This week’s article is a continuation from last week exploring the Old Gods in RuneQuest. Last week focused on defining and describing these entities. This week explores ways that adventurers can interact with them. If last week was 80% lore, 20% gameplay, I’d say this week is closer to 50/50.
As a reminder, this article’s guiding star is YGWV—Your Glorantha Will Vary. At the moment, I don’t really care if I’m “right” about Glorantha’s mythology. It’s more like playing with action figures in a sandbox and having a good time. That said, I hope this provides food for thought, and inspires fun at your RuneQuest table!
Magic of the Old Gods
The published materials have a few rare instances of the Old Gods providing magic to mortals outside of nature-bending entities like Uleria. The most important is Gata, the primal earth who provides the spell Gnome to Gargoyle. This spell transforms an earth elemental into a humanoid monster; its specific effect isn’t really that important to our discussion. What is important, is that the spell exists, and is a one-use spell.
One-use Rune spells are generally restricted, powerful spells which consume the Rune points—the stored POW—used to cast them. Such a spell is often one-use for all cults but that of the spell’s source. For example, Humakt is the only cult with reusable access to the killing magic Sever Spirit. In my Glorantha, this reusability is a direct consequence of who Humakt is, as mentioned previously.
What happens when an adventurer wields a one-use spell? The power embodied in the Rune points leaves the chain of magic. It can’t be replenished because the mythic entity is too distant from the adventurer. A typical adventurer can’t participate in a magical relationship with the typical Old God. Their cult might know pathways to wield that entity’s magic—like Ernalda’s communication with Gata—but such spells don’t result in that reciprocal relationship we call Worship. Most mortals can’t participate in the existence of an Old God. Entities such as Uleria, Humakt, and Chalana Arroy facilitate this through their descent toward mortals. The Old Gods of Fertility and Death are genuine cosmic principles—unlike, for example, Orlanth or Ernalda, which are more precise in scope—which unlike their fellows are capable of altering themselves to draw closer to the Middle World.
Thus Uleria has a cult in Time, whereas Gata is experienced as the trinity of Asrelia, Ernalda, and Voria. Mortals aren’t somehow more capable of understanding Cosmic Love than Primal Earth—the Love Goddess is the entity which bridges that gap. If I wanted to frame a Glorantha in which she did not, I would probably present Uleria as an associated cult or subcult of Ernalda which provides a one-use Community Rune spell. Even this would not be all of the Old God. It would be the aspect—family and community—which is important to the Ernalda cult.
This mode of Old God magic—distant and restricted—offers a way for gamemasters to introduce powerful and distinctive Rune magic into their campaigns. It’s not likely that spells from an Old God are broadly available, so it’s very plausible for just a handful of temples to know the rites. From a game balance perspective, it’s easier to introduce a one-use spell because they effectively cost permanent POW to use. This cost isn’t trivial. In my experience, powerful abilities which are costly to use result in enjoyable gameplay. They lead to players spending more time thinking about their options, and getting to make more choices about what tools to use.
(As an aside, this is also why I like spirit cults—even if you don’t live near enough to replenish the spirit cult’s Rune points they still give adventurers access to weird tools and options.)
But what if players want to reach up to the Old Gods? How else can their magic be brought into a RuneQuest game?
Becoming a God
And beyond that, there is yet another even larger Outer Region … though often with vague and shifting boundaries because the concepts are fluid. … Hence, its extreme difficulty forbids passage for most people.
To truly understand these larger, encompassing domains requires …being able to enclose all the various concepts that are contained within them.
This process is one of going outward. Eventually a shaman could theoretically integrate these huge realms within themselves … and go onward to others that are even more huge and vague. …
When all possible realms are thus digested, Eternity may be reached.
RuneQuest core rules, pages 372–374
One essential quality of the shaman is contact with Greater Entities. Doing so requires the shaman to venture out into the Spirit World and meet them on their own terms. Although anyone can discorporate with the assistance of drugs (like hazia) or through the use of magic (like the Discorporation spell), only the shaman is capable of making the journey needed to interact with them directly. The result is the strange abilities and taboos for which shamans are well known.
Why?
In Conrad’s Glorantha, the names given to the Greater Entities are very much mortal titles given to powers beyond mortal ken. Shamans describe the entity they visited to followers or outsiders which then use a name which makes sense to the listener, not the shaman. The shaman describes a great, all-encompassing storm—so the sage names it Kolat, the animist spirit of the Air, which in the genealogies is the father of all air elementals. But this is not the shaman’s experience. The shaman’s experience is Umath, the Primal Air, the air which spreads across all of Sramak’s River and contains within it all the winds from a babe’s breath to Orlanth’s stormy Middle Air.
