Glorantha

This page is in need of cleanup. Srsly. It's a fucking mess.

>

This page is needs images. Help plz.

Glorantha is the setting for the Runequest TTRPG. It began in 1966 when Greg Stafford was trying to pull some wiccan chicks into his wargaming group. It is based off of themes found in bronze age myths, rather than from Tolkien's works. And given the fact that Greg was a practicing shaman with a degree in Comparative Religion... Well, it's completely batshit. Younger gamers may recognize its influence on franchises such as Elder Scrolls (e.g, the bullshit insane lore) whose lead writers and designers were huge fans and even co-workers of Greg.

Recently a new, gigantic, lore book titled Guide to Glorantha was released —packing 12 ducking pounds of lore— and covers (practically) everything. Sadly, it's only available now as a PDF file, and unlikely to be reprinted. It did make enough money to keep the setting going with new lore, however. So support ~~Greg's retirement fund~~... the company he left behind, as Greg passed in 2018 (Rest in Peace you glorious crazy man).

Premise[edit]

The gods are real because people believe in them. Every belief in this world, no matter how contrary to that of others, is true to a certain degree. This fact is not helped by Chaosium's adage: "Your Glorantha will Vary" (YGWV). This is practically Greg's ultimate fuck you to any fan looking for "the canon" because technically, everything including the most moronic fan-theory, is canon. This is even backed up in-lore by multiple examples of individuals and even entire civilizations who changed others' beliefs and thus changed reality for their own ends.

The "world" is a cube floating in an endless sea topped with a dome of stars, that is really the underside of a land of gods and myths. As for the other planets, there are the various moons which seem to do little more than fuck everything up. Fortunately, that doesn't happen often (unless other civilizations or cults get in the way).

Everything that occurs in Glorantha generally has some sentient being or magical force responsible for it. For example, all rivers flow in any particular direction because a god had decided, been forced, or been bribed to be there (as the god and the river are one in the same). The people/elements/plants/ducks/lizardmen that inhabit Glorantha are generally religious zealots or ingrates that are more than willing to be extorted by any local gods that they have the poor fortune to witness. Aside from these Neanderthals there are a number of civilizations that seem to get by okay when they pool their efforts and trade off with the stronger gods.
That is, except for the Lunar Empire, which seems to fuck everyone's shit up by using a mysterious magic known as logical reasoning. Aside from the Lunars, there is also the Orlanthi who follow Orlanth (very original guys) and fought the Lunar Empire in order to get their own videogame and spotlight status. Besides these major players, Glorantha contains more individual peoples and places than can be covered in a single paragraph.

Creation Myth[edit]

There are multiple, some of which are in complementary and some of which are contradictory. Best I can do that is that there was a ouroboric dragon/pantheistic being/Glorantha herself/primordial pantheon/creation rune/world machine who came out of the ether and spat out/shat out/snorted out/breathed out/puked out/willed into being/built everything else. For a while Elves were ascendant because everything was just algae, forests, and prokaryotes, then the sun (Yelm) came out and gave Elves flowers; now he rules because they loved flowers so much.

Yelm, the sun, was set up to rule a golden age of peace, prosperity, and stasis. A few years/few millennia/few million years/few days later, a god named Umath got mad at the stasis so he made war with Yelm and got badly beaten. Before this he managed to fuck a mountain and who knows what else, that he begets Orlanth and the Storm Tribe. Someone discovered what death is and some trickster tested it on this universe's Adam and/or Eve, causing all of their descendants to become mortal. Orlanth, replacing his dad as king of the storm tribe, stole/borrowed/forcefully acquired death and used it on Yelm, sending the world into sunlessness.

Orlanth, now technically ruler of the world in this new Storm Age, still has to fight threats to his domain in the so-called Godswar. These threats range anywhere between manageable (e.g, Yelm's heirs and tribe, rival gods and ideologies) to horrible such as Chaos and trolls, both of which stemming directly from Orlanth's irresponsibility. Chaos was introduced through tears in the world left by Yelm's death and Orlanth's rebellion whilst trolls are refugees from the Underworld now unbearably hot and bright from playing host to Yelm's perpetually burning corpse. This all comes to a head when Orlanth's brother Ragnaglar dramatically expanded Chaos' portfolio by inventing the concept of rape on his wife Malia and his mistress Thed to create the literal Devil who darkened the world, sent millions into extinction, and killed a fuckton of gods.

