RUNNING GLORANTHA; SOME THOUGHTS

IN THE THIRTY-SIX YEARS I have been writing scenarios and running game sessions, Glorantha is the setting I return to most.  Starting with the classic RuneQuest 2, then RQ3, Hero Wars, HeroQuest, HeroQuest: Glorantha, my own GURPS adaptation (don't ask, it was the 90s), two editions of Mongoose's RuneQuest: Second Age, and most recently RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and 13th Age Glorantha, I have led dozens of groups across Prax, over the mountains of Sartar, across the Homeward Ocean, and into the Underworld.  Now, none of this makes me "the expert."  No one is here to tell you how your Glorantha is to be run.  But I have been living, breathing, and thinking Glorantha for most of my terrestrial existence, and I thought I might take some time off from chronicling the current campaign to share some thoughts I have on running games in this setting with you.

Let's start with the basics.  In no particular order, these are core principles I come back to time and time again to try and make Glorantha "Glorantha" for my players.  In future discussions, I will talk specifically about my thoughts on running the different game systems. 

A WORLD OF MYTH, NOT SCIENCE

The first, last, and middle thing to keep in mind when running Glorantha is that it is a world forged by myth.  In the early, timeless ages of the world, the actions of gods, heroes, and spirits laid the foundations of the cosmos.  The world was made, there was a golden age, then the gods warred upon each other and let Chaos in.  To save existence, Time was born, and the cycle of the Gods Age became the blueprint for everything in the world.

There are no physics, no biology, no chemistry.  It is not a fantasy setting that is world just like ours with a bit of magic added.  On this flat world, under a sky dome and over an underworld, there is no "axial tilt"--seasons change to reflect the cycle of the Gods Age.  Spring is the dawn of the world, summer and autumn the golden age, winter the war of the gods and the coming of Chaos.  This is not a planet that rotates--the sun rises and sets because he was born, ascended to the throne of heaven, and then was killed and sent to the underworld.  Like all gods, he now repeats his Gods Age actions (from the mortal perspective) endlessly.  There is no gravity--rivers run to the sea in answer to the sea god who called upon them to come help him fill the hole the Devil left in the center of the world.  Keep this in mind at all times; when things in Gloranthan seem to operate just as they do in our world, they do so for mythic reasons and not scientific ones.  Make this clear in the daily lives of the player characters.

In my games, for example, people don't "catch colds."  There are no viruses or bacteria.  Instead they become possessed by sickness spirits.  Wounds become infected because the cut lets such spirits "in."  If the spirit is minor enough, the possessed's own spirit will eventually eject it.  If not, call a healing priestess or shaman to exorcise the possessing spirit. Likewise adolescents don't sexually mature because their pituitary glands and gonads kick into action; their Runes are awakening.  Even then, they are not able to procreate (or perform magic) until they pass their adulthood initiation rites and fully awaken those Runes.  Indeed, young, uninitiated boys can help their fathers plant the fields by leading the plow or carrying bags of seed...but they never plant the seeds themselves because nothing would grow.  They lack that procreative power.  In the same way women in my games menstruate because the local mother goddess once made a blood sacrifice to awaken her fertility.  Because I like to start my Glorantha campaigns with youths becoming initiated into adulthood, all of this becomes a way to introduce players to the unique flavor of the setting.

Your Glorantha will vary, and if you don't want to get into the weeds on Gloranthan "birds and the bees" that is just fine.  Come up with other examples of how even the mundane in Glorantha is mythic.  Once the players understand that even the "facts of life" here operate by mythic rules, they understand they are not in Kansas anymore.

EVERY ACT IS A MAGICAL AND MYTHICAL ACT

Magic in Glorantha is how mortal beings in the Inner World (of Time) interact with the Outer World (of Myth).  Because myth is the blueprint of existence, magic is ubiquitous.  Nearly all acts of change and creation are magical because they call upon the myths underlying existence. Planting a field, forging a sword, bearing a child, building a home, these are all just as magical as calling lightning from the sky.

These acts are by definition also mythic.  Fields are planted because the farmer god first did it in the Gods Age.  Blades are forged because the smith god first did it.  When you perform any of these actions, you are therefore acting as a god did.

In running Glorantha, let this concept color everything.  Gathering a party and descending into a ruin in search of treasure isn't just a dungeon crawl; your party is walking in the footsteps of Orlanth, who gathered the Lightbringers and descended into the Underworld to rescue the sun.  A drunken bar fight between an Orlanthi warrior and an off-duty Lunar soldier is a reflection of the rebellion of the storm gods against the celestial empire (conversely, the Lunar is emulating the Red Goddess at Castle Blue, proving her right to exist in the world).  Anything you typically take for granted in other fantasy settings in Glorantha resonates with the very highest levels of existence.  There are no "small" adventures.  Even a low-level RuneQuest campaign about homeless Sartarite youths struggling to survive on the mean streets of New Pavis is part of the world's epic, heroic tapestry.

HISTORY REPEATS

Just as the setting is mythic on the microcosmic, day-to-day level, it is equally so in the grand, macrocosmic sweep of history.  This is an aspect of fantasy roleplaying that your players are more likely to be used to--Tolkien used it again and again--but the changing of the Ages in Glorantha is as much a part of the cycle of things as the changing of the seasons.  

