SIX (MORE) SEASONS IN SARTAR: IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING REDUX

If you haven't played Six Seasons in Sartar, or read the blog, this post will contain spoilers. Be warned.

PROBABLY THE CHAPTER THAT CHANGED THE LEAST between the HeroQuest blog version of Six Seasons in Sartar and the published RuneQuest version was "In Sheep's Clothing." This mystery, in which an encounter with a ghost draws the player characters into a hunt for missing children, is pretty much the same in both versions. What did change is that the published version falls after "The Riddle" and "Rites of Passage," meaning that the player characters are now adults as they investigate the disappearances. In the blog version, "In Sheep's Clothing" fell before their coming of age rites, meaning that the player characters were technically just children themselves.

With a wink and a nod towards "Hansel and Gretel," "In Sheep's Clothing" deals with one of my favorite (and in my opinion most woefully underused) Gloranthan menaces, the ogre. I think I enjoy Glorantha the most when it borders on the fairy tale, and of the six chapters of the campaign this is the one where I indulge that predilection the most. Gloranthan ogres, which look indistinguishable from humans but have a taste for human flesh, are straight out of fairy tales. "Puss in Boots," "Hop-o'-my-Thumb," and even some versions of "Bluebeard" are classic ogre stories. They tap into that deeply rooted taboo of cannibalism, and the modern exemplar of the ogre would have to be Hannibal Lecter. Drugalla Applecheeks, the ogress in this particular fable,  is essential one gingerbread house short of being a full-on fairy story witch. She lures children to their dooms, devours them, and gives sacrifice to Cacodemon, literally a manifestation of the Devil.

The Fairy Tale Ogre

Of course, having played it all once, the revelation that Drugalla is an ogre was about as shocking to my players as watching any given film version of Dracula ("wait...Count Dracula is...a vampire?!?!"). While there are substantial differences between the other Six Seasons in Sartar chapters and the blog versions this group already played, enough to keep them guessing at least, replaying this one was pretty much the equivalent of watching a rerun. But that was fine. This was their first real session of RuneQuest, and so playing through the same story a second time gave them the chance to worry less about unraveling the mystery and more about learning the new system. As mentioned earlier, the fact that in this version their characters were adults (with magic) rather than children (without magic) also made a big difference.

The ogre from Puss in Boots

Which brings us to the climax.

The characters are now all initiates of the Black Stag and have sacrificed for Rune magic. This led to a very innovative and unexpected use of the spell "The Stag's Leap" (SSiS, p. 18). At the climax, entering Drugalla's cavern, they see her across the chamber menacing her captive child. Rather than cross the distance on foot, both Beralor and Kalliva used "The Stag's Leap" to get there instantly, giving Drugalla no time to react. A special success with a sword attack, added to the luck that it was a blow to the head, made short work of our ogress.

The next session will be "The Deer Folk," the chapter in which The Company of the Dragon has its roots. Now that the players have a basic grasp of the system, it will be time to throw a much fuller RuneQuest adventure at them.

   

SIX SEASONS IN SARTAR: THE COMPANY OF THE DRAGON FAQs

"I WAS INTRODUCED to Glorantha back in 1983.  Thirty-seven years later I found myself writing a love letter to this setting in the form of Six Seasons in Sartar.  As much as this was a love letter to Greg Stafford’s world, it was also one to the game that introduced me to it, “classic” RuneQuest or RQ2.  As so many characters were in that game, the characters in Six Seasons were “newly-minted” adults, without previous experience, a cult, or even much magic.  This was to capture the feel of those early RQ days.

When it came time to write the sequel, however, I had a very different love letter to write.  RQ might have been my introduction, but that very same year I was also introduced to the Gloranthan war game White Bear and Red Moon, freshly republished back then as Dragon Pass.  This game blew my mind.  It shared the same setting with RQ, but the two seemed to exist at completely opposite ends of the spectrum.  In RQ, you were this individual, scrounging around trying to get yourself some decent armor and some magic.  In WB&RM, you were commanding massive armies, battling over the destiny of the world.  RQ was Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but WB&RM was the Iliad, it was the Mahabharata.  Inasmuch as The Company of the Dragon is the sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar, the two do not take their inspiration from the same source.  Company is my love letter to White Bear and Red Moon.

