Having a great time in Sog, wish you were here. from Curtis Shenton on 1995-06-26 (Glorantha Digest Vol 01)

From: Curtis Shenton <curtiss_at_netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 13:01:59 -0700 (PDT)

I just ran the first session in my Sog city campaign and it was a blast. The PCs are all exiled Rokari nobles and are having an interesting time learning to adapt to life in Sog. I've also gotten a chance to run quite a few interesting NPCs. The players decided for political reasons they couldn't hire any Rokari knights they ended up hiring the Dark Troll Hrestoli knight and his rag tag band.

I decided to come up with several sort of reject knights who work together to gain acceptence and a good reputation. Krastol Newfaith is the troll leader, Gestus Thrice Cursed is a Hrestoli knight who has managed to pick up a different curse from each of the three main elder races(falls asleep on the holy days of plant rune gods, takes double damage from iron, and has no resistance to magic at night), Twan the Blind, Vortan who used to be a great Knight until he got tapped by foes in the Kingdom of War, and Barain who is a female knight and isn't generally accepted by other knights.

The PCs also met possibly the only Trollkin HeroQuester in Gloranthan history, Master of the Five Demons(formally Master of Six Demons and originally Master of Seven) Basically he's a superior trollkin who got dragged on a HeroQuest by his mother, a Dark Troll priestess. I think having to sacrifice one of your children to a group of demons is a fairly reasonable bargain to a Troll. She made a mistake and got eaten instead and now the Trollkin has one time only services owed him by several demons. He used one demon to get out of Hell and summoned another demon to track down an escaped slave for the PCs. Which wasn't quite what the PCs had expected.

On a related subject I've been thinking about HeroQuests for my game, especially ones for groups. This got me to thinking about the composite nature of seval Gloranthan heroes and gods. The Red Emperor is made up of several beings who live on the Moon, Arkat had his group of followers who were all acting like Arkat, and I've begun to wonder if Razalkark in Dorastor isn't up to something similar. In fact I don't think it's a stretch to say that the Red Goddess could be a similar composite being made up of the Seven Mothers. Makes me wonder if the original Lightbringers Quest wasn't a similar attempt by a sorceror named Worlanth to become King of the Gods that went wrong.

Does anyone have any insight into these group entities in Glorantha? Which came first, Arkat or the people trying to be Arkat? - --
Curtis Shenton curtiss_at_netcom.com internet & 4@3091 WWIVnet "Remember the story of Burt and the Piano" -Stan Ridgway