The cosmic war of the Storm Tribe against the Celestial Empire echoes in weather patterns, personal lives, and the ages of the world.  It is said that the Devil returns every six or seven hundred years, but it could also be suggested that the Gods War is repeating.  The struggle of Nysalor (the new emperor of light) and Arkat (the rebel) in the First Age carries strong echoes of Yelm (the old emperor of light) and Orlanth (the original rebel).  In both cases we have a stormy and tempestuous challenger to the ordained embodiment of the status quo.  In both cases, both sides are morally ambiguous (a point we will revisit below).  There are entire cultures who view Orlanth or his local counterpart as the villain in this mythic struggle, just as others cast him as the hero.  It is much the same with Arkat and Nysalor.  Which one of them is "Gbaji" (the Deceiver)?  The uncomfortable answer is probably "both."

The Hero Wars seem to be yet another return of this cosmic cycle.  This time the celestial status quo is embodied by the Red Emperor and his mother, with Argrath (whose name is even a convenient corruption of Arkat) as the stormy rebel.  Ties back to Orlanth are even clearer when we remind ourselves that Arkat and Argrath both mean "Liberator," and this is very much how Orlanthi culture views the storm god.  Yet the same question circles the Hero Wars that did the Gbaji Wars...who exactly is the "good guy" here?  The Lunar Empire, which Argrath will rend to tatters, is probably the finest place in Third Age Glorantha to actually live.  Lunar philosophy of healing the world and e pluribus unum is seductive.  At the same time, they embrace world-destroying Chaos and subjugate local populations via a titanic demonic bat the likes of which would give Godzilla pause.  Argrath, meanwhile, has a sympathetic, almost Arthurian backstory--a royal, destined king raised in obscurity who returns and displays his right to the throne by drawing a sword from a stone...or rather in Argrath's case relighting the Flame of Sartar.  He seems to be a uniter as well.  On the other hand he is an Illuminate, something central to Lunar philosophy that Argrath's own people tend to revile, and much of what he accomplishes resembles, frankly, the same things the Empire does.  He is ruthless, dangerous, unpredictable.  And, oh yes, he destroys the world...at least as we know it.  

The point here is that a dark and stormy, world-shattering rebellion emerging against a cosmic order that is peaceful but stagnant is baked into the setting.  It is in the DNA of the world.  History repeats for the same reason the seasons do; it all happened in the Gods Age.

GRITTY REALISM, AND THAT MEANS UNCOMFORTABLE SHADES OF GRAY

We tend to think of "gritty realism" in gaming as synonymous with "lethality."  I submit to you, however, that realism is a function of background detail...that it lies in portraying a world that is rich, consistent, and believable to the players.

Having just spent the past ten minutes explaining the mythic dimensions of the world, it has to be stressed that in many ways Glorantha is probably also more realistic than other fantasy settings your players are bound to have encountered. Player characters are rarely roving bands of adventurers who remain eternally 20-something and live their lives liberating monsters from the burden of their treasures.  Gloranthan PCs come from cultures, they belong to communities, they have families, careers, and even cults.

My Gloranthan campaigns are always about the "3Cs;" culture, cults, and cultivation.  All three English words emerge from the Latin cultus, "care, labor, worship, society, tending" and sum up nicely what Gloranthan characters do.  In lieu of alignments, their world views are shaped by their cultures, by the customs, traditions, history, and lineage of their peoples.  This shapes how characters think, how they determine what is right and proper.  It also shapes their goals.  They fight to protect, sustain, and see that their communities prosper.

Basically, in this they are just like us.

As far back as the original RuneQuest this was made clear in how cults worked.  Unlike character classes, cults made ever-increasing demands in exchange for the power they granted.  Becoming an initiate meant gaining greater magic, but also meant giving your time, energy, loyalty, and resources to the cult.  The demands increased the higher you rose, until eventually the character and the cult were inseparable.  

In practice, a Glorantha GM really needs to take time at the onset of the campaign making the character's culture real to him or her, and making it matter.  In Six Seasons of Sartar I started the characters off as uninitiated youth, and spent four entire sessions just painting a picture of Sartarite village life.  I explored kinship structures, daily life, farming, diet, what they wore, values, etc.  I gave them family members to care about, rivals, pets.  Were I to run a Lunar campaign--or the Uz campaign I have always secretly dreamed of--I would do exactly the same.  Glorantha makes this easy to do because the cultures are all so vibrant and richly detailed.  The Guide to Glorantha is an extraordinary resource for this, but there are 40 years of background materials available as well.  I submit to you, however, that Greg Stafford and Company did not spend decades and hundreds of thousands of words on making Gloranthan cultures so rich if they were not close to the heart of gaming in the setting.

While not all campaigns can (or should) start their characters off as youths growing up in the same community, another way to approach this is the old World of Darkness concept of the prelude.  If you intend to have a group of characters from different cultures, try a solo session with each player before the first game, in which you portray their background and upbringing.  A face-to-face session would be best, but barring this even an email exchange or discussion can make all the difference in making the character's culture central to his or her identity.