And so, while the first book confined you to a small mountain community, the second has you sweeping back and forth across Dragon Pass.  You may not be Heroes, but you cross paths with them.  Argrath is there.  And Ethilrist.  Delecti.  Cragspider.  In Six Seasons, there was nary an Elf or a Troll to be seen.  In The Company of the Dragon most of the Elder Races get their moment in the spotlight.  Gods fall and a Dragon rises.  And 420+ pages after it all started, the saga of the Haraborn comes to an end.  In my heart, I see them laying down their swords and going home to till the soil and make babies.  But of course, all that is up to you..."

from the "Afterword," The Company of the Dragon

This week The Company of the Dragon became available in hardcover, and I figured this was a great opportunity to answer a few frequently asked questions about it. So, without further ado...

What is it?

The Company of the Dragon is a 27-episode, five-year long campaign for Runequest Roleplaying in Glorantha, Questworlds, or 13th Age Glorantha. Set between 1620 and 1625 ST, it covers the final years of the Lunar Empire's occupation of the mountainous land of Sartar. The player characters are the leaders of a warband, the "Company of the Dragon." The band is about 150 people strong, but the membership will fluctuate. They are sworn to Kallyr of Kheldon, the "Prince in Exile," and work against the forces of the Lunar Empire remaining in Sartar and their many collaborators. Near the end of the campaign, they become the central players in the event known as the "Dragonrise," which breaks the Empire's grip on Sartar and sees Kallyr return to be crowned Prince.

Is it the sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar?

Yes...and no. If you played Six Seasons in Sartar, then The Company of the Dragon picks up exactly where that story left off, and your player characters will move effortlessly from one to the other. If you haven't played Six Seasons, however, The Company of the Dragon contains full rules and support for creating new characters and putting together your warband. It plays perfectly fine without any relation to Six Seasons at all.

What exactly is inside?

The best way to answer that is to just show you the table of contents. The Company of the Dragon is a campaign, but it is also a sourcebook. Most of if can be adapted for any Glorantha campaign. You get;

- "Sartar Before the Dragonrise" which details the land in the final years of the Lunar Occupation. I worked under Jeff Richard on the upcoming Sartar Campaign from Chaosium, so I made every effort to ensure The Company of the Dragon's vision of Sartar would match the official campaign. 

- "The Company of the Dragon" details the structure of the warband, how it operates, supports and arms itself, recruits, etc. New mechanics are introduced here for running large groups--military units, temples, towns and cities, even a nation. These mechanics measure their strength and influence, resources, health, etc. All of this could be used in any Gloranthan campaign.

- "Draconic Consciousness" is a look at the mysticism of the True Dragons and the Dragonewts, complete with mechanics to model it in the game. Player characters can practice this path and gain new powers and abilities.

- "Characters" is a MASSIVE chapter. It starts with rules for creating new player characters for the campaign. There is a section of "character arcs," a new idea that gives each PC their own personal journey inside the major plot of the campaign. Next the book introduces a streamlined system for creating and running NPCs, including more than 30 templates--Young Clansman, Seasoned Clansman, Chieftain's Thane, Wind Lord,  Young Clanswoman, Young Vingan, Earth Priestess, Eurmali Clown, Issaries Trader, Street Urchin, Young Apprentice, Guild Master, Kolating, Lunar Soldier, etc etc etc. Basically any NPC you might need over the course of the campaign you can whip up with these templates and rules.

- "Initiations" talks about joining cults. It explains what initiation means in the Gloranthan context, and includes full initiations for martial cults like Humakt, Vinga, Babeester Gor, and the like. There is also the initiation for joining the Company of the Dragon itself.

- "Running the Game" is another massive chapter. It walks the GM through setting up their campaign, how to make use of the new community characteristics system, running battles, heroes and superheroes, a new optional system of "plot points" to let players better guide the narrative, and finally my thoughts on Glorantha and making your campaign feel "Gloranthan."

- "Episodes" makes up the last 160 pages of the book. These are the "adventures." Some resemble full-length scenarios, some are adventure seeds. Most are something between. The majority of the episodes can be played in any order, and the GM gets to decide which ones to include and which to exclude from their campaign, making everyone's experience of The Company of the Dragon different. There are some episodes that are part of the main plot, however, like "The Dragonrise" and "Prince Kallyr." 

Is it usable with Questworlds or 13th Age Glorantha?

Yes. Building on the rules in the Six Seasons in Sartar 13G/HQG Conversion Guide The Company of the Dragon is fully playable in those systems.

Is it "canon?"

No. As I mentioned, however, I worked with Jeff on the upcoming Sartar Campaign and worked VERY hard to make sure The Company of the Dragon doesn't contradict anything in there. The idea has always been for Six Seasons in Sartar and The Company of the Dragon to transition you from the "classic" RQ era to the new timeline. 

