SIX SEASONS IN SARTAR 1: INTRODUCING THE CAMPAIGN

INTRODUCTION

Six Seasons in Sartar began thirty years ago as a "classic" RuneQuest campaign (RQ2).  The player characters were all to be exiled Sartarites working as mercenaries in and around the city of New Pavis.  To give them a unified backstory, Six Seasons was created as a sort of prelude "mini-campaign" in which we saw them years earlier as young adults in Sartar, roleplaying through the tragic events that led to their exile.  The campaign then jumped ahead five years to Pavis.

It worked.  It worked so well, in fact, that the players found Six Seasons more memorable than what came after in Pavis.  So a decade later, when Hero Wars appeared, I revived Six Seasons and ran it again for a new group of players.

This new version of Six Seasons is written specifically for HeroQuest Glorantha, but could easily be adapted to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha or 13th Age Glorantha.  The plan is to post each scenario--in full--here on this blog after my group plays it, followed by a discussion of how it went down at the table.  Along the way I will include tips and suggestions for converting the scenario to any of HeroQuest's sister games.

THE BROAD STROKES

Six Seasons consists of seven episodes each covering--as you might have already guessed--a single season in Sartar.  It begins in Sea Season 1619 and concludes in Sea Season 1620.  It is, to be blunt, a tragedy.  It tells the story of a Colymar clan's fall and eradication.  The player characters begin the campaign as youths, ages 14 to 17.  The sixth episode, "Rites of Passage," is actually a Heroquest that marks their transition into full Orlanthi adulthood (it appeared in its original, more RuneQuest specific form here).  After the clan Haraborn suffers its tragic doom, the campaign will continue in a less scripted format, with the player characters who survive seeking their way in the world in the aftermath.

Though the first scenario will be posted next week after we play  it, what follows here is an introduction to the setting.  Again, some of this has been posted before in a more RQ specific format, but what follows has been revised and rewritten.   

THE HARABORN

This is the tale of a tragic dynasty;

a narrative of hatred, honor, courage,

of virtue, love, ideals and wickedness,

and of a war so terrible, it marked

the threshold between one age and the next.

The Mahabharata, Carole Satyamurti

HIGH IN THE MOUNTAINS of Sartar, a narrow, V-shaped vale stretches between Mounts Quivin and Kargradus.  Since the days of Heort this has been the tula of the Haraborn, the Clan of the Black Stag.  

Mythos & History

Before men came to the Vale it was home only to Black Stag, son of Hykim Beast-Father and Kero Fin, his bride the Running Doe, and their children.  These were the albino Ghost Deer, known only in the Vale.  In the Greater Darkness, when Chaos laid waste to the world, a war band led by Jarstakos Forked Spear, son of Heort, wandered hungry and tired into the Vale.  Hidden by the magic of the Black Stag, Chaos had not come there yet.  The men were struck with wonder to find the Vale lush and teeming with game.  

It was Jarstakos himself who loosed the fateful arrow.  Hunting deer to fill the bellies of his men, he killed the Martyr Faun.  The wrath of the Black Stag was terrible, matched only by Running Doe’s grief.  The Stag sealed the Vale, and condemned the men to die for their transgression.  “What evil can be done to a father more terrible than the murder of his son?  For you rob him not just of his child, but of eternity, of his name being passed on down the generations.”  

Jarstakos Heortsson pleaded for forgiveness, and pledged that he and his men would replace the son Black Stag had lost.  Henceforth they would dwell in the Vale and give honor and worship the the Stag and the Doe, bearing their name.  Never again would they hunt the sacred deer or let others hunt them.  This is how they became Haraborn, the Clan of the Black Stag.

Thus did they remain in the Vale, and there they lived still long after the First Dawn and the beginning of History.  For a thousand years it was so.  Only as the coils of the Empire of the Wyrm Friends closed around them did they falter.  “You must go,” the Black Stag told his people.  “For the Dragons stir in wrath and soon there will be only doom.”  Thus did the Haraborn pack up their belongings and flee into the lowlands of the south, burning their homes behind them.  When the Dragonkill fell, and every man, woman, and child in Dragon Pass was slaughtered, the Haraborn were already departed.

In the days of Jarstakos, one of his war band had been the Dark Troll Ungbar Zak Bak.  Since that time, some among the Haraborn were born Dark-Touched, with the blackest hair and eye.  The current chieftain, Jornun Shadechaser, was one of these, so when he led his people to the court of Ezkhankekko, the Only Old One recognized this bond and gave the Haraborn a place.  For two centuries they served the Trolls as laborers and soldiers, dreaming of the Vale and the home they had lost.

Then Belintar the Swimmer came ashore from the forbidden sea and declared himself the Pharaoh.  When he killed Ezkhankekko, the White Hart—a spirit son of Black Stag who had gone into exile with the Haraborn to watch over and guide them—told the people it was time to go back.  They no longer had the protection of their patron.  So the Haraborn again migrated, this time north into the haunted and empty Dragon Pass.  