All of this improves your game by making it real to the players, by making the setting multi-dimensional and complex.  Yes, there are kilometer-long dragons and an Underworld, but people also farm, love, and make babies (and the latter three occupations are far more important to them).  Because the setting is really all about the clash of cultures and religions--just as our own terrestrial history is--the tired cliches of black and white, good and evil, light and dark give way to more complicated shades of gray.  Let me give you concrete examples;

In the six episodes of Six Seasons in Sartar I portrayed the Lunar Empire as a faceless, monstrous evil.  This is, after all, how an isolated mountain village in occupied Sartar would see it.  Yet in the subsequent River of Cradles campaign, I started to cast doubt on this.  The player characters befriended a Lunar boy who turned out to be not all that different from them.  In a recent session, one of the characters (who has a wife back home and is expecting a child) kills a Lunar soldier.  While searching the body, he finds a locket around the man's neck with the carefully painted portraits of his own wife and child inside.  To my mind, this is gritty realism.  Killing an orc seldom raises such moral qualms.

Of course there is plenty of "feel good" killing in Glorantha; no Broo deserves to live (having said this, I can instantly imagine crafting a Broo character that might challenge this).  But Glorantha works best when she is messy and complicated and human.  Never forget that mythology itself exists in part to explore the deep moral and ethical questions as much as explain where the world came from.  No?  Revisit the Iliad, the Mahabharata, or the Kalevala and the ethical struggles of their characters.

  

THE RIVER OF CRADLES, CHAPTER FIVE: THERE IS ALWAYS ANOTHER WAY

Chapter Five:

There is Always Another Way

The Story thus far…

In Book One: Six Seasons in Sartar, four young protagonists come of age in the Sartarite mountain community of the Black Stag.  In the year before their adulthood initiation rites, they learn what it is to be Orlanthi.  Yet a shadow falls over the community when the four become entangled in the plans of Kallyr Starbrow, a rebel queen dedicated to liberating their country from the grip of the Lunar Empire, which conquered them a generation before.  In helping Starbrow complete the first stage of a her quest, they bring the wrath of the Empire upon them.  The mountain valley is attacked by Lunar forces and defeated; the men are condemned to feed the monstrous horror known as the Crimson Bat, and the women and children are sold into slavery in the neighboring wastelands of Prax…

In Book Two: The River of Cradles, two of the youths join Kallyr’s rebel underground, the Sons of Orlanth, and two escape from Lunar captivity.  After the Sons of Orlanth rescue the Black Stag clansmen being sent south to feed the Bat, the four youths reunite.  They decide to go east, into Prax, to locate the women and children of their clan and rescue them from slavery.  At the slave markets of Pimper’s Block, with the aid of an Issaries merchant from a rival clan, they locate many of their clanspeople scattered across Prax.  In the camp itself they find some young women and boys sold into a brothel.  In a rescue that sets fire to the temple granaries and eventually burns half of Pimper’s Block down, the heroes spirit the children out and arrange for them to flee back to Sartar.  Now hunted by the Lunars, the four agree to aid a Praxian High Llama tribesman rescue his own family from the Morokanth, and uncover a shadowy conspiracy meant to set the Praxian tribes warring against each other…

Setting: The Paps, Prax. Starting from Clay Day, Movement Week, Dark Season 1620 ST.      

Theme:  Ernalda’s principle that “there is always another way.”  With the Morokanth seemingly gone rogue and taking human slaves to convert into Herd Men, the solution here is actually to help them rather than fight them.  

Synopsis:  The party is being led to Pavis by a nomad guide they helped in the last chapter…or so they believe.  In fact, the guide is an agent of a secret society sent to test them.  At the Paps, they will enter the depths of the earth and leave the Inner World to confront a threat to the paces and stability of the region…

Dramatis Personae

The Protagonists

Kalliva Nomother of Twnstone: a Vingan warrior marked by a Dragonewt Rune burned into her palm.  In the last episode, a botched sacrifice caused her goddess to withdraw from her, and in the interim the Dragonewt Rune has been itching and swelling, and her dreams have been troubled by dragons…

Kalf Lightfoot: a Heortling herdsman and shepherd who has left his young bride behind in his quest to rescue his enslaved clanspeople.  He is accompanied by Nightclaw, a shadowcat he bonded with while in Lunar captivity.

Leika Faransdottr: a strong-willed albino spirit-talker and member of the Kolat spirit society.  She carries with her several bound wind spirits, and travels accompanied by Three Bears—a young Telmori she has begun a relationship with—and his wolf brother Azul.

Beralor Three-Fathers: a young Orlanthi initiate raised by the smith Harvarr and his Nandan husband Affar.  His true father is the Eurmali trickster Kheladon Blue-Eye.  Recently Beralor has been sent dreams of the White Bull, and encountered a Praxian secret society dedicated to that being.  They have urged him to head for the city of Pavis…

Other Companions

“Orin” (Orininus (or-i-NIGH-nus) Prathvi Yuthaldrex): The former slave of a  wealthy Lunar magistrate assigned to Pavis, he was lost in a dicing match and purchased by Issaries merchant Teolrian Soudatch. Liberated by the protagonists after his master’s death, Orin accompanies them on their quest to free other slaves.   

