TEXT: Forgotten 
  Secrets of 
  Glorantha
   SANDY PETERSEN
  THE KRAKEN 
  Chapbooks
  
  SEMINAR HOST
  Sandy Petersen
  TRANSCRIPTION
  Scott Martin
  ILLUSTRATIONS
  Jon Hodgson
  IDEA & DEVELOPMENT
  Fabian Küchler
  EDITING
  Sandy Petersen
  Fabian Küchler
  Gianni Vacca
  Yohann Delalande
  PROOFREADING
  Sandy Petersen
  Gianni Vacca
  Fabian Küchler
  Yohann Delalande
  Kirsten Skacel (Lektorat Rotstift)
  DESIGN & LAYOUT
  Claudia Schille
  FONT
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  PAPER
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  This Chapbook PDF is a fundraiser for THE KRAKEN, published by
  Tentacles Press and the RuneQuest-Gesellschaft e.V., November 2015.
  For more information about THE KRAKEN visit the-kraken.de
  Forgotten Secrets of Glorantha was recorded at THE KRAKEN August 24th, 2014.
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  Sandy follows his own dark counsels. Let the reader beware!
  
  4
  Forgotten 
  Secrets of 
  Glorantha
  SANDY PETERSEN
  From THE KRAKEN 2014 Program booklet:
  FORGOTTEN SECRETS OF GLORANTHA 
  Host: Sandy Petersen 
  Let the Geekfest begin! We’ll make Uncle Sandy tell us stories on 
  how he helped Greg Stafford create Glorantha in the Green Age. 
  The Only Old One has more arcane knowledge, memorizes more 
  sources, knows more amusing trivia and unconsciously guards 
  more Glorantha secrets than anyone besides Greg. All we have to 
  do is ask! Crazy, I know. And yes, he knows the God Learner Secret. 
  And no, he won’t tell us. Or worse: he will. 
  
  5
  Sandy Petersen: So, Forgotten Secrets of Glorantha. Here are 
  some maybe never released secrets. One thing that hasn’t been clear 
  in Glorantha all that time is that Heroes are supposed to be really 
  rare. Dragon Pass of course has like fourteen Heroes and Superhe-
  roes, so that’s a ton but, that’s because it’s the Hero Wars. Up until 
  the Hero Wars, they’re really uncommon. Every cult has a bunch of 
  Hero Cults written up in the description, but that’s because the writ-
  ers thought Heroes were common, based on Dragon Pass. In reality, 
  most cults probably don’t have many Hero Cults. One maybe, or two. 
  Superheroes of course are even more rare. One of the secrets of Su-
  perheroes that has never been revealed is that Superheroes are each 
  connected to a particular Rune. Harrek the Berserk is Death, Jar-eel 
  the Razoress is Harmony, Elamle was Life, and Sheng Seleris is the 
  Spirit Rune. It’s possible that there can only ever be one Superhero 
  of that Rune in all time. There has never been another Death one, 
  for example. Harrek is the Death Superhero. Possibly the reason that 
  Harrek defeats Jar-eel in the Hero Wars is because Jar-eel Harmo-
  nized to his Death.
  “POSSIBLY THE REASON THAT HARREK DEFEATS 
  JAR-EEL IN THE HERO WARS IS BECAUSE JAR-EEL 
  HARMONIZED TO HIS DEATH.”
  Audience: Harmonized to his Death?
  SP: Yes, she harmonized to his Death Rune, so she is killed. But the 
  Harmony goes both ways, she harmonized him which is why, after 
  he killed her, he basically retires and goes away. He doesn’t want to 
  kill anymore. So it kind of worked both ways. I don’t know what Tada 
  was, Beast or something. Androgeus was the Man Rune. That’s what 
  I think. Or possibly Change.
  AUD: Because Androgeus is both male and female?
  SP: Yes, but the idea is that each Superhero is aimed at a cer-
  
  6
  tain Rune. The Superhero I made up was Elamle, the Superhero of 
  Pamaltela who saved the peninsula from Wakboth the Devil.
  SP: Here’s another thing that hasn’t been clearly laid out, which is 
  that in Pamaltela geology or history is running backwards. So, in the 
  Second Age you have the Six-Legged Empire with their horses, it’s 
  like a conventional Genghis Khan-like empire, and then it’s worked 
  its way back to nomadic tribes and primitive beasts like rhinoceri 
  and the like. If you go over to Tarien in the west part, there are di-
  nosaurs and lizard things, but those aren’t relics of the past. Those 
  are the new things that are coming. The dinosaurs are the newest 
  animals in Pamaltela and the Slarges. So Pamaltela is literally going 
  backwards geologically, humans are on the way out. The most civi-
  lized and advanced humans were the Artmali. Of course, the most 
  civilized and advanced were the original humans but they were evil 
  too. So who cares?
  “… PAMALTELA GEOLOGY OR HISTORY IS 
  RUNNING BACKWARDS.”
  AUD: Was there a reason for that?
  SP: It’s just a thing. That’s how it is. You could just as easily ask why 
  Genertela isn’t going that way. This is the kind of thing that comes 
  out of me and Greg Stafford talking, where I notice this happening 
  and say, “Hey Greg, do you realize that in Pamaltela …” and he goes, “Oh 
  yeah, that makes sense …” (Laughs)
  SP: Fonrit, which is the civilized place, is kind of trying to hold out 
  against the barbarous past, such as Harrek and the Revolt against 
  Slavery. Of course, being more modern isn’t always better. That’s 
  how you get slavery and cities and roads and taxes and dictatorships. 
  In the Fourth Age I would expect the Slarges to rule most of Pamalte-
  la, if they’re not wiped out by the Chaos things brewing in the Nar-
  gan Desert. I think those are in the Guide to Glorantha, right? 
  
  7
  AUD: Not really …
  SP: The big threat now in southern Pamaltela is that the Nargan 
  Desert is a Chaos Nest. And there are rivers that drain down into 
  it, like the Serpents in the Wastes, except there’s way more water 
  in Pamaltela, it’s more fertile. The Pamaltelan steppes are not like 
  the Wastes in Genertela, they’re more like the African savannah. In 
  these riverbeds in Pamaltela, part of the year there’s water and part 
  of the year there’s not, but in the dry season hordes of Grayskins and 
  other Chaos stuff that can’t survive anymore in the dry interior come 
  pouring up the riverbeds and they have to be killed. They aren’t in-
  dividually very dangerous. You know what Grayskins are? They 
  are like a person with a Chaos feature, usually a bad Chaos feature 
  that hurts them. But they have to be killed and stopped. So what’s 
  happening is that in the Nargan Desert, the forces that are there are 
  breeding Chaos to perfect it and get better Chaos. And the leftovers 
  — the rejects — are what’s going north.
  
  8
  “THE BIG THREAT NOW IN SOUTHERN 
  PAMALTELA IS THAT THE NARGAN DESERT IS A 
  CHAOS NEST.”
  AUD: Intentionally?
  SP: Intentionally. It is organized Chaos going on in the Nargan 
  Desert. So that’s really bad.
  AUD: Usually when you talk about Chaos in Glorantha everybody 
  focuses on Genertela.
  SP: Right, but there’s really big Chaos brewing in the Nargan Des-
  ert, possibly the biggest Chaos place in Glorantha right now, unless 
  you count the Lunars. (Laughs) So it’s huge, and they’re breeding 
  Chaos and the rejects are what goes north. I think it might be a cor-
  rupt relic of the Six-Legged Empire from the Second Age, because 
  they would be organized and they would have fled from the curses 
  that destroyed their empire. I’m not sure exactly what is there. I 
  know they have labs and breeding pens and stuff and they’re mak-
  ing bigger and bigger and better Chaos monsters. It’s also possible 
  the Mother of Monsters, at least part of it, came from that source. 
  Anyway, so that’s something to know about: the Nargan Desert. 
  Let’s see, what else?
  SP: Here’s the most embarrassing Chaosium secret on Glorantha, 
  or one of them. Greg had a race for each of the elements at one time, 
  in the very early part of Glorantha. So the race for the Heat element, 
  for Fire, was the Tamali. And then he realized that he had Hot Ta-
  males, so they went away. (All laugh)
  SP: I don’t know how much of the East Isles history is in the Guide to 
  Glorantha, because I didn’t get a chance to read it before I came here.
  AUD: There’s quite a lot about those islands that have Treasure 
  Ships or whatever.
  
