Sylthi—Session Two

Yesterday, we had our second session of my RuneQuest game set in Sylthi. Sylthi is a minor city in the matrifocal land of Esrolia. I’ve chosen to explore it because it homes the main temple of the Sword Sages of Lhankor Mhy, and I love the idea of ass-kicking kung fu sorcerers. I also find Sylthi interesting to write about because it’s fairly small, yet big enough for a variety of action. I want to create a detailed, comprehensive setting, in a way I feel is impractical with Glorantha’s larger cities (like Nochet, Boldhome, and Glamour).

This is a playtest campaign exploring the ideas, notes, and other material I’ve been developing about Sylthi over about the last year, for future publication on RuneQuest‘s community content program on DriveThruRPG, the Jonstown Compendium. To record the development process for myself—and hopefully to entertain some of you curious folks out there—I’m writing a series of blog posts collecting the game’s events. All session writeups and myths can be found collected over on my Sylthi Playtest page.

During this session, we tried improvising through a heroquest based loosely on my myth “Asrelia Retires.”

THE CHARACTERS

Currently, we have three player characters in this campaign:

• Avalon, a noblewoman of House Netha who worships the great Earth Mother and Queen of the Universe, Ernalda. She was adopted as a child by the Nethi from common squalor upon recognition of her sharp wit and blessings from Ernalda. Rumors about being sold to pay off her family’s debts are cruel and unsubstantiated.
• Agnis, a shapeshifting thief from the city of Brol, downriver. She worships the river god of the turbulent Whitefall River, Hrell, and can take three of his shapes—baby croc, ram, and bull. Her family are high-ranked in the priesthood of the Twin Rivers cult, and don’t know that Agnis stole some family heirlooms when she fled town. Yet.
• Gandas, the unclaimed son of a prodigal daughter of the noble House Lorel. He’s a common herder, and worships the god of shadowcats, Yinkin. (Shadowcats are similar to bobcats, but more intelligent—Gandas has one as a companion, which helps him herd sheep.)

The adventurers got to know one another fighting together during the Siege of Nochet. In addition, there’s a few non-player characters who are relevant to this session’s game:

• Hanalda is Avalon’s adoptive mother, and the oldest of House Netha’s elders. She has born no children of her own, which is part of why she adopted Avalon. We haven’t yet explored this backstory.
• Grandmother Hazulda is the head of House Netha, and one of the major political powers in the city. During this adventure, she’s organized a conspiracy together with her rival Dorinela of House Doraest against the Lunar-affiliated Pareninni.
• Murhan is a Sun-worshiping noble of House Doraest who joined the adventurers last session, at Avalon’s behest. He’s slightly attracted to her, but so far unimpressed by her skills.
• Tyvula is one of Avalon’s cousins. We haven’t defined much about her yet—she’s probably the daughter of one of Hanalda and Hazulda’s younger sisters, or a second cousin from a branch family.
• Farnalie is this adventure’s antagonist. She’s a Pelorian noblewoman, and Rune Priestess of the Seven Mothers. Although a foreign priestess, she is integrated into House Pareninna’s power structure. Farnalie has been delegated the “Asrelia Privilege.” This is House Pareninna’s access and authority over a portion of the city granaries, which the Lunars used to manipulate city politics during the Great Winter.

LAST SESSION

This adventure is a prequel, set before the standard starting date of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha’s campaign. My goal is to tell the story about how the adventurers were involved in Grandmother Hazulda’s conspiracy to throw the Lunars out of Sylthi, creating the current political climate.

Their mission was to kidnap Farnalie, so that the conspirators can get access to House Pareninna’s granary within the city Earth Temple—filled with Lunar grain, seizing the granary peacefully will slash the Red Earth Alliance’s influence over city politics. This will give Houses Netha and Doraest the needed leverage to oust Queen Treiraija and install one of their daughters as City Queen.

Although there were some complications, the adventurers were generally successful. Our session ended when they returned to Netha Manor with Farnalie in tow while throughout the city, conflicts continued to ignite.

THIS SESSION

After we’d spent a bit longer than usual gabbing about non-session stuff, we handed out adventurer sheets, and settled into the game. I tried giving the adventurers another opportunity to mill among their fellow conspirators and compete for Reputation, but they seemed uninterested. After Gandas bumped into a stranger and mostly ignored him, I moved on to the main attraction.