Harjaani Finds-Water: A High Llama Rider scout of the Blue Stone Bearers), Harjaani is also an initiate of the White Bull spirit society, sent by them to seek out the Protagonists, test them, and to bring them to Argrath in Pavis…

BEGINNING:  AFTER THREE WEEKS recovering among the High Llama people, the protagonists have set out across Caravan Alley towards the Paps, led by their guide, Harjaani Finds-Water.  The chaparral slowly gives way to scrub and then grass as the land slowly rises and becomes more fertile.  True to his word, Harjaani keeps them out of the way of Lunar patrols, but they increasingly spot more and more tribesmen grazing their herds as the approach the Sacred Ground.

Harjaani’s bond with his mount, Ukunda, becomes more obvious to them.  As he rides, to pass the hours his sings and the animal almost seems to whinny and snort in time with him, singing along.

ACT ONE: THE SET UP

INCITING INCIDENT:  By sunset of the third day, they reach a settlement high on the slopes of these sacred mountains.  A cluster of small buildings, made of sun-baked bricks and grass, nestles around an entrance into the ancient subterranean Paps themselves.  Like the Riddle back in their own village, this is a perfectly square doorway leading to a tunnel system under the earth, a relic, they say, of the Green Age.  Two crude statues stand on either side of the door, both of bare-breasted women.  One has the head of an Impala, the other, a Bison.  There are several Earth Priestesses around, Praxian natives but whose dress and appearance differs slightly from any of the tribes they have seen.  Instead of animal hides they are in cottons and linens, richly dyed in greens and earth tones.  They are marked with the Runes of Beast and Fertility, Earth and Spirit.

When they first arrive the eldest priestess is blessing a herd of ostriches, their riders watching nearby.  She wears a feathered ostrich mask and sings to the beasts in such a way that they birds sway and almost dance.  When she finishes, she pulls off her mask, gives the protagonists a stern and apprising look, and then speaks to Harjaani.  The characters are led into one of the huts to wait.

SECOND THOUGHTS:  Much to their surprise, the priestess returns with Harjaani and tells them that she will reluctantly assent to their “quest.”  The White Bull has proven himself a friend to the people, she says, and a true defender of the Earth.  Because of this she will allow them to profane the sacred Paps to fulfill their mission.  

Harjaani is characteristically tight-lipped, but confesses to them that the White Bull Society has asked him to lead the four here.  Beneath the Paps, he tells them, the goddess Eiritha sleeps, and in doing so is responsible for the rebirth of the herds and the life of the land.  She is surrounded by her daughters, one for each of the great herds; Impala Woman, Bison Woman, High Llama Woman, etc.  Each of these is tasked with the health and the well being of one breed of herd animal.

Yet also present here is the Herd Man Mother, and the White Bull Society has come to suspect it is here that the Sunset Society have struck.  By penetrating the sacred ground and finding her resting place, they have bound or poisoned the Herd Man Mother, causing the Morokanth’s herds to whither.  This has forced the Morokanth to begin taking slaves and prisoners, an escalating situation that could lead to war between the tribes.  They are to investigate and to repair the damage, if possible, thus preventing a war.

ACT ONE CLIMAX: They agree to the task, and spend the evening in preparation.  Before dawn, however, they are attacked by Lunar scouts sent to assassinate them.  If victorious, Orin can read their orders.  They have been tracking the four—possibly by magic—at the orders of the Jakaleel Witch Ashaghara.  This is disconcerting because they killed her outside Pimper’s Block…

ACT TWO: CONFRONTATION

 OBSTACLE 1: Worn-stone steps lead down deeper and deeper into the lightless earth, the tunnels narrow and close.  They come to several intersections.  At each, bas-reliefs of Eiritha’s daughters are craved on either side of the doors.  The trick is to always turn down a passage where one of the figures is human-headed…towards the Herd Man Mother.  Any other way will get them lost and force them to reorient themselves.

OBSTACLE 2: It becomes clear to them that the deeper they head into the Paps the further they stray from the Inner World and begin to enter the Hero Plane.  Things begin to take on a surreal and dreamlike quality.  Everything becomes prophetic and filled with meaning.

After an endless series of turnings they come at last to a vaulted chamber with a pool at its heart.  The air here is particularly charged; they feel a dizziness and sense of timelessness.  They must draw upon what they learned in their initiations or be lost.

In the pool are a series of visions; Kalf sees his wife, Esrala, holding their child on a hilltop and staring off into the distance as if watching for him.  Leika sees a massive wooden boat on a wide river—inside is a sparrow in a cage.  Kalliva sees only scales under the surface, the writing coils of a great dragon.  And Beralor sees his father, Affar, with a white Heortling bull standing in front of him…

Orin urges them to move on, and either they listen or become lost into the timeless dreams and visions of the pool.  

PLOT TWIST: Beyond the pool room, the tunnel seems to widen…the torchlight cannot reach the walls at all.  In fact there may no longer even be walls as they continue through the lightless depths of the Otherside.  The animals with them (Nightclaw and Azul) become restless and afeared.  