  9
  SP: Well, here’s the deal with the East Isles. In the Gods Age, they 
  were one continent, they were Vithela. There were two monster gods 
  that came to attack it. Beater and Gulper is what their names trans-
  lated as. Beater would smash the continent and break it up into sep-
  arate islands. Then Gulper would suck the islands down one by one 
  and destroy them. Vithela was being destroyed by this process. And 
  here’s a secret of the East Isles: there used to be one organized, decent 
  pantheon of gods that ran the East Isles. But when the islands were 
  shattered and broken into pieces, each island kept one fragment of 
  the personality of a god. So each island in the East Isles has its own 
  proprietary god, but it’s whatever fragment it got, so that there’s one 
  island that has the God of Hairdressers, one island that has the God 
  of Volcanoes, and there is one island that has the God of Lamps. They 
  each have their one thing. That’s their island’s piece. And they don’t 
  go worship other gods, because that’s their god, even though they 
  may know their god is stupid, because they’ve got the God of Pub-
  lic Toilets or something. But that’s their god, you wouldn’t change it 
  any more than you would change your last name. It’s just how it is. If 
  you’re lucky you have a good god, you can do more things, but your 
  god is your god. So the way that Theya, the Goddess of Dawn, saved 
  the islands from being destroyed is by weaving a net that tied the 
  islands together mystically so they were still part of a whole. And 
  because they were mystically together, Gulper couldn’t suck them 
  down because they were connected, and Beater couldn’t break them 
  apart because they were already broken, so those monster gods were 
  rendered impotent. They couldn’t destroy the islands anymore. For 
  the magical communication to keep the islands connected mysti-
  cally, Theya had the Keets give up the power of flight. So that’s why 
  ducks don’t fly, according to the East Islanders.
  SP: Of course the Keets are more than just ducks. They’re mostly 
  ducks even in the East Isles but there are other ones there, of course. 
  There are flamingoes and auks and penguins. Well, not penguins. 
  But there are other kinds of flightless birds.
  AUD: But they are usually presented in a less pathetic way than the 
  ducks of Genertela.
  
  10
  SP: Yes. The ducks of the East Isles are highly respected. Well, 
  they’re sort of respected. They are still ducks. It’s considered bad luck 
  to kill one, and considered good luck to have them on your ship. Ev-
  eryone realizes that because of them, the islands weren’t destroyed. 
  Now the Sorns, which I think were mentioned in the Wyrms Foot-
  notes1 — I had Sorns in my mystic menagerie article —, so the Sorns 
  were pterodactyl Keets instead of birds but they didn’t want to give 
  up the power of flight, so they didn’t. That is why they are considered 
  a Chaos enemy now. They are mildly Chaotic, about like a Cave Troll. 
  They usually don’t have a Chaos feature, maybe 5% of the time, and 
  they can still fly. Of course, their problem is that most of them have 
  a 6-to-8 foot wingspan, they weigh about 30 lbs. and they don’t have 
  hands. So they can’t do too much evil. Maybe they can carry off a lit-
  tle kid or poop down your chimney. They do all the evil they can, but 
  they’re not like Broos, which are a real threat.
  AUD: A minor threat?
  SP: The Sorns are more of a nasty pest that you want to get rid off if 
  they are around. Of course they can fly long ways so they can be any-
  where in the East Isles. So that’s the Sorns, that’s their main Chaos 
  foe. And of course, they’re selfish; they didn’t want to give up flight to 
  save the isles. So their original islands of course were sunk, but they 
  had flight so they could go to other islands. 
  SP: So that’s the East Isles, let’s see, um … oh, East Isles! In the Sec-
  ond Age the East Isles Empire was run from Golden Mokato, which 
  had a really good part of a god, it was like the God of Being a King or 
  something. So they ran the empire, but you may notice that during 
  the Second Age all the empires are destroyed in these huge catastro-
  phes, but not the East Isles Empire. This is because of the people of 
  Mokato with their god, and their skills. And they are also not a part 
  of the God Learner movement, they’re a whole separate group, they 
  fought the God Learners and they fought the False Dragon Ring and 
  they held them off. They didn’t beat them, but they held them off. So 
  1 Wyrms Footnotes 15
  
  11
  what happened is that Mokato saw the disaster, they prophesied the 
  disasters and knew they were coming. And unlike the God Learners 
  and the Wyrms Friends and the Six-Leggers and the New Dragon Ring 
  and Errinoru’s Elf Empire, the Mokato Empire saw like how to save 
  themselves. They withdrew all their people, all their soldiers, all their 
  governors, all their bureaucrats, back to Mokato and voluntarily aban-
  doned the whole empire. And by doing that, they weren’t destroyed 
  because there was no empire left for the destructive forces to get a grip 
  on. Of course, now the Doldrums moved in and the East Isles kind of 
  didn’t do anything because the Third Age had that kind of passive lack 
  of communication type activity. And that still hit them.
  SP: Here is the thing: Mokato is still there and still fantastically rich 
  but they still can’t leave their island because if they do, the doom that 
  was waiting for the East Isles Empire will get them — it is still there!
  “MOKATO IS STILL THERE AND STILL 
  FANTASTICALLY RICH BUT THEY STILL CAN’T 
  LEAVE THEIR ISLAND BECAUSE IF THEY DO, THE 
  DOOM THAT WAS WAITING FOR THE EAST ISLES 
  EMPIRE WILL GET THEM — IT IS STILL THERE!”
  AUD: Oh! (Excited)
   SP: It hasn’t triggered. It’s delayed! It’s still there. So they don’t 
  dare leave their island but they still want the empire. People can go to 
  the island and leave again, so they’re plotting to set up their empire 
  like at a distance by controlling it without themselves having to leave 
  very much, kind of the way how Carthage did it, where like Hanni-
  bal’s army wasn’t Carthaginian, it was mercenaries from Spain. You 
  know what I’m talking about?
  AUD: Yeah, yeah! (Excited)
  SP: They’re trying to set that up as best they can but it’s harder for 
  
  12
  them. Because at least Carthage could send out Hannibal and those 
  guys, but they can’t do that. They have to only stay on the island. 
  They’re trying really hard to set it up that but it’s hard. So Haragala has 
  taken up the slack. Haragala has a God of Sailing Ships and Navies, so 
  they’re kind of becoming the big power. So that’s the East Isles secrets.
  SP: All the Elder Races have a secret plan to destroy the world in 
  the Fourth Age, at the end of the Third Age. I think these have been 
  published, right?
  AUD: We know about the trolls and Valind’s Glacier …
  SP: The trolls and the Glacier. Yeah, that is the Troll Plan.
  AUD: … the Aldryami and the forests.
  SP: Yes, with all the seeds. 
  AUD: The Mostali and Slon, where they have the huge chain and 
  they drag Slontos into Magasta’s Pool?
  SP: Well, the Glacier is going to go there too so they might hit each 
  other. The Troll Plan is to plug Magasta’s Pool with the Glacier and 
  flood all the coastal lands where the humans live, then they’re going 
  to move in and eat all the corpses. So they have very simple plans, 
  really. (Laughs) “We’ll have lots of food!” (Laughs)
  AUD: So the Mostali do this. As for Dragonewts — I don’t think we 
  know.
  SP: The Dragonewt Plan might be incomprehensible for humans, 
  it might make no sense. Dragonewts do a lot of things that make no 
  sense to humans, because they’re so alien to humans. Their goals are 
  different. They can’t die. One thing about Dragonewts is that like a ma-
  jority of the Dragonewts living in the Dragon’s Eye and those places 
  — they never eat. They just starve to death and get reborn. Then they 
  just do things till they starve to death and they get reborn. Why would 
  