Returning to the ancient Vale they found it overrun by the Telmori Were-Wolves.  The Black Stag was enslaved, Running Doe in bondage, and the Ghost Deer hunted.  Led by Barnor Grudsson, the Haraborn took up arms against the Seven-Tailed Wolf and his pack.  When they retook Stag Hill—the ancient barrow mound of Jarstakos atop which stands the sarsen stones marking Orlanth’s shrine—Grudsson performed a heroquest, walking the path of the Black Stag when he himself had first driven the Wolves from the Vale.  It was successful, and with the Stag and Doe liberated. the Haraborn drove the Telmori away.  The Vale was again theirs.

The Haraborn reclaimed their ancient lands and slowly rebuilt their homes.  They made alliances with other clans returning to the Pass and eventually joined the Colymar Tribe.  When Sartar rose, they became Sartarites as well.  They lived in accordance with the ancient ways, honoring the gods and the Stag.  All seemed well.

Yet Evil never sleeps.  In the north there had risen baleful Shepelkirt, the Blood Red Moon.  Hating anything that lives free, she sent her legions into Sartar to take it.  At the Battle of Grizzly Peak the Haraborn followed the Colymar king Kenstrel against Lunar forces and lost their own chieftain, Kentrel Bargarson.  It was a sign of the doom to come.  A generation later saw a Lunar puppet on the throne in Boldhome, and foul Lunar ways spreading through the lowlands.  In the years since, the Haraborn have grown more isolated as they cling to the Old Ways under constant threat from the Lunar occupation.

The Land and People

AS OF 1619 ST the Haraborn are the 13th clan of the Colymar Tribe.  They are one of the smaller clans, with about 450 members, similar in this respect to the Varmandi and Anmangarn.  Their lands are centered around Black Stag Vale, some 15 kilometers from Boldhome, high in the mountains between Quivin Mount and Kagradus Peak. 

The Vale runs a length of nearly seven kilometers, stretching from the narrow southern opening where the Haraborn maintain a fortified palisade, all the way to High Deer Falls at the northern end.  It is seldom wider than half a kilometer, and the mountains enclosing it are heavily forested and very steep.  A creek known as Deer Run flows south from the Falls, the entire length of the Vale.

To the north the Vale is bordered by the forbidden Dragonewt citadel of High Wyrm.  The Antorlings and the Enjossi, two fellow clans of the Colymar, border the Haraborn to the west.  The eastern border consists of the wilder and untamed Quivin Mountains in the north and the warlike Sambari to the south.  These thrall holders are famed for their ferocity and aggression, and a source of constant trouble for the Haraborn.  The Telmori Wolf-Folk, driven from the Vale, infrequently come down from the Quivins to raid as well.

About a dozen steads, each belonging to a single extended family, can be found spaced out along the banks of Deer Run.  These are the homes of the Carls, or “cattle men,” the middle-class of Orlanthi society.  Families will include paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all living together in longhouses (and in the winter with their cattle).  Each nuclear family head (and there are on average 3 to 5 or these per longhouse) will have his own team of oxen and a plow.  Each is granted a “hide” from the clan, as much land as he can plow in two seasons.  Counting wives, children, and grandparents, each stead will have about 15 to 2o people and 30 to 40 cattle.  They will have twice as many sheep, pigs, geese.  While children, of course, know who their parents are, it is traditional to refer to all aunts and all uncles as “mother” and “father.”  Once they are old enough, they are expected to help tend the livestock and the fields.  All adult males also serve in the clan militia, or fyrd.  The head of each stead holds Thane, or “horse man” status, and is considered a community leader.

The names of the steads as are follows.  Individuals will be known as “(X) (Y +sson/sdotr) of (Z stead).  For example, “Wulvann Skilfilsson of High Water Stead” or “Frania Veranisdotr of Riddle Watch Stead.”

The stead, running from south to north are;

1. Vale Gate
2. Twin Stone
3. Bear Fallen
4. Red Rock
5. Cliff Shield
6. Riddle Watch
7. Hill Base
8. River Bend
9. White Bark
10. Twice Blessed
11. Glass Cave
12. High Water

Between these steads are scattered two dozen cottages, usually in the hills at the base of the mountain peaks.  These are the homes of the Cottars, or “sheep men.”  They are the lower class of Orlanthi society.  Their cottages are usually round, consisting of one room with a thatched roof, and home to one or two nuclear families.  Cottars have their own flocks of sheep and often pigs, and tend small gardens around the cottage.  Most are huntsmen who supplement their diet with rabbit, boar, or pheasant.  It is forbidden for the Haraborn to hunt deer.  Naming conventions for Cottars are the same as for Carls, but they exclude the “stead” portion of the name as sign of lower status.

The Village lies in the center of the Vale, spreading out beneath the Hall.   It is a cluster of about 20 homes around the Issaries market, the Redsmithy, and the community meeting hall.

The householders living in the Village hold Thane status.  Six are members of the Clan Ring, including the Chief Priest and Priestess, the Chief Weaponthane, Lawspeaker, Champion, and Skald.  In addition to this is the trader Lodar Mikarsson of Glass Cave, who ensures commerce between the Vale and the capital in Boldhome runs smoothly, and Herdnor Hamtarsson of Hill Base, the master red smith.  The remaining twelve are all weaponthanes.  The Villagers are supported by their families out in the steads, and by the chieftain in the Hall.       

