Apocrypha Now: A look at Dark Side of the Moon

IN THE DVD EXTRAS FOR PETER JACKSON'S The Fellowship of the Ring, Ian McKellen (Gandalf) talks about working with Ian Holm (Bilbo). Holm would intentionally play each take a little bit differently than before, varying his line delivery or mannerisms, so that Jackson could then look at each variant and chose which "Bilbo" was right for his film. 

I mention this because it is how I think about the Jonstown Compendium. Official Chaosium publications are "canon," inasmuch as anything in Glorantha can be, but the Jonstown Compendium is the place for alternate "takes." Here creators can present different versions of Glorantha, and GMs and groups can use these variants, or the mainline canon versions, as they see fit to fashion their very own Gloranthas. Both Nick Brooke and I have presented alternate takes on the Battle of Dangerford, for example, he is his The Duel at Dangerford and myself in The Company of the Dragon. Both are very different takes, and when Chaosium gets around to theirs it will be different as well. But all are out there for gamers to pick which they like best. Likewise, I know my portrayal of the Dragonrise presented in The Company of the Dragon is not the canon version of events. My Kallyr Starbrow spends six years planning the awakening of the Brown Dragon. The canon version woke the Dragon by accident. Yet this is the joy of the Compendium. Back in June, one of my talks at Chaosium Con Australia was for aspiring Compendium writers, and this was a point that I emphasized. Don't try to do canon, do something different and give the tables out there a choice.

Dark Side of the Moon is a brand new release from many of the people who brought you A Rough Guide to Glamour, including Chris Gidlow, Mike Hagen, and Nick Brooke. Other writing credits include Margaret Gill and Jeff Erwin, as well as a lengthy piece from the late Greg Stafford. The stunning wrap-around front and back cover comes from John Sumrow, with the interior art provided by the tireless Katrin Dirim, whose work turns up in so many books I suspect she might have clones of herself working at the same time.

Dark Side is a case study of what I have been talking about. Billing itself as a "compilation of heretical Lunar apocrypha," arguably the only "canon" document in the entire 141-page pdf is Stafford's own "The Life of Sedenya." With the recent release of The Lunar Way, however, Dark Side of the Moon doesn't need to adhere to canon, and does what Compendium books are good at, offering personal and alternative takes on the Lunar religion. Some of this material has been around awhile, going back to Tales of the Reaching Moon, but all of it has been updated for RuneQuest Roleplaying in Glorantha and a lot of other material here is new.

Let's start with what Dark Side isn't, other than canon I mean. This is not a replacement or stand-in for The Lunar Way. There is not, actually, a lot of "crunch" here (some, less than the Cult books). It also isn't a a book for beginners. What I mean by this is that if you are new to RQ and want to know what the deal is with the Lunar Empire and the Red Goddess, start with The Lunar Way. Likewise, there are no adventures here, no new monsters or NPCs.

However if you love the Lunars, and you want some deep, fascinating Lunar content, this is the book for you. I hesitate to call it either an "art book" or "coffee table book," because there is a meaty amount of content here. But it is a book that is designed to be flipped through, repeatedly, and absorbed in small bites. Dark Side is not a text so much as inspiration. Case in point, throughout the book Katrin Dirim's work accompanies passages from Stafford's Zero Wane History. Now, you could just go read most of this elsewhere, but the passages combined with Dirim's work make it a meditation exercise. No, there are not "kewl powerz" to buff your adventurer, but these passages and images will get you into the headspace of your Lunar adventurer.

The same can be said for Gidlow's "Seleric Verses," which with a trick near and dear to my heart is in-world literature that critiques current Lunar policies by comparing modern Lunar figures to heroes of the Zero Wane. No one eats up the use of invented books and scriptures more than I (and perhaps that eccentric fellow from Providence). 