  13
  they bother to eat? That would just take up time. They don’t eat, they 
  don’t sleep, they catch diseases and die. They don’t care because they 
  just get reborn immediately.
  AUD: And then they have no sex, right?
  SP: No, dragons have no sex. Well, okay, it is possible but they have 
  five sexes … 
  “NO, DRAGONS HAVE NO SEX.”
  AUD: Okay.
  SP: … one to each stage. But really they are from dragon eggs. Eggs 
  from real dragons, often from the God Time. Maybe with one Drag-
  onewt from each sex they could make new eggs, but why would they 
  do that? They have no need to. So they can either advance to dragon-
  hood by the five stages, doing a ritual, or they can just exist and die. 
  Of course they can be killed, because Chaos can destroy them.
  AUD: I’ve tried to play one in a game, but as you say, they’re so com-
  pletely alien, they don’t have passions …
  SP: The way that Greg plays them is letting them do weird things 
  once in a while to sort of simulate it. I mean, Dragonewts have mo-
  tivation for what they do, but we just don’t understand it. Oh, one of 
  the things is the Dragonewts have the Left-hand Magic, that’s how 
  they put it. Everything else in Glorantha is the Right-hand Magic. 
  What does that mean? It’s not clear, you know? (Laughs)
  AUD: There are Dragonewts units as mercenaries in armies. Why 
  would they do that? Do they need money?
  SP: Well, they might. Dragonewts do leave their homes and go long 
  distances to do things. And when they do then they have to hunt in 
  
  14
  order to cook and eat and do everything. And also there are barbar-
  ian Dragonewts that aren’t as much into the dragon way, just like 
  they were left behind by the dragons. Especially in Ralios, you have 
  a lot of barbarian Dragonewts and they just live like animals. Some 
  of them even have a primitive version of the Inhuman King. Those 
  in Ralios might breed more often to replace their numbers. So there 
  probably used to be more Dragonewts, and as they went extinct they 
  weren’t replaced. And remember, the Dragonewts we have left are 
  the very worst ones, the crappiest ones because these are the ones 
  who haven’t gone on to dragonhood. These are the ones who were so 
  selfish, or so cowardly, or so inferior or so lazy that they haven’t be-
  come dragons. Remember, most of the Dragonewts today were alive 
  at the Dawn. They just haven’t done anything. They just sit around 
  and exist. They don’t have the same motivations. The ones who were 
  motivated went on to become dragons. And these stuck around. So 
  we have the worst examples of Dragonewts. (Laughs)
  “AND REMEMBER, THE DRAGONEWTS WE 
  HAVE LEFT ARE THE VERY WORST ONES, THE 
  CRAPPIEST ONES BECAUSE THESE ARE THE ONES 
  WHO HAVEN’T GONE ON TO DRAGONHOOD.”
  AUD: So what happened to all those that made it to dragonhood?
  SP: They became dragons!
  AUD: But where are they now?
  SP: Who knows? Somewhere, right? The Dragon’s Eye or somewhere 
  mystical. Dragons seem to be able to fade out. It’s not clear. Maybe it’s 
  the same place — both the Malkioni and the dragons say that the In-
  visible God and the Dragons aren’t in the same place, but it might be a 
  similar place. Because the Invisible God doesn’t have any manifestation 
  in Glorantha, but the Malkioni are all convinced he exists. They have 
  carefully plotted proofs he exists despite the fact that he does nothing. 
  
  15
  So, the dragons similarly say, “Oh yeah, well he became a dragon and he went 
  away, so therefore obviously there is a place they go.”
  AUD: But you could destroy the Dragonewts if you destroy their 
  breeding grounds?
  SP: You could destroy the breeding grounds and they don’t get re-
  born. So there are fewer Dragonewts now because they did that at 
  the start of the Dragon Kill War. And that killed a bunch of Dragone-
  wts. Now they don’t dare do it any more. The thing is they thought 
  the dragons were gone, but they found out that at least some of them 
  were still around, and that was bad. Has it been published what the 
  goal of the Empire of Wyrms Friends was?
  “HAS IT BEEN PUBLISHED WHAT THE GOAL OF 
  THE EMPIRE OF WYRMS FRIENDS WAS?”
  AUD: No. (Astonished)
  SP: Do you want to hear it?
  AUD: Yes! (All excited) 
  SP: Okay. So, here is the map of Glorantha (Starts drawing), here’s 
  Genertela. Here is the Oslir River and here’s the Rockwood Moun-
  tains. Down here is the Holy Country. You know the Rockwoods, 
  right? Okay, so what they were doing is they were creating the World 
  Dragon. And in doing so … the reason they were oppressing the peo-
  ple so direly is that they were taxing and draining them partly to 
  cause unhappiness. The plan was: the spine of the dragon is the Oslir 
  River. The wings of the dragon are the mountains, the Rockwoods. 
  The head of the dragon is the Holy Country with all the magics. And 
  the soul and the mind of the dragon are the people and the leaders 
  of the Empire of Wyrms Friends. And in giving the dragon passion 
  and personality, to give it a heart and a soul, they were repressing 
  
  16
  the people and filling them with anger and passion and betrayal and 
  all the emotions they needed to have in the dragon. And they were 
  sucking all the magic out to put it into the dragon to compose it. But it 
  was hard and causing disruptions. And what they were trying to do, 
  they were trying to reach the point where these things would bal-
  ance off and they would merge and the dragon would rise up. And 
  would probably destroy Glorantha, but that would be okay because 
  you’d have the World Dragon now. But what happened at some point 
  was that the Dragonewts realized the disruptions were so great that 
  this process wasn’t going to succeed.
  “… WHAT THEY WERE DOING IS THEY WERE 
  CREATING THE WORLD DRAGON.”
  AUD: So they stopped it?
  SP: No, they killed them all right away. Of course, they wanted it 
  to happen, but they said “Okay, it’s going to fail, so we’ll kill them all and 
  it will stop.” 
  
  17
  AUD: How did they realize it was going to fail? I didn’t get that.
  SP: The Dragonewts? Presumably they were working out mathe-
  matical probabilities of how much magic they needed, how much 
  personality. They were just looking at the numbers. The Empire of 
  Wyrms Friends people said, “No, no! We can do it!” But the Dragonewts 
  calculated they couldn’t. And they might have known because they 
  were closer to the Wyrm. 
  AUD: So they chickened out?
  SP: Yes. So they rose up, they wiped out the Empire of Wyrms 
  Friends leaders, and then everyone came down to destroy the  
  Dragonewts. Because the people who liked the Empire of Wyrms Friends 
  leaders were mad at the Dragonewts as they killed the leaders, and the 
  people that didn’t like the Empire of Wyrms Friends leaders hated the  
  Dragonewts because the Dragonewts were the Empire of Wyrms 
  Friends leaders, too. They were right up at the top. So for example if you 
  hate China’s rulership and the leaders of the army wipe out the rul-
  ership you’ll still hate the army. Everyone hated the Dragonewts and 
  that’s how the Dragonkill War came about. But that’s what they were 
  doing, trying to make the World Dragon. Or at least that’s what Greg 
  and I believed in 1988. (Laughs) And that’s why they were focused on 
  such a small thing. That’s why even though they were so much smaller 
  than the God Learner Empire they were deeper and more powerful. 
  The God Learners had breadth; the Empire of Wyrms Friends had 
  depth. Of course, the God Learners had the Middle Sea Empire and 
  they had the False Dragon Ring, which was a separate country. It was 
  a separate empire but it was founded by God Learners — by breakoffs 
  of it. And of course, the Six-Leggers were another breakoff. And there 
  was one nonhuman Empire, the Errinoru Elf Empire.
  AUD: So we know all the Elder Race Plans, right? There’s no other 
  plan that we have missed? The trolls, the Mostali and the Aldryami?
  SP: We don’t know the Dragonewt plan. We know they have one 
  because of the Dragonewt Dream. That’s part of their plan.
  