During this Darkness Age, darkness, cold, and chaos were rampant (but they fight and hate each other), and only ended when Orlanth decided to man up and accept some responsibility for once in his life. He and his retinue, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy, Chalana Arroy, Eurmal the Trickster, Flesh Man, and Ginna Jar went through a highly difficult and convoluted quest to resurrect Yelm and have him re-light the world. While trying to make peace with Yelm, the Devil got himself killed so he can directly enter the Underworld and waylay the Lightbringers Quest until Glorantha herself/Ginna Jar/the Universe Itself decided they've had enough and caught the Devil in a web, using him as material for the legally-binding document called Time.

Yelm was returned to light the world but only during the day as he had to include his Underworld empire, and every god of every culture was made to sign the Great Compromise so they can live eternally in a separate, ever-repeating, but constricting Godsplane while their mortal constituents live in a free middle plane (ideally) protected from the clutches of Chaos by the fabric of time/an actual dating system and so, history starts from here.

Races & Cultures[edit]

Human Cultures[edit]

Orlanthi - known by many names such as Vingkotlings, Theyalans, and Heortlings. Can be best described in real-world terms as "greek-celtic-vikings" (basically the pre-roman Hispanians) for their olive skin, tattoos, and widely ranging hair and eye colors. You get to play them, erroneously portrayed with northern european features, as the Heortlings in King of Dragon Pass and against them, now faithfully portrayed, as Vingkotling "rams" in Six Ages. The posterboy culture of the franchise owing to having the most fluff and that their gods and heroes have had the most effect on Gloranthan history, for better or worse. Is currently, HeroWars era, at a state of war and/or rebellion against the moon. and spiritually led in this endeavor by Argrath who may be one or many. Notable Orlanthi nations are Tarsh - slavekeeping clients to the Lunars, Sartar - the kingdom you build in KoDP, and the Holy Country - the country you escape from in KoDP. Orlanthi men are expected to be fiery, violent, and emotional (manly tears galore) whilst orlanthi women are expected to be cold, calculating, and stoic.

Dara Happans - sun (yelm) worshipping, slavekeeping, patriarchal, egyptian-babylonian fusion who look like WASPs stuck in the Bronze Age. So prolific, in fact, that you can tell which cultures are the quite numerous offshoots/cousins of Dara Happans if their art or fluff describes them as midwest american caucasoid. They idealize the city life and the emperor (no matter what form he takes or his claims to power) making them the gloranthan equivalent of the modern, subordinate, weak-chinned, urbanite. They look down upon their rural citizens called Lodrilli (named after Lodril the Dara Happan earth god) which is ironic as the region that they live in, Peloria, is a breadbasket of the continent. Currently ruled as the Lunar Empire by the Red Emperor, demigod son of the Red Goddess (aka the moon), and thus they have subsumed Yelm into a subordinate position.

Hsunchen - just your run-of-the-mill spiritual animists who, interestingly enough, despite being of widely varying races and geographical distribution possess mutually intelligible if not identical languages. Hsunchen are divided into tribes based around their totem animal. Shamans of some of the tribes return from their heroquests as the opposite sex or permanently afflicted with qualities of their spirit animals while some tribes, such as the telmori, are literally just were-versions of their totem.

Agimori - living on the southern continent and widely varied. AKA the black people of glorantha. Ranges between the slavekeeping, wealthy Fonritians, to the matriarchal Kresh who roam around the plains on massive (think arena-sized) wagons kept constantly mobile by literal armies of porter slaves, to the Doraddi, the stereotypical bush hunter type, but they are TOTALLY COMPLEX, NUANCED, AND NOT ABSOLUTELY RACIST I SWEAR.

Kralorelans - Chinese. Just. Chinese. Led by human emperors who somehow managed to convince everyone (including dragons) that they're dragons.

Vormain - Japanese. Just. Japanese. But their economy flourishes and depends mostly on piracy. Think Somalian-Wako Pirates.