Notable too are Jeff Erwin's "White Moon & Blue Fox" & "Ulurda Fragments," and Margaret Gill's "The Seven Sayings of Sedenya." These are, essentially, "flavor text." Now, I have a bizarre relationship with flavor text. 90% of the time, I skip it (the White Wolf books of the 1990s were the worst offenders). Unless it is illustrating a rule or a mechanic, I can do without it in my game books. But the point I am driving at here is Dark Side is not exactly a game book as it is a setting book, a "Glorantha" book. These separate pieces are all deep dives down the Lunar rabbit hole, but so long as you go into the book knowing this, and Sedenya is your vibe, you will derive a great deal from these. In this way, Dark Side has more in common with the books in the Stafford Library than it does the main game line, and I was fine with reading (and re-reading) those over and over again.  

However you also get alternative write-ups for each of the Seven Mothers cults, and this brings me full circle back to the beginning. Having the versions from The Lunar Way, and having these, is what the Compendium offers...alternatives. These alternate takes might offer the most to the most "game-oriented" reader.

A Rough Guide to Glamour and The Lunar Way are more foundational texts for the Lunar religion than Dark Side of the Moon. For example, if you wanted your Lightbringers to go visit the Lunar capital, or just wanted to know what those Lunars you are fighting believe, they are the first places to go. Dark Side is a bit more focused. It is for Lunar fans looking for more lore and myths, and in this respect Dark Side serves its audience particularly well. It is also for those of us who dig The Book of Heortling Mythology, The Glorious Re-Ascent of Yelm, and similar examples of in-world Gloranthan writings. It is a book you think about, talk about, ponder, and puzzle over. Less a meal and more a feast. And I think the Compendium needs more of this, particularly as the Cults books and Lands books come out and lay down the canon. The Compendium is for flights of fancy and alternate takes, and that Dark Side of the Moon does very well. 

 

    

      

Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass

I was late to the party.

In 1975 game designer Greg Stafford and his fledgling company Chaosium (technically "The Chaosium" at that point) released a war game, White Bear & Red Moon. I might have bought a copy, but being four years old, did not.

WB&RM introduced the world to Stafford's Glorantha, a trippy technicolor Bronze Age fantasy setting, more Moorcock than Tolkien, leaning Leiber and inclined Iliad. This was the Mahabharata with a metal soundtrack, an Odyssey gone glam. There is nothing like Glorantha. It is equal parts insanity and anthropology. There are dinosaurs and sentient ducks. The world is flat. Science? Ha! Diseases are caused by spirits and spiritual discord, not mere microbes. Gravity? Nonsense. Mortals are pulled to the ground by the power of mother earth's love. Yet the paradox of the setting is a relentless, tireless drive towards anthropological realism. We have all read fantasy settings where the societies are total bullshit. They could never exist. But author and game designer Robin Laws nailed it when he wrote, "(i)n its mythic power, phantasmagoric imagery, and trenchant understanding of human nature, Glorantha stands as a founding text of the roleplaying genre..." It is that third element that ignites the setting. Any time the setting seems off-the-rails weird you are grounded by the realism of the human element. You believe the weirdness because the cultures are organic, breathing things.

I met Glorantha through White Bear & Red Moon's companion RPG, RuneQuest. This was in 1982. A year later, WB&RM received a new edition, but this time under the name of the region the game took place in, Dragon Pass. RuneQuest had moved the focus of the setting from Dragon Pass to neighboring Prax, the locale of Chaosium's other war game Nomad Gods. Sure, RQ had a map of Dragon Pass, but I didn't really get details of the setting until I played Dragon Pass. 

The current edition of RuneQuest (Roleplaying in Glorantha) wisely moved the focus back to Dragon Pass. Prax and Pavis are fine, but the timeline has now advanced to the Hero Wars, a world-engulfing conflict whose trigger lies in the enmity between the princedom of Sartar and the Lunar Empire, and this ignites in Dragon Pass. Most campaigns want to be where the action is. 

To date, most of the releases for the new edition have leaned phantasmagoric by necessity. The rich mythology of gods and spirits is the heart of the setting, and so the Cults of RuneQuest series has kept the Chaosium team busy unfolding that. One notable exception was the woefully misnamed Weapons & Equipment guide, a brilliant book that explores all the nooks and crannies of the setting's material culture.  Now, however, we have the first release for the new Lands of RuneQuest line, Dragon Pass: Site of the Hero Wars. This is a deep dive into the geography, flora, fauna, weather, locations, and societies of the region.