  18
  AUD: What is the Dragonewt Dream?
  SP: That was the Dragonewts starting their plan. That wasn’t just 
  a random thing. That was the Dragonewts setting their plot into ac-
  tion. We know the Mostali Plan. The next step in the World Machine 
  is to bring the Red Moon down, so it orbits. The first part worked. 
  It came up, now it has to go down, and then orbit like the sun does. 
  That’s all part of the plan.
  “WE KNOW THE MOSTALI PLAN. THE NEXT STEP 
  IN THE WORLD MACHINE IS TO BRING THE RED 
  MOON DOWN, SO IT ORBITS.”
  AUD: But will it eventually happen, right? The moon will go down?
  SP: No, Argrath just wants to destroy the Red Moon. The dwarfs 
  want it to keep going, just like the sun.
  AUD: Like clockwork. 
  AUD: But who is coordinating plans like this within the Elder Rac-
  es? I can see the Mostali being that coordinated, but is there someone 
  who leads them, or is it communal?
  SP: The dwarves — that’s the problem. Here is why the Mostali plans 
  don’t ever work: They really don’t have a leader as the people who are 
  the most experienced Mostali aren’t people who rose to the top be-
  cause they were leaders, they were just the ones who were the very 
  best at like building cogs or something, so they aren’t necessarily able 
  to lead other Mostali in an intelligent manner. They have this World 
  Machine and it’s supposed to do the work for them. The Machine is 
  supposed to do it on its own, but it doesn’t. (Laughs) So the dwarves are 
  actually kind of pathetic. When their machines work, they’re great. 
  Your camera is great, but if you went fishing with it, it wouldn’t be so 
  good. And the other problem the Mostali have is that the camera has 
  
  19
  no self-direction, it can only be used by someone else. So presumably, 
  at one time there were forces that used the Mostali for tasks, and now 
  those are gone. The dwarves are still there trying to get their tasks.
  AUD: So someone was issuing tasks for them?
  SP: Probably the Celestial Court. And when the Celestial Court went 
  away then the Mostali lost their motivation. 
  AUD: I mean with the trolls you can easily imagine …
  SP: Oh, they have a family structure. Mistress Race Trolls are in 
  charge of the Dark Trolls, and the Aldryami have the Spirit of the For-
  est. They’re kind of disorganized because each forest is separate, but at 
  least each forest has a communal soul that can make decisions.
  AUD: Do you remember when we talked about my ideas for the Troll 
  Plan last year? Their original plan is to use Trollkin to nibble off a piece 
  of Valind’s Glacier, right? The trolls put them with their heads in the 
  ground and make them eat through the ice like a drill to eventually 
  break off a huge iceberg. So I was thinking, would it not be part of the 
  plan that all troll communities shipped their Trollkin north to help the 
  project go faster? 
  SP: Oh yeah, I loved that. 
  AUD: One fun thing that would probably happen is that since all the 
  Trollkin are gone, the troll insects and fungi farms would collapse and 
  the insects would roam around freely and the fungi would spread un-
  controlled. And no one would know what happened. Isn’t that some-
  thing that could happen?
  SP: Well, actually there are two Troll Plans for the Dragon Pass 
  area. The plan number one is that they’ve decided they don’t want the 
  Trollkin anymore, so Cragspider kicks all the Trollkin out of Shadows 
  Dance. So all the Trollkin that used to be there are ousted from the 
  troll community, and they’re all going to go across the human lands.
  
  20
  “WELL, ACTUALLY THERE ARE TWO TROLL PLANS 
  FOR THE DRAGON PASS AREA.”
  AUD: Now you have all kinds of problems with them.
  SP: First of all, that would disrupt things. And they have another plan 
  that would compete with that. Here is their other plan: The trolls have 
  been looting Dragon Pass, they were fighting and gathering treasures 
  and they have a lot of gold. They have a secret hall in the Castle of Lead in 
  Shadows Dance, it’s called the Hall of Fiery Brilliance. It’s where all the 
  gold they’ve kept is. Of course, they don’t like the gold. But they’ve got it. 
  They have mountains of gold because the trolls don’t use it. They know 
  that if they get gold, they give it to Cragspider or to the Castle of Lead 
  people, and they just put it in the hall, and then they just use Bolgs and 
  Lunars. So all the gold is there. They are going to take all the gold pos-
  sibly just before or after the Trollkin Release and give it to the humans.
  AUD: Just like that? 
  SP: It’s going to destroy the economy, all right? (Laughter) 
  AUD: It’ll be a financial disaster. (Laughs)
  SP: It’ll be a financial disaster! I mean, If they give it all to the Sar-
  tarites, what’s going to happen to the Lunars? Exactly. It will be cata-
  strophic, then if you follow it up with a Trollkin raid … There will be 
  inflation everywhere and all the farmers will have stopped farming 
  because they’re rich.
  AUD: And you can’t buy anything! (Laughs)
  SP: You can’t buy anything anymore, yeah. (Laughs) That’s the other 
  Troll Plan, which I think is actually a better plan than the iceberg. 
  AUD: Much more effective!
  
  21
  SP: But once the humans have fallen into civil war and the commu-
  nities have broken up — then the trolls come and eat them all.
  AUD: I never heard about that one. That is kind of cool. It would be a 
  fantastic campaign, you know?
  SP: Wouldn’t it? (Laughs) A troll comes up to you and gives you 10,000 
  Gold Wheels! “Here, thanks.”
  AUD: But everyone else has it too, you know! Like you bring it back 
  and celebrate: “Yay, we are rich!” and then …
  SP: Until they find out they’re trying to kill you for it and you’re 
  fighting each other — “We’ve got to go and spend it with the Lunars first!” 
  Part of the reason for that catastrophe is to demonstrate that the trolls 
  are actually pretty savvy. They’re smart. Still the ultimate goal is: Eat 
  stuff! But they can be smart about the way they do it. (Laughs)
  AUD: That is very funny.
  AUD: So why did they want to release all the Trollkin?
  SP: Oh, that’s actually a side effect of their plan to cure the Trollkin 
  Curse. 
  AUD: But we don’t know anything more about it?
  SP: They want to exterminate the Trollkin, but the Trollkin are 
  still useful as food. They just don’t want them in the troll lands. This 
  is yet another failed attempt to end the Trollkin Curse. Cragspider is 
  still trying. She tried twice. She made the Great Trolls. Well, she didn’t 
  make the litters. Also, in Pamaltela they’re trying to end their curse. 
  AUD: What was their curse?
  SP: There are Jungle Trolls in Pamaltela. What happened there is 
  that when the Darkness God, who is probably Zorak Zoran, led the 
  
  22
  Armies of Ice into attacking Pamaltela, they got defeated. In the 
  myth, it’s Pamalt fighting Zorak Zoran or the Cold Ones, Umath 
  and those guys, but probably physically it was armies of humans 
  and elves fighting trolls and barbarians. Pamalt crippled the trolls 
  and destroyed the Cold aspect of them. So the Hot Trolls live in the 
  jungles and they’re Darkness, but they have no Cold left in them. 
  It’s like Yelmalio has no Heat, they have no Cold. But it’s a physical 
  thing. These trolls, they’re still big, but they’re skinny and emaciated 
  looking. They’re still dangerous predators but they don’t live in big 
  groups. The trolls in Genertela are organized and they have king-
  doms. In Pamaltela, they live in family groups or little clans here and 
  there. They kind of live among the elves and they just eat things. 
  AUD: They are more savage. 
  SP: Yeah, they’re savages, right? They view their lack of Cold as a 
  weakness. They thought that if they could have Cold and if they could 
  bring chill to the jungle, they would be more dangerous. They’re try-
  ing to figure out a way to break that curse. One clan did it by doing the 
  Cragspider’s plan — they got a Dark Troll and they got their Dark-
  ness spirits to mate with it, hoping they would give birth to a new 
  hybrid Jungle-Dark Troll that could stand the cold. But instead, what 
  they got was that the clan started giving birth to Trollkin, so that was 
  a problem. There was another clan that combined with Storm spirits 
  because it was originally Storm and Darkness that invaded Pamalte-
  la. And this is in the central mountains, the Mari Mountains. They 
  combined Storm and Darkness and they gave birth, they recreated 
  the Horned Trolls from the God Time. That was a small Heroquest 
  success. They kind of broke the Jungle Troll Curse, but now they are 
  no longer Jungle Trolls, but instead Horned Trolls. 
  AUD: There are not many of them?
  SP: No, no. It happened actually in my campaign when I was work-
  ing at Chaosium. They’re up in the mountains and they have Horned 
  Trolls, a few.
  
