An uncertain future....

From: Michael Cule <mikec_at_room3b.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 23:15:12 +0100


>1. Apparently, the Red Moon is going to be destroyed? I think I saw this on
>the list. I really don't like this, as I happen to like the Lunars. I can
>understand having them pushed out of Sartar and Dragon Pass, but why totally
>screw up the world to do it? If this really happens, it can limit the
>usefulness of further products to me, at least.

Well, that's what happens in the Official Future as shown in KING OF SARTAR. But it doesn't happen any time soon ("Seventeen Twenty Five-Keep the world alive!" as the Fourth Age Children's song has it) and it doesn't have to happen in your Glorantha. (In mine a copy of the Dread Purple Book of Future Knowledge is now in the hands of Kallyr Starbrow and all has become uncertain again.) I doubt very much if Issaries are going to be publishing books about the events beyond the retaking of Boldhome any time soon.

>2. What is the general outline of what will happen during the Hero Wars? Just
>basics, so I'm not completely surprised.

Buy a copy of KING OF SARTAR and you will know all this....

In 1625 the Brown Dragon swallows the nearly completed Temple of The Reaching Moon in Sartar and Kallyr Starbrow is proclaimed Prince of Sartar as the Lunars flee and the country rises. Sometime in the next few years she is killed, reports differ as to how (Jane Williams and I believe that she is betrayed by Argrath and killed by Harrek when he raids Boldhome) and Argrath becomes Prince and leader of the Rebel Alliance against the Evil Empire. Over the next hundred years Argrath builds his magical and military might. He makes alliances cemented with marriage in many cases and becomes (by marrying the Feathered Horse Queen) King of Dragon Pass. He goes to Hell on the Lightbringers Quest and then beyond the reach of even that ritual to rescue Sheng Seleris from the Lunar Hell in which he was imprisoned (and which Fazzur Wideread  so unwisely showed to the rebel leaders at the time of Starbrow's Rebellion). Sheng returns to his people in Pent and leads them against the Lunars. He and Argrath later have a falling out and Argrath sends him back to Hell forever. The Lunar Empire continues to crumble and (according to the admittedly biased account in ARGRATH'S SAGA) turns more and more openly to chaos. Finally in 1725, Argrath calls upon the Great Dragons to tear down the Moon. (But a White Moon seems to have taken it's place by the Fourth Age.) Argrath becomes a god and sometime in the early 19th Century ST a curse of illiteracy (possibly similar to the Ban over Fronela: caused by the death of Lhankhor Mhy?) spreads across Glorantha and the whole world forgets how to read and write for several generations. In the early 23rd Century ST KING OF SARTAR is written in a Glorantha that has forgotten the old Gods and the old nature of the world and is ruled by a dynasty (?) called the Harshax.

But none of this need happen in your Glorantha! If you want a triumph of the benevolent Lunar Empire over the disorderly and outdated Orlanthi, it can happen. But be fair. Give your (presumably Lunar) playercharacters  the chance to cock things up....
- --
Michael Cule


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