Yet Umath is long dead and long gone, his powers split up among his sons. So for the sage, this Greater Entity cannot be Umath. And the shaman simply smiles.
By awakening their fetch, a shaman exists in two places simultaneously. The first is the Middle World, the second the Spirit World. They do so within Time, engaging in both the magical and the mundane worlds of living experience.
There’s another name, too, for someone with a permanent presence in Glorantha’s magical world: a Hero.
Shaman, Hero, Demigod, Kaelith, Ascended Master—these terms and others (like whatever the easterners call their great mystics) all point toward the same type of individual. They aren’t synonymous. Rather, these labels are like differing circles on a Venn diagram. However, the overlapping space between all the circles is much larger than the spaces which are unique to each.
The actual properties of being a Hero aren’t terribly important for today’s discussion of the Old Gods. Suffice to say, a Hero is someone with POW stored in the magical world. For a shaman, this is called a fetch. According to The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories, this POW can also be stored through a theist’s heroquests. In my Glorantha, the POW dedicated to a sorcerer’s Runes or Techniques can also obtain this property through logical mastery of the mind, body, and emotions. (I haven’t invented the actual rules process yet, but my model here is how the Rokari zzaburi feebly imitate the demigod Brithini.) By investing POW into their deeds, an adventurer becomes a demigod within Time.
Becoming a demigod allows the adventurer to enter the chain of veneration. A shaman leads spirit cults, a Hero is worshiped by their followers, an Ascended Master channels their community’s magic points toward the One. Mortals cannot worship the Old Gods—but now, the adventurer is no longer mortal. The shaman can reach the Outer Realms and offer their strength to Kolat, to Umath. Tosti Runefriend can climb the Spike, and bring back wisdom learned from the Celestial Court. The Ascended Master ceases aging, allowing them to shepherd their community through generations of virtuous lives.
In RuneQuest terms, I like to think of this type of Old Gods magic with shamanic abilities as my archetype. The benefit of this perspective, I’ve found, is that utilizing shamanism as an inexact exemplar for Heroes helps complete the rules system—it helps me approach the different challenges players present when they want to explore mundane, magical, and combined adventures. To Hunt a God is my most thorough published example of a “combined” adventure, a proper heroquest. A strictly magical adventure is basically a shaman’s discorporate journey through the Spirit World, with an emphasis on the magical aspects of the adventurer (spells, spirits, POW, CHA, Runes, etc.).
Adventurers who achieve these feats become able to gain abilities and learn spells from the Old Gods. They gain reusable access to one-use spells, learn unique, new spells, and can be the channel through which followers gain access to such magic. Often, an adventurer who learns magic from an Old God will provide the path to their cult. However, for other initiates this magic is one-use. As mortals, they can’t engage in the same Worship relationship as the adventurer. Consequently worship of the Old Gods can be very useful for the adventurer, but often doesn’t lead to a revelatory change in the broader cult.
As the quote above suggests, in Conrad’s Glorantha it is, indeed, possible for an adventurer to go beyond even this stage. The adventurer who increases in power and mastery can begin to engage with multiple of the Old Gods, and even attempt to integrate multiple within themselves. The process for worshiping the “elder gods” like Atrilith or Ouroboros is the same, conceptually, as worshiping the Old Gods. The further up the chain an adventurer goes, the higher they can reach. However, this has consequences. Reach too high, and you become increasingly distant from the Middle World.
Thus, the likes of Arkat or Harrek become not just superhuman—they are inhuman in all senses of the word. And I have no clue what that might look like at the table, though I hope to eventually have players who strive for it.
After all, one of my favorite aspects of RuneQuest is how well the game scales upwards. I find the system favors long—especially indefinite—campaigns without predetermined endpoint. This is why I find the “chain of veneration” concept is a good compliment to a “shamanic” model for Heroes. Both favor a slow, constant journey onward and upward. From fresh-faced adventurer, to initiate, to Rune Master, to Hero, and beyond.
Want to keep up-to-date on what Austin’s working on through Akhelas? Go ahead and sign up to the email list below. You’ll get a notification whenever a new post goes online. Interested in supporting his work? Back his Patreon for early articles, previews, behind-the-scenes data, and more.
You can also find Austin over on Facebook, and a bit more rarely on Twitter.
Akhelas 