Wait...no PDF bundled with the book?

No. DriveThruRPG is a PDF vendor, not a publisher. Print on Demand is a service they offer on only specific titles. For the Jonstown Compendium, a PDF needs to reach Electrum bestseller status to qualify for POD. That means as an author, I cannot guarantee a print version will ever exist. I need to sell PDFs first. Unfortunately, because of this there is no mechanism to subtract the cost of the PDF purchase from the print (when and if it happens), and it would hardly be fair to make PDF buyers pay full price for print while giving those who waited for the hardcover a PDF for free. My hands are tied on this one.

Two hardcovers???

DriveThruRPG offers two print options; standard color and premium color. The premium color is a bit more expensive, but the images look crisper and deeper. Having said this, the standard color books look superb too. I don't think people who buy standard color will feel cheated in anyway. We released The Company of the Dragon in both formats to give the audience price options that were right for them. 

 

 

 

THE COMPANY OF THE DRAGON: CAMP LIFE

THE ORLANTHI ARE NOT a nomadic people, yet neither are they as sedentary as many other Gloranthan peoples. The ancient Vingkotlings, for example, were stationary, with holds and steads firmly established, but their immediate successors were not.  Heort's "Deer People" lived in the mountains and hills outside of the cities and forts, a tactic that kept them alive in the Greater Darkness. Modern Orlanthi blended these two cultures, with Esrolia and Sartar's cities exemplifying the settled patterns and the Pol Joni showing more mobile instincts.

The longhouses, halls, and hill forts of late Third Age Sartar might have had their roots in the Vingkotling stream, but the nomadic lifestyle adopted by rebel forces during the Lunar Occupation (1602 to 1625 S.T.) harkened directly back to Heort. Before coming to occupy (if, in your campaign they do at all) the ancient Vingkotling fortress of Storm's Age (p. 219-226), the Company of the Dragon adopted a lifestyle that their distant Heortling ancestors would have found very familiar.

Setting Up Camp

The practice of establishing camp was ritual, formalized, and rooted in myth.  It began not with Orlanth but Umath himself. First, the recognized leader of the band locates what is to be the center of camp and plants the Law Stone there. This is a sacred stone created at the formation of the band or company and brought with them whenever they break camp and establish a new one elsewhere. The Law Stone traditionally has carvings identifying who the band is, who their leader is, and perhaps most critically who their wyter is. It was not unusual, in fact, for the Law Stone to be the sacred vessel containing the wyter's spirit (see RQ, p. 286).  Once planted, the Law Stone marks the camp as belonging--so long as it remains--to the band or company.  Umath established this tradition, but it is also clearly a reflection of the Spike that stood at the heart of Glorantha.

The highest ranking priest or God-talker among them would then call the Six Guardians to encircle and mark the boundaries of the camp;

I call upon the Six Guardians of the camp; I call upon the spirits Before Me, On My Right, Behind Me, On My Left, Above Me, and Below Me. 

Often this was accompanied by use of the Warding Rune spell (RQ, p. 347), but not generally if the camp was being established in the territory of an allied or friendly host.

Sacred Fire

The next step of establishing camp was a critical one. The Company of the Dragon, like all traveling Orlanthi, would have made use of a "traveling house," a structure not unlike the lavvu used by the Sami peoples of Europe or the tipi of indigenous North Americans.  The skeleton of the structure was formed by three notched or forked poles, arranged like the Movement Rune to form a tripod, with additional straight poles added between to lend support.  Over this was stretched walls of animal hides and skins.  The center of the traveling house was left open to the sky, and on the ground beneath it each one would have a small campfire within.

Along with the Law Stone, the leader of the band or company would carry with them a fired clay box containing a single coal. This was the sacred essence of Oakfed, a Low Fire spirit and brother to Mahome (the hearth) and Gustbran (the forge). In the center of the camp, beside the Law Stone, the leader would then create the Camp Fire. From this, each fire within each tent would then be lit. Hymns would be chanted or sung in memory of Oak Fed helping the ancestors survive in the Greater Darkness. Once the fires were lit, the camp was said to have "woken up," and was considered a temporary yet acceptable surrogate for the hearth fire of Mahome burning at the heart of every permanent Orlanthi dwelling.

On a final note, latrines would have been dug several meters from the edge of camp. The Orlanthi practice was to dig them in the north, likely as a slight to the Dara Happan peoples in that direction.