Malkioni - the fedora tippers of glorantha. Are characterized by varying pantheistic/atheistic magocratic caste systems wherein they believe that gods are simply entities who managed to "Tap" very strongly into the runes and orders that represent the aspects of the world, and that they themselves can rise to "godhood" by doing the same. Located mostly in the westerly parts of continents. Currently divided into many philosophies and equivalent kingdoms of varying cosmoplitanism and emancipation. Named after Malkion, who can be described as Glorantha's equivalent to a Buddha-Christopher Hitchens lovechild.

Praxians - horse-nomads but not really. Instead they are a collection of tribes of the various human races present after the desertification of Prax, assigned by draw-lot with their own respective warbeast mounts. There are the massive dark-haired and bearded Bison Tribe, the pygmies of the Impala Tribe, the swarthy tibeto-burmese lookin High Llama Tribe, among others, and even the Morokanth tribe wherein the humans lost the draw to the the animals and as such are farmed as food and companions to giant aardvarks with no opposable thumbs. Hates Chaos with a passion as the head of their pantheon is Storm Bull the Devil-Slayer, analogous to the Orlanthi Urox. Married to Storm Bull is the Earth Goddess Eiritha, analogous to the respective cattle goddess of most cultures, and is said to have singlehandedly repopulated Prax by periodically birthing the warbeasts within a cave.

Pentans - Sexual egalitarian dara happan offshoots on horses. Probably descended from the horse riders you play in Six Ages and/or charioteers you play against. Worships the sun-horse god Kargzant who may or may not be the orlanthi Elmal. Immensely more successful at being rampaging nomads with gloranthan history fraught with them having to get kicked out or subjugated for anything to move forward. There is even a period in recent gloranthan history wherein a warlord called Sheng Seleris ravaged Kralorela then conquered the Lunar Empire, at its golden age, and ruled over it for A CENTURY before being sent to the underworld by the moon herself. Currently ruled again by Sheng Seleris after Argrath did a Lightbringer's Quest to resurrect him. Sheng Seleris is so feared that not only did the moon birth a goddess specifically for the purpose of putting him back and keeping him in the underworld, but he also ended up taking over from the moon as the BBEG for Argrath to beat by conquering and consuming the Lunar Empire (emperor, prison goddess, and chaos included)

Glorantha is riddled with many other relevant minor cultures such as

Grazers- pentan exclave in Dragon Pass. Were practically the reason why the horse is anathema to Prax during their time as rampaging mercenaries/buffer states there. Now concerned with keeping Dragon Pass healthy with rulers of Sartar and Sarsh having to win their incumbent queen's hand to be declared King of Dragon Pass.

Votanki/Balazarings - Dog lovers. Just. Dog lovers. They have mastered dog lore to the point that they can even breed and foster absolutely massive dogs (think Clifford the Big Red Dog) on the regular. Worships Votank and of course, you've guessed it, his companion Brother Dog. Besides their tribal hearths, Votankiland is dotted with three citadels dedicated to Yelmalio, an ascetic understanding of Elmal/Kargzant/Yelm, and are ruled by Balazaring kings with these citadels basically representing what little civilization there is in this infertile shithole. Named after Balazar, a pentan who tried using the votanki towards his own dreams of kingship dashed by the fact that the land is, as aforementioned, an infertile shithole and that he got killed when dragons ate everyone when he joined an invasion of Dragon Pass.

Jrusteli - mainly known as the origin of the God Learner philosophy. God Learners were the munchkins of glorantha who were cynically collating the world into useful data and minmaxing. They became so good at Powergaming that they've managed to do things such as 1.) Predicting future events such as the HeroWars, 2.) Swapping the earth goddesses of the Orlanthi and the Dara Happans for a while, and 3.) Making the world rage so hard that it perceptibly moaned and groaned and shook to destroy their empire, their continent in the middle of the sea, ocean travel in general, and all trade and communications in a certain area of the main continent.

Artmali - Blue-skinned people that came to Pamaltela from the Blue Moon. Had a big empire in there during the Storm Age that prospered due to their ability to manipulate tides, before being corrupted by chaos. Pamalt burned it down along with the many chaos creatures and gods. What remains of them are the tribal Veldang who worship their crippled gods and nature spirits, and the Blueskin slaves of Fonrit. Another group called the Zaranistangi went and ruled the lands of Teshnos for a time before getting curbstomped out of existence by the God Learners.

