From: "John & Christy Thompson" To: "Chaosium Digest" Subject: [Chaos-digest] Chaosium Digest v38.6 Date: Sunday, August 15, 2004 9:47 PM Chaosium Digest Volume 38, Number 6 Date: Sunday, August 15, 2004 Number: 1 of 1 Contents: * The Chosen One (CTHULHU) by Nick Middleton Editor's Note: Here's the newest issue of the Digest, just in time for GenCon. If you're in Indy for the con this week you might run into me. I'll be helming a few "You too can Cthulhu" sessions and stalking about the dealers room. Thanks to those 15 of you who responded that you were receiving the Digest. Your kind words were encouraging. Most especially thanks to Nick Middleton who provided the submission for this issue and another to be used later. Lastly, September is the last month to qualify for this quarter's Chaosium Contest prize of $40 worth of Chaosium products. Keep those submissions coming and enjoy this issue. Announcements: * GATHERING THUNDER IS HERE The post brought my copy of Gathering Thunder this week. More than delight... I am beginning to understand the Hero Wars. As the time line expands (and the authors tell more), it is easier to see some of the wherefore of developments to date. The Empire has been hurt, but not defeated. Now the rebels must find new allies and magics to stand any chance of defeating the Empire's latest scheme: the construction of a new Temple of the Reaching Moon to subjugate all of Dragon Pass to the Glowline. This book culminates in the epic Boatraising, as heroes accompany Kallyr herself on a mighty heroquest to reshape the skies. MORE TO COME Provided by Stephen Martin Unfortunately, our publication schedule for the rest of the year is still in flux. We have several unfinished manuscripts in the process of being completed, including UNDER THE RED MOON, the second volume of the Imperial Lunar Handbook; MEN OF THE SEA, the Player's Book for Sailors; BLOOD OVER GOLD, Adventures Among the Trader Princes; and HEIRS OF MALKION, an overview of the West of Glorantha. Work also continues on DRAGONRISE, Volume 4 of Sartar Rising, being worked on by Merlin Cox; SUN SON CITY, a book of adventures set in the city of Raibanth, helmed by James Maliszewski; and OAK AND PINE, the Elf Player's Book being written by Shannon Appelcline. As soon as we have more details on the publication schedule, we will let you know. In the meantime, go to for information on these and other upcoming products. CONTESTS Sadly, Issaries did not receive enough entries for The World of Glorantha Art Contest to judge the contest and award the prize. Thanks to those who did submit. The winners of the latest GTA Observers drawing are Hans Torstensson and Darin Christensen. Each received a copy of Masters of Luck and Death. Luck indeed! This time around, the Observer contest is for a copy of whatever book comes out next! This could be Blood Over Gold (the Trader Princes book), Heirs of Malkion, Men of the Sea, Under the Red Moon (Imperial Lunar Handbook, Volume 2), so if you are interested in any of those books, send an email to with OBSERVER CONTEST - GRAB BAG in the subject line. As always, please do not send other correspondence in the message, but make sure to include your full name and your physical mailing address so that we can send you your prize. Two copies of the book will be awarded from all entries received by midnight August 15, Pacific Time. If you know someone who would like to keep up on all happenings Gloranthan, and maybe score a free prize sometime, have them contact us at so that we can add them to the list of Observers. Or just send them to to add themselves! SUMMER CONVENTIONS >From Stephen Martin and various Convention Coordinators Greg was at ORIGINS 2004, in Columbus, OH, June 23 - June 27. Greg was a Guest of Honor and held forth in several seminars, on both Arthurian subjects and Pendragon as well as HeroQuest and other matters Gloranthan. He ran several gaming events. In addition, Jeff Kyer ran a massive tournament: a multi-session first round for "Distant Thunder" (which follows "Sheep, Clouds, Thunder") followed by a final round for "Black Cloud Castle," a heroquest in the Sky World to gain an ally for the Storm Pantheon. (Both of these scenarios are slated to appear in Dragonrise.) CONTIUUM, the successor to Convulsions, is booked for 23-26 July, in Leicester, UK. Glorantha and HeroQuest will be at the heart of the event, which includes tabletop games, freeforms, seminars, and displays. Stephen Martin of Issaries, Charlie Krank of Chaosium, and Mark Gaelotti and Simon Bray of the Unspoken Word are among the guests. The Con book looks impressive: MAGNUS LIBER RERUM includes many articles for RuneQuest, HeroQuest, and Glorantha, and will be available at the convention. There will also be a HeroQuest tournament, 'The Dark Heart of the Dragon Lands' by Darran Sims; a massive convention-long miniatures game; and more. Check out the Continuum website at for more information. GENCON INDY (formerly known as just GenCon) will be held August 19-22 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Issaries invites individuals to run events there. Issaries can provide