The Chieftain’s Hall sits on a low, conical hill overlooking the village.  It is protected by a wooden palisade with simple watchtowers.  The Chieftain and his or her family dwell here.  The Clan Ring meets to advise the Chieftain here as well.           

Two other locations of note in the Vale must be mentioned; Stag Hill and the Riddle.

Stag Hill is a mound of earth 20 meters high and 70 meters in diameter.  It is capped by a ring of seven standing stones.  This tumulus contains the ancient graves of Jarstakos Heortsson and the original war band that founded the Haraborn.  The worship of Orlanth and the Thunder Brothers was conducted from atop the Hill openly before the Lunar Empire forbade the cult; all male rituals are still conducted there.  

The Riddle is more of a mystery.  A perfectly square entrance way is carved into the base of Kagradus, and dates back before Orlanthi times, possibly back to the Green Age.  Inside is a labyrinth, a maze in perpetual blackness.  Torches will not burn within.  The women of the Haraborn are initiated here, taken shortly after their first menstruation  and led inside by the Earth priestesses.  No man is allowed inside the Riddle (this does not apply to the Nandan, who are taken inside the Riddle for initiation when their natures become clear and the priestesses approve).  When a woman of the clan passes, her body is carried inside the Riddle and left there.

On either side of the Riddle are shrines to Barntar and Uralda.

Not inside the Vale, but overlooking it from atop a cliff face rising some 600 meters, is the Royal’s Grove.  The Royal is the Son of the Black Stag; he is always a 12-branch Ghost Stag buck born silvery white rather than albino.  He is always sentient and always capable of speech.  It is unclear if the Royal is the same stag, endlessly reincarnated, or if it is a hereditary position passed on.  The Royal is the Chieftain of the Beasts, the leader of all animals in the Vale.  He is considered a member of the Clan Ring.  Aside from this duty he is also the leader of the local shamanic tradition, the White Hart.  Haraborn seeking to become shaman must do so with his instruction and blessing.  The Grove is a perfectly circular clearing in the woods under an massive, spreading oak.  

The Clan Ring

There are technically two Clan Rings, the “Outer” Ring composed of the dozen stead leaders, the Issaries merchant Borkar Gudinnsson, and the master redsmith, Harvarr Horviksson, and the “Inner” Ring composed of the following members. The Inner Ring generally has authority over internal clan affairs, but any decisions must be approved by the chieftain. The Outer Ring advises the chieftain in all decision-making, and focuses on external affairs. 

Chieftain: Gordangar Kenstrelsson of Twice Blessed Noble/gWs is the clan chieftain, a shrewd survivor from a powerful bloodline. He hates and fears the Lunars as his father was killed by the Lunar Army at the Battle of Grizzly Peak. He is middle-aged, generous, and traditional. Gordangar pays lip service to the current Colymar king Kangharl Kangradusson, even though he secretly despises him for selling out the tribe and bending his knee to the Lunars, and is a supporter of Queen Keika Black Spear, now in exile. Likewise, like many chieftains he knows that the Lunar puppet king Temertain is too weak to rule. He and his Ring are thus secretly sending supplies and what aid they can offer to the Sons of Orlanth, a network of war bands scattered across Sartar fighting a guerrilla war against the occupation.

Chief Weaponthane: Jorgunath Bladesong Formerly of Red Rock Warrior/gty leads the chieftain’s weaponthanes. He is a follower of Humakt, and adheres to a strict code of honor that colors his entire perception of the world. He believes in truth, duty, and death before dishonor, and has little patience for anyone else who does not abide by similar principles (Keladon Blue Eye is the primary target of his contempt).

Chief Priest: Savan Kentrelsson of Twice Blessed Priest/gsR is the clan’s full time priest and brother of Gordangar. He is haunted by prophecies of the Hero Wars and believes that the doom of the gods and men is rapidly approaching. He is a devotee of Orlanth and spends his life performing rituals to strengthen the storm gods. Savan is a passionate defender of the Royal House of Sartar, which he believes truly lies in a prophesied “Prince Who Shall Come.”

Chief Priestess: Morganeth Jarlarant of High Water Priestess/exl is the clan’s full time priestess and performs the rites at Ernalda’s sanctuary. She has powerful healing magic. Morganeth was born to the Ernaldor clan and has strong connections to the Colymar Earth Temple. She lost her eyesight when the Crimson Bat devoured Runegate. She dislikes Humakti, distrusts Vingans, and despises Uroxings; but she is always generous with her Healing magic to members of her clan and tribe.

Lawspeaker: Joddi White Hart of Riddle Watch Scribe/gsy is an elderly thane from a rival bloodline of the chief‘s. He is wise and discerning, and knows every legal procedure and tactic. He was never a warrior and knows little about fighting (but much about dying as his father, brother and two sons all died fighting the Empire), but his advice to farmers is relied on by the more prudent carls of the clan.