Suddenly, in the dark before them, they spot a little boy with his back to them, no more than ten or eleven.  He is Sartarite, by dress, and auburn-haired.  He is crying, speaking to someone they can’t see.

"I don’t understand.  Why can’t he be my brother?  Why does he have to go with the women?  He is my closest friend!”

When Beralor catches a look at the boys face there is an unmistakable resemblance to his father, Affar.  Is this boy talking about him?  Before any questions are answered, the boy fades away and the room begins to brighten.  They are in another chamber with towering statues astride doorways leading out.  Each seems to be dedicated towards a specific daughter of Ernalda.  They pass through the one leading to the temple of the Herd Man Mother…

OBSTACLE 3 (Combined with DISASTER/CRISIS):  They are assaulted, immediately, by powerful spirits.  These are Lunes, the Moon elementals, and powerful.  They will have to defeat them to go any further.

Questioning these spirits (if Leika can bind one) reveals that they were sent by Ashaghara, who seems less and less dead by the minute.  Worse, the Sunset Society has bound the Herd Man Mother at the Seven Mothers Temple’s request.  By keeping the tribes at each other’s throats, the Lunars think they can strengthen their hold over Pavis and the River of Cradles and weaken any local resistance. 

CLIMAX OF ACT TWO: This is the Big Fight.  Beyond the Lunes the protagonists discover the shrine of the Herd Man Mother, an oval chamber with a towering large-breasted and wide-hipped woman figure (think Venus of Willendorf).  She is surrounded by a dozen chanting shamans…the Sunset Society…and Ashaghara.  The magicians are guarded by six Broo, and will not fight immediately because of the necessity of maintaining their spell. Leika can hear that the air is filled with wailing spirits crying to be born but prevented from doing so.  The player characters go head to head with the Broo in an  Extended Contest, facing each Shaman is a Simple Contest.

ACT THREE: RESOLUTION

CLIMAX OF ACT THREE:  If they win, Ashaghara’s secret will be revealed.  Under the black robes there is nothing…she animates these forms like a puppet via the Runestones they discovered when first “killing” her.  She is sending her spirit forth, wrapped in these robes, from some other location. 

DENOUMENT and END: The curse on the Herd Men is lifted and the party heads on to Pavis across the Long Dry.  Two weeks later, having entered the city, Harjaani will take them to meet Argrath White Bull in the Rubble.

There is no mistaking it.  He was the boy they saw on the Otherside, and his resemblance to Affar is strong.  They must be related…

AFTER PLAY REPORT

A LOT OF THE DRAMA this time was personal and of a visionary nature.  

At the start of the tale, cut off from Vinga, Kalliva’s Dragonewt Rune began to ache, itch, and later to swell.  She was plagued by dreams of Dragons.  Later, before heading into the Paps, she went to a hilltop and prayed, hoping to reconnect with her goddess.  She did, but the vision was a confusing one.  She saw Vinga in the frozen snowy fields outside Orlanth’s stead, but when the goddess turned to her she had a star in her brow like Kallyr.  It seems to Rune branded on her hand still ties her to the Starbrow’s plans somehow.  She is also warned by Starbrow/Vinga “don’t look behind you.”

Kalf is wrestling with being away from his wife, a sensation that becomes exasperated after killing one of the Lunar scouts sent after them and discovering a locket on the man with the face of his own life and daughter painted inside.  

Leika’s shamanic powers continue to grow and she feels a strange affinity for Prax.  Spirit-talkers are more revered here than in her own culture, and her albinism is seen as some kind of sacred marking (connected to the legends, perhaps, of the White Bull and/or the White Calf).

Beralor, as he draws closer to Affar in Pavis, discovers more and more of his father’s past and realizes how little he knows of his origins.  Harvarr, his other father, was Black Stag, but where did Affar come from?  How did they meet?  A possible connection between Argrath and Affar begins to explain the White Bull’s interest in him…

THE RIVER OF CRADLES, CHAPTER FOUR: VIOLENCE IS ALWAYS AN OPTION

As always, this story is part of an ongoing campaign.  Start here for the beginning.

Parts of this story could not have been prepared without the superb work in Stafford and Richard's Pavis: Gateway to Adventure, especially the White Bull references on pages 48, 54, and 54, as well as the Sunset Society on page 54.

Chapter Four:

VIOLENCE IS ALWAYS AN OPTION

Setting: South of Pimper’s Block, near Hender’s Ruins. Starting from Fire Day, Disorder Week, Dark Season 1620 ST.      

Theme:  The Orlanthi principle that “violence is always an option.”  The characters will be put into positions in which killing is probable, but not perhaps always the best option.   

Motif:  Blood.  And lots of it.

Synopsis:  The PCs are asked by a desperate man to help him save his kin from a fate worse than death.  Helping him might also be their own best chance of getting across the plains of Prax alive.  This means facing a desperate band of Morokanth and a shaman hellbent on saving his race... 