scenarios and prizes, but needs reliable narrators to help bring the Word to those lost in the Darkness that is d20. Email if you are going and can run one of our events (or plan to run one of your own). Check out the Issaries conventions pages for officially sponsored events at and also (for other conventions). SHORT TAKES AND QUICK PLUGS HeroQuest En Espanol -- The licensed Spanish translation of HeroQuest is out! We've seen it, and although it looks eerily familiar to us, we're still ecstatic that it is now available! Greg says he isn't able to read it all as of yet, but he's working on it! The cover art by Alejandro Teránis is first rate, and I also like the duck. Start at . For even more stuff, check out Vision Runica, a Spanish fanzine that includes scenarios, a color map of Ralios, and articles on Lalia, Arkat & Eurmal at . Lokarnos has moved his wagon! Lokarnos.com has moved to a new server. To reach it reliably, type (not http://www.lokarnos.com, which goes astray). >From Charles Corrigan: Do you want to know how to kill the Bat? Are you more ambitious? Do you want to know how to kill Orlanth? The Whitewall project at and can show you how to achieve both of these and much, much more. The online 'zine Sequential Tart is looking for women gamers familiar with comic books as well to be reviewers. If you are a woman, are familiar with comic books, and want to get some free games to review (including HeroQuest books), or know a woman who meets these requirements, please contact editor-in-chief Marcia Allass at . And check out HeroWars.pdf, a combined Contest Results grid that shows Simple and Extended Contest Results along with Recovery: . If you like mapping as much as I, do not miss the marvels at . SONS OF KARGZANT is out, fun from Unspoken Word: 64 pages of nomad nastiness and fun, subtitles 'the bloody saga of the Char-Un warlords of the savage steppe.' Says it all, really! TRADETALK #14 "Outside Genertela: The Southern Continent" is the latest offering from the Chaos Society. David Dunham does a short overview of "Umathela", accompanied by an Umathean Myth; Simon Bray describes the "Kumanku Islands" (includeing a HOMELAND spread), and the narrator character of "Red Ravaal"; "Golden Kareeshtu" is an article written by Martin Hawley & Peter Metcalfe; "The War beneath the Waves" by André Jarosch gives an overview of the Marthino Sea, plus scenario ideas for land dwelling characters, a plunder item, and two new creatures; Martin Hawley's "Laskal" shows us Harreks future Kingdom before the Hero Wars or Harrek himself have reached this region. "Legends of the Embyli" tell myths of the yellow elves and "Homeland: Errinoru Jungle" is the first HOMELAND spread for an Aldryami area, both by Shannon Applecline. Artists include Simon Bray, Dario Corallo, and Sarah Evans. Path of the Dammed #3, the Glorantha comic, will be available very soon. A new PBeM has just launched, thanks to Rich Willard. Details are at . If you've not got enough players in Adelaide, reach out. If you want to pursue HQ rules and context, visit the HQ forum on Forge , which contains informative and helpful posts on a variety of subjects. CALLING ALL EXAMPLES Greg has asked tribe members for more HeroQuest examples, to spread the word of Heroquest. Here is a chance for you to contribute to the Greater Good!: Just as the rules book has limited space to include things, so we at Issaries have limited time to put these together. So, please allow me to solicit examples from all of you, so that we can expand our on-line examples to infinite size. OK, not really infinite. But I would like to solicit YOUR input for the site. Please write up examples of what you think ought to have been given. If we get umpty-ump combat examples, we will just select some of them to use. So be creative and give us examples to help those new players! (If you have rules questions, please ask them before sending us an example illustrating one interpretation.) Send examples to . We will sort them out, make sure they are correct, and post those which we feel will do the most good. Please, NO RULES VARIANTS. We know you have them, we know you use them, but for the official site, please keep within the published rules. Thanks! GTA MEMBERSHIP UPDATE >From Stephen Martin The GTA Tribe welcomes new members. Currently the GTA has 2 Demi-Gods, 36 Heroes, 47 Runemasters, and 178 Initiates, for a total of 263 members. There are also over 800 Observers. If you know anyone else who might want to join the Glorantha Tribe, have them contact us at . New Initiate: Eric Vanel New Runemaster: Terra Incognita The legions and missionaries have gathered to spread the Way by sword and word, and they are dedicated individuals all. We especially welcome back members once lost who have returned to us. We are sure their presence back in the fold will enrich us all. But some Travelers and Journeyers have been long lost in the alien Otherworlds, and we fear that, like the Goddess before them, their path through hostile realms and ages has become difficult to follow home. If, like brave Yanafal Tarnils, any of you can embark on your own journey to