & Big Rubble Companion Director’s Cut, is now available to order from DriveThruRPG: just $35.95 for a massive 224-page colour hardcover tome.

The PDF has been available for a while, but this is for old gippers like me who don't entirely trust PDFs and is a very welcome release.

And it's just first volume in a hugely expanded re-release of the original Companion series.

This is 'old school' stuff, all updated to the new rules system (RQG), but written in the classic style of gameplay (RQ2).

Focused around independent adventurers in search of wealth and glory, who slowly but surely become more and more connected with the Cult of Pavis and its allies, and end up being Champions of the Old City!

Probably the most important publications in Runequest / Glorantha in years are the new Cults of Runequest books.

There will be 11 books in total, listed here in no particular order: Prosopaedia, Lightbringers, Earth, Mythology, Darkness, Water, Solar, Lords of Terror, Horned God, Invisible God, Lunar Way. Those in bold are already available. The Mythology book is coming in October.

The first one was the Prosopaedia, published first simply, I think, because it was ready first. On its own it's not that great a resource for players - though may be for GMs because it's effectively a summary of what was to follow in the individual pantheon books.

The Lightbringers and Earth pantheon books are a different kettle of fish. Containing, between them, 35 cults, including those most commonly used by players of Sartarite and Praxian focused games, and adding the same kind of detail as the ground-breaking Cults of Prax from all the way back in 1979.

One of the great things about the cults books though, are the cults which players don't tend to play. These are not just a bunch of cool new spells and skills for PCs to bring to bear, they're part of the monumental world-building of Glorantha. Some of these gods exist not to be be part of a party's toolset but simply because they are interwoven into the mythology of Glorantha and deserve to be present.

All available from Chaosium, of course, as print (with free PDF) and also from local game shops which are part of the Bits and Mortar initiative.

If you run a game, or play a game, based in Sartar or Prax, I'd say these books are pretty close to being essential to deepen your understanding of the cults of Glorantha.