Dramatis Personae

Teolrian Soudatch (Teol Soudsson)

• Runes: Trade, Movement, Darkness
• Issaries Initiate
• Goals: To rise in the ranks of his cult and make enough of a profit to buy a house and land for himself on the edge of Sartar or civilized Prax.
• Notes: While Teol is not a bad man, his affinity with the Darkness Rune gives him a cold streak and a tendency to be grasping; he wants, but it never really full.  He traffics in all sorts of goods, but his willingness to traffic in slaves is another manifestation of this Darkness…his own parents were thralls.  Born free, but poor, he has had to make his own way in the world.  Teol is a fair merchant and a true Issaries, however.  He never goes back on a bargain.  

“Orin” (Orininus (or-i-NIGH-nus) Prathvi Yuthaldrex)

• Runes: Fire/Sky, Life, Truth
• Slave
• Goals: Teol has promised him the ability to but his freedom at some point in the future, an option he likely would not have under a Lunar master.  This makes him surprisingly loyal to Teol.
• Notes: No more than seventeen, his pale skin tanned by the sun of Prax, his hair pale blonde and eyes sky blue…is from the Lunar Heartlands.  He is originally from a well-placed Dara Happan family that fell afoul of a Dart Competition.  The adults in his family were sentenced to death, the children to slavery.  Orin was sold to a wealthy Lunar magistrate soon after assigned to Pavis, and lost by his master in a dicing match.  That is where Teolrian bought him.  The boy is useful because he is fluent in Trade, New Peolrian, and now Praxian, knows arithmetic, and can read well.  While obviously a Lunar, he is by no means a Lunar.  He recognizes the Red Goddess and the Emperor as the supreme powers in the world, but culturally he is Dara Happan.  He sees the Red Goddess as something that happened to his people, not something they have become.  His father taught him that one day the Sun would vanquish the Moon…which is in part the kind of heresy that destroyed his family.     

Harjaani Finds-Water

• Runes: Harmony, Death, Spirit
• Foundchild Initiate, High Llama Tribesman, Scout, Secret White Bull Initiate
• Goals: To be known as a great scout and hunter, to win a wife.
• Notes: Finds-Water is a young and up-and-coming member of his tribe, a group of 34 wandering High Llama Riders (the Blue Stone Bearers).  He has a strange streak of curiosity regarding outsiders, something his khan disapproves of.  He has learned to be wary of the Red Moon People but the High Mountain People fascinate him.  He is also an initiate of the White Bull spirit society, and part of a movement he believes will bring peace back to Prax and the world.

ACT ONE: THE SET UP

BEGINNING:  THE ZEBRAS RACE across the hardened earth, nostrils flaring, foam flecking their striped flanks.  Driven furiously by their riders, they scream and whinny as the racing scrub brush and cacti draw blood from their legs.  Astride them, the riders keep low, holding fast with their legs, clutching white-knuckled the reins.  Their hearts pound almost as loud as their mounts.

The player characters are fleeing.  Behind them a Lunar cavalry division, mounted on  the lighter and more nimble sables, gives chase.  Mounted archers fill the air with the hiss of passing arrows, and now and again a javelin passes too close for comfort.  There are a dozen in the patrol, which through sheer ill fortune came upon the player characters as they watered their zebra mounts at a muddy hole a quarter of a day south of Pimper’s Block.  Despite Teolrian Soudatch’s best attempts to persuade the patrol that he and the player characters were merely merchants bound south down Caravan Alley, the captain was suspicious.  Half of Pimper’s Block has burned to the ground in what the Lunars have deemed a terrorist attack, and they are out in force rounding up anyone suspicious in the area.  The characters could not risk capture, so they fled.

Soudatch was forced to abandon his trade goods, his supplies, and now, racing across the chaparral, the player characters watch a well placed javelin take his life.  The merchant falls in a rain of blood from this terrified mount, bouncing several times across the fired-clay earth before lying impaled in a cactus bush.

The slave boy, cries out his master’s name, and for a few brief seconds looks like he might wheel his mount around and stop.  Yet a leaping sable, the leather armored Lunar on its back slashing at Orin with a curved khopesh close enough to draw blood from his shoulder, changes his mind.  He turns his zebra liked a skilled horsemen and races after the player characters...

Violence is Always an Option is the tenth episode in the ongoing saga, setting the Base Difficulty at 16 and the Augment Value at 15.  Escaping the Lunars should be Moderately difficult; fighting them much harder (they outnumber the player characters three to one), at least High or Very High.  Run this as a Simple Contest for each player.  If they attempt escape let them; any Consequences of Defeat can be handled in the next seen as wounds and injuries they received while getting away. 

INCITING INCIDENT:  By sunset they have lost the Lunars, their guide, and most of their supplies.  They are forced to make a meager camp.  If there are wounded, they will have to be tended.  They will no doubt wish to discuss what to do next.

Orin will elect to stay with them.  After seeing their mission in No One Can Make You Do Anything, the slave boy supports their cause.  This is lucky; from his travels with Soudatch, he knows the trails and trading camps in Caravan Alley fairly well.  If asked, he suggests they head on to Tourney Altar.  There should be more Issaries caravans there.  

However the scene throws them a pair of curveballs.

First, Beralor dreams.  He sees a city of giants.  He sees a massive boat, as large as his chieftain’s hall, floating on a river.  He sees a massive white bull under the stars.  When it raises its head and bellows, the brightest flash of lightning he has ever seen strikes the earth and ignites an inferno...