My goal for this session was to mess around with playing a heroquest. I hadn’t been certain this would be part of the adventure when I was making my notes, but after the first session I had the idea pretty surely in mind. When preparing for this session, I chose to intentionally under-prep compared to my comfort level. I wanted to both force myself to experiment with a more improvisational gamemastering style, and also to be certain that the players would have a freeform approach to the heroquest.

I had a mix of ideas in mind before the session, but again, I intentionally didn’t have heroquest rules I wanted to playtest. Rather, I wanted to try seeing what we would come up with as a group, which would feel both fun and fair during the game. Sources that I’d kept in mind while making notes and playing include Jonathan Webb’s Tradition and Simon Phipp’s Secrets of HeroQuesting from the Jonstown Compendium, as well as various design notes shared by Chaosium’s developers. In particular, I love how Webb uses magic points within a heroquest, I found Phipp’s discussion of the station of a heroquest as well as potential rewards useful, and the public design notes had a variety of interesting elements—especially the notion of “Identification”—although they seemed generally more complex than I was looking for.

Part of my prep then, was to go through the myth I wrote about the heroquest, “Asrelia Retires,” and create a simpler version. I condensed this to a collection of known archetypes, and known stations within the heroquest. However, I knew it was very explicit that these weren’t every possible mythic role, or every possible station within the quest. My intent was that they’d be more like guidelines and suggestions than rules.

The quest was triggered by the situation’s mythic resonance; Farnalie, who bears the magic of Asrelia the Grandmother of Wealth, was surrounded by worshipers of Asrelia’s daughter Ernalda, who all wished to receive Asrelia’s power.

I called for Avalon to make a Cult Lore (Ernalda) roll, to see if her memory of the myth was triggered. It was, and she found herself speaking the opening words. (Should her roll have failed, I’d planned that her cousin Tyvula would trigger the quest. My players weren’t getting out of this with just one failed dice roll!)

I passed over my handout for “Asrelia Retires,” and explained Identification. (I also handed over a printed copy of my own myth because I felt one of the players would be into it—but that story is long enough I wouldn’t recommend it generally as a table handout.) This is one of the concepts I got from the design notes Chaosium has shared online, although I’ve had to make some leaps and guesses of my own to put them into practice. Identification requires the adventurers to make ability rolls to define themselves as particular mythic archetypes. These aren’t the same type of thing as the gods, but are a sort of “personality-stripped-away” deity. The names of the gods are something mortals assign to the myth. On Earth, this leads to situations like when Herodotus identifies the Egyptian and Olympian gods as essentially the same. Gloranthan cultures also share deities with basic similarities and slight variances. For example, the Dara Happan divine scribe Buserian, and the Orlanthi god of knowledge Lhankor Mhy. In focusing on roles, not gods, my thinking is that the players don’t necessarily need to know about the god they’ve taken on—they just need to worry about their role’s Runes and values.

Like I’ve noted previously, work in progress. I know I’m struggling here to be precise.

The handout suggests roles, but also notes what divine names the adventurers recognize each role as. I later discovered that was a mistake, because my players really looked at that as “do I want to be that god” rather than “does my adventurer fit that role?” Although I emphasized that the players could try Identifying with roles not on that list, they largely stuck to my suggestions. Mechanically, all I required for Identification was rolling one or two abilities—generally Runes, although a few Passions were rolled when relevant—and spending one magic point per ability rolled. Major roles had two rolls, while minor ones just a single ability tested. Alternatively, I told the players they could cast a Rune spell which used the relevant Rune affinity, and not spend magic points. I see this as reflected in the idea of “heroforming.”

I can’t remember where I first stumbled across the idea, but it’s represented in the very vivid perceptual display of Gloranthan magic conveyed in the core rules. Basically, when you cast a Rune spell, you become your god slightly. Sometimes, that’s called heroforming. Heroforming is whenever a hero becomes, in some sense, the same as their god. Identifying yourself as a mythic figure during a heroquest is also a manner of heroforming. So, casting relevant magic is just another way of performing the requisite Identification.

The adventurers Identified themselves as the following:

• Avalon got to go first, as the one starting the heroquest. She Identified herself as the Mistress of the Crafthall, using her Earth and Fertility Runes. Her player’s decisive factor was that this is the role associated with Ernalda. All other characters were then considered to Identify themselves simultaneously.
• Agnis became the Impudent Daughter, an Esrolian mask of the trickster god Eurmal. She Identified using her strong Disorder Rune, and then replaced the role’s suggested Hate (authority) with her Water Rune.
• Gandas Identified himself with Old Age, using his Death Rune affinity. This was the most surprising to me—I expected him to Identify the family cat or something similar, because he follows Yinkin and is strong in both of his god’s Runes.