Champion: Erinina Copperaxe of Bear Fallen Warrior/etW is the most ferocious warrior of the clan. A warrior woman, half her head is shaved and the shoulder-length hair on the other side is dyed blood red. Her body is adorned with tattoos and she carries a copper-bladed axe. Debate is not her strength: she relies on intimidation, bluster, and her fearsome reputation to get her way. Erinina is jealous of any perceived rival for glory or attention.

Skald: Keladon Blue Eye Skald/gji is the chief poet, which a prodigious memory for songs and ballads and a sharp tongue that can instantly compose biting verse or flattering phrase. Born with one blue eye and one gray, he is a Eurmali and Bonded Trickster sworn to Gordangar.  He is not a Haraborn, but became a companion and ally of Gorgandar from the days of the Lunar invasion.  He is known to be a member of The Guide subcult…any others are secrets he keeps.

Already mentioned, the clan’s chief Issaries merchant and Redsmith are as follows;

Master Merchant: Borkar Gudinnsson of Riddle Watch Merchant/ghs is Joddi White Hart’s middle-aged nephew.  As a devotee of Issaries, he leads the trade caravans from the Vale to Boldhome and surrounding tulas, and regulates fair trades between the clan steads.  There are persistent rumors that he has connections to the Eye and the Ear, a pro-Free Sartar network of merchants providing the Sons of Orlanth with crucial intelligence.

Master Smith: Harvarr Horviksson of Cliff Shield Crafter/.s, is a taciturn, massively muscled giant, a head taller than even the chieftain.  He bears a long scar on the left half of his face, and wears a patch over his missing left eye.  This wound was received in his youth fighting for Boldhome.  He is married to Affarr Dronnsson, a gentle and loquacious Nandan who keeps his house in order.  It is said after recovering from his injuries he camped outside the gates of the Dwarf Mine for a year and a day, until Isidilian’s folk allowed him to enter.  He studied with them for three years.  He himself will not comment on this tale, but his husband loves to repeat it. Harvarr crafts and maintains the weapons for the clan’s thanes.

Finally, we must mention the Royal.

The Royal: This Talking Beast Shaman/gBb leads the animals of the Vale.  It is uncertain if he is the same Royal, reincarnating as a new fawn when the previous Royal dies, or if magical powers and sentience and somehow transferred to fawn when need arises.  Seldom seen by the humans of the Vale, when encountered he commands all the deference owed the chieftain.  The Royal is a massive, silvery stag with a mane of milk white hair and twelve-branched antlers the color of bleached bone.    

The Royal is the master shaman of the White Hart Tradition, created when the Haraborn fled from Dragon Pass and the Black Stag sent his spirit-son White Hart to act as Wyter-in-Exile.  Since the Haraborn returned to Dragon Pass, the Black Stag no longer bestows magic directly; in creating White Hart he seems to have passed that ability to his son.  The Black Stag still receives some of the worship directed to the ancestors (he is consider father of the Clan), but channels his power through the spirit society of his son.

Common Charms provided by the tradition are;

g: Bellow Like Thunder, Run Like the Wind, Dodge Arrow, Stag’s Great Leap

B: Speak to Deer, Sprout Antlers, Hide in Forest, Sense Predator

b: Awaken the Land, Speak With Ancestors, See What Deer Sees Feel What Deer Feels 

  

NETFLIX AND THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

FILM AND LITERATURE are two very different mediums, and it is pointless to expect a smooth translation from one to the other.  There are reasons why Arwen was at the Ford of Bruinen rather than Glorfindel in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings; reasons why Mat Hooper doesn't hook up with Ellen Brody in the film adaptation of Jaws; and yes, even reasons why Ozymandias's sinister plan in the cinematic Watchmen doesn't include tentacles.  It's pointless to rail against such things.  Very few films are scene-by-scene faithful to the books that inspired them.

There are a few.  Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby is essentially just the novel put up on the big screen.  Robert Mulligan didn't stray far from Harper Lee for To Kill a Mockingbird.  And in 1963, legendary director Robert Wise did an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House under the title, The Haunting.  There have been two subsequent film versions, one in 1999 and now a ten-hour television adaptation for Netflix.  Wise's faithful version is widely considered one of the finest haunted house films ever made.  The two subsequent versions missed the entire point.

Now, I did not object to the complete overhauling of the novel's plot; Jackson's legendary novel is far too short and to the point for a ten-hour binge-worthy Netflix adaptation.  Making the protagonists a family, rather than a collection of strangers brought together to investigate a haunted house, was not on the face of it a bad idea.  Nor was it a bad decision to flash backwards and forwards between the characters as children--when they lived in Hill House and it destroyed their mother--and adults still dealing with the echoes and the fallout of that tragedy.  But when fate has handed you one of the scariest pieces of fiction ever written to work with, you might wish to pay attention to the engine that makes it work. That engine is Hill House itself.