Second, Leika will be awoken from sleep (unless she is on watch) around midnight.  Harjaani Finds-Water, the Blue Stone High Llama rider they encountered a few days earlier, is standing there at the edge of her bedroll (or the edge of camp).  He is dressed differently, despite beating a Llama rider, he is wearing the skin of a white bison.  The animal’s head forms a hood over his own, with long, ivory-colored horns.  

She realizes he is a spirit.

They communicate in spiritspeech.  Harjaani is desperate.  His body lays injured about a league away.  While he and two companions were off hunting game, his tribe (about 30 people, including his sister and her two small children) were ambushed by a Morokanth raiding party.  Not just any raiding party, there was a shaman leading them, and they seemed particularly rapacious.  Seven men were killed, two badly wounded.  Harjaani and his companions returned too late; the Morokanth killed his companions and he was force to flee, both he and his mount injured.  The Morokanth took not only the llamas, but also all of his people.  He has heard something unspeakable is happening among the Morokanth; some curse is killing their herd men, and desperate, they have taken to magically stripping captive humans of their intellect to replace their losses.  They are making for a holy place near Hender’s Ruins, where dark magic is strong.  If they get their, his family will all lose their humanity.  

He will do anything if they help him.  Even guide them unseen across Prax.  They must help him.

SECOND THOUGHTS:  Do they do this, risk their own lives when their own kin, in Lunar bondage, depend on them?  On the other hand, a guide and tracker like Harjaani may just be the only way to get across the plains uncaptured.  If Leika mentions the White Bison, it might feed into Beralor’s dream as well.

ACT ONE CLIMAX: Led by Leika, they find Harjaani lying in a stream bed, a muddy trickle flowing past him.  He is in trouble, though.  As they approach, the wounded Praxian is fending off three hunting Deinonychuses (packing hunting dinosaurs 3.5 meters from snout to tail…think feathered Velociraptors; see RQG Bestiary, p. 111).  This is the climax of Act One, so should be run as an Extended Contest. 

ACT TWO: CONFRONTATION

OBSTACLE 1:  THE MOROKANTH are headed for Hender’s Ruins, a place so foul only Jaldon Toothmaker was mad enough to go there.  The ruin sits atop a low, flat topped hill rising out of the chaparral, glittering in the light.  The top of the hill is crowned by broken crystalline structures, perhaps the shattered wreck of some lost deity’s palace.  The base is surrounded by foul vegetation…blood red shrubs that stink of reeking meat and attract flies, cacti with bloodsucking tendrils, fleshy, green and crimson flowers that taint the air with cloying, carrion perfume.  Getting through all of this may or may not require a Simple Contest at the GM’s discretion, representing the fight to find or cut a clear path through.

Harjanni explains that the Morokanth are not behaving normally.  Their community seems divided.  While some continue on the old ways, recently a growing number have been marking themselves with red paint that looks like claw marks and either purchasing or stealing a great number of slaves.  These are the ones that raided his clan.  The other tribes are concerned, as the Morokanth seem to be breaking the ancient covenant of Men and Beast.  They are not ransoming human captives…the prisoners just disappear.  The general consensus is they are being made into more herd men…and yet, the number or herd men on the plains seems to be dwindling.  It is a growing threat that will inevitably lead to war.

OBSTACLE 2: As they near the base of the hill, the party comes across a shimmering pool of iridescent, milky slime.  They need to go round it to reach the stone ruins at the foot of the hill.  As they near, however, it rises in a towering pillar of slime, shooting forth tendrils and sizzle and burn with acid.  This is a massive Gorp (RQG Bestiary, p. 99).  Fighting it is madness, but fleeing it is far easier.  In either case a Simple Contest will do.

PLOT TWIST: Atop the hill the Morokanth lie encamped with their prisoners.  If it is daytime, the nocturnal Morokanth will be asleep, with two guards on duty.  If it is night, all will be awake, sitting, eating, and waiting.  

The waiting is for the arrival of four mounted shamans; Deheya Widowmaker of the Bison Tribe, Ohota Hoy’oho of the Rhino Riders, K’nuknuk of the Ostrich Tribe, and Pahaya-jajaati of the Bolo Lizard Folk.  These arrive shortly after the player characters do.  The shamans are all similarly garbed in black, and their is a sinister air about them.  If Harjaani is with the player characters when they see this group arrive, he visibly pales.  They are the Sunset Society, he tells them with a voice that is tight with fear.  They are—how do your people say it?—the “boogeyman.”  Our mothers tell us to behave when we are children or the Sunset Society will come and take us away.  They are a secret brotherhood.  Some say they serve Darkness Spirits.  Some say the Dead.  Others Chaos.  They are the blackest of the magicians found amongst my people.

The shamans go inside the single tent on the hilltop to speak with the Morokanth shaman leading this band, Awa-wa-hahey.  The player characters have no way of knowing this at this stage, but the Morokanth are being extorted.  A plague is sweeping Prax and the Wastes right now, an it kills only Morokanth herd-men.  Normal humans are unaffected.  The sudden demise of their herd populations is driving some Morokanth to turn to normal human slaves, and the Sunset Society has swept in with a proposition.  They have demonstrated their ability to lift the curse, but they require large numbers of human sacrifices in payment.  Desperate to save themselves, these Morokanth will do anything—even risk war with neighboring tribes—to give the Sunset Society what it wants before their entire way of life goes extinct.