The myth then also dragged in several nonplayer characters. The most important of these was Farnalie, who took the form of the Great Creatrix under the influence of the Moon and Fertility Runes.

Immediately, we had a conflict based on Identification. The Runes associated most strongly with the Mistress of the Crafthall are Earth and Harmony, but Avalon Identified using Fertility instead. Her cousin, Tyvula, vied for this role, seeking to shunt Avalon into the role of the Bountiful Mother (Earth and Fertility). I resolved this with a POW resistance roll, which Avalon received a bonus to due to her special success with the Earth Rune. Avalon succeeded, and Tyvula adopted the Bountiful Mother instead.

Another role noted was Murhan, who was drawn in because in the story I wrote, Ernalda is also called the “Fire-Tender.” Due to Avalon’s recent flirting with the Sun-worshiper, I felt it could be intriguing to draw him into the quest. In the myth I wrote, Fire doesn’t really do anything—but it was important to me as a gamemaster that the game session’s story was different. Ideally, the result should be recognizable as the same “myth,” but a different version.

That’s also why I felt there was no problem with Agnis using her Water Rune to heroform the Impudent Daughter. The role is inherently disruptive—she’s actually the antagonist in the story—and letting a player be the antagonist in strange ways felt interesting. Besides, the antagonist at the table was actually Farnalie/Asrelia/the Great Creatrix.

Once we’d settled on each adventurer’s roles, I set the stakes: the adventurers’ goal was to successfully Identify Farnalie as the Great Creatrix, and coerce her to give up her power so her daughters could inherit it. This is a major departure from the myth I wrote, on purpose, but to my ear it contains the right echo. After all, it’s not rare that old people will be reluctant to give up power to those younger. I see this in particular as a major theme in Esrolia, since it’s ruled by the Grandmothers. If the adventurers succeeded, the Netha conspirators would be able to seize the city granaries without violating the Earth Temple. If they failed, the conspirators would have to violate the temple to seize the grain. The consequence for this violation would be a penalty to the Sacred Time omens roll for 1625—potentially wounding the whole city!

After defining the stakes, I described what happened as Avalon spoke. About fifteen/twenty minutes of discussion condensed into about half a minute in the game. For those in the heroquest, the world changed around them. They’re in two worlds at the same time. On the one hand, they’re still in the Middle World, still moving physical bodies within the audience hall of Netha Manor. On the other hand, they’re simultaneously in the Hero World. In the magical world they’re all gathered together in a small, primitive hut, roofed with palm fronds. People who aren’t in the quest can see that they’re under the effect of magic, but they don’t see the questers heroformed and in the shape of the gods. Instead, they’re just glowing with various lights, speaking in magical tongues, and so on.

This adventure is a This World heroquest, one in which the participants are on a heroquest, but aren’t totally absorbed into the Hero World or God World. I made sure to note that if an adventurer didn’t successfully Identify into a This World heroquest, that they’d still be able to participate in a supporting role. Casting spells upon their questing allies, augmenting their abilities, and so on. But, I didn’t define what would happen if an adventurer failed to enter a “bigger” or more ceremonial heroquest—off the cuff, I think that would be an all-or-nothing gamble by the adventurers and their community.

Next, I asked the adventurers how they would begin.

Old Age/Gandas took the lead, based on the handout’s stations. He approached Farnalie/Creatrix, and attempted to embrace her, making her older. I asked him to make an ability roll—any sort of Rune, Passion, or skill—to represent his actions. We explored the idea that while in a heroquest, the game should become a bit more freeform. Basically, while heroquesting the game rules grow looser, while we focus on gritty action when not questing, or something like that. Runes can be used pretty freeform, and skills used metaphorically (the example we came up with was Old Age using Move Quietly to “sneak up” on Farnalie, like how old age is said to creep up on people). Spells are less metaphorical, and spirit magic spells in particular. Gandas used his Beast Rune to reflect the cruelty of Death as an opening action, which was countered by Farnalie’s magic-warping Moon Rune restoring her youth.

