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Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, or henceforth SKoH, is the first of a new line of Gloranthan setting books published by Moon Design for use with second edition HeroQuest. Designed to be both an introduction for novices to the mythic glory of Glorantha and a comprehensive study of the lands of Sartar, it succeeds well in both its aims.
Presentation
First off, SKoH is both big and beautiful! Weighing in at a massive 378 pages this is a huge, soft cover tome. It contains over 100+ specially commissioned pieces of black & white art, which break up the text into intuitive sections and actually illustrate the subject matter at hand. There are seven very nice colour maps included too, although I personally found them to be oddly conflicting with the crisp B&W feel of the rest of the book.
Layout is clean and simple, easy to read and is generously littered with side texts in the margin, which contain interesting snippets of Gloranthan knowledge. No page space has been wasted on fussy boarders or extraneous paragraph spacing.
Content
The book starts with a nice simple introduction to the world of Glorantha, which is invaluable for those new to the setting. It quickly acquaints the reader to the world, its mythic basis, the Sartar region of Dragon Pass and the people that inhabit it - the Sartarites, also known as Orlanthi - who are a Bronze Age culture of fervently religious hill tribes and clans.
The remainder of the supplement is divided into four ‘sub-books’; Making Your Own Orlanthi Character and Clan, Magic and Religion, The Orlanthi Book, and The Colymar Campaign, each of which is described in detail below.
Book 1 – Making Your Own Orlanthi Character and Clan
In its first sub-book, SKoH launches straight into character generation using the 2nd edition HeroQuest rules. The process is almost ridiculously simple and after running through it several times, characters can literally be generated in a couple of minutes. There’s a list of occupations available to Sartarite characters which describes their role and gives guidelines to the profession’s capabilities.
A very important aspect of character generation is selecting which Runes you have an affinity with. For those unfamiliar to the world of Glorantha, Runes are the magical building blocks forming the cosmos, and are a fundamental part of mortals, magic and the gods themselves. So deciding which Runes your character is tied to will determine the magical effects they can manipulate, and which gods they can initiate to.
Character generation concludes with a brief overview of daily life, which gives the reader a firmer grip on what Orlanthi society is really like. Although this information would probably be more useful as an aid to designing PCs prior to character generation, it instead helps pave the way smoothly into the next subsection concerning Community.
Another vital Gloranthan aspect, community explains the character’s relationships to his household, clan, tribe and temple. These are important as roleplaying Orlanthi depends very heavily on blood ties, oaths and responsibilities. They are driving forces in a world where normal adventuring isn’t a case of kicking in doors, looting the room and selfishly squandering your amassed fortune on building castles or wenching it away in a drunken blur. Instead SKoH is a land where heroic tales are formed from defending your homestead against invaders, seeking vengeance by slaying the murderer of a family member, or re-enacting the myths of your god to break the strength of winter and bring back the spring! That’s not to say that you can’t have fun playing old school hack and slash in Sartar, but there’s a huge amount of roleplaying depth for those who take the effort to incorporate it.
Perhaps the most innovative part of the entire book is the final chapter of this section, which allows a group of players to cooperatively design their own Orlanthi clan. It uses a questionnaire to generate the origins, magical affinities and enemies of a clan by selecting multiple choice answers to Gloranthan mythological questions! Not only does this build an esprit d’corps between the player characters and give them a sense of actually belonging to their clan, but it also teaches novices about Orlanthi mythology in a fun and non-intimidating manner. Although I found several of the questions obtuse, even an old time RQ player like myself can learn some new myths and gods along the way!
Book 2 – Magic and Religion
The title of the second section is pretty self explanatory, and takes up almost a third of the book.
It starts with the classification and description of each of the Runes familiar from the early days of RQ, but also adds Personality Traits which manifest in characters who have an affinity with that Rune. This is a nice touch for guiding the persona of both PCs and NPCs.
Next is an explanation of Charms, Spells and Talents. These are minor magical effects which all Orlanthi have some access to. Charms are captured spirits, Spells are verbal invocations of wizardry, and Talents are natural magical abilities you are born with. As is normal with HeroQuest, defining a Charm, Spell or Talent is simple, merely requiring a short description such as ‘See in Darkness’ or ‘Hurl Livestock’. The effect is just what its description says, but the power is only limited by the value you know it at. For example, knowing the charm ‘Hurl Livestock’ at several levels of mastery may allow a character to magically throw a pig across a valley, or knock down a charging herd of bison!
However, SKoH doesn’t focus on these forms of magic, rather it devotes itself to Rune Magic, the powers provided by worshipping the gods. The following chapter summarises Orlanthi Religion, its pantheon of gods, and how to join their cults. Cult membership is limited to those sharing a Runic Affinity with the god in question, and ranks are defined as Lay Member, Initiate and Devotee. Progression requires meeting cult specific stipulations and improving the rating of your Rune Affinity to a minimum value. In addition to the social status granted by having a higher cult rank, it also benefits your character’s magical abilities.
A lay member can use his Rune Affinities to augment everyday tasks he performs, if there is a corresponding sympathy between the task and the Rune. This is best viewed as a psychological bonus to skills. For example, a warrior augmenting his combat skill with his Death Rune affinity.
Initiates may take this one step further and use their Rune Affinity to produce overtly supernatural effects, avoiding the need for credibility tests. This is a very nice aspect since each Rune can be used in very imaginative ways. An affinity with the Air Rune could be used to increase the range of your voice, blow objects to you, change the weather, hold your breath for extended periods, buffet enemies, etc.
Devotees become so attuned to their god that they can channel them, manifesting the power of their god directly via magical feats. These are learned by heroquesting, re-enacting one of their deity’s myths. Feats are capable of epic scale effects since you are, in effect, becoming your god. The downside of this is that whilst you channel your god, you are constrained to act like them, else lose the power!
Perhaps because of the elegance of the 2nd edition HeroQuest system, the mechanics of using magic are childishly simple and seamless, allowing a player to run riot with his imagination as long as the effect is relevant to his Runes. However, this freedom could lead to run-away Rune Magic abuse, causing possible conflict if initiate magic inadvertently replicates a divine feat.
The section continues, explaining various aspects of religion, such as holy days, sacrifices and rituals, community magic and wyters – the minor gods which protect temples, clans and tribes. This is followed by an overview of Orlanthi mythology since the beginning of the god time, a list of all the cults worshipped in Sartar including foreign ones, and the holy places and cult centres of Dragon Pass.
Eventually this intriguing information leads to the in-depth depiction of the ‘most significant Orlanthi cults’, those being Orlanth, Ernalda, Chalana Arroy, Elmal, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy, Humakt, Urox and Yinkin.
Each specific cult has information covering... • Mythos and History • Nature of the Cult • Depiction • Rune Affinities • Opposed Runes • Likes and Dislikes • Cult