OBSTACLE: The group needs to formulate a plan of attack, and fast.  Here they should devise the spells they will use, the battle plans, etc.  Run this as a series of augments as they prepare to strike.

DISASTER (and CRISIS):  NOTE: As I ran the episode tonight, I actually dropped this part.  As you will see in the AFTER PLAY REPORT below, the players already suffered a disaster during the Obstacle stage above, leading to one of the characters offended her deity and losing magical support in a way that shattered their entire battle plan.  There seemed no need to pour salt into the wound, so I replaced THIS Disaster and Crisis with THAT one.

The goal is to rescue the captured tribe.  There are nine Morokanth; 2 guards, 7 resting or sleeping depending on the time of day.  In addition there are five shamans; the Morokanth and the four members of the Sunset Society.  The prisoners are all seated on the ground under the watchful eyes of one of the guards.

The player characters might intend to get the prisoners to safety while the rest of the party fends the Morokanth off.  The goal is, after all, to rescue them.  The slaves have been enchanted, however, marked with special painted runes that bind them to Awa-wa-hahey.  If any attempt is made to remove them from his presence (i.e. off the hill top) they will suddenly collapse, convulse, and if not returned die.  The ONLY way to stop this is to kill Awa-wa-hahey first.

CLIMAX OF ACT TWO: This is the Big Fight.  The player characters go head to head with the Morokanth in an  Extended Contest.  There are several key things to remember here;

• If they kill Awa-wa-hahey, they can lead the captives safely away from the hilltop,
• If they kill the four Sunset Society shamans, the Morokanth will stop fighting.  To the player character’s surprise, despair overcomes them.  They just give up.  Even if the characters keep killing them they don’t fight back.  Remember…they are giving these captives to the Society because they believe the Society can help save their people.  

ACT THREE: RESOLUTION

CLIMAX OF ACT THREE:  If they defeat the Morokanth and save the prisoners, Harjaani leads them to Day’s Rest.  Several tribes are encamped at the oasis, as well as Issaries and Etyries merchants.  They are honored guests of the High Llamas, given a tent and food and drink.  Harjaani goes to speak with the elders of his people.  

And yet as he sleeps Beralor is drugged and abducted.  He wakes up blindfolded as people around him speak in Praxian.  He can pick out a few words, Argrath, Starbrow, and his own father’s name, Affar.  They question him about his dream.  Another person speaks to him in his own tongue, another native Sartarite by the sound of him.  You must go to Pavis, the voice tells him.  You have been summoned.  The dream comes from Orlanth himself.  Your destiny lies with the White Bull.

These men are all members of the White Bull Society.  Just as the Sons of Orlanth is Starbrow’s underground network in Sartar, the White Bull Society is Argrath’s network in Prax.  News of the four player characters has reached Argrath in Pavis (they are being called “Starbrow’s Children” by some in the wake of the role they played in helping her open the Dragon Temple), and he is curious about them.  Harjaani first contacted them in No One Can Make You Do Anything under White Bull Society orders.  When his people were taken, he sought them out because of their reputation.  If Beralor or the others told him about Beralor’s dream, he would have immediately reported it to them.  Otherwise, assume they know it through similar dreams.  

They will try to convince him to head for Pavis, then drug him again and dump him on the edge of camp.

The rest of the episode should deal with this revelation, and the group discussing what to do next (DENOUMENT and END).

AFTER PLAY REPORT: THE EPISODE played out largely as written, with a few minor changes and one major.

Beralor did, in fact, discuss his dream with Harjaani early on (a reasonable thing to do, after Leika told him about seeing Harjaani's spirit dressed as a white bison).  This led straight to a scene at the end where--partially at Orin's urging--they group told Harjaani the debt he claimed to owe them could be repaid by telling them the truth of the White Bull Society, which he did.  

Notable also was a scene where Kalliva removed Orin's slave collar after Soudatch's death.  The entire party made an effort to welcome him to his freedom and to make him feel free.  He had originally intended to join the party because he believed in their mission to liberate slaves, but he is coming to see them as family now.

The biggest change came in the Disaster phase.  I scrapped the complication I had planned when Kalliva's own plan went south in a big way.  

Drawing on Vingan mythology, Kalliva wanted to create the illusion of larger forces on their side (Vinga tricked her enemy into thinking she had more warriors by putting straw dummies on sheep).  It was a terrific idea...but Vinga did not think so.  The player fumbled his roll and I did well in mine.  The goddess was so offended she withdrew her power from Kalliva, abandoning her.  We need to decide now what made the goddess offended...that Kalliva was saving "non-people" (Praxians, not Orlanth), that she was sacrificing a zebra in offering instead of cattle, or that it was Wild Day?  That needs to be decided later, but the ritual was a disaster.

So in the next episode, led by Harjaani, and with the aid of the High Llama, the party heads for Pavis and the next big twist in the saga...