Camp Life

Evenings would be given over to songs, stories, and the retelling of ancient myths. The shift rotation of guards patrolling the outer edges of the camp would have been assiduously observed. Food would primarily be hard, dried breads softened and flavored with gravies made from dried stock, cured meats, beans and lentils, and if they were lucky a bit of beer. If the band was given permission to hunt on the lands it occupied, game might be added to the menu. In general though, within two hours of sunset, the camp would have gone quiet.

Traveling houses were large, and often held up to ten individuals. For the Company of the Dragon, where Companions trained in phalanx formations of ten, the Company would have bedded down in their phalanx groups. Romantic relationships were known and accepted, and would have been quietly ignored by other tent mates.

In the morning the members would rise with the dawn and wash, not just for cleanliness but as a ritual purification washing away any lingering traces of sleep, the "little death." In Sea, Fire, and Earth Seasons the camp would optimally be placed near a source of flowing water for this purpose.  In Dark and Storm Seasons, snow would be brought into the tent to melt overnight in vessels beside the camp fires.  The company would then break its fast, and engage in the militia training or other occupations of the day.

A Word on Hospitality

It should be noted that once the Law Stone was planted and the fires lit, the camp for all intents and purposes belonged to the band or company occupying it. Even if they had been given permission to encamp on someone else's clanstead, by ancient Orlanthi custom and tradition the land belonged to the campers, not the owners. No member of the local residents would enter the camp without announcing themselves and receiving permission first. To do so would have been a serious breech of protocol. Likewise, no party would set up camp on the lands of others without first securing permission, and it was recognized that by encamping on other's lands you established and now owed a debt to them. 

     

LIFE OF MOONSON, BOOK ONE: CHARACTERS - A LOOK

 

THE ARGUMENTS GO BACK forty years.

You have the Roman Camp, who will point to the Imperial legions, the liberal use of terms like "centurion" and "tribune," and the existence of a Senate. Obviously this makes Sartar Gaul or Germania...possibly even Judea.  Then you have the Persian Camp, who remind you of the Satraps and sultanates. This casts Sartar in the role of the brave Greeks holding off the forces of Xerxes I. There is a Byzantine Camp, who point out the existence of a state religion that is keen on conversion, a Soviet Camp who view the insidious spread of "Illumination" as a euphemism for Communism (not to mention, the empire is "Red"), and even a Star Wars "The Empire" Camp...because let's face it, there is something rather Death Star-like about the Red Moon just hovering there. Each side, given the chance, has made convincing cases initially around gaming tables, then later message boards, and nowadays the Internet.

Of course the real answer is simple. The Lunar Empire is all of these things.

In a world based on myth, the Lunar Empire is the archetypical Empire, a mold into which you can pour any empire you like (or dislike, for that matter). Alternatively, if you are the team that put together 2020's A Rough Guide to Glamour, you cram that mold close to bursting with every single empire you can think of. Glamour served up a Lunar Empire that was simultaneously Rome, Byzantium, Moscow, Britain, Palpatine's, and more than a little Oceania, spiced up with pop culture and humor, and served hot in the Jonstown Compendium. Now the band is back together for Life of Moonson, Book One: Characters.

Both A Rough Guide and Moonson originated with a LARP run at Gloranthan conventions in the late 1990s. It was a strange period of history for "Glorantha in the real world," when the setting had just split from RuneQuest but had not yet been reborn in Hero Wars (later HeroQuest). Yet this LARP played a crucial role in assembling the Avengers, the people who would become--in the words of Jeff Richard--"a veritable Who's Who of the modern Team Chaosium." So it felt "right" for a Rough Guide to be expanded, illustrated, and published for the new Jonstown Compendium, and it feels right for the Life of Moonson books to follow it now.

While A Rough Guide detailed the setting of the LARP--the Lunar Empire's capital of Glamour--this volume, Characters, contains more than 50 characters for it, each illustrated, with pages of description  background, personal objectives, secrets, and things the character knows. There are no game statistics here, but the characters are so complex and fleshed out that adding a few for RuneQuest or QuestWorlds would be well worth your while. These are the movers and shakers of the Lunar Empire. the heaviest of the heavy hitters. Within you will find the Red Emperor himself, Sor-Eel, the Great Sister, the Dean of the Field School of Magic, even Jar-Eel the Razoress. This makes it invaluable to anyone wanting to run a campaign in the capital, or at the highest levels of the Empire. For the rest of us, its just makes for damn juicy reading.

