The first RuneQuest character I ever played was a knight-sorcerer in RuneQuest 3. Coming from Pathfinder 1E and Dungeons & Dragons 3.5E I loved the idea that you could play anything you wanted due to the skills-based Basic Roleplaying (BRP) engine. Our game added in a bunch of insane spells from Sandy Petersen’s RuneQuest sorcery rules (including putting his Tékumel spells into our Glorantha game) and basically I’ve had a bit of a love affair with sorcery ever since.
In RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha (RQG) the core “game area” extends north to Tarsh, and south to Choralinthor Bay, centered on the princedom of Sartar. The former “Holy Country” which surrounded the bay has split back up into six regions following the disappearance of its magical ruler, Belintar. RQG more or less provides rules for playing adventurers from two of these Homelands: Esrolia and Heortland. (Heortland isn’t strictly described as its own Homeland, but since it’s included as a region of Sartar in RQG I believe that’s how Chaosium’s Glorantha views it.) Of those not yet detailed, the region of God Forgot is a sorcery-dominated culture. This is so far south it’s not actually on the RQG maps—you need to check out the Guide to Glorantha or the free Argan Argar Atlas to actually go that far south.
The people of God Forgot are pretty much “weird Malkioni.” They’re cool, but today I actually want to spend some time exploring their northern neighbors. The Esvulari are an ethnic group which lives on the fringe between the “theistic” Heortlings and the “humanistic” people of God Forgot. As a sorcery nerd I’ve kept returning to thinking about them in my scribble journals. Sorcery-wielding theists were basically impossible in the RuneQuest 3-based perspective which introduced me to Glorantha. Even in RQG they’re still unusual, restricted mostly to the worshipers of Lhankor Mhy (or the Lunars, as I’m told their forthcoming cults book will detail).
So what does this culture look like?
Like with my articles on the Old Gods awhile back, anything I say about the Esvulari and their religion is strictly true for Conrad’s Glorantha. I’ll probably reference Chaosium’s Glorantha a fair bit, but this stuff is gloriously non-canonical (or possibly canon-heretical). I’d enjoy publishing something about this on the Jonstown Compendium eventually, but don’t think of this (or similar) articles as a hint that it’s “in the works” or “coming soon.” Right now the Aeolians are firmly in my “playing around” headspace. I just think sharing some of it could be fun, and could inspire other players and creators to find their own ways to keep their Glorantha weird.
An Ethnicity or a Religion?
First off there’s a major distinction to be made between these two groups:
- The Esvulari are an ethnic group which lives primarily in the hills and valleys south of Heortland, centered around the great temple to Aeol at Mount Passant.
- They follow Aeolianism, the religion and philosophy spread by Aeol, the Third Prophet of the Invisible God. (First was Malkion, second was Hrestol.)
Pretty much all of the Esvulari are Aeolians, but not all Aeolians are Esvulari. Like most religious movements, Aeol’s revelations spread outside his own ethnicity or culture. Aeolians can be found throughout the whole Holy Country area. They’re also present in the Dragon Pass area to the north, although not exactly common. My thinking is that, just as Heortling clans fled north when Belintar conquered the lands around the Choralinthor Bay, so too some Esvulari clans joined the Resettlement of Dragon Pass. Over time these Esvulari mostly integrated with the Heortlings and other peoples to form the Sartarites, but their religious traditions were inherited by the descendant communities.
This history of diaspora provides religious variation and improved access to sorcerous traditions in the core game area. It eases Aeolianism into Sartar by allowing the gamemaster to just say “Oh yeah, this one clan in your tribe are Aeolian weirdos.” That way, if players want to do more with sorcery than Lhankor Mhy’s investigations and logic puzzles, there’s a route provided which bakes it into the setting. I like this concept because the way elements of Glorantha are interconnected is one of the setting’s strengths. Saying “you learned sorcery from a wandering Malkioni wizard” feels, to me, less compelling than providing new cultural context encouraging Orlanthi sorcerers.
Interested in more weird RuneQuest cults from yours truly? I published quite a few while producing Monster of the Month. My favorite is probably the dreaded Storm Bull Frog—go check it out!
Who are the Esvulari?
Ethnically, the Esvulari are closer to the pseudo-Malkioni of God Forgot than they are to the Orlanthi. In daily life their cultural practices, however, are more similar to the Orlanthi. They still follow a Malkioni caste system, but much more loosely than in most regions of the West:
- The ordinary people have no special name for their caste—they simply are Esvulari. Westerners trying to figure out their society would probably call them dronari, the caste of merchants, farmers, and other laborers necessary to mundane existence. However, these people have the right to wield weapons, study magic, and claim other privileges denied to a dronar in the West.