What distinguished Jackson's novel is that we are never really certain if Hill House--despite a reputation for being the "Mount Everest of haunted houses"--is really haunted at all.  Are there ghosts in Hill House?  We never see any.  To borrow a line from H. P. Lovecraft, "What I heard in my youth about the shunned house was merely that people died there in alarmingly great numbers."  That is the essence of Hill House.  People have terrible accidents there.  People kill themselves there.  But the implication is not that specters walk the halls, it is that the house itself is bad. Stephen King understood this, referencing Hill House directly in his 'salem's Lot.  His own Marsten House--like Hill House--holds evil in its "moldering bones."  King, like Jackson, is asking us to consider the possibility that a house, like a human being, can be wrong.

In the novel, and the superb Wise adaptation, there are poundings on the doors, there is writing on the walls.  But not all of the characters hear the poundings, and we are never really sure if it was a ghostly hand or--far worse--one of the characters wrote the words themselves.  To sum the Jackson novel up in the colloquial, Hill House is fucking with their heads.  People died there, but did they actually leave any ghosts?  Not according to Jackson;

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Hill House, "not sane," stands "by itself."  Whatever walks there, "walks alone."  The problem with the 1999 adaptation, and now Netflix's, is that the house is not alone.  It is filled to the rafters with ghosts.

Don't get me wrong, the Netflix The Haunting of Hill House is a bit more subtle about it than the 1999 version, and is superior to that one in nearly every way.  Right up until the tenth and final episode you can't be certain the ghosts are real or just hallucinations.  But it is in that final installment that the writers and producers demonstrate they either never fully understood the point of the novel or they simply did not care.  Hill House is bad, yes, but the ghosts are real and some of them are "good."  A husband is reunited with his wife there and they two of them live happily ever after as ghosts forever.  The Dudley's die there so they can live eternally with their child.  And in a rewritten line that is essentially a giant middle finger at Shirley Jackson, "whatever walks there, walks together."

Yes, there are legitimate reasons to rewrite books for films.  The film version of Goldfinger, for example, turns Ian Fleming's daft idea of the ultimate bank robbery into a far more chilling act of terrorism.  Yet despite this change, Goldfinger remains fairly true to the core of the novel.  This Hill House doesn't give a damn about Jackson.  It just wants to cash in on the title.

If you like well-written family drama, if you like uplifting tales of familial love overcoming obstacles, this is a good series for you.  It has genuinely scary moments, and the final revelation of the secret of the "Red Room" is brilliantly done.

But if you were looking for The Haunting of Hill House, go rewatch Robert Wise.    

GREG STAFFORD 1948-2018

I MET GREG STAFFORD just a handful of times.  The most memorable for me was a RuneQuest convention in Baltimore, around 1994 or 95.  I somehow lucked into having drinks with him and Sandy Petersen, two people who had immeasurable impact on my adolescence.  The next day, having gotten myself into the final round of the "Orlanthi Storytelling Competition," Greg gave me second place, quite rightly calling me out because the story I was telling was a disguised version of an old Welsh tale from the Mabinogion.  I had put it past all the other judges, but not Greg.  That man knew all the stories.

We had talked about Pendragon, he and I, and that other favorite game of mine Prince Valiant.  We also talked about Mircea Eliade and Georges Dumézil.  I should have told him, but I didn't, how he had shaped my life.  I was a graduate student at that time majoring in mythology.  All of that was because of him.

In junior high school, having run Dungeons & Dragons in the fifth and sixth grades, I joined the D&D club.  Only the boys in the club weren't actually playing D&D, they were playing something called RuneQuest.  I'm a writer, but I struggle putting into words what encountering that game meant to me.  

You see, Stafford was utterly unique not in having created a fantasy world--lots of people do that--but in the way he decided to share it.  He didn't put Glorantha into a novel or a script.  He made his world a "do it yourself novel."  To understand what Greg did, imagine George R. R. Martin creating all of Westeros and Essos, detailing the seven kingdoms, and then letting the fans write A Song of Ice and Fire themselves.  The generosity of spirit in that act is almost inexplicable.  Not everyone can create a world like Glorantha, so Greg did it for us and then gave it to us as a gift. 

As an Indologist, the closest thing to Glorantha I have ever found is the epic poem Mahabharata.  I say this because unlike the Iliad or the Odyssey the Mahabharata is still very much living tradition.  It is told and retold, and changes every telling.  Martin Singer brilliantly called it a literature that doesn't belong in a book.  I can think of no better way to describe Glorantha.  Putting it in a book would have been selfish.  Instead, always the shaman, Greg Stafford went to the Magic Place and brought Glorantha back for us.    

Because I played RuneQuest, because Greg Stafford introduced me to the Iliad, the Aeneid, and there blessed Mahabharata, I eventually studied classical Greek and Sanskrit, I studied comparative religions, I became the person that I am.  This blog, a weird fusion of mythology, gaming, and ritual magic, owes everything to him.  Recently, I have had the great pleasure of getting to know some of Stafford's successors.  People like Jeff Richard, Michael O'Brien, or Nick Brooke.  I barely know these men, but we are instantly family because we all share the same passion.  Stafford did that.  Stafford created a tribe.

Stafford left us today.  I am sitting here at 5:30 AM trying to process that.  I am trying to understand how I can feel so much loss for a man I barely knew.  But what can I say?  Greg was my shaman.  Greg was our shaman.  

You gave us so many gods, Greg.  I pray they all watch over you tonight.      