  23
  AUD: Just how abstract is the God Learner Secret2, Sandy?
  SP: I don’t even know if it’s the same secret as it was when I left, or 
  if Greg has changed it. If he hasn’t, it’s not particularly abstract.
  AUD: Is there anything else on your list?
  SP: Let’s see: there’s the God Learner Secret, there is the Lunar Se-
  cret …
  “LET’S SEE: THERE’S THE GOD LEARNER SECRET, 
  THERE IS THE LUNAR SECRET …”
  AUD: The Lunar Secret?
  SP: Well, the way they look at magic and stuff. It’s not really a se-
  cret, I guess. On the Hero Plane, there are Shadow Warriors who 
  guard critical places. These are actually members of the Arkat Cult, 
  trying to protect the Hero Plane. When you go to treat with the Knife 
  Raven, which is a raven with feathers all made of iron knife blades, 
  you’re supposed to negotiate with him. But there’s a guy in black ar-
  mor with a big sword standing next to him, watching. And if you try 
  to kill the raven, he will fight you. The Knife Raven will too. And so 
  they’re all over the place in the Hero Plane. What they are … the Ar-
  kat Cult is actually a bigger cult than people know, but no one ever 
  sees it do anything because all its activity is on the Hero Plane. Be-
  cause you join the Arkat Cult, your goal is to protect the Hero Plane 
  from being abused like the God Learners did. If you join the Arkat 
  Cult and you are like a Runelord of Arkat, your job is to go on the 
  Hero Plane and stand by the Knife Raven and guard it. If someone 
  tries to kill it, you kill them.
  2 Why didn’t we ask what the God Learner Secret is? Probably because we adhered 
  to Greg Stafford’s rule for Glorantha Lore Auctions. The rule says that there are 6 
  questions that will not be answered and the first is “What is the God Learner Secret?” 
  
  24
  AUD: Isn’t the Knife Raven a Humakti quest?
  SP: It’s a Humakti quest, but other guys will want to go on the quest 
  to treat with the Knife Raven as well. Humakti might go on the quest, 
  but do it wrong, either because they make a mistake, or they are Il-
  luminated, or something. So you’re just there. What happens is the 
  Lunars are actually doing creative Heroquesting kind of the way the 
  God Learners did, but not with the same motivation, so that they’re 
  been having this war on the Hero Plane against the Arkat Cult. So, 
  sometimes you go to a place like where the Raccoon is, whom you talk 
  to and play a riddle game with before you cross the river. And there’s 
  no Guardian of the Raccoon, because the Lunars killed him and the 
  new one hasn’t come, so you can kill the Raccoon and get his fur. 
  And if they do that enough, the Raccoon will go away. There won’t 
  be a Raccoon. That’s what happened with the God Learners, they 
  
  25
  started destroying, changing the God Plane. So there are things 
  on the God Plane that aren’t there anymore because they wrecked 
  it. And the Lunars are doing that, and the Arkati are trying to force 
  them to stop. Of course, Arkat did creative Heroquesting too, so it’s 
  kind of trying to fix what he did. But Heroquesting isn’t very com-
  mon, I guess. We need to have a Guide to Glorantha for the Hero 
  Plane, too. 
  AUD: Is it possible for someone to join the Arkat Cult, go to the 
  Hero Plane physically and vanish from the physical world? 
  SP: Well, yes. Usually you come back periodically. Here’s one of the 
  reasons for the Arkat Cult: in the Arkat Cult you can go and you can 
  get permission to violate the Hero Plane. You can say, “Hey, I really 
  need to kill the Knife Raven.” And they say, “Well, okay, this one time. But 
  then you have to make up for it by doing all these other things.” And you go, 
  “Okay.” So they’re kind of cynical about it. And really, the thing about 
  the Arkat Cult is that it’s not actually a cult because people go into it 
  from all different religions. They’re an organization that is trying to 
  run the Hero Plane. They just want to protect the Hero Plane. They 
  may only want to protect their own Hero Plane, but the Arkat Cult is 
  the organization that keeps track of all the Heroquests. Because the 
  Arkat Cult is composed of Illuminated people from lots of different 
  cults, they are able to collect together all the Heroquests. It learns all 
  the Heroquests from the different cults, so it’s the source of them all. 
  That’s another reason the Lunars want to get them, they want to get 
  all those secrets. And they coordinate. Like, a Yelmalio cultist might 
  want to guard the Hill of Gold and they would help him coordinate 
  that, to guard it. They might even send him help. He might not want 
  help from a Darkness cultist to guard the Hill of Gold. The Arkat Cult 
  is not very cult-like. It doesn’t give you magic. It teaches you about 
  Heroquests. So it’s really more like a secret organization. And I think 
  it’s in the Guide to Glorantha that there are some monsters in Ralios 
  called the Dog People. You know about them?
  AUD: No.
  
  26
  AUD: That was in one of the Hero Wars books. 
  SP: The men are human bodies with a dog head and the women are 
  dog bodies with a woman’s head. They’re actually a fairly common 
  nonhuman race there. The women of course cast all the spells be-
  cause they can talk, they’re the magical ones. The men are the ones 
  who fight. They’re not Chaos, they’re just like minotaurs or some-
  thing. The most common Beast people among the Ralians are the Elk 
  People, the Deer People. 
  AUD: You’ve talked about Genertela, Pamaltela, and what were the 
  islands? Is there anything else?
  SP: Sure, tons — which islands do you want to know about?
  AUD: Teleos and Loral?
  SP: Loral is Monster Island. Well, I’ve just recently learned that 
  they’ve decided that there are humans on it. I didn’t know that. I al-
  ways thought that Monster Island had no humans on it, just monsters. 
  But Loz3   is writing a Monster Island book. I saw copies of it at GenCon. 
  AUD: It is actually published already.
  SP: The monsters on Loral are Godzilla monsters. In the 1980s, we 
  didn’t think any humans lived on Loral. I guess now they do. Okay, 
  I would want to have Godzilla on the island but I probably wouldn’t 
  have based them all off Godzilla.
  SP: Teleos in the First and Second Age, the First Age especially, 
  was the Pirate Kingdom. Pirates from Teleos plagued all the world 
  and then until the Middle Sea Empire kind of suppressed them. But 
  their ships would go out. Teleos, as you know, they have multicolored 
  people. There are the six tribes of Teleos: Orange, Yellow, Red, Green, 
  Blue and Purple. 
  3 Lawrence Whitaker
  
  27
  AUD: It’s not clear whether they were already there … 
  SP: No, no, those are the Teleos people. The pirates were colored 
  like that. And the pirate ships had Dragonewts on them sometimes 
  too, because the Dragonewts on Teleos were friendly towards the hu-
  mans, or at least neutral. Today the six races are kind of hostile to 
  each other but of course they can’t fight. It’s pointless to fight — if 
  you try to wipe out the Blues then that means your tribe gives birth 
  to more Blues next year. There’s no point in fighting.
  AUD: But has this weird birth mechanism already existed? Or is it 
  from some catastrophe?
  SP: They already had it. But here’s one thing. You know the Third 
  Age is the Age of Lost Communication? It is the age of the Silent 
  Prophet, the Doldrums, the Closing, the Syndics Ban. On Teleos, it 
  is when the tribes separated into colors. Before then, there weren’t 
  tribes. You were Red and you had Purple wife and your kid was Yel-
  low. The personality traits were still there. The Red wife was more 
  sexy, the Yellow kids were a little lazier but kind of smart. The Or-
  ange kids, you kind of had to watch because they were a little bit 
  sneaky, the Green kids would eat dirt and you would go “Come on!”. 
  They all had these personality traits but it was all your family. You 
  didn’t segregate. So the fact that the Yellows were kind of lazy but 
  kind of smart meant that actually they made good organizers and 
  leaders. The fact that the Purples were prone to fits of anger made 
  them good as soldiers and police. These personality traits were not 
  super-strong — there were plenty of Yellows who were hard work-
  ing. It’s like Americans when we perceive Europeans and I’m sure 
  Europeans are the same way. When I go from Germany into France 
  there is like some big differences I immediately notice in just the way 
  the cities are, right? 
  AUD: And Italy, too.
   SP: And Italy, too. I don’t know, Germans probably aren’t born to 
  be German. Raise a German kid in France, I’m sure he’ll be French 
  