With the stalemate, I ruled that each person in conflict lost one magic point. This idea borrows from Webb’s Tradition. During Tradition, there’s a heroquest in which a character’s ability to stay in the quest is measured by their magic points. I really liked this idea of using magic points as “stamina” or “magical health” or whatever because it’s intimately connected with the adventurer’s POW characteristic—their soul. The idea is that actions during the heroquest can have their normal effects, but can also wound (or heal) your soul. Run out of magic points, and that character drops out of the heroquest. That’s usually an automatic failure, even if you’re supposed to be “defeated” during the quest. We defined that if the adventurers and their allies drove Farnalie’s magic points to zero, that would be a win along the lines of “Death has overcome the Creatrix.” But I also made sure to state that wouldn’t be the only way to win. Actions are meant to matter more than damage.

Throughout the quest, I ended up using this rough metric for losing magic points:

• Stalemate: Each side loses one point.
• Minor Victory: Loser takes 1D3 damage.
• Major Victory: Loser takes 1D6 damage.

Spells can still cost magic points to cast, and would probably have magic point damage in addition to their standard effect, if it felt relevant. The goal wasn’t to have rigorous rules here, but to play it by the seat of our pants and test what felt right. A big piece of why it felt right to me is that my players tend to lurk down around 10-13 POW to improve their odds on POW Gain rolls, sacrificing the rest for Rune points, spells, enchantments, offering to weird spirits, and other shenanigans. I’ve had players impulsively go down as low as 4 POW!

This magic point damage mechanic in particular was concerning for the players because they were already down several magic points due to their heist last session, although they did have the advantage of numbers and community support. We didn’t implement the concept with full consistency, but to me it “felt” like we’re on the right track.

After Old Age’s stalemate, the players froze a little when I asked who acted next, so I determined that the Bountiful Mother/Tyvula pronounced her claim for the Earth’s Fertility as her inheritance. Farnalie rebuked this, but failed to prove her own Fertility. Then the Impudent Daughter/Agnis jumped in.

Her player first clarified what would happen if she tried contesting every inheritance. I ruled that this was a possible story outcome, but that the adventurer would receive increasing penalties to her ability rolls as she got greedier and greedier. The player confirmed, then rolled Farm to demonstrate that she was more worthy to receive the Earth’s Fertility. She failed, while Tyvula succeeded—however, the Creatrix remained hesitant. After all, unlike in the original story, she’s not yet willing to hand power over to her daughters! Plus, things working out in weird and unexpected ways makes sense for trickster roles.

The Mistress of the Crafthall/Avalon intervened on her sister’s/cousin’s behalf against the Impudent Daughter’s sneaky claim. (I made sure to use blended terms like that to reflect the mixed Hero World and Middle World relationships throughout the game’s narration, too.) With a sacrifice of her own Fertility, she bolstered the Bountiful Mother to prove that she truly was deserving of the Creatrix’s Life. Fertility waned from the Creatrix/Farnalie.

The Mistress of the Crafthall/Avalon then made a claim for the Earth’s Might! I had suspected this might happen when she Identified that role, because Avalon’s player is taking more of a shieldmaiden, “the Earth takes no shit” perspective for his adventurer. Which is awesome!—but is going to come into conflict in this type of situation. Once again there’s a stalemate, as Farnalie rebukes Avalon’s claim of strength. In response, the Mistress casts the Strength spirit magic spell to prove her might. The cast is a success, and she becomes mightily muscled.

At this point, we have a brief discussion about the use of the same ability multiple times while doing this freeform heroquesting stuff. After all, it’s becoming pretty clear that when you stretch abilities into metaphorical or freeform usage, it’s easy to just rely on one strong ability, like Farnalie’s Moon Rune. We decide that repeated ability use will suffer a –20% penalty, based on the rule for multiple parries during melee combat. This is pretty quick and easy to apply, so it fits well into this sort of situation.

While the Mistress/Avalon and the Creatrix/Farnalie are in conflict, Old Age declares another attack. He calls upon his Air Rune to become like a poisonous vapor, so that he can enter the Creatrix’s body that way. This leads to a simultaneous conflict as Farnalie attempts invoking the Moon to redirect or block her opponents attacks using poisonous Air, and the strength of the Earth.

Old Age is blocked, but the Mistress succeeds. I rule that the poison Air has filled the Creatrix’s lungs, but not yet turned her old. This weakens the Creatrix/Farnalie enough that the Mistress/Avalon wins her contest, claiming the Earth’s Might.