Full disclosure, I am mentioned in the 'additional credits' of the book, but was not hired to write for it, and the copy I am reviewing I purchased myself.

On the other hand, I have done a great deal of writing about Dragon Pass, both for the Jonstown Compendium and Chaosium, so this was a release I was very much looking forward to seeing. To a certain degree, I have been a spiritual resident of Dragon Pass since I was 12. And this is the book that would have made my life a lot easier. It is, simply, the most detailed and exhaustive treatment of Dragon Pass RuneQuest has ever seen. Before some of the grognards take issue with that, note I said "RuneQuest." Sartar has been detailed in previous games, and HeroQuest had a gazetteer, but in the breadth and depth of coverage of the entire region Dragon Pass has them beat.

Let's start with the contents...

After an introduction that gives a broad overview of the region, Dragon Pass looks at the separate subregions. Sartar, the area around Far Point, the kingdom of Tarsh, Wintertop and Old Tarsh, the Grazelands, the Wilds. We finish with a bestiary. The highlight of the introductory chapter, to my mind, is the exhaustive history. Glorantha's "timeline" (for want of a better word) can be divided into Myth (the age of the gods, before Time began) and History (after the first Dawn and birth of Time). Myth was the making of the world. The actions of the gods formed the patterns of existence. The sun, Yelm, died and fell into the Underworld before his glorious re-ascent. Thus the sun rises and falls each day. History is the unfolding of the world, its developments, the rise and fall of empires, the coming of heroes. The focus thus far in RuneQuest so far has been Myth. Unless you own the Guide to Glorantha (any why don't you, you mad thing?), History has been more obscure. No longer. There is a brilliant and detailed History here of the three Ages of Time in Dragon Pass, complete with maps and timelines.

Mentioning the maps, it is time for me to almost obligatorily comment on the extraordinary art of Dragon Pass (yes, including the cartography, shout outs to Matt Ryan, Glynn Seal, and Tobias Trannell). Anyone who has been paying attention to the development of the line understands Jeff Richard's commitment to the look of this edition, and Dragon Pass does not disappoint. My sense is that in the Cults books, the style leans Katrin Dirim and Loïc Muzy, more stylized and heightened to reflect the mythic themes. Weapons & Equipment and now Dragon Pass lean towards the gritty realism of artists like Ossi Hiekkala, who provided the cover. To my mind no one has ever depicted the world of Glorantha the way Ossi has. Looking at his work you can almost smell the sweat and taste the dust. This is not to shut out the rest of the art team--there is not a picture in this book that those of us writing for the Jonstown Compendium would not give our eyeteeth for. But overall, Ossi seems to represent the style of "History" Glorantha.

There is one piece I need to spotlight.

Page 61 gives us a location, the Hill of Orlanth Victorious. The accompanying art simply took my breath away. A great temple to the king of the gods and lord of storms, it is a pilgrimage site for his woad-wearing worshippers. This piece was so raw, so ecstatic, it gave me gooseflesh.

   

Each subregion gives an overview, discusses adventurers from that area, gives sample NPCs, and then details the key locations. With this book you could fuel a Dragon Pass campaign for years. The sample NPCs are a terrific touch, giving you templates to tailor your own. One thing you will not be getting however are stat blocks for the great movers and shakers like Kallyr Starbrow, Cragspider, Fazzur Wideread, etc. They are detailed, but not given statistics. I have seen some disappointment with this online, but I have to say I approve of the omission. These should be the province of the GM. If you want to run a campaign where Kallyr is an unstoppable badass, you should design her to be so. If you want a campaign where your players overthrow her, you should be able to build her appropriately too. Stats for these movers and shakers ventures too far into the straitjacket of "canon" for my tastes.

In the final analysis, Dragon Pass finally channels the spirit of White Bear & Red Moon back into RuneQuest. When I wrote my ode to WB&RM, The Company of the Dragon, I would have had to do a lot less work had this book existed. It is a counterweight to the Cults series, grounding the mythic setting in a tangible reality. It delivers a feel for the region and its people that makes it real, not just an Elf game with magic, but something that tells stories about people who live, bleed, and die. It brings the anthropology to the eschatology of the Hero Wars.