  28
  like everyone else. Of course in a magical world it’s not the same. 
  They have those personality traits. Before the Closing, those traits 
  were … well, actually it may have started when their pirate navy was 
  destroyed by the Middle Sea Empire, they began segregating. The 
  current artificial system of them all living in different areas is that 
  they all have to meet to trade kids. That’s a modern result of their 
  segregation. It’s actually like a racial prejudice mockery. (Chuckles) 
   
  AUD: And the fact that they used to be pirates and today they are 
  very peaceful?
  SP: Oh no, they want to be pirates again. They remember those 
  days fondly. They’re peaceful because they have no one to fight. They 
  couldn’t fight each other. I guess you could fight the Dragonewts, I 
  mean there is not much point. There was nobody they could bat-
  tle. They could beat you up, but they couldn’t use weapons. So they 
  have these taboos, because they didn’t have a weapon culture. Now 
  with the Closing ended, they’re trying to figure out how to be pi-
  rates again. But they’re crippled by the fact that if they filled a whole 
  ship of just Reds, it wouldn’t work. Now they’re doing it a little bit. 
  They’re opening trade, they have trade ports. The thing is, the tribes 
  are structured differently. Some of the tribes have a king, some have 
  a council of elders, one of them takes advice from the Dragonewts, 
  they’re all different.
  AUD: We played a scenario of the Harreksaga in Teleos by Loz, we did 
  the Rainbow Quest. It would have been very interesting to know these 
  things before. I played it by luck, but it was a great game. The Brithini, 
  the old people of the West, do they have different skin colors too?
  SP: They were paler.
  AUD: You don’t say the magicians were all blue and the rulers all 
  gold? They had no different skin colors?
  SP: No, they were all white. The Vadeli had different skin colors. 
  Blue Vadeli were blue.
  
  29
  AUD: But not the other People of Logic?
  SP: Well, the Vadeli aren’t People of Logic. The Brithini will con-
  firm, the Vadeli are the complete opposite. (Laughs) They’re absolutely 
  the polar opposite, the worst things. It’s like Jews and Samaritans. 
  They’re still Samaritans, they’re not allowed in the Jewish army. 
  (Laughs) Of course, there are only a couple hundred Samaritans. But of 
  course the Vadeli don’t care, they’re the Vadeli. Actually in my cam-
  paign, there’s now one Blue Vadeli. The players are kind of sad about 
  that, they’re trying to worry about it. Here’s the thing with the Vade-
  li. Before the Third Age, before the Closing, there were only Brown 
  Vadeli left. The Vadeli are caste-like, just like the Brithini. The Brown 
  Vadeli were the worker caste, so they weren’t farmers, they were sail-
  ors and hunters. They really weren’t dangerous. They’d do all the bad 
  things they could, but if you have a whole bunch of proletarians, I 
  mean you need a Lenin or a Trotsky to make them dangerous. Af-
  ter the Closing there was an island with Red Vadeli. The Red Vade-
  li are the warriors. So when the warriors mixed with the Browns, 
  then that’s when the Vadeli Empire formed, briefly. Where they went 
  and colonized and they said, “We ended the Closing, be our slaves!” That 
  didn’t last very long, but it lasted a little while and that was because 
  the Reds were back. If they had been Blues, it would have been more 
  effective because the Blues are the king caste. They don’t have a ma-
  gician caste because they all use magic.
  AUD: For you there is no Gold Vadeli that are rulers, it’s Blues who 
  have power? In my understanding the Gold caste is the Talari, the 
  ruler. The Blues are thinkers, wizards. So for you the Vadeli …?
  SP: There is no Gold caste for me. There are three. There are no 
  wizards. That’s one of the reasons that they are unnatural to the 
  Brithini, because all the Vadeli use magic. And with the Brithini, 
  only the wizards can. So it’s not fair. The Brithini wizards actual-
  ly feel pretty constrained. They can’t use weapons. They can’t farm. 
  They can’t hunt. They can’t fish. They can’t give commands. But the 
  Vadeli can do all those things. And if a Blue Vadeli violates his caste, 
  it doesn’t matter. They can violate their caste all the time. So a Brown 
  
  30
  Vadeli can fight or give orders, he’s just not as effective. But a Brithini 
  wizard is just as effective giving orders as a king. It’s just that he will 
  die if he does it. (Laughs) Well, he doesn’t die. He begins to age. What 
  happens is that … say, like for example, here’s Fabian, a handsome 
  24-year-old4. If Fabian was a Brithini and he looked this age and he 
  violated his caste he would still be that age, he would just start to age 
  from that point like a normal human. They just go on from that age, 
  whatever age they look like. They’ll die in 40 or 50 years. But to them 
  that is horrible. They do have spells that let them violate castes. For 
  example, they have a spell that turns farmers into warriors. It’s an 
  emergency spell. All the farmers who accept the spell will then grow 
  old and die. So it’s only for emergency. 
  AUD: The Spell Forbidden by Urostio?
  SP: That’s the one. It turns farmers into warriors, and all the farm-
  ers who take the spell will die.
  AUD: So it’s a kind of kamikaze spell for them because it means 
  death?
  SP: They don’t want to do it, but they will do it if they have to. 
  Here’s the thing about the Brithini. All the Brithini that had spirit 
  and courage and bravery and honor, they all became Malkioni and 
  they died. The ones that are left are the most cowardly, reactionary, 
  cold-blooded and loveless. They are the worst Brithini that are left.
  “ALL THE BRITHINI THAT HAD SPIRIT AND 
  COURAGE AND BRAVERY AND HONOR, THEY ALL 
  BECAME MALKIONI AND THEY DIED.”
  AUD: I think they are not human anymore.
  4 Thanks, Sandy, but I was 39.
  
  31
  SP: Well, you know, they are as human as you would be if you’d 
  been alive for a thousand years, and never loved anybody, and only 
  worried about your caste, and only worried about staying alive. So 
  that’s why they don’t have children unless they’re ordered to, be-
  cause it breaks their eternal boredom. And of course, they feel be-
  trayed because Brithos is gone. So the Arolanit Brithini are like, “Oh! 
  They left us! They suck!”
  AUD: Tell me about the War of the Seas where the Waertagi ally 
  with the Brithini again to wipe the seas clean.
  SP: That’s supposed to be a secret. (Laughs)
  AUD: We’re talking about secrets!
  SP: Okay, what’s happening right now is people are seeing Waer-
  tagi show up. Waertagi dragonships showing up, they’re coming in 
  from the north and the south, because of course they all went down 
  Magasta’s Pool when the Closing hit. But they are showing up. But 
  the Closing came from Brithos. So the dragonships are showing up 
  and they’re asking people, “Where’s Brithos?” Everyone thinks that 
  the Waertagi are looking to get vengeance on Brithos. But they’re 
  not! They want to bring back the Waertagi-Brithini alliance. And if 
  Brithos comes back, if the Waertagi … basically the Waertagi will at-
  tach magical anchors to it, and pull it back out of the fog. And if they 
  can do that, then there will be a new power, well, an old power back 
  in Glorantha again, from the First Age.
  “EVERYONE THINKS THAT THE WAERTAGI ARE 
  LOOKING TO GET VENGEANCE ON BRITHOS. BUT 
  THEY’RE NOT!”
  AUD: Why do they need the Brithini?
  SP: They don’t need the Brithini, they want them. 
  