- The priestly caste is the most visible overt “caste” in Esvulari society. They retain the name zzaburi, and are ritual and magical specialists. A zzabur is forbidden from participating in many activities of day-to-day life. This avoids impurities and helps them act as virtuous role models.
- There is just one family of the leading talar caste, albeit a large one (nearly a whole clan). They are descendants of the Third Prophet, and worship Aeol directly through an ancestor-worship cult. The talari serve a similar role in Esvulari society as the cult of Orlanth Rex does among Sartarites, protecting and binding the rest of the people together.
They live by farming and pastoralism, love a good cattle raid, praise the Earth and venerate the Lightbringers. To outsiders (like Malkioni, Lunars, and Praxians) the Esvulari basically look like an Orlanthi tribe with some slight differences in religious imagery.
To the Esvulari, meaning and purpose is found in the Middle World—not in some distant place of spirits or gods. Their syncretic perspective blends Orlanthi reverence for the eternal with the Malkioni (and especially Brithini) emphasis on the here and now. They see the Middle World as the sacred expression of the Invisible God’s own thoughts, which descend from it as the gods in accordance with the Law. This emphasis on Law as a constitutive element of the universe is especially characteristic of the Esvulari. Other Aeolians do typically hold some version of this belief, but they do not see it as central to their version of the Lightbringers religion.
Esvulari also differ from other Aeolians in their belief that one day New Malkonwal will be restored. This is a sacred city said to have been founded when the First Prophet—Malkion—was exiled from the West during the God Time. This is the eternal dream and ambition especially of the talari royal family. Aeolian philosophy, however, does not require this set of beliefs about the future of the Esvulari people.
In addition to Aeolianism, the Esvulari also worship the traditional goddesses of the Earth. They favor Ernalda and the Grain Goddesses, of course, but tend to blend together the dark aspects of the Earth into a single bloody goddess whose name is not spoken. Esvulari earth worship tends to have more social prominence than among the Heortlings because they see Ernalda as her own queen, not as the wife of Orlanth. In RuneQuest terms they’re “friendly” rather than “associated.”
What is Aeolianism?
The Third Prophet taught that all gods are descended from the great Invisible God which existed, exists, and will exist. The greatest of these entities are those which directly come from the Invisible God’s thought. This is the origin of the Celestial Court, the original versions of the Power Runes. Later in the God Time, the Invisible God sent new gods to correct the errors brought about by the devolution of the Celestial Court and their descendants. These new entities—the direct thoughts of the Invisible God itself—are its Emanations.
The Emanations are identified with the Lightbringers who saved the cosmos. Each is a greater god, identified with power over a single Rune. They act and are embodied through their Consorts, which are identified with their opposite Rune plus an Elemental Rune. Thus according to Aeolians, Orlanth is the Movement Rune, an Emanation of the Invisible God. His Consort is the goddess Entekos (Stasis and Air). In the Middle World, air is the body of Entekos, and movement within the air—wind—is Orlanth’s presence. Aeolian philosophy also teaches that this extends to the human body. We are filled with wind, with breath, and so we are animate.
Each Aeolian cult is a unity of two deities: an Emanation, and their Consort. The former are worshiped directly by the zzaburi, while the masses worship the Consorts as an intermediary. The Emanations, of course, in turn act as intermediaries with the Invisible God. My list of Aeolian cults currently includes:
- Lord Orlanth (Movement) and the Lady Entekos (Stasis, Air)
- Lhankor Mhy (Truth) and Elasa, the Light of Imagination (Illusion, Fire/Sky)
- Lady Urmala (Disorder) and the Old Dark (Harmony, Darkness)
- Chalana (Fertility) and Magasta the Terrifier (Death, Water)
- Issaries (Man) and Asrelia the Hag (Spirit, Earth)
Aeol’s Hexagram—which replaced Zzabur’s Pentacle in this culture’s version of Malkionism—then completes these five with Moon, which is associated with the Runes of Luck and Fate. This point on the hexagram is simply called “The Mystery.”
Aeolianism provides some Rune magic, but emphasizes sorcery. It views sorcery as using one’s mental and magical capacity to shape the expression by which the gods are immanent in the Middle World. Sorcery is not a distant and ecstatic union with the Invisible God, but a present mindfulness of the sacred world around the caster. Improving one’s skill requires both the traditional rationalist study of Runic forces, ritual chants, etc., and also experiencing the world to develop an intuitive, subjective familiarity with the Elements, Powers, and other Runes.
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