The production values are upped here from A Rough Guide, which is actually saying something as that book set the bar for other Compendium works. The writing team of David Hall, Kevin Jacklin, Nick Brooke, Chris Gidlow, the notorious MOB (Michael O'Brien), and Mike Hagen are joined by illustrator Dario Corallo, whose art so perfectly matches the spirit of the book. As with A Rough Guide, Moonson portrays the luminaries of the Empire in the guise of famous actors, performers, and artists we all know. I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to identify them all at your leisure. 

At 235 pages Life of Moonson is massively expanded from its original source material, with new essays  and maps courtesy Phil Anderson and Nick Brooke. Book Two: The Rules, is on the way and will deliver the basic story of the LARP (seven years after the Dragonrise, the great and the good of the Empire have come together the celebrate the Lunar New Year...), the rules, and tools needed to run it.

Even if you have no intention of playing the LARP, Life of Moonson belongs in your collection along with A Rough Guide to Glamour. LARPs have never been this reviewer's cup of tea, but I still find both books terrific RPG references. Like so much from the Compendium they are passion projects, and it shows. They also shed light (scarlet, crimson, and vermillion light, of course) on a part of Glorantha we don't often get to see.

Life of Moonson is available now in PDF from the Jonstown Compendium.  Buy a copy, and help it get past the threshold for print on demand eligibility. 

     

TALES OF THE SUN COUNTY MILITIA: SANDHEART VOLUME ONE (A REVIEW)

INASMUCH AS ROLEPLAYERS "like" the idea of settings different from our own world, we don't seem to like them to be too different.  Sure, castles and knights are fun, but the whole "women as second class citizens" business?  Not so much.  The speakeasies and jazz of New Orleans in the Roaring Twenties are great...let's just ignore the Jim Crow laws.  We enjoy using roleplaying as a window into the Other, but like Narcissus what we really want is to see our own face, the familiar, reflected back at us.

The most successful RPGs do this; the best do it well.  In the 70s D&D had absolutely nothing to do with Europe or the Middle Ages; written by Americans for (at the time) an American audience, the game was basically the Old West in Renaissance Faire drag.  There were alignments instead of White and Black hats, but it was still about swaggering drifters riding from town to town proving their badassness and making fistfuls of cash doing it.  The feudal system?  Vassalage?  Nah...you made enough money to buy your own land and build yourself a fort at 9th level.  It was a stroke of genius, really.  TSR served Americans Tolkien with all the confusing British bits removed.

I would argue that Greg Stafford's Glorantha was a masterpiece of this principle, and for the very simple reason that it was built on myth.  Set in a Bronze Age world--and a flat world under a sky dome at that--20th (and later 21st) century players could nevertheless see the familiar reflected back at them in it.  The reason is simple; myths are timeless.  Yes, we can all sit around and debate "who the Lunar Empire is."  Like looking at Rorschach blots you see what you are familiar with.  They could be the Romans.  The Persians.  Assyrians.  But for a kid playing RuneQuest in Reagan's America, we knew damn well who the "Evil Empire" was.  Hell, they were Red too.  

The same goes for the Heortlings.  If you live in England, I suspect they look Celtic.  Northern Europe?  Probably Norse.  My friends and I thought they were clearly Mycenaean.  After Braveheart, they suddenly had woad and kilts.  But of course they are all of these things because Glorantha is this titanic genius mirror that shows what you want to see in it.

The best RuneQuest supplements (and for brevity's sake I am including Hero Wars/HeroQuest/Quest Worlds and 13G under that label as well), understand Glorantha is a mirror and use it as such.  Sure, it's a polished bronze mirror, of course, but we recognize ourselves in it all the same.  Think back to the classics, like Pavis, The Big Rubble, and Borderlands.  New Pavis is not a terribly accurate recreation of any actual Bronze Age city, but it is a mythic mirror of Tombstone, or San Francisco during the Gold Rush, a boom town where an intrepid adventurer can make a name for themselves.  If you are Australian, New Pavis might be "The Alice," with adventuring stockmen traversing the "Red Center" of the Praxian wastes.  The classic RQ supplements never got bogged down in the scholastic gobbledygook of recreation.  This is what made them great.

 Tales of the Sun County Militia: Sandheart Volume One is another example of an RQ supplement that "gets it." I am reviewing specifically here the "remix," a 103-page expanded version of the original 39-page (!!!) Jonstown Compendium offering.  Written by Jonathan Webb, with help from Nick Brooke, Darren Page-Mitchell, and Shaun Rimmer, what stood out to me reading it was how intuitively the authors understand why Glorantha is such a powerful setting and how to use that to their advantage.  Indeed, right from the very start on page 1 it is made clear to us that Sandheart is going to be a sort of dialogue between Bronze Age societies and our own;

It could also be argued that it (Sun County) is a xenophobic, misogynistic, repressive and strict culture. Although this goes against many of the values and virtues of a 21st Century culture, it also presents the player characters plenty of opportunity to both uphold the more noble values of Sun County whilst, at the same time, reeling against such a system. There is plenty of opportunity for role-playing the conflict between the nature of the county and the nonconformist nature of player characters. The secret is to make these conflicts fun and part and parcel of your game... 

