I love early Iron Maiden. They had a raw fresh sound, born out of metal like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, but also with influences from prog rock and - perhaps most importantly - punk. The first two albums, featuring Paul Di'Anno's vocals have a raw, angry purity which I keep coming back to.

Ludicrously under-serviced by the British music press, Maiden have given us a stupendous total of 41 albums, and have performed utterly epic tours often over 100 shows long, with the '84-'85 World Slavery Tour coming in at 187 shows and playing to massive crowds including a co-headline with Queen in Rio de Janeiro with an attendance of 300,000 people.

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

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.

Because they don't have windows.

The salted egg yolk flavour does sound pretty good.

I did (not authentic 'cos I don't like fennel seeds) porcetta at the weekend for my lot and my wife's brother's family. A couple of notes: 1. that skin/crackling was an absolute flavour bomb, 2. the leftovers were disappointingly scant.

Album of progress.