find and rescue them, please inform us of any result, either by emailing contacting information to or by asking them to contact us once they have recovered from their quest: Michael Abbott Chris Bell Michael Hill Hugh McVicker Al Petterson Michael Pose Phil Posehn Andrew Reichart Dom Twist Anthony Utano Don Walli David Weihe Peter J. Whitelaw Michael Zaitz However, additional T&Jers have been so far lost that even their names are in danger of disappearing from the tribe. Unless you keep your contact information current, you will regularly miss out on special offers and all sorts of insider stuff. PARTING SHOT Everybody likes to manipulate stuff when they game. Watch the hands of those in poker tournaments ... constantly fussing with their chips. They teach us from an early age to count and sort things but it's a deeply human trait to fiddle. Like mine, your players might like to use something physical to realize Action/Advantage Points or Hero Points as they are wagered, lost and won. I've printed up Hero Point currency on business card stock (with a Extended Contest grid on the back) in different colors for different denominations. And I've been experimenting with plastic chips in gold, silver and bronze for AP bidding. They mimic the Heortling valuation from _Thunder Rebels_, as if they were Issaries-blessed trade tokens: gold is worth 20, marked with a cow; silver is worth 4, marked with a boar, and bronze is worth 1, marked with a barley sheaf and MinLister's basket. The gold trade token is a Mastery; the others "make change." What do you think? Hawkbear a.k.a. Mark Leymaster * Greetings to the Tribe! At long last, "Arcane Lore: Heroquests and Heroquesting" is at least finished. We have one last map to scan, and then the sixth Pre-Finished Work will be on its way to the printer. We expect it to begin shipping by the end of the month, but you can order it now. Arcane Lore reveals a vast treasure trove about heroquesting. Collected from almost 30 years of questing, this book explores the philosophy, mechanics, and practice of heroquesting from a multitude of viewpoints and angles. Although much of the material was written for the old RuneQuest game, and other parts were used in the development of Hero Wars and HeroQuest, all of it is useful in understanding heroquesting and developing your own heroquests. In addition to extensive sections on Heroquesting, God and Mortals, The Worlds, and The Mythic Ages, Arcane Lore contains over 40 pages detailing heroquests. From the Hill of Gold to The Quest for Knowledge, from the Jackal's Path to the Westfaring, these quests provide details of Glorantha and the Hero Planes that have never been published anywhere. It also includes over a dozen maps and diagrams of the Hero Planes and Otherworlds. Like all of the Pre-Finished Works, much of the contents of Arcane Lore are speculative and subject to change as development of HeroQuest continues. More even than those other books, we are compelled to warn readers that the material in Arcane Lore is EXTREMELY SPECULATIVE, and subject to great changes before the final version of a HeroQuesting Handbook is done. With those caveats in mind, however, we invite you into the Other Worlds and hope you enjoy the contents. We also would like to give a special thanks to Graham Robinson and Brian Isikoff, without whose work this book would never have been. Arcane Lore is 108 pages and is $30.00 US. It includes material by Greg Stafford, Sandy Petersen, Steve Marsh, Roderick Robertson, Bill Keyes, and David Hall. For more information (including a complete table of contents) or to Pre-Order Arcane Lore, go to www.HeroQuest-rpg.com/products/3007.html. Cheers, Stephen * Hi Guys and Gals!! Chaosium hopes your summer has been as fun as ours. The crew at Chaosium went swimming with Dagon, feasted at a BBQ hosted by Cthugha, and even had a chocolate shoggoth for dessert!! Chaosium is gearing up for another great GenCon, and we hope to see many of you there!! Come by our digs and see all the cool stuff we have, or just to say "Hi". If you need directions, we are Booth # 420, and we promise to be friendly. For our British fans, Charlie (aka the Bearded Brain Case), will be attending Continuum in the UK. If you will also be there, use your Spot Hidden to find him and have a chat. As one of the great role playing systems, Basic Role Playing (BRP) has been around for well over 20 years. Chaosium is celebrating with two new releases for our classic system. Get your copies of our two newest monographs while they last. Clicking on the links below will take you straightaway to the Basic Role Playing Player's Book and the Basic Role Playing Magic Book, wherein you may learn more of the fabled tomes. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=528 http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=529 Chaosium is also happy to relay a message sent from a friend deep in the African interior. It seems that a crate containing a game called Dark Continent was found in a boggy swamp. This neat game details Africa in the 1930's, and is quite useful when the Call of Cthulhu draws you to the Dark Continent. Click on the link below to learn more. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=336 We were also quite fortunate to receive recently a restock of the wonderful line of HPL books from our friends at Arkham House. We offer four tomes of horror and madness, and they may be found by searching for "Arkham House" in our search engine, or you may click here to go to the book section of our website. Get your copies of Dagon, The Horror in the Museum, At the Mountains of Madness, and the Dunwich Horror while you can, as these great books move fast!! http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=35 As always, Chaosium tries to add new and spooky stuff to our site all the time. We do enjoy surprising and scaring you with new things unmentioned, and this summer is no different. We hope to have a few new things available shortly, so keep your tentacles crossed!! Until the next time, farewell from the Chaosium Cult. Regards Charlie, Dustin, Fergie, and Lynn. * August, and Other Atrocities Howdy Folks This is Dustin Wright of Chaosium, filling in for Fergie for this issue of the Chaosium.com Newsletter. He's packing and shipping many boxes of our Yellow Sign & Other Stories Reprint. More on that below. As always, you can find our site at http://www.chaosium.com, we've got more things to read or purchase than you can shake a dried zoog at. Swing by and explore when you have some time. August is always an insane month for us. Gen Con gobbles up half the company, for about half the month. This year, August is crazier than normal. Charlie spent the last two week in the UK attending Continuum. While that means he's two weeks behind on Gen Con preparations and office work, he did bring home some swell stuff for the catalog. We now have copies of excellent COC fanzine The Whisperer #5 by Michael Mason. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=544 We have restocks of the brilliant Modern Day COC Zine The Black Seal Issue #2 and issue #3 by Adam Crossingham. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=43&products_id=338 http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=43&products_id=507 We have a restock of Dark Continent by David Salisbury & Mandy Smith. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=41&products_id=336 Not to be out done, the rest of us have been busy as well! We've recently received restocks of the Dunwich detective miniatures. These pre-painted 1920's Characters come in two sets of 5 characters each. They also come packaged with a bunch of d20's. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=36&products_id=531 http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=532 We've recently discovered two statues of Cthulhu. Worship Him! http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=543 http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=542 We've gotten some restocks of some medieval miniatures useful for your Cthulhu Dark Ages campaigns. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=36 We found some previously forgotten H.P. Lovecraft Tarot Decks for your divination needs. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=34&products_id=237 Finally, we've just received a new printing of Chamber's The Yellow Sign and Other Stories edited by S.T. Joshi. http://www.chaosium.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=75 We're working on getting many of our monographs back in stock. Most of them have sold out recently. Never fear, they'll be back soon enough. I hope we see a couple of you at Gen Con later this month. We're the friendly folks in booth 420. Happy Hauntings! Charlie, Dustin, Lynn, and Fergie. The Chaosium Dudes. * Worlds of Cthulhu #1 will be debuting at Gen Con Indy on Thursday 19th August 2004. Worlds of Cthulhu is published by Pegasus Press (who are at stand 1907 at Gen Con), and is Pegasus's first venture into English. Pegasus is best known for their German Call of Cthulhu line and supporting magazine "Cthuloide Welten". Published twice yearly Worlds of Cthulhu is a 128 page journal dedicated to covering all period settings and flavours of Call of Cthulhu. Licensed by Chaosium Inc., Worlds of Cthulhu features the best of its mother magazine translated into English and new original material in English. Worlds of Cthulhu's first issue contents are as follows: Scenarios: The Secret of Knossos (1920s), The Vampire of Schwarzbrunn (Dark Ages), Project Pi (modern) Feature articles: Law & lawlessness in the 1920s, the Archaeologist in the 1920s and 1930s, the Starry Wisdom church cult, Dark Ages: Averoigne Columns: d20 Cthulhu by Mike Mearls, Delta Green by Scott Glancy, Keeper's Corner, Dork Tower strip Interviews: Stephane Gesbert of Cthulhu Dark Ages fame Worlds of Cthulhu #1 will cost US $14.95 and will enter North American, European and international distribution after Gen Con Indy. Worlds of Cthulhu website: www.worldsofcthulhu.com --- Adam Crossingham Editor - Worlds of Cthulhu THE gaming magazine for Call of Cthulhu Coming August 2004! -------------- The Chosen One A Tale of Terror for modern day Call of Cthulhu by Nick Middleton, ©2002 The fluorescent tube flickers on sluggishly and Michael Reed ritually reminds himself to replace the starter in the hall light. He drops his coat on the hook behind the front door and steps from the hall in to the largest room in his flat, the sitting room. He should eat, but he isn't hungry. He should check the paper, abandoned in his coat pocket, for jobs but he can't be bothered. His eyes flit nervously over the shelves, CD's, comics, fiction, textbooks, plastic knick-knacks and aboriginal artefacts from half a dozen decadent cultures, the detritus of failed careers in computer game design and anthropology. He fumbles, unsighted, for the TV remote and his eyes fall on the picture of Hannah and flick away. To the table. Where the laptop sits. Michael Reed can't help himself. Rationally, he knows it is his choice whether he turns the computer on, turns the modem on, dials up, dials in. He has e-mail to pick up (but it'll mostly be junk mail from THOSE sites), news groups to lurk in (but he's running out of ISP's that don't screen the ones he always ends up in), chat sites to frequent (but he never has the courage to say anything). At the very least he should write back to Ricardo, thank him for the package. Yeah, just a quick e-mail to say thanks to his friend. When they found Michael Reed, he was rigid in front of his computer, which appeared to have crashed because of a nasty virus program. His face was curiously flaccid although there could be no doubt from the pool of blood that he had bled to death, from genital abrasions. Possibilities 1) Michael was an occultist contact of the Investigators, active in several Internet discussion forums. He became the target of a cult when he received an artefact of power from his contact in South America, Ricardo. His enemies set a trap for him, knowing he was a rather lonely, repressed man and bombarded him with junk mail for a fake internet porn site, which to view required downloading a custom viewer. The viewer was a program that generated a Glyph of Eihort, an animated fractal that destroys the sanity of any who study it by forcing them into repetitive, compulsive behaviour. Running it is also so mathematically bizarre that it will crash any human designed computer and randomise the storage attached to it (that is write-enabled...). The Cult want their artefact, the police want the PC's to identify the body and verify the contents of the flat as Michael has no known relatives. 2) Michael was an occultist rival of the Investigators. They have previously been involved in several spectacular flame wars in various internet newsgroups, but had never met face to face despite living in the same city. The Investigator will thus be very surprised to receive an urgent e-mail from Michael asking for the Investigator to come to his house as soon as possible to discuss an unusual South American cult artefact that has come into his possession. Michael had obviously taken more of the Investigators words seriously that his public position suggested. Unfortunately, this drew him to the attention of a local Cult, whose leader, the Sorceress Hannah Crawford, approached and seduced the lonely and somewhat insecure Reed. Having established he was little danger, the cult used him as a blind in getting a cult item into the country. Michael came to suspect Hannah and the true nature of the item Ricardo sent. On the day of the delivery, he decided to contact the Investigators. Before they arrive however, Hannah came round, "To make things up." She used Mesmerize on Michael to get him to kill himself in a suitably "amusing" fashion, deliberately infected his computer to trash any data and left with the item. However, the Investigators know it should be there... 3) Hannah Crawford feels guilty about breaking up with Michael Reed again. They had been close at university, but after his summer field trip to Peru before their final year, they broke up. A few years later Hannah bumped into Michael in an Occultism Chat room on the Internet. They resumed their acquaintance, but Michael seemed strangely reluctant to go further. Hannah persisted and they made some fumbling attempts to recapture their previous passion, but Michael's heart was not in it and he broke it off. Now he is not responding to Hannah's calls and she is worried about him, so she has asked the Investigators to check up on him. On his field trip, Michael "liberated" an icon of Shub-Niggurath that contains a bound Dark Young. It has over the years been devouring his capacity for normal emotional relationships and drawing him into corruption. Seeking to expand this dark obsession, Michael arranged for another item from South America. The two items in close proximity were too much however: in the end Michael died of autoerotic obsession. The Icons are small statues, some 15 to 20cm tall. Kept in proximity they are dangerous to all around them and they will draw the attention of the local Shub-Niggurath cult. _______________________________________________ Chaos-digest mailing list Chaos-digest@lists.chaosium.com http://lists.chaosium.com/mailman/listinfo/chaos-digest_lists.chaosium.com