In this succinct passage, Sandheart makes clear something that took me a dozen boxed texts in Six Seasons in Sartar to do, namely, to suggest that instead of whitewashing Glorantha or remaking it into something more palatable to us, it might be more useful to engage in a dialogue with it.

Now the book itself contains a single scenario, "No Country for Cold Men," as well as a detailed look at the Sun County hamlet of Sandheart.  Two further volumes, The Corndolls and Tradition, also available from the Jonstown Compendium, continue the campaign.  Sandheart is not a large community, only about 100 souls call it home, but it is lovingly detailed in glorious depth.  It's people, its environs, its mysteries are all there. 

 The heart of the book however is the Militia, because your player characters are it.  This is where the mirror comes back into play again, because Sandheart feels a bit like a police procedural.  Your characters enforce the law.  You are going to come up against lawbreakers, and it isn't always black and white.  So what do you do?  It's nice to get away from the Heortling Clan campaign but still see how adventurers in Glorantha work best as part of a society, rather than outsiders to it.  There is tremendous potential in Sandheart to capture the same feel of all those cop shows were tough choices are made.

"No Country for Cold Men" is the centerpiece here, and I don't want to spoil it for you except to say that the Militia is up against a gang of drug runners here.  I am going to use this opportunity to segue for a moment to the layout and the art.  Because it is here in Marc Baldwin's iconoclastic sketches that the Gloranthan mirror principle comes back to the fore.  Gloranthan art has always had a wicked streak, going through the decades often with tongue firmly in cheek.  I think back to the Argan Argar with his sunglasses and parasol.  Baldwin does it here by giving some of the NPCs direct references to our own world.  Let me show you an example;

The "Make Pavis Great Again" logo also appears in some graffiti.  No, it isn't Bronze Age.  But neither, really, is Glorantha.  In a subtle reference to 21st century America, connections and reflections are happening again between two societies fallen on hard times where people turn to drugs.

Baldwin does the bulk of the heavy lifting here, with Ludovic Chabant and Kris Herbert, and a cover by Jacob Webb.  The layout is Nick Brooke, fresh from his A Rough Guide to Glamour and looking at the terrific work the team does here makes me question the wisdom of going my books alone.  Sandheart is an example of how it is getting harder to tell the Compendium and the Chaosium books apart.  It looks professional, the art (and there is a ton of it) is engaging.  It simply looks great.

The book winds down with Brooke's Sun County Backgrounds, here replacing the parental and grandparental backgrounds in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.  This helps make Sandheart an even more useful tool to anyone wanting to run an RQG game in Sun County.  

With a foreward by Michael O'Brien, who brought Sun County to us back in 1990, Sandheart marks another step forward not only in the development of the Jonstown Compendium but in the entire Gloranthan Renaissance.  MOB writes of his frustration, back then, of RQ3 doing reprints and not new material.  On the opposite side of the planet, a younger version of me shared that frustration.  What we have now is an embarrassment of riches, with better and better Gloranthan material coming at us every day.  Sandheart is a worthy successor to Sun County, and it looks to be just the beginning.  Thoughtful, exciting, challenging, it is essentially what you want your fantasy gaming to be.  And if you learn something about yourself in the process, even better. 

    

   

     

SIX SEASONS IN SARTAR: THE COMPANY OF THE DRAGON - A FIRST LOOK

A NOMINAL SEQUEL

IN WRITING THE COMPANY OF THE DRAGON, the one thing I didn't want to do was a sequel.  Six Seasons in Sartar is a self-contained story; it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  It struck me as silly to just have "continuing adventures" tacked on, as if the ancient Third Age poet Usuphus of Jonstown just kept cranking out additional epics like some Gloranthan Jerry Bruckheimer.  So from the start I knew The Company of the Dragon had to be something different.  It would have to be 100% compatible with Seasons, but also a stand-alone project.

Because the metafiction was key to Six Seasons, it proved essential here too.  It enabled me to establish a connection between the two sagas, but to also explain why they are so different in design and in tone.