     

WHERE ON EARTH IS DRAGON PASS?

It gets a little academic in here.  I pray, gentle reader, you don't mind.  Numbers marked with a (*) are footnotes.  

MIRROR IMAGES

GLORANTHA is not Earth. It is not a "fantasy" Earth or even a "mythic" Earth. Yet like all pieces of imaginative fiction--a genre encompassing but not limited to fantasy, horror, and science fiction--Glorantha is composed of undeniable "echoes" of Earth, reflections that by looking at help us come to better understand ourselves. This is one of the principle functions of imaginative fiction, going all the way back to mythology itself.

Thus while Glorantha is strange it is also familiar.  It is a flat world under a sky dome, the underworld stretching darkly beneath it...but isn't this the Earth the Aeneid or the Bible describes? At dawn in Glorantha the sun emerges from the gates of the east to journey across the heavens, and at dusk descends through the gates of the west to journey through the lands of the dead...but similar journeys were made in the myths of our own ancient Greeks or Egyptians.  Mighty Orlanth, one of the chief deities of the setting, was a formidable warrior chieftain, a thunderbolt wielder charged with staving off chaos and sending life-giving rains to fertilize the earth...but this puts him among gods like Indra, Perun, Tarhunt, or Thor.  Like our own image in the looking-glass, when we look at Glorantha see ourselves, but simultaneously like Alice's journey through the looking-glass everything is different.

In fact, with Glorantha we often feel we recognize what we see but at the same time can't exactly place it.  It is often much easier, in other fantasy worlds, to recognize exactly what we are seeing. In Dragon Age's Thedas or Warhammer's "Old World," the reflections of our world are much more apparent.  "Orlais" in Thedas and "Bretonnia" in the Old World are undeniably reflections of France; the names sound French, the cultures come off as (at least stereotypically) French, and the location of the nation on the map is essentially where France should be (bear in mind Thedas is basically Europe turned upside down).  Just look at the map of the Old World below and you can easily guess which terrestrial nations "Tilea," "Estalia," and "Kislev" mirror.  Turn Thedas upside down and the connection between the Roman and Tevinter imperiums becomes clear.  

Warhammer's "The Old World"

Dragon Age's "Thedas"

In Glorantha, this is seldom the case.  A notable exception is Kralorela, an ancient nation on the eastern shores of the continent of Genertela.  Kralorela is clearly a reflection of China, Korea, and other East Asian civilizations.  It is probably the easiest Gloranthan culture to associate with something terrestrial (outside of that homage to Toho Co. Ltd known as Loral).1*  But the vast majority of Gloranthan cultures are impossible to identify in this way.  

Move to the opposite side of the continent.  The Western regions of Fronela, Ralios, and Seshnela immediately remind us of Europe; the predominant religion reveres a single creator God whose mechanistic, clockwork world is governed by immutable laws of nature.  There was a single Prophet who revealed the laws of this God to the world.  There are sects squabbling over what these laws really mean.  But the longer we look, the less sure we really are.  From one angle we see Christendom, but from another Judaism, the Islamic world, Zoroastrianism.  We know we recognize it, but from where?

Glorantha's northern continent, Genertela

The answer lies in Glorantha's very foundations.  She is not that interested in terrestrial geography, history, or culture.  Glorantha only reflects such things to the extent that they support her main purpose, the reflection of terrestrial mythology.  My suspicion is that Kralorela mirrors China so strongly because--as an ancient and mostly isolated region--China's mythologies were so self-contained.  But Western monotheism?  This was born in the Near East, spreading like wildfire.  Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy trace back to the same sources as Sunni and Shiism, right back to Zarathustra and his Magi.  All of this gets reflected in the "myth pool" of Western Gloranthan culture.  We are not sure exactly which terrestrial culture we are seeing because we are seeing so many at once.

All of which brings us to the titular question; "where on Earth is Dragon Pass?"

THE PROTO-INDO-EUROPEANS

Located in south-central Genertela, Dragon Pass has been the center of stories set in Glorantha since White Bear and Red Moon. If you have played RuneQuest, Hero Wars, HeroQuest, King of Dragon Pass, or 13th Age Glorantha, you have likely visited there. You know of the barbarian kingdom of Sartar and its struggle against the occupying forces of the Lunar Empire. You have heard of the mountain ranges that are titanic, sleeping dragons. You are familiar with Kero Fin, the tallest mountain in the world. Paradoxically, we know more about Dragon Pass than anywhere else in Glorantha...and yet it is one of the hardest regions to "place" on the map of our own world. Who are the Sartarites reflections of? Is there anywhere in out own world like this mountainous, contested region?

When I first visited Dragon Pass back in 1982, the Sartarites were described to me as "vikings without ships."2*  This was a common perception back then.  Dragon Pass was vaguely northern European, with storm-worshipping barbarians fighting an empire.  For American teenagers, it was the easiest association to make.  We had studied the Roman invasions of Germany, Gaul, and Britain, and of the little mythology we knew, thunderbolt-wielding Orlanth (the chief god of the Sartarites) seemed far more Thor than Zeus.  