  32
  AUD: Why do they want them?
  SP: Because the Waertagi can only live on land for a short time. 
  And the Brithini … you know the Waertagi are like the fifth caste of 
  the Brithini. They’re very closely related to the Brithini. A Waertagi 
  will sicken and die if it stays on land very long. So there are those 
  little pockets of coast where there are Waertagi, but in some of the 
  areas they have interbred so much with other people that they can 
  live on the land. But in others they get on a boat and they have to go 
  out for a little bit every day, and they just lived all through the Clos-
  ing like that. So there are little pockets of blue and green-skinned 
  people. Now the color of Waertagi skin, there are like four different 
  blue-skinned humans in Glorantha. There are the Artmali, and their 
  skin is about the color of a Russian blue cat, a grayish blue. That is the 
  color of their skin. Then there are the blue-skinned Vadeli, which is 
  kind of a … I’m not sure what their color is, but it’s a different color. 
  And there are the Blues of Teleos with a nice robin’s-egg blue, kind of 
  a pretty blue. And the Waertagi are of a sea-greenish, a green-blue-
  cyan kind of color. They have gills, some of them. They don’t all have 
  gills. They’ve bred with the Fish people, the Mermen. They have the 
  Innsmouth Look. And they’ve bred with the fish Mermen, not the 
  dolphin ones.
  AUD: So there are many kinds of Waertagi? They don’t look all the 
  same?
  SP: No, but they all feel of the same race. Well, there aren’t many 
  kinds now because they were exterminated. And now there are the 
  ones on the coast that have interbred with people. There are Waer-
  tagi pockets that are still left along the coast of Elamle, that’s where 
  they are. Sog has some, too. There are other places where they 
  crashed their dragonships and interbred, but there they interbred so 
  much they vanished. But they stayed in Sog because Sog has Brithini, 
  so they didn’t interbreed because Brithini don’t want to have sex, so 
  they always stayed separate. And in Elamle it’s because of the Mother 
  of Monsters who keeps the things separated. You know of the Mother 
  of Monsters works, right? The Mother of Monsters walks back and 
  
  33
  forth in a cycle and lays an egg every day. And what the egg hatches 
  into depends on where the tides are and what it is laid on. The most 
  fundamental difference is that if it’s on dry land when the egg hatch-
  es, it becomes this land monster, like a Chaos tyrannosaurus. If it’s 
  part in water and part out, it becomes an amphibian monster. And if 
  it’s in the water it becomes a sea serpent. But there are other things. 
  Like, if it’s elevated above the ground, it will become a pterodactyl. 
  And there’s the King Eater if it’s on top of the grave of an important 
  person. There are all sorts of different things. And the King Eater is 
  really feared. Some people will roll the egg onto a king’s grave and 
  get a King Eater.
  AUD: Can you tell us where the Mother of Monsters comes from?
  AUD: It could be a remnant of an experiment of the Six-Legged 
  Empire.
  SP: It’s a legacy of the Third Age Communication Ban. It’s the Com-
  munication Ban for that area.
  AUD: It is part of the Closing in a way, or the Ban?
  SP: You’ve got to remember that Glorantha usually is not just one 
  thing. The Silent Prophet and the Doldrums and the Closing and 
  the Syndics Ban are not all the same thing. But they all happened 
  simultaneously just like the Sunstop. There are a whole lot of differ-
  ent things happening that all made the sun stop in the First Age, but 
  they were not connected to our understanding. Maybe Arachne So-
  lara sees the connection. The Mother of Monsters is clearly a Chaos 
  thing. It may have been spawned by the Six-Leggers or by a bungled 
  Heroquest. We know that at one time the Mother of Monsters was 
  in the Holy Country, at least briefly. During the Masters of Luck and 
  Death Wars, the Mother of Monsters is on that coast. It may have 
  been moved there.
  AUD: But there is another Mother of Monsters in the ocean, right? 
  There was a bit of confusion about that.
  
  34
  SP: Well, there’s Triolina, the Goddess of all Sea Life. Anything can 
  be a Mother of Monsters but this specific monster, which probably 
  should have another name, is the Curse of Elamle. The humans only 
  survive by working with the elves. And every town has a different 
  method. Some of the towns … what happens when the Mother of 
  Monsters comes by, they abandon the whole town. Then, when it 
  leaves they go back and kill the babies. Some of them do other things. 
  It’s just that the Mother of Monsters is the biggest commonly seen 
  Chaos monster. Oh, here’s one thing! I didn’t realize this wasn’t com-
  monly known, because Loz didn’t know it. The Sky Terror! No one 
  knew about the Sky Terror! I was amazed. So here is the Sky Terror. 
  (Excited) There is currently not a Sky Terror. The Sky Terror has to be 
  assembled. Ralzakark knows how to assemble one. Ralzakark, King 
  of the Broos, he knows how to make one. You know about the Chaos 
  Gaggle? 
  “THE SKY TERROR! NO ONE KNEW ABOUT THE 
  SKY TERROR!”
  AUD: Yeah. (Excited)
  SP: Okay, the Chaos Gaggle is never complete. But what it con-
  sists of is three, well I am going to call them Wyverns but they’re 
  not Wyverns, (Starts writing) they just have two wings, no legs — three 
  Wyverns, (Writes) four goats, one python, one whale and the Red 
  Gorp. (Writes) Okay, these are the parts of the Chaos Gaggle. (Holds up 
  paper) If all of these parts are together, it’s not hard to assemble the 
  Sky Terror. The Chaos Gaggles are broken up Sky Terrors. The Sky 
  Terror is a huge monster with sixteen legs and six wings and a long 
  neck. It looks a little like … (Draws for a while) looks a little bit like this?
  SP: It flies around in the air and eats ambient Chaos, so it can’t sur-
  vive long if there’s not a lot of Chaos around. It needs Chaos. So that’s 
  why you can make one in Dorastor and then fly out to do things for a 
  while before it breaks up again. 
  
  35
  AUD: How big is it?
  SP: It’s colossal!
  AUD: It’s bigger than the Crimson Bat?
  SP: Oh, bigger than the Crimson Bat. It’s huge.
  AUD: Is it Mother of Monsters size?
  SP: It may not be as big as the Mother of Monsters, but it’s big. I 
  think it’s like 200 or 300 feet long.
  AUD: And what does Ralzakark want this thing to do?
  SP: Well, here’s the thing. Look, seen the three sets of wings? 
  (Points at drawing)
  AUD: Ja.
  
  36
  SP: Those break up into the Wyverns. They come off. The four legs 
  become the goats. The toes become the legs of the goats. The python 
  is this long thing that is like the digestive tract. And the whale is the 
  torso without the digestive tract, it is like the lungs and liver and stuff. 
  And the Red Gorp is the glue that fits it all together. So it’s a huge 
  quivering mass of this stuff. Well, Ralzakark doesn’t need it right 
  now, but if he needs to wreak some horrible damage somewhere, it’s 
  like a Superhero level thing. So he would unleash it on the Lunars if 
  they tried to invade him. For most things he wouldn’t need it. 
  AUD: So he’s keeping it in reserve for now?
  SP: He doesn’t have one. He has to make it.
  AUD: He’s reserving the possibility of one.
  SP: Right. So to make a Sky Terror you have to have all the pieces, 
  and if all the pieces are from the same Sky Terror you can make it 
  pretty easily. The problem is usually some of them have been killed, 
  so you might be missing the whale or one of the goats and then you 
  have to take two pieces and try to fit them together, and that requires 
  some effort because they don’t fit the same way. That’s what the Cha-
  os Gaggle is, and that’s why you don’t see them because they fly into 
  areas that are non-chaos, and then, after a while, they degenerate 
  and turn into the Chaos Gaggle because there’s not enough Cha-
  os to maintain them. Actually they were a common terror monster 
  during the Chaos Wars that people would see all the time, and it was 
  a real problem because they’re almost as powerful as a dragon. Awful 
  things. And so there may be some coming out of the Nargan Desert. 
  AUD: So they are not the same thing as the being called Tyram who 
  gives the Hate Sky spell?
  SP: No, Sky Terrors aren’t intelligent. No intelligence. They are just 
  insensate monsters. 
  AUD: So nobody worships them? Tyram is something else?
  
  37
  SP: Tyram the Sky Horror? That is a different Sky Terror, yes. 
  When Tyram manifests, it’s more of an East Isles’ Chaos god. When 
  Tyram manifests, what happens is that the sun becomes the pupil of 
  a giant eye that fills the whole sky. That’s Tyram. The sky is one huge 
  eye seeing you all the time, knowing everything, knowing all the se-
  crets, governing everything. It’s the worst. 
  AUD: Shit. 
  SP: (Laughs) Yeah, you don’t like it. And occasionally, like once the 
  Chaos gods, the Chaos forces got strong enough to bring the Sky Hor-
  ror to visibility, and that of course was during the Sunstop.
  AUD: How does it explain the Hate Sky spell? Or don’t we care and 
  forget it?
  SP: What’s wrong with the Hate Sky spell? Of course Tyram has 
  that. Tyram wants to replace the sun with his pupil. You know what a 
  pupil is? It’s a hole. It’s dark, right? Tyram is the antithesis of the sun. 
  Tyram means to replace the sun with it.
  AUD: So the Black Sun might be a part of Tyram? 
  SP: Yes.
  AUD: Oooh. (Astonished laughter)
  SP: And Xamalk is the Darkness Chaos god.
  AUD: Who?
  SP: Xamalk.
  AUD: Xamalk, yes okay.
  SP: And there are monsters called Xamalki, burrowing Chaos 
  things that are more prominent in Pamaltela. But in Slon the dwarfs 
  
  38
  have to fight them sometimes. They go underground where there are 
  Xamalki and fight them.
  AUD: Sandy, sorry to make you repeat but I have seen these words 
  often and I have never heard them pronounced by a native speaker, it 
  takes some time to catch. Okay?
  SP: Well, how would someone from France or Germany or Italy 
  pronounce that? [Xamalk]
  AUD: Zzz-a-malk. (French accent)
  AUD: Zaamaalk. (German accent)
  SP: Yeah. Well, the initial X is always an issue. 
  AUD: One last secret, Sandy. 
  AUD: Tell me about the Blue Moon. I am big on the Blue Moon. Tell 
  me interesting stuff about the Blue Moon.
  SP: Okay, the Blue Moon. The Blue Moon is undead. It was killed 
  during the Gods War and buried … as a potato. Literally. Potatoes are 
  the Blue Moon plant, because they give life in the ground. It arose as 
  the Undead Moon and began its invisible cycle where it crawls off the 
  outside of the Sky Dome, where you can’t see it. And then it drops 
  through the Pole Star to Magasta’s Pool, and you can see it as the 
  Streak. And all the water in Glorantha follows it rising up or climb-
  ing the Sky Dome, then it drops when it goes down. So the tides in 
  Glorantha take several days to rise and then drop in a single day or 
  sometimes in a few hours.
  AUD: That’s not a secret. Tell us more! 
  SP: It’s the God of Secret Powers and Conspiracies. People who live 
  on the coast can predict the tides for as long as anyone wants to. They 
  know what the tides are. The Blue Moon is not … Seshneya in the 
  
  39
  
  40
  Gods War was also blue, but it was not the Blue Moon. That came 
  later. There’s stuff that everyone knows, Blue Moon assassins and 
  the Blue Moon Cult and how their spells work, right — their spells 
  aren’t variable. Okay, the East Isles and the Lunar Empire and Ar-
  grath’s people all believe in a White Moon. Now the Lunars say the 
  White Moon will replace the Red Moon when it has won. The other 
  people, the Orlanthi, say you have to destroy the Red Moon before 
  the White Moon can rise. The East Islanders say the White Moon is 
  in hell, waiting to rise, and will be brought up someday. Everyone 
  agrees the White Moon is good. Everyone likes the White Moon. 
  There is also the legend of the Black Moon, and the Black Moon is 
  bad. One theory that some Lunars have, not all of them, is that the 
  Black Moon is currently in the sky orbiting the Red Moon and that’s 
  what causes the phases. 
  “THERE IS ALSO THE LEGEND OF THE BLACK 
  MOON …”
  AUD: That’s interesting. 
  AUD: I never heard that before. 
  AUD: Yeah, that’s new.
  SP: And they say it’s a big secret of the Emperor. How big, who 
  knows? Now the East Islanders say they can receive dreams and in-
  struction and information from the White Moon if they’re righteous 
  enough.
   
  AUD: Sandy, do you happen to remember which side of the Sky 
  Dome the Blue Moon creeps up?
  SP: The outside.
  AUD: From the south, from the north, from the east, from the west?
  
  41
  SP: Well, no one can tell because you can’t see it. No one can see it. If 
  you ask different people they have different theories. Lots of people 
  say, “Oh yeah, it goes there.” But who knows, right? It’s possible it has 
  different places, that’s why it’s faster sometimes. Sometimes the Blue 
  Moon will be a couple of days, sometimes it is seven or eight days, 
  sometimes as long as 30 days, sometimes only the next day, it keeps 
  varying, but there is a definite cycle you can predict it with, like the 
  planetary orbits. The Blue Moon has a cycle — it’s not unpredictable. 
  AUD: It makes the seas rise the first five days, then fall in four days, 
  then four, then three days.
  SP: No, it’s like two, then seven, then three, then nine, then one, 
  then six …
  AUD: But always the same cycle?
  SP: No, no. It’s more complex than that. You actually have to do 
  math to figure it out. It’s more like an irrational number where you 
  can calculate Pi for a long way but it doesn’t repeat. It’s like that. 
  Sometimes it will repeat, but you can calculate it. I don’t know what 
  they use to calculate, Lunar spirits maybe. The Blue Moon does have 
  Elementals. They’re called Selenes, and they are really hard to get 
  because you can only summon them during the Blue Streak. Which 
  is pretty short. And you have to be a cultist. And the cultists of the 
  Blue Moon who do this mostly want to keep their powers secret so 
  people don’t know how to defend themselves against them. So it’s 
  hard to tell what they do.
  AUD: So what does a Selene do?
  SP: Hm?
  AUD: What does it do?
  SP: I just said, they keep it a secret. 
  
  42
  AUD: (Laughter)  
  AUD: Okay, guys! Sandy has to get ready for his game. Thanks for 
  attending …
  SP: Okay, here’s what a Selene does. Well, I’ll tell you this: The Se-
  lene does something unexpected and surprising that would fit your 
  campaign. But then it will always do the same thing. They don’t dif-
  fer. What would be the most effective thing against your players? 
  That’s what it will do, and then it will do that thing. Selenes bring 
  cold, or Selenes bring undeath, or Selenes drain power. I think in my 
  campaign they drain power. They’re like Fearshock, but it kills your 
  power. Your might in Magic Points is dead. I’m thinking RuneQuest 
  so they kill your magic power. But they can do whatever you want.
  “THE SELENE DOES SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 
  AND SURPRISING THAT WOULD FIT YOUR  
  CAMPAIGN.”
  AUD: Thanks, Sandy! That was really entertaining!
  AUD: Thanks a lot. 
  (Applause)
  
  44
  Sandy Petersen (born September 16, 1955 in St. Louis, Missouri, 
  USA) is a game designer who lives in Rockwall, Texas. He is most 
  famous for designing the Call of Cthulhu RPG and thus greatly  
  popularizing the works of H.P. Lovecraft, but he is also the second 
  most influential author for Glorantha after Greg Stafford. 
  Later he worked as a computer game designer on many ground-
  breaking and influential games like Doom, Quake and the Age of 
  Empires titles. He now designs board games at his company Petersen 
  Entertainment and publishes Cthulhu Wars and the upcoming 
  Glorantha board game Gods War. Recently Sandy returned to  
  Chaosium as Vice-president of the Board of Directors, Chief Creative  
  Consultant and Guidance Ro-Man. 
  
  TENTACLES  PRESS
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Runequest and Glorantha (d100)/RuneQuest (d100) [multi]/HeroQuest/The Kraken - Chapbook #02 - Forgotten Secrets of Glorantha.pdf