Then, there’s still one traditional piece of the inheritance to claim—the Earth’s Authority. This is traditionally the Mistress’s piece of the inheritance, while the Earth’s Might is claimed by the Mighty Daughter or Cheerful Dancer (called by mortals Maran, and later Maran Gor). I’d left at least one of the three main daughters open, to create room for conflict within the story. But at this point, I throw a twist into the story I hadn’t expected myself!

The adventurers hear Fire/Murhan call in a bold voice that he should receive the Earth’s Authority, as the great Light which will lead the world. In effect, Murhan is trying to increase Fire’s role in the story to become that of the Emperor of the Universe, Yelm. He succeeds an Orate roll, and presents a powerful argument about his worthiness to the Creatrix. Plus once again, Farnalie is not inclined to let this quest go as planned if she can avoid it.

In response, the Impudent Daughter/Agnis tries to cast Extinguish, but fails the cast roll. This was the players immediate thought when he heard that Murhan had heroformed into the house’s Fire at the start of the quest. “Gee, it sure would suck if I Extinguished him…” Failing that, she makes a roll on her Water Rune to invoke the opposed powers. This feels weak, but ultimately meets a plausibility test for me because of her trickster aspect. After all, that’s why I allowed the Water Rune in the first place when she heroformed the Impudent Daughter.

She deals damage to Murhan, and I have her roll a POW resistance roll to overcome him in the contest. Murhan isn’t making an ability roll to counter, but rather is mimicking his god, Yelmalio/Elmal, and enduring the hardships. The resistance roll is a fail, so Fire/Murhan dims, but remains glowing. Fire will rule the universe with Earth’s Authority!

Well, that can’t stand.

The Mistress/Avalon asks to make a challenge on Earth’s Authority, much like the Impudent Daughter has been. I agree on the condition that she either lower her Harmony Rune from 90% to 80%, or use an ability to overcome her Harmony Rune. My thought process is that she has a strong preference against discord due to that Rune, plus she’s also heroforming a role which typically uses the Harmony Rune. Add to that that she’s already begun blurring the lines between different mythic roles, and that in this quest challenging the inheritance is strongly associated with a trickster role, and I feel she’s straining plausibility. The player agrees with me, and chooses to make a role on Avalon’s Disorder Rune of 10% to see if she breaks character. He rolls over, and Avalon doesn’t make her claim.

However! Avalon’s adoptive mother, Hanalda, is standing nearby in the Middle World. After the Mistress/Avalon’s claim on the Earth’s Might succeeded, she moved close to give her daughter praise. As a different counter to Fire’s claim, Avalon takes hold of her mother, and tries to pull her into the Hero World!

After a moment’s thought, I decide to allow this, provided Avalon wins a POW resistance roll against Hanalda. The issue isn’t that Hanalda’s resisting the magic, but that she hasn’t been defined as a participant in this powerful and impromptu magic. Giving Avalon a bonus to the roll for her Strength spell—since she’s received the Earth’s Might, and is doing both a physical and magical action—I rule her attempt is low, but not impossible.

And she succeeds! Hanalda walks through the door of the Hero World’s hut as a young and beautiful version of herself, Identified with the Earth Rune as one of the Many Daughters. She counters Fire’s claim because as one of the Creatrix’s daughters, she is a better choice for any inheritance than Fire.

While Farnalie may have been willing to give Authority to Fire as a vengeful strike against the conspirators—one in harmony with her homeland’s Solar culture—she’s certainly not happy to hand it over to a leader of House Netha. Further, Hanalda also bears House Netha’s Asrelia privileges, delegated from her sister’s position as God-Talker of Asrelia (in addition to several other political and religious appointments). So, she has similar mythic resonances to Farnalie.

The Creatrix/Farnalie attempts a great reversal. She blows the poison of Old Age within her lungs out to one of her Many Daughters, and declares that the daughter is, in truth, older than she. Therefore, she’s not fit to inherit the Earth.

The adventurers counter this in two ways (and I was grateful they jumped in, so I wouldn’t be playing awkwardly with myself). Old Age/Gandas rolls his Illusion Rune so that it will only seem that the Creatrix has expelled him, while the Mistress/Avalon declares that she casts Vigor to bolster her sister’s/mother’s lovely youthfulness.