It never sat right with me though.

I fell in love with mythology long before I met Glorantha.  In grade school, I was seldom far from my battered copies of the D'Aulaires' retellings of Greek or Norse myths.  Other kids had Batman and Spiderman.  I had Hercules and Jason.  I was eleven the first time I set foot in Glorantha, and recognized it all immediately.  But even then--a decade before mythology would become my academic career--I knew about gods like Vedic Indra and the Slavic Perun, enough to make me question why my gaming group so easily assumed Orlanth must be Thor.  I went along with it, though, and it wasn't until I was running RuneQuest in college that I started to think more deeply about where and who Dragon Pass might be reflecting.  

As a graduate student I was in Washington DC studying Sanskrit and Indology,3* but my real passion was the mysterious Proto-Indo-Europeans, or "PIE."  A hypothetical people, their supposed existence in the late Neolithic and early Bronze ages answered a great many questions.  For starters there was the linguistic evidence, what we call the "Indo-European" languages.  Given the rules of linguistic "drift," the slow changing of words over time, it is clear that many languages in Europe and central-south Asia came from the same source.  Counting in counting in Sanskrit, for example, is eka, dva, treeni, chatvaari, pancha while ancient Greek is ena, duo, tria, tessera, pente.  It's easy to see the correlation. 

Another strong piece of evidence is the existence of epic literature across the Indo-European language spectrum.  The Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Eddas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and others are all epic poems that sing of gods and heroes and wars.  Further, they contain the same stock phrases. "Imperishable fame," "the wheel of the sun," "cattle and men" (used to describe wealth, as in "he possessed many cattle and men"), and "the wine-dark sea" turn up repeatedly.  There is the suggestion here that these stories were passed down from the same source.  Countless generations of oral tradition preserved the stock phrases even as the stories evolved as the cultures grew apart.

Of course for me the most persuasive argument was the mythological. The Indo-European cultures shared remarkably distinctive deities and myth patterns.  There was, for example, always a dichotomy between two "father" deities.  On one hand there was an aloof, all-seeing father associated with the sky, mystery, and creation (Woden, Ouranos, Varuna).  On the other there was a father figure--usually his son--associated with thunder, rains, cattle, chieftains, and family (Thor, Zeus, Indra).  This second deity was usually the most worshipped, as the first was too distant and unapproachable.  Everywhere we find him he wields the thunderbolt, sometimes in the guise of an axe or hammer, sometimes as the three-bladed vajra.  He was the model chieftain for the culture, the model father figure, the model warrior.  

In other words, he was Orlanth.

The more I learned about the PIE, the more they seemed like my beloved Orlanthi.  From all the evidence we had gathered about them we knew they were pastoral famers who saw cattle as the measure of wealth, who had a strong oral tradition of heroic sagas and worshipped a storm god, who tended to see the ideal ruler as a war lord rather than a hereditary king. Even in the migration patterns of the Orlanthi I saw a reflection of the Indo-Europeans.  Looking at a map of the Orlanthi in Genertela, after a few cocktails you might be forgiven for thinking your are looking at the Indo-European Yamnaya or Corded Ware.    

Orlanthi Dispersal in Genertela

Indo-Europeans in Europe

PIE Homeland and Migrations

By the time my dissertation was finished,4* the Orlanthi as a reflection of the ancient PIE peoples was firmly fixed in my mind.  And that meant for me Dragon Pass could no longer be "northern European."  Just as the Orlanthi originated in Dragon Pass and then fanned out across Genertela, the Indo-Europeans originated somewhere to.  Dragon Pass became, in my mind, the Caucasus.5*

THE CROSSROADS OF A CONTINENT

Quivins...or the Caucasus?

If we compare Genertela with Eurasia, Dragon Pass and the Caucasus occupy roughly the exact same south-central position.  Each is the crossroads of a continent, a mountainous region that gave birth to storm-worshippers.  There are many other intriguing parallels as well.

A modern village in the region.

We have mentioned the Lunar Empire; like all Gloranthan cultures it is a "myth pool" and this particular one combines the mythic images of several ancient empires.  It is easy to see the Romans in the Lunars, but the Indian Gupta dynasty is evident as well.  Indeed, with roots going back to Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (Dara Happans), a mythic history that describes a Solar dynasty replaced by a Lunar one, and a supreme battle goddess who brings enlightenment and salvation to those who love her and rains destruction on her enemies (it is difficult to read about Durga in the Devi Mahatmya and NOT see the Red Goddess) the correlations between the Gupta and the Lunars are strong.  Of course we also see the Achaemenid Empire as well in things like the Lunar "satrapies" and the iconography of deities like Yelm.  This Persian empire is in many ways a better "fit" for the Lunars, more Bronze Age than the Romans and far more "exotic." 

I bring this up because the Caucasus was where the Achaemenids were stopped.  In 513-12 BCE Darius I led a campaign there, but it is unclear from the "satrapy list" of Herodotus whether or not the Persians were able to hold it very long.  Evidence suggests some of the kingdoms here remained under Persian rule a brief time, and others sent tribute, but that in short order Persian rule was thrown off.  The Persians expanded across the ancient world, but the mountainous Caucasus and the storm-worshippers there were the wall their expansion ran into.