For decades, scholars have argued that Usuphus's coming of age tale was pure fiction, without basis in fact.  But the discovery of additional Third Age documents in the 1960s changed all that.  The War Bands of Occupied Sartar is a history, the name of its author unknown, and it details the individual guerrilla warfare companies that comprised the Sartarite resistance between 1620 and 1625.  One chapter, "The Company of the Dragon," is the first real hint that Usuphus might not have made the entire thing up.  Though it doesn't mention the "Haraborn," it details a war band made up of warriors "whose homes were burned and lands taken" by the Lunars.  While this is only a thin similarity to Usuphus's protagonists, one striking detail is that this war band is described as having a draconic wyter, a coiled dragon spirit with rainbow scales.  This sounds suspiciously like Shah’vashak, the dragon spirit that becomes the patron of the youths in Six Seasons.

IN PLAY 

What this means at your gaming table is that The Company of the Dragon could, indeed, be played as a direct sequel to your Six Seasons in Sartar campaign. After the fall of the Haraborn, your player characters join the "Deer Folk" become warriors in the underground. The Company of the Dragon tells the story of that phase in their lives. On the other hand, the Company may have no connection to Usuphus at all, and could easily be run as its own campaign.

Beyond this, however, it means The Company of the Dragon is very different in both tone and design. Six Seasons is based on an epic poem; it is a fairly linear story. Company is a history, covering a five-year period. Instead of chapters building to a climax, the book is made up of 50 to 60 "episodes," much like the ones in the final chapter of Six Seasons. Some of these episodes can be used at any time, others are time specific. They become available at certain times along the timeline. In this way Company has a much more "sandbox" feel, but instead of encounters being triggered by wandering a round a map, they are activated by previous encounters and by certain times.

To keep the story aspect, however, Company introduces "character arcs." During character creation, each player and the GM will map out an "inner journey" the character will take. Avenging the death of a loved one. Finding someone they lost. Being torn between love and duty. Etc. As the campaign progresses, these personal stories weave in with the episodes to keep a continuity and to help the characters develop and grow as they pursue personal goals.

TONAL DIFFERENCES

The biggest difference between the two campaigns, however, is that Six Seasons was about a clan. The characters farmed, had families, community. It presented a fairly bucolic image of Heortling life.

The Company of the Dragon is about war. 

Though the Lunar Empire considers Sartar "pacified" enough to move their troops south to the Holy Country, the resistance aims to prove them wrong. Your characters will hold up and rob Lunar caravans, strike military targets, engage in espionage and diplomatic assignments, take hostages, rescue prisoners, fight battles, and yes...Heroquest...all while evading capture and hiding out in the highlands and the wilds. You will fight to survive the Great Winter than falls when Orlanth and Ernalda "die," and you will be instrumental in the Dragonrise.

Oh...and did I mention the sealed, forbidden city of insane Dragonewts?

This doesn't mean that community is not an important part of the story! The Company of the Dragon includes introductory chapters on war bands, on the sacred bonds that join members of them together. You are not some collection of murder hobos! You are a group of people who have put your lives into each other's hands, a bond closer than blood. Three types of war bands are given as examples; Vingan, Orlanth Adventurous, and Humakti, each with their own rituals, customs, and initiations.

THE DRAGON CONNECTION

Another difference between this and Six Seasons is scale and scope. Seasons takes place in one narrow valley over a six season period. The Company of the Dragon moves across Sartar and Dragon Pass, with forays into Prax and the Holy Country, and covers five years. This means a lot more of what we love about Glorantha enters its pages; Uz, Mostali, Ducks, Morokanth, and especially Dragons. In an intentional echo of Six Seasons in Sartar, Kallyr Starbrow will need the help of the player characters and their Dragon wyter to bring about the Dragonrise, and The Company of the Dragon includes a meaty chapter on "Draconic Consciousness" and Dragon Magic.

FINALLY, MORE 13G AND QUESTWORLDS 

While Six Seasons was always intended to be compatible with QuestWorlds/HeroQuest Glorantha (the blog contains an HQ conversion of the entire campaign), 13G was not covered by the Jonstown Compendium. All that has changed, and The Company of the Dragon will fully support all three games. In the coming weeks we will also be released a FREE 13G adaptation guide for Six Seasons! 

I will be sharing a lot more about the book over the coming weeks, and keep you posted about a release date. Please note; because of the new Jonstown Compendium guidelines I cannot offer a print version until the book has sold at least 250 PDF copies (as of this writing, Six Seasons is nearly double that and very close to Gold bestseller status, so with any luck, Company will get a print release eventually too). 