"Elder Races"[edit]

Elves - these elves, as opposed to tolkien's elves, are literal walking talking trees. Created by their goddess Aldrya to assist in her quest to preserve and propagate plant life, these elves are divided into many subtypes depending on their pet tree types. Elves who take care of oaks are called Brown Elves and are typically large and very ent-like while elves who take care of tropical trees are small Yellow Elves and inhabit the Vietnam(s) of Glorantha, while elves who take care of pines and evergreens are Green Elves who are deliberately made to look like very attractive humans. DO NOT attempt to sleep with a Green Elf. Symptoms of elfborne STD include but are not limited to: skin discoloration, itchiness, halitosis, death, miscegenation, vitiligo, allergies, and (in rare cases) apotheosis.

Mostali - dwarves but not really. made as servitors and maintainers of Mostal, the world-machine, and are divided into many subtypes based on what kind of kiln they were forged in and what they're supposed to do. Rock dwarves are stonemasons, gold dwarves run logistics, and so on. Mind you, actual non-fleshy dwarves are endangered (think a couple of dozen) and have been elevated to the ruling class. To save their kind in the Darkness, most dwarves are now flesh and thus have to commit the business in presumably the old kilns (imagine the smelle). Currently engaged in "maintaining" and repairing Mostal and they sincerely think (lol) that everything that happened, whether disasters or miracles, in Gloranthan history was because of their or someone else's upkeep or breaking of the world-machine. They also sincerely believe that the world will return to its normal stasis, with mostali ascendant over the rogue gods and lesser races, as long as they keep working on the world-machine.

Trolls - grey ungulate-looking motherfuckers ranging from 7 to 10 ft forced out of their beautiful Underworld by the brightness of Yelm into the middleworld proper which they call the "Hurtplace". Can eat absolutely anything but has preference for elves, as they are delicious, and dwarves, as they are hallucinogenic, and are thus at odds with both of these races. Also despises Chaos for being their main competition during the Darkness and would support literally anyone, including the aforementioned races, currently fighting chaos. Once members of the now defunct World Council of Friends (composed of races who survived the darkness against chaos) but left when the council decided to build an artificial god, Nysalor/Gbaji, who subsequently cursed their race and goddess to have 50% chance to multiple birth stunted trolls called trollkin that they use as food, slaves, and cannon fodder, weakening the once powerful race. Is a matriarchal society and a matriarch's rank is based on the number of non-trollkin births. Worship mainly Kyger Litor the matriarchal goddess and Zorak Zoran the male troll god of violence.

Dragonewts - absolute weirdos who just do what they want. They are the larval forms of true dragons who for some reason take way too long to metamorphose. They do believe that every action they commit contributes toward dragonhood for the world and themselves in a philosophy centered around maturing into True Dragonhood. Each nest is ruled by an Inhuman King, a true dragon taking dragonewt form, under whose presence they can be reborn in their original eggs when killed, rendering them effectively immortal. Helped form the Empire of Wyrm Friends (EWF) in Dragon Pass until they quit and killed anyone who might know useful dragon lore as the decadence and tyranny of human side of EWF was simply too deeply rooted. This culminated in the Dragonkill wherein a fuckton of dragons came out of nowhere and ate every human in Dragon Pass as well as those unfortunate bastards who came to destroy the EWF. No human lived in Dragon Pass until King of Dragon Pass proper. Also, Dragonnewts who fail to take control of their desires and emotions devolve into and are the ancestors of the dinosaurs of Glorantha.

Beast Men - includes minotaurs, centaurs, and talking walking ducks with arms. Mostly located in the Beast Valley in Dragon Pass and are typically Orlanthi in culture and religion. Swears fealty to the King of Dragon Pass.