Which sounds to me quite like what happens in Dragon Pass.

There are several other interesting parallels worth mentioning.  The first has to be Mt. Elbrus.

The tallest mountain in Genertela is Kero Fin, the mother of Orlanth who towers over Dragon Pass.  The tallest mountain in Europe is Elbrus, who towers over the Caucasus. The ancient Persians associated it with Mount Qaf, the mythical highest mountain in the world.  She is called, in fact, "the mother of all mountains." Avestan tradition associated Elbrus--and the Caucasus region around it--with the battleground of the Saoshyant, an eschatological hero who would conquer the personification of Evil and remake the entire world.  This sounds more than a little like Argrath's war against the Evil Empire.

Interestingly, Elbrus has two peaks.  The second of the two is actually said to be a sleeping dragon.  This certainly sounds more than a little like the mountain ranges one finds in Dragon Pass.  And irresistible to fans of Greek mythology, the Caucasus was also home to ancient Colchis, the destination of the Argonauts and the home of Medea.  It was in the Greek imagination a land drenched in magic, and, of course, a breeding place of dragons.  The Persians associated it with dragons as well.

As a side note, the Orlanthi, who associate with alynxes the same way many peoples associated with dogs, would be pleased to hear the terrestrial Caucasus is home to an indigenous species of lynx.

Finally, it must be pointed out that just south of the Caucasus lies Mesopotamia, the urban center of the ancient world.  The fertile lands between the Tigris and Euphrates gave rise to great city-states like Nineveh, Uruk, Sumer, and Babylon.  This region mirrors nicely the lands just south of Dragon Pass, Esrolia, the urban center of central Genertela.  While elements of Esrolia's culture strongly reflect Minoan Crete, it is hard to look at a city like Nochet--whose population rivaled Babylon's and not think of Mesopotamia.  The adjacency of this "holy country" next to the Caucasus is another strong case for comparing that region and Dragon Pass.

YOUR GLORANTHA MAY VARY

Glorantha resists the kind of one-for-one identifications that are possible in some other fantasy worlds.  Primarily, as discussed, this is because her cultures are more reflections of belief systems and mythic themes than actual terrestrial civilizations.  Praxian nomads are not Native American plains tribes nor Arabian bedouins, but something in which we can see shades of both. But in addition to this, Glorantha is now more than 50 years old, and over time she has evolved into something more her own. The description of Western Malkioni society in 1990's Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars reads far more "dark ages Europe" than the description in 2014's The Guide to Glorantha.  As a setting she has, quite simply, grown up and formed her own identity.

But Glorantha would not resonate with us, she would not mean anything, if she did not mirror the world we know.  To the extent that she has succeeded to captivate us for forty years testifies to the extent she reflects our own faces.

The Indo-Europeans are--just like any Gloranthan culture--a construct of sorts, a "myth pool."  In creating the Orlanthi, I don't think there was really any need for Greg Stafford to fuse together multiple cultures and myth streams as he did for peoples like the Lunars or the Malkioni, because with the Indo-Europeans, scholars had already done that for him.  Orlanth reflects any number of historical thunder gods the same way as his equally imaginary counterpart, Dyḗus Phtḗr (a hypothetical PIE name meaning "sky father") does.  He is Thor, and Perun, and Zeus, and Indra and Jupiter simultaneously...and none of them at all.  Remember, Gloranthan cultures are mirrors...and we each see something different when we stand in front of the looking glass.  Your Glorantha will vary.

In "my" Glorantha, the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass have more in common with ancient Colchis, Media, or Iberia than the Norse or the Celts...but the case in Fronela and Loskalm is different.  In Dragon Pass, iconography shows Orlanth with a vajra.  In those northern regions he bears a hammer or an axe.  In "my" Glorantha, the Lunar-Sartar conflict is more 300 than Braveheart.  I like my Lunars Persian with a strong Gupta India twist.  Again, yours will vary.

And thank Orlanth for that.

NOTES

1* Though technically Gamera was Daiei Films and Kong was RKO Pictures

2* Actually my first RuneQuest GM told me to think of them as "vikings without ships or Men of Rohan without horses."

3* I was lucky in my mentors.  As an undergrad I studied under Thomas Coburn, whose Encountering the Goddess: a translation of the Devi-Mahatmaya and a Study of its Interpretation and Devi Mahatmya, The Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition are highly recommended to any devotees of the Red Goddess out there.  As a grad student I studied under Alf Hiltebeitel, whose Gods, Heroes, and Krsna: A Study of the Mahabharata in relation to Indian and Indo-European Symbolisms and The Ritual of Battle: Krishna in the Mahabharata might change the way you think about Argrath.

4* The Lotus and the Lioness, Sacral Kingship in the Mythologies of Durga and Sri.  I guarantee it will put even the most desperate of you insomniacs out there to sleep.

5* There are competing theories as to where, exactly, the PIE originated.  Marija Gimbutas, for example, places them just north to the Pontic-Caspian Steppes.  You can probably guess which theory I subscribe to.