Having finished reading this, I wanted to share a review with you. The History of the Heortling Peoples is the first of the Stafford Library Series from Moon Designs. The Stafford Library is the successor to the Unfinished Works – collated material from Greg's Gloranthan notes and musings – but the production quality is higher: perfect bound with clean layout and high quality maps. Moon Designs have promised to revisit the earlier Unfinished Works to bring them up to this new standard over time.
For those of you not familiar with the Unfinished Works, this is deep background, bearing a relationship to published game material akin perhaps to Tolkien's Unfinished Tales to his Lord of the Rings. As such, its audience will be GMs, would-be authors, and fans of Glorantha, as opposed to casual Gloranthan gamers.
Art is restricted to hand-drawn maps – though those maps are clear informative and detailed. I have no issue with the absence of other art in a reference work like this, though other's mileage may vary.
We have seen some of the material in this work before, but its context: GTA material, out-of-print fanzines, notes to gamesupplement authors has meant most of it has not been widely available; other portions are new with this publication, helping to clarify and explain the rest of the material.
This `book does what it says on the tin'. It collects together assorted documents that reveal the history of the Heortling peoples from the First to the Third Age. Despite many games being centred on the Orlanthi, and Greg's novels being focused on these people, we have only had fragmentary, abbreviated, or incomplete versions of this history up to now, and this is the first volume to try and tie all the disparate sources together, remove inconsistencies and illogicalities and turn chaos into order, discord into harmony.
There are three main sections: History of the Heortling Peoples, The Imperial Age, and The Third Age.
The History of the Heortling Peoples draws heavily on material from Greg's stories about Harmast. we have information on the dawn survivors, but much of the core here is extracts from Greg's novels, which reveal how the Dawn Council became the High Council and how Lokamayadon rose to power, including the Battle of Night and Day when the Great Army of Restraint crushed the Heortlings and cursed the trolls. I love this novel material as it gives you a great feel for how Greg sees Glorantha in his writings, and is redolent of real history. Rastalulf's Saga is the tale of an important Orlanthi hero, told in the style of an Icelandic saga; those who enjoy the sagas will find this captures their power and pathos. There is also a timeline for Harmast and his children here.
Of course, GMs will find much here to inspire them: The Vanak Spear quest leaps out at me as great material for a heroquest for example.
Greg developed the Second Age material as deep background for Mongoose authors and some parts had appeared in GTA material. This is mainly a timeline of the Second Age focusing on the key events of the EWF and the attack on the Zistorites Clanking City. For anyone running games in those periods this is a key overview of the history of the period. There is also discussion of how the dragon religion was able to spread among the Orlanthi, and how Obduran succeeded and Ingolf failed in achieving draconic enlightenment. The Ingolf material is particularly useful for anyone aspiring to run EWF mystics as it contains a discussion of their beliefs and goals.
The Durengard Scrolls are placed with the Second Age material, for they are a document from that period, but they cover the origins of the Hendriki back to the First Age. The Hendriki are the Heortlings we know best for their descendants are the people of Heortland and Sartar. The Hendriki Kings details their first and early second age history through its king list. Finally, here we come to understand the Larnstings, who have been mysterious figures of Heortland history before, as agents of change, whose magic is mastery of their own breath: Orlanthi mystics who appear and re-appear to change the Heortlings. I really like this illumination of who they are, it adds depth to the Orlanthi, without reducing the Larnstings to people with cool powers, or inexplicable dues ex machine. There is enough here to speculate about how to play them in HeroQuest. Discussions of Orlanthi kingship here are also clarifying and likely to provide answers to some old debates. The Kings of Kerofinela covers the same period as the Hendriki Kings, but widens the focus to allow us to see events across Kerofinela.
The Third Age material picks up the history from the Second Age into the now of the Hero Wars. The material here clarifies what happened after the Pharaoh. The vision here clears up the differences between Hendriki, Heortland, Esvulari, and Volsaxi so that finally these groups make sense both as ethnic ones (the Esvulari are the separate ethnic group) and as a succession of political entities (Hendriki, Heortland, Volsaxi). I really like the way that this has been resolved, as it preserves the Hendriki as Orlanthi, firmly placing the earls and sherrifs as agents of pharonic government, rather than social reforms to the Heortlendings themselves. This emphasis feels `right' to me, if only because the Hendriki, clustered around Whitewall are the core of the Heortlings, sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting, but always enduring in the Savage Forest and around Whitewall. It also explains the complex civil war that resulted in the Resettlement of Dragon Pass, and the status of Broyan as High King. Expertly done. I think this really provides the best way through the murk here. This also couples well with the new understanding of the Larnsti presented earlier.
The book finishes with what is called miscellanea but don't be fooled there is important material here too. Finally, we get an explanation of Esrolia that ties in Imarja and explains the rule of the grandmothers without emasculating every man in the country. We also get some clarity on the Kitori and the Nightcult religion. There is also also get the history of the Yelmalio cult in a form which hopefully closes that chapter of disagreement.
To me this is a great addition to the Library particularly as it answers more questions than it asks. For those interested in the deep facts about the Heortlings it is an essential work.
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