Chaos - They are composed of beings ranging from broos, who can impregnate inanimate objects, to Ogres, a race of Chaos-tainted humans who look normal until they open their mouths to reveal rows of jagged teeth for devouring other humans in cannibalistic murders, to Walktapus which are big naked humans with an octopus for a head, to vampires and undead, to simple amorphous giant blobs of chaos. Hated by almost everyone except the Red Goddess, who is vaguely affiliated with them, and her Lunar Empire, whose main philosophy argues that they are an essential part of the world. They exist on the rightful basis of kill-on-sight. Chaos as a state thrives on and is spawned by acts committed against the natural order. Notable examples of chaos-creating activities are kinslaying, failing HeroQuests with traditional chaotic villains, and rebelling against a rightful emperor.

Triolini - Bikini Bottom in Glorantha. Composed of warring subtypes such as the Ludoch, who are dolphin-folk, and Ysabbau, who are Gloranthan deep ones, among others. Subtypes are grouped into two based on descent from hated storm gods and nymphs who were either taken consensually, the Cetoi who are friendly to landlubbers, or raped, the Piscoi who would drag you down a trench, by those storm gods. Most of them have to surface to breathe with the exception of the Gnydron who are the giant triolini and whose ancestress nymph castrated her storm god to be impregnated with her own hermaphroditic mating organs.

Wind Children - Winged humans descending from sylphs and humans that lived during the Godtime. Largely just hang in their mountain top and cliff face aeries, flying their days away hunting and contemplating. Dislike elves because their trees used to take away their open spaces in Godtime, and griffins because they compete for the same enviromental spaces. Also complete wusses when it comes to alcohol, getting drunk from just a couple drops.

Digestible History[edit]

After the sun came back to the sky, the races of the world formed a United Nations of sorts based on their shared experience surviving Chaos. As expected, this council ends up failing as they decided to build a blasphemous artificial god to signify their newfound mastery of the world with most Orlanthi (because of course they're iconoclastic zealots), Trolls (because the new god smells of Chaos), and the Dragonnewts (just because) rebelling against the global government schizo/Gaddafi style.

This god was called Nysalor, later called Gbaji, who defeated Kyger Litor and cursed her children. Gbaji was fought by experienced heroquester Arkat, who was of the anti-theistic Malkioni subsect of Brithini in the so-called Gbaji Wars. Arkat got killed and was resurrected through Lightbringers Quest by Harmast Barefoot, who is a descendant of your Riders in Six Ages. Arkat is now a transracial Orlanthi who worshipped Humakt, the storm god who owns death.

Arkat made so many successful forays into HeroQuesting that he's managed to map the Godsplane quite comprehensively and has brought back allies and treasures to effectively kill Gbaji. Arkat also learned that Heroquests of all kinds are all true and can exist in mutualism, causing him to join the trolls and to not only try but also fabulously succeed in their own rituals. Arkat became the first and only male and human to be recognized as the leader of general trollkind, pissing off Harmast and the rest of the Orlanthi who then disowned him for being a trollboo. The final battle between Gbaji and Arkat ended with Gbaji's permadeath and the cursing of his homebase, Dorastor, into a land of rampant chaos and broos with specks of stubborn Orlanthi and Telmori.

After Arkat died, people from Jrusteli landed on Malkioni shores with the God Learner philosophy that they then used to great effect, ruling every coastline in the world in an Empire of Land and Sea. At the same time, people from Dragon Pass decided that dragons are cool and formed the EWF.

The God Learners added to their own knowledge by conquering Arkat's Autarchy and stealing his discoveries. The God Learners, however, faced a brick wall when they encountered the EWF and have gone on a perpetual state of war to steal and protect secrets.

Both empires did however share a mutual burden of, as ever, fanatical Orlanthi subjects with Orlanthi violently opposing both the blasphemy of the God Learners and the alien dragon-worship of EWF. The human rulers of the EWF were so desperate to quash the Orlanthi rebellions, led by the aptly named Alakoring Dragonbreaker, and have fallen off the path of dragonhood in the process, causing the dragonewts to abandon the EWF. The EWF, along with the True Golden Horde sent to vanquiish it, was then crushed and digested by a sudden swarm of dragons (the smallest being the size of an arena) appearing out of nowhere.

