I'm not sure if you are familiar with the Syndic's ban, which is critical to understanding Fronela. Hence, here is my amateur summary (others here no doubt can and in fact may have expressed it more accurately and eloquently, but rather than sending you off hunting through the web....)
Essentially a prince of Loksalm and companions managed to kill a "god" (why a god in sorcerous Loksalm? Not sure) at about the end of the second age (this was the end of the second age in Fronela, just like the closing and the DragonKill ended it elsewhere). This apparently averted some horrible tragedy (or was supposed to anyway). The result was that each independant region of Fronela was isolated unto itself by walls of mist. You could walk into them for days and not come up, but turn around and come out where you started very quickly. Nor did magic give any way to bypass or communicate. The syndics ban dropped from some regions earlier than others. One large area by the Sweet Sea (Charg if I recall properly) is still encased in it.
The small regions mostly suffered and declined in their isolation, including the Janube river city states, which were partially dependant on trade. But Loksalm was a large and well off kingdom anyway, and in its isolation managed to purify its religion and thrive for the most part. It is known that the Rathori (spelling?) bear hsunchen, who normally hibernated through the winter, ended up hibernating throughout the whole syndics ban period. The history of other regions is generally less well documented, but in most cases there was cultural drift in their centuries of isolation.
Note that the progression from caste to caste made playing in Loksalm somewhat difficult in Runequest. The way the skill assignment and improvement system worked essentially meant you really had to spend quite a bit of time working on the farm to rise to the soldier caste, and everyone started off in the farmer caste (not all were literally farmers, but lacking farm skills they were even farther from rising to soldier). I think this may have contributed to the limited amount of fan material supporting Loksalm, it was just a difficult place to set many types of adventures. Under HQ rules, however, it would be far easier to handle I think, so hopefully those gifted in such things will start exploring it and writing about it.
> The Kingdom of War: utterly terrifying! The fullest description was
in
> "Glorantha: Introduction to the Hero Wars"; previously described in
> less detail in "Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars". The Kingdom
of
> War is an ever-expanding war zone whose armies worship "one hundred
> gods of war." They are brutal, efficient, and always victorious.
> Nobody knows where they came from, or what they ultimately want to
> achieve. They have no civilians, no culture, and no cities, apart
from
> those they capture, occupy and in due course destroy. The worst
thing
> is, they're going to win...
When the syndics ban dropped from one region that had been unremarkable prior to the syndics ban, what it revealed was the Kingdom of War. Back in RQ3 days, the background here suggested that about 20% of the population was warriors, about 80% were serfs/slaves who were heavily magically tapped to be stupid and magically weak (and eventually just sucked dry and left dead). This is a little at odds with the description above, but frankly I don't think many people have been into the Kingdom of War and come out alive to actually give much of a description.
It is of course tempting to think of the Kingdom of War as the karmic balance to Loksalm, that as Loksalm made itself ever more virtuous, its cast off sins somehow came to rest in the Kingdom of War. But surely that can't be....
--Bryan
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