SIX SEASONS IN SARTAR, AN UPDATE, AND WHAT ELSE IS IN THE WORKS

SIX SEASON IN SARTAR

Six Seasons In Sartar is still in DriveThruRPG's top ten "Bestselling Titles" three weeks after release, something I certainly never expected from a modest community content offering.  I am indebted to the folks at Chaosium, as well as the Glorantha fan community, for this.  The reviews have been terrific, and because of all of this we are working hard to prepare the book for a print on demand offering (something we never initially expected to do).  Stay tuned for news on that.

 

Click to read what people are saying.

And here as well.

With this said, I'd like to let all of you know what you can expect from us next.

THE FINAL RIDDLE

Expected Late Summer

New Pavis, 1623.

As Pavis struggles to recover from the Great Winter, its streets thronged with the destitute and the hungry, a Dara Happan aristocrat arrives from the ancient Pelorian city of Alkoth.

Unva Prithverna is hiring.

For two dozen desperate guards, bearers, and guides, employment means rescue from starvation.  But everything comes with a price.  Prithverna's path will lead them across the River of Cradles into the desolation of the Wastelands.  Her purpose a mystery, they stray far from caravan trails and nomad grazing lands into uncharted horror and madness.  The restless dead, hungry spirits, and Chaos monstrosities haunt them every step of the way, but all this pales before what awaits them at the end...

Help Prithverna unlock the final riddle.

Unva Prithverna (some interior art)

Inspired by Armaj of Glamour's infamous pillow book, The Final Riddle is expected to be about a hundred pages.  Like Six Seasons in Sartar, it comes annotated with excerpts from scholarly works and lectures detailing aspects of Seventh Wane history, Lunar religion, and life amongst the nomad peoples of Prax.  Also included between the covers you will find;

5 complete scenarios set in the Wastelands beyond Prax, useable together as a single campaign of suspense and horror, or separately in your own Gloranthan sagas.

An introductory essay on author Lady Armaj, Lunar pillow books, and how The Final Riddle led to her downfall and death.

A chapter on Illumination in Glorantha, discussing the differences between Nysalorean Illumination, Lunar Sevening, and Draconic Consciousness.

Streamlined NPC creation rules that focus on roleplaying and making the characters memorable.

A dozen Prax and Wasteland specific "episodes," mini-scenearios and side quests you can use to expand your campaign or drop into any ongoing Gloranthan game.     

We hope to offer the book in both PDF and POD formats.

SIX SEASONS IN SARTAR: THE COMPANY OF THE DRAGON

Sartar.  1620 to 1625 ST.

Once, you had a home.  You had a family and a people.  You belonged, and something belonged to you.  Then, the  treachery of your own king and the servants of the Red Moon goddess took everything away from you.  You watched the people you loved die and the life you knew burn.

Now, all that's left is vengeance.

Playable as a direct sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar--in which your characters are now "the Company of the Dragon," also known as "Kallyr's Chosen"--or as its own separate campaign where you start off as a band of outlaws and rebels waging guerrilla war against the Lunar Occupation, The Company of the Dragon is the story of a conquered people and the lengths they will go to for freedom.  Members of the Sartarite rebellion, from their hidden encampments the characters strike at the Occupation every chance they get.  But the "deaths" of their god and goddess at the hands of the Lunars have brought endless winter and starvation.  If something doesn't change soon, there will be nothing and no one left for them to liberate.

Planned to be even longer than Six Seasons, at about 160 to 180 pages, The Company of the Dragon will include;

5 complete scenarios taking place over as many years, including a daring raid to rescue prisoners condemned to feed the Crimson Bat, the Battle of Auroch Hills, and a terrifying mission into a condemned dragonewt citadel in order to help Kallyr of Kheldon drive out the Lunar Empire once and for all.

A extensive look at Initiation in its various forms and degrees, including initiation into cults or war bands, Rune Lord status, or the Rune Priesthood.

An essay on Draconic Consciousness, the dragonewts, and the mysteries of the Empire of Wyrm's Friends.  

Two dozen "episodes," mini-scenarios and side quests centered around life as a rebel.  These include raiding caravans, espionage missions, attacking supply lines, taking and liberating hostages, and diplomatic assignments to gain support for your cause.  While tailored for this campaign, they could easily be adapted to any other Gloranthan saga, especially those focused on rebellion and banditry.

Like Six Seasons in Sartar, The Company of the Dragon is designed with flexibility and adaptability in mind, so that much of it can be reused in other RuneQuest or HeroQuest/Questworld campaigns.  

We intend to have the book ready before Christmas, in both PDF and print on demand forms.