Meanwhile, the God Learners continued to violate the natural order, even creating yet another artificial god that Orlanth himself and the rest of the world banded together to turn it into scrapmetal. This all ends with Glorantha herself moving to expel the God Learners with an event called the Closing. The Closing was an invisible wave of force that destroyed ships and prevented sea-travel of any kind, and also caused tsunamis and storms that turned the western Malkionist subcontinent into a collection of large archipelagos

With the God Learners destroyed, sea-travel impossible, the EWF consumed, and Dragon Pass blocked off with a warding spell, a man named Belintar somehow amazingly managed to emerge from who-knows-where and swam towards the shores of Kethaela, the Orlanthi heartland of the continent's south. Belintar then conquered Kethaela and formed the Holy Country with himself dubbed as Pharaoh and as a God-King figure syncretized into all the religions within his domain, forcing the most orthodox of Orlanthi to cross the northern threshold to Dragon Pass, by then blocked off to humans for centuries.

At the same time, a woman in Dara Happa apotheosized as the Red Goddess, became the moon, took up space and squatted in Orlanth's plane in the sky, and the Lunar Empire was born. A few decades later, a Pentan warlord called Sheng Seleris conquered both the Lunar Empire and the not-China, Kralorela, into what could possibly be the largest contiguous land-based empire in Gloranthan history. This only lasted for a century however as Sheng Seleris got killed and was personally assigned a lunar goddess whose sphere was basically to keep him in the Underworld, he simply is that awesome.

With the opening of Dragon Pass, the people of the continent were no longer isolated from each other. Sartar conquered Dragon Pass and married the Grazer Feathered Horse Queen to become its king and built a powerful Orlanthi nation in control of the central trade node of the continent. Whilst the Prince of Sartar is typically the King of Dragon Pass, the ruler of Tarsh may sometimes prove a great contender.

A new period was started when the Pharaoh successfully bypassed the Closing with his son Dormal, who invented the method for doing so, basically apotheosizing as a patron god of sea trade and general bypassing of bullshit magical barriers. Some time after global sea trade was restarted, Tarsh and Sartar were conquered using treachery by the Lunar Empire leaving Tarsh as a highly obedient client-kingdom and Sartar with a sartarite cadet dynast as puppet king. The Pharaoh was assassinated by the Lunars and was magically prevented from reincarnating. Surprisingly, all the par-on-course Orlanthi revolts were successfully put down including one led by the accomplished Sartar-descended warrior-queen and heroquester Kallyr Starbrow.

This left the central Orlanthi nations weak, leaderless, subjugated, and Orlanth effectively dead. The Lunars were on the brink of victory until a man named Argrath, a wolf pirate under Harrek the Berserk, landed on the Holy Country and conquered all the way north and along the way have (may be attributed to one or many Argraths) resurrected Sheng Seleris, brought Orlanth back to life, conquered Dragon Pass, and had every Lunar loyalist in Dragon Pass accidentally eaten by dragons. The HeroWars culminate with the Red Moon crashing to Glorantha to vague and dubious results.

The history of Glorantha is actually documented in-universe in the future Harshax age by none other than a guy with a canonically friendly name of Greg Stafford. This history is also described multiple times in-universe to be unreliable and has set the precedent for the setting and those that draw inspiration from it to be the most obtuse and opaque in all of fiction, causing frustration for players, theorycrafters, and wiki editors alike. Believe it or not, this article was actually written as a badly needed quick rundown.

Significant and Notable Deities and Individuals[edit]

Orlanth - appellations include "Lightbringer", "Lawbringer", "Victorious", and "Ramping, Stamping, Petulant Troglodyte". A real irresponsible fellow who killed the sun, thus creating an entire epoch lighted purely by his sparkly thunderous ego called the Storm Age. He does get better though, and eventually selflessly restores the world. His myths are constantly portrayed as most credible as attributed to his power, the fanaticism and global spread of his smoothbrained namesake worshipers, and by the fact that he's the franchise's golden boy.

Yelm - is the literal sun and the inventor of either enlightened absolute monarchy or tyranny. Depends really on whether or not you're an Orlanthi. Portfolio is expectedly fire, light, imperialism, and photosynthesis. Life flows from this guy, do NOT kill him.

