Gloranthan Cult One pagers are an attempt to gather into a one (or two) pager format useful information about Gloranthan cults.
Here is another batch of one pagers from the net. Brown book of Zzabur, Nick Effingham’s site and soltakks page have been the source with updates from other material. I modified them a bit and here they are
Yara Aranis – Eater of Horses, a Lunar soldier god
Gloranthan Cult One Pagers are an attempt to gather together in a single page (well sometimes two pages) format the main cult information. Currently there are more than 150 cults described. Your game system may vary (Runequest versions or even Heroquest) but you might still find something useful in here even if you are not using the exact same version of game system – this is material I have created for my campaign over the years. It relies on multiple sources but might not be exactly canon even if I have tried to follow that as much as is useful for my campaign. Input is welcome.
Gloranthan Cult One Pager contains the following parts (if I have been able to find out the information from a source or invented it in case of some)
Name and the main purpose of the cult
Runes
Requirements to Join initiate
Requirements to join – rune level
Cult skills
Folk magic for Initiates
Theist Miracles (Rune spells)
Pantheons the cult belongs to
Sources
Areas the cult (thru its Pantheon or otherwise) can be found
Personality traits that the runes of the cult expect members to personify
Opposite runes.
Enemy, Hostile, Friendly and Associated cults
Holy Days and High Holy Days
Spirit Societies the cult belongs to or is associated with
Totem animals the cult’s spells can command or speak to
Example of Glorantha Cult One Pager
The spells and skills part this is tuned for Adventures in Glorantha Preview on top of Mythras. If this does not suit your campaign system wise – disregard them or mod them to your heart’s content. For the spells and the description of the cults you will need to dive into Cult Compendium, Gods of Glorantha, Cults of Terror and Shadows in the Borderlands – at least.
Rest of the information is mostly if not all game system independent Glorantha information.
The links to sources of the spells is on the tools directory.
The links to original books are mentioned for the cults, you will need those books for detailed description of the cult, skills and spells. Many of the books and magazines are out of print but Moon Design Publications has a few and some others you may find thru drivethrurpg.com, Amazon or eBay.
Cults available are grouped in the link underneath roughly by ‘pantheon’
All of the above will likely change during my campaign.
You will of course want to follow both the cult’s social guidance of who the enemies and friends (above) are and your cult’s rune personality guidance to emulate your cult’s god.
Gloranthan Cult One Pagers have now also pantheon specific summaries to be easily distributed to your players.
Pantheon Cult Catalogue
Pantheon Cult Relationships
Pantheon Cult Spell Catalogue
Pantheon Cult Personality Traits
These are stored in the pantheon directories together with Cult One Pagers.
Aldrya, Babeester Gor, Flamal, Grain Goddesses, Mee Vorala, Voria, Yelmalio
Hsunchen
Ancestor Worship, Basmol, Hungry Ghosts, Hakim & Mikyh, Telmor
Independent
Baraku, Blackfang, Bloody Tusk, Caladra & Aurelio, City God, Dorasta, Flintnail, Lamsabi, Selern, Sun Dragon and Um-Oradin
Kralorela
Black Sun, Dendara, Grain Goddesses, Hakim & Mikyh
Lunar
Seven Mothers (Danfive Zaron, Irrippi Ontor, Jakaleel the Witch, Queen Deezola, She Who Waits. Tele Norri, Yanafal Tarsils), Annilla, Crimson Bat, Etyries, Lanbril
Malkion
Dormal and Arkat
Ompalam
Burayha Xolagi (the Good Doctor), Calari the Hunter, El-Jazuli (the Earth Witch), Ennung, Ernamola, Evukindu, Garangordos the Wise, Hanjethulut (the Angry One), Ikadz, Jokotu the Liberator, Karkisso the Seer, Ompalam, Orjethulut
Pamalt
Ancestor Worship, Babeester Gor, Basmol, Bolongo, Lodril, Maran Gor, Nyanka, Pamalt, Rasout, Ty Kora Tek, Uleria
Praxian
Ancestor Worship, Basmol, Dark Eater, Eiritha, Foundchild, Gagarth, Hungry Ghosts, Pavis, Storm Bull, Waha, Zola Fel
Glorantha has rich and diverse tradition of cults with enmities forged in times beyond Gods War and friendships made in Time. It is good to know who your cult’s traditional enemies are. If you do not follow the traditions of your cult’s relationships it will be that much more difficult to get ahead in the cult, not impossible but more difficult. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
The information here can make for tense moments in your party and in society in general. If your Blackfang assassin has managed to stay in good standing with your Zorak Zoran and Pavis fellow members it still might not be wise to let them know about your tight connections with Krarsht.
Cult Compendium has a great compatibility chart for finding out who your cult’s friends and enemies are. Currently it has 43 cults there. I have now combined that information for those cults into easily digestible form into the Gloranthan One Pagers.
You will of course want to follow both the cult’s social guidance of who the enemies and friends (above) are and your cult’s rune personality guidance to emulate your cult’s god.