Farnalie attempts a Moon Rune roll to perform another reversal, but her percentage is abysmal due to repeated penalties. Magic and power fade from the Great Creatrix, flowing into her daughters as Old Age finally claims her for his own.

Our heroquest ends with Harmony being reestablished among the Daughters of the Earth. Instead of Harmony, the Impudent Daughter/Agnis rolls on her Love (family) Passion to express the same sentiment.

The hero magic fades, and everyone becomes normal again. I decide to just go around the table and ask what the players think appropriate boons would be. I know I want them to be fairly minor, since this heroquest, although important, wasn’t a ceremonial affair with lots of magic powering it. It was small and impulsive, triggered by the myths rather than by the participants. In addition, this is right at the start of the campaign, and I want room to escalate powers, abilities, etc.

• As the inheritor of Earth’s Might, Avalon asks for something to do with STR or CON. We agree on a CON Gain roll—working the same way as a POW Gain roll, but for CON—and she gains one CON.
• Gandas claims Farnalie as Death’s Own, denying her as a hostage of any of the elites. Despite their glares, no one contests the commoner because no one’s willing to anger someone who has been channeling Death’s power. We define that she won’t immediately murder him in his sleep due to the heroquest’s magic, but that they are not lovers like in my version of the myth. We also agree that eventually Farnalie will break free of the magic because Asrelia, too, wasn’t claimed forever by Death.
• We agree that Agnis receives acceptance, framing this as adoption into House Netha as a member of Hanalda’s household. Agnis becomes Avalon’s sister in both a legal and magical sense. This worked for us because her relationship with her family in Brol is strained. I’m looking forward to what problems this may create.

We start wrapping up the adventure. More strife occurs, but nothing we need to play out. The conspirators are ultimately successful, and the leaders of the Red Earth Alliance within Sylthi either exiled or killed in the fighting. Gandas ransoms Farnalie to an unspecified group of Lunars, and hogs the ransom for himself (rather than sharing it with his fellow adventurers—we haven’t discussed if he shares any with relevant communities). In addition, Avalon’s mother looks a few years younger. She’s less grumpy and arthritic, and is currently destined to receive a bit more political authority within the Netha Clan.

Overall, I found improvising our way through this heroquest was a lot of fun. Forcing myself not to prep rules felt really effective, because it made the game more the table’s, rather than just me presenting material and seeing how the players react.

As I believe I noted earlier, one of the flaws in the handout was naming the gods. In the future, I won’t do that, because I think it will be more interesting if the players have to muddle through ideas. In general using a handout feels like it’s likely to push player choices—that’s definitely what I witnessed as they considered roles and stations, although the heroquest grew more freeform as we played it.

I think the goal is to sort of “teach” ourselves to keep playing it through in this open way, to the point that the players will start inventing stations of their own and making unexpected choices. Or, better still, consciously implementing stations from one quest, into another. One option I considered as a reward, inspired by Phipp’s Secrets of HeroQuesting, was to allow Avalon to sacrifice POW and learn “Asrelia Retires” as a heroquest spell, using Phipp’s formulation of those abilities. I ultimately decided against it because I didn’t want that much emphasis on one adventurer, so early in the game—I’d rather the rewards feel more evenly distributed. Basically, such a spell would allow Avalon to use her Rune magic to invoke the quest in relevant situations, getting ad hoc bonuses or penalties as the myth implied.

Something else I need to work on is tracking non-player character action so that it remains cohesive and interactive. My preference is usually having full statistics—I am the statblocks guy, after all—but I think with better notetaking, I could use NPC abilities in a more consistent and less repetitive way.

Further, our method also needs to think about how mythic plausibility works. How many roles is too much? How many actions? At some point, I definitely felt that Avalon was straining plausibility, and I think we need some sort of narrative and mechanical tools to handle that situation.

Finally, as I look back over the heroquest, I realize it wasn’t exactly about Identification, but was more magical combat against Farnalie. Within the role of the Great Creatrix, she attempted to circumvent the heroquest’s intended myth, rather than come into conflict over whether or not she was Identified with one of Asrelia’s roles. Maybe a multi-role magical debate would model this story better? Food for thought.

Anyway, that pretty much wraps up the session. Thanks for reading, those of you who’ve reached this far. I know it’s a really long one.

Next session, we’re going to be doing stuff with the Aldryami—the plant-people elves of Glorantha. I have a few ideas, but for now, I’m going to keep them as my secret.

Until next time, then.

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