As the setting is big on aspects, avatars, body doubles, and general stand-ins; the other sun gods are either just him or his sons. One of these sun gods is the Orlanthi horse god Elmal. Elmal is described as an ex-member of Yelm's Fire Tribe, and is described as Orlanth's right-hand, and the guardian and light of the world during Orlanth's underworld adventures. In meta terms however, Elmal was just a balancing patch introduced by Greg to allow the posterboy Orlanthi access to fire powers. This small move has caused literal decades worth of Skub ever since within the Glorantha community with half the elders trying to canonize him to non-existence (even blaming him being in the setting on Greg having brain fog) and half welcoming the change and featuring him in his very own video game, Six Ages, that rationalizes him as the strongest of Yelm's heirs and knits him seamlessly into Dara Happan and latter Pentan mythos.

Ernalda - Orlanth's wife and following the aforementioned multiple aspects thing, is practically everyone's. May or may not be the many other earth godesses as well as even Glorantha herself. Every earth priestess of every culture will agree that their version of Ernalda has many husbands, but will claim that their culture's primary god is her favorite. It is actually only generally accepted that Orlanth is her greatest husbando-protector because the greatest earth-worshipping nation is located in Orlanthi homelands.

The Red Goddess - also known as "Sedenya", is the literal moon. Besides the missing Blue Moon of the Artmali, Glorantha did not have a moon before her as tides wax and wane not according to gravity but to the general mood of your local watering hole's resident spirit. Is really putting in a (murderous) spanner in Orlanth's works not just because she took up space in his sky, but has also taken over Yelm's earthly representative empire wherein her priests preach acceptance of Chaos as part of the natural order. Understandably sees Orlanth as a cantankerous fundamentalist for demonizing her idol Nysalor and his art of Illumination, but overlooks the fact that Chaos once killed 98% of the world and that the art of Illumination, described mostly as achieving CHIM in order not to not get sodomized by Chaos, takes a long-ass time to master.

The Devil and the Unholy Trio - the Unholy Trio is composed of Orlanth's brother Ragnaglar, Ragnaglar's wife Malia, and Ragnaglar's mistress Thed. Ragnaglar is the only one of Umath's sons to fail his coming-of-age ceremony simply because he got the absolute worst one: the Sex Pit. What happened in the Sex Pit can be left up to imagination but whatever it may be, this caused him to go mad and he is known as the god of madness to this day. During his crazed spree, he commits the first ever rape on his wife Malia who then decided that she must be the goddess of Rape so that the rest of the world would experience the pain she did. The rape led to child and this was delivered by Thed as midwife as she used to be a healing goddess, now taking on the mantle of Goddess of Disease.

Whilst, the Unholy Trio (or at least Ragnaglar) may be a purely Orlanthi aspect of the story of the darkening of the world, their baby the Devil is generally agreed upon by everyone as unfortunately real. The Devil was a motherfucker who've genocided most mortals and most gods, taking the world's worth of a Lightbringer's Quest to kill him. Both he and his dad Ragnaglar are very much dead, with the former used as parchment to write (I shit you not) actual Time.

Aldrya - the goddess of plants and most things greenery. The elves are her children and are named after her as the Aldryami. Is generally agreed upon by everybody, including herself, that she is Ernalda's daughter thus proving the point the earth predates the sun. Mortals who get to bone her just straight up descend into godhood as it's just that good.

Mostal - the world machine. Is the, if it can be called it that, god of dwarves. Is typically represented as the world as a machine and a cube and how dwarves actually maintain and repair this is described extremely vaguely. Other cultures tend to represent Mostal as a dwarfking as they can barely wrap their heads around it which goes to show you how dismal the average IQ could get in Glorantha.

Kyger Litor - is the big, bad, goddess of Darkness of the Trolls. Said to reside in the many palaces of obsidian she sprouted all over Glorantha as safe haven for her trolls from the burning glow of Yelm. As Darkness is now banished half of the time in both the Hurtplace and the Underworld, her power is mostly confined in the relatively small sliver of crust and bedrock between these places.

Yelmalio - could be anyone between Yelm and Elmal, a son of either, or a reinterpretation of either or neither (I hope you're sensing a pattern here). Is unique among versions of the sun god(s) as his sun powers do not include fire nor heat and that his worship is spread throughout the world not in the manner of sprawling empires albeit in the form of fortified ~~mosques~~ "Sun Dome Temples", around which civilizations form and armies of Phalanxes are trained. A fan theory is that he is just Elmal/Yelm as a subdeity after losing a battle to Zorak Zoran sometime in Godtime (note: time is extremely relative in the Godtime).