This is the initial list used to source the cult associations (this is from the Cult Compendium)
There are several versions of Gloranthan Holy Day calendars floating around. Soltakks has a nice one on his site among lots of other useful stuff and there exists a beautiful Theyalan rune calendar made by Nel – a Catalonian gamer with fluent Finnish – of all languages.
I wanted to have a complete calendar containing all the cults. It is A3 in size 🙂
This is a draft version with as many as I could find so far. There are a few cults that do not have holy days or have floating ones – those are not in here.
Same goes for the Good Doctor, Fonritan healer god Burayha Xolani.
If you are not using Rune Affinities in your Runequest game you are missing a lot. Anyway in such a case replace the Rune Affinity requirement by Exhort or some similar Rune Magic skill.
The runes have been updated based on the research done in this document so should be up to date with the latest information. Changed Ompalam’s rune to be Law instead of Harmony.
Runequest and Glorantha recommend the character to act like one’s god. Cults and gods are associated with runes and many of the runes are associated with personality traits. If character does not act like the runes one’s god represents she is not likely to succeed in Glorantha nor in the cult – in fact she might suffer the displeasure of the cult or one’s god.
Personality traits are from Heroquest Glorantha. I felt that there are some runes that should have personality trait information that do not officially have it and added those to Moon, Law, Unlife and Spirit as per discussions on the Glorantha.com forums and Basicroleplaying Glorantha forums.
Here are the added personality traits:
Spirit: Ecstatic, Spiritual, Aware, Mystical
Unlife: Soulless, Fiendish, Relentless, Cold
Law: Logical, Rigorous, Materialistic
Moon: Tolerant, Balanced
Orlanthi character has the runes Movement, Air and Mastery. Those will bring the personality traits:
Air: Passionate, Proud, Unpredictable and Violent.
If one acts against those that might cause divine unpleasure and society’s unapproval for not emulating one’s cult / god and vice versa. Depending on game system this can be handled many ways.
This brings expectations that player characters might also have about the cult members in Glorantha.
The list contains all the cults that have Glorantha Cult One Pagers which means all the ones that have cult information in various Runequest editions (Cults Compendium, Cults of Terror, Cults of Prax etc). The runes have been updated based on the research done in this document so should be up to date with the latest information. Changed Ompalam’s rune to be Law instead of Harmony. Gloranthan Cult One pagers will be updated shortly with this information.
Fonrit is one of the most intriguing places in Glorantha.
The authoritative source is of course Guide to Glorantha. In Volume 1 there exists a detailed description of the culture of Fonrit and in Volume 2 description of the places.
Fonritan Culture for Mythras
Fonritan greeting: “I am a slave of mighty (name), from the city of (X). Who is your master, stranger?”
01-05 Treat as Ruling from Civilized for possessions
06-30 Treat as Aristocracy from Civilized for possessions
31-95 Treat as Gentry from Civilized for possessions
95-00 Treat as Outcast from Civilized for possessions
06-10 Slave Soldier
Treat as Slave from Civilized for possessions
11-30 Yad Slave
01-40 Landowner or Steward (treat as Gentry from Civilized for possessions)
41-60 Outcast
61-00 Professional (treat as Freeman from Civilized for possessions)
31-00 Kaddam Slave
Treat as Slave from Civilized for possessions
“The people of Fonrit have blue, black, or white skin, as well as any possible mixture thereof. Most of the ruling class is dark-skinned Agimori, while the most miserable slaves are predominantly blue-skinned Veldang. The majority of the population is of mixed blue and black origin, called the Torabs.” . GtG
Language
All main Fonritan languages (Afadjanni, Banamban, Kareeshtan and Mondoran) are related but are not mutually intelligible.
There are pregenerated characters for many of these in Pregenerated Characters for Fonrit if you need some for a quick run. Searching in the Encounter Generator for Fonrit you will find many NPC’s and other encounters for your game – take a look at both the parties and enemies tab.
This article expands still more the scope beyond those standard areas to guests who might arrive.
Fonrit is one of the more intriguing areas in Glorantha. Background for creating characters in Fonrit can be found here. Here is a set of pregenerated characters for a game in a land where deceit is the new normal, trust was sacrificed centuries ago, colors are bright, conspiracy and assassinations are on the menu every day, Renewed battle for the (relative) freedom for slaves and Oldsters try to uphold the oppression and Vadeli are your friends while Silence is not.
Sometimes you just need a bit more variety on the kind of characters that people take up. Here is larger variety of pregenerated starting characters for Encounter Generator . These are useful for those times when you just do not have time to go thru the character generation process. The reasons why (TPK, party member died in the middle of the game, surprise additional player…) are many. These follow the same principles than in the previous pregeneration articles (Standard Barbarians, Nomad Herders and Warriors, Barbarians, City Thieves and Priests, Esrolia, Balazar, Hsunchern – Civilization vs Primitives) that were usable for example in Pavis and Sartar.
This article expands still more the scope beyond those standard areas to guests who might arrive. Now most of the professions for barbarians and civilized are covered for Esrolia and Sartar
Notes From Pavis 