Genert - an earth god and the namesake of the setting's most documented (aka has the most Orlanthi) continent, Genertela. Once bossed over his landmass from his garden until the Devil straight up turned him into sludge and made his garden into the semi-arid veldt called Prax, home of the Praxian beastlords.

Pamalt - an earth god and the namesake of the setting's not-africa, Pamaltela. Is uniquely not only a male earth god, but also head of the pantheon worshipped by the not-africans of Glorantha with his power levels reflecting this status. Unlike his brother Genert, has managed to defend himself from chaos by doing literal scorched earth tactics of him turning the entire southernmost latitude of his continent into lakes of fire.

Argrath - the namesake of one or many heroes who created a notoriously Lunar-resistant community in the thrice-ruined city of Pavis, who rescued the most recent giant baby along with a literal giant cradle filled with loot and magical treasure, sailed with and fought with and alongside the most powerful warriors of the era, resurrected both Orlanth and Sheng Seleris, summoned a miniature Dragonkill, and is now on a mostly successful march of liberation towards the very center of the Lunar Empire. Note the similarity of his name to that of the man-hero of the last era, Arkat. Greg is really driving it in.

Arkat - born a slaving Brithini anti-theist who led the most serious resistance effort against Nysalor's empire at the time, as the Brithini are practically a bunch of dusty, old, egocentric wizards who would not brook "gods" to tell em what to do. Was resurrected by Harmast Barefoot in what is probably the first ever mortal Heroquest attempt to replicate the Lightbringer's Quest. Arkat is the greatest ever Heroquester since then with a 100% success rate in ever more complex and frequent Heroquests save that which was used to bring him back to life. Arkat is basically your heroes when you savescum in King of Dragon Pass. Using the resultant encyclopedic knowledge of godlore, an arsenal of divine-tier treasures and weapons, and an openness to learning from every source he could, he curbstomped Nysalor and an entire region into the void. Ironically died at a ripe old age.

Nysalor - an artificial god created by the late-stage World Council of Friends (the original Council minus the Orlanthi and trolls, and then led by the recently inducted Dara Happan Empire and "orlanthi" who were leeching at Orlanth's blessings) as a symbol of hope. Was already preaching divine diatribes the moment he left whatever womb he came from. Was the inventor of the art of Illumination which is a long-winded process towards the conclusion that boils down to basically recognizing that everything, especially Chaos, is part of the natural order. Being "Illuminated" to this conclusion usually leads to one graduating from "Hostile" to "Neutral" reputation for the Chaos faction. Of course, this offended the sensibilities of chaos-hating races such as Orlanthi, Praxians, and Trolls to the point of rebellion and alienated the elves, mostali, and dragonkin. This forced Nysalor to take the military option and imperialize which then led to conflict to the Malkioni nations of the west and Nysalor's proceeding downfall and demonization as Gbaji.

Belintar - imagine, if you will, being an average orlanthi stickpicker living in what used to be a great international harbor now in disrepair after centuries of no sea travel. The only traveler on the sea that you've ever seen is the occasional pile of garbage or divers bringing back what they could from the most adjacent coral reef. In the distance, within the limits of the magic of the Closing you spot a man butterfly stroking towards the coast at 40 miles/hour. This is how Belintar came to Genertela. This man was so powerful that he conquered Kethaela on his own and personally slew the previous boss of Kethaela, the thousands-year old demigod troll Ezkanekko. Now dubbed Pharaoh, he is the ruler of a golden age of Kethaela as a god-king portrayed to be the delegate of every single god of any race in the then renamed Holy Country. Much like Arkat, not even his godly powers could stop death and assassination from the Lunars. Whilst Belintar can and does resurrect regularly, the Lunars somehow managed to block this and he is now floating around somewhere as a disembodied spirit. The people of the Holy Country, now committed to Argrath's war effort, still hopefully await his resurrection and have even arranged for Argrath to recognize him as the true king of an indepdendent Kethaela once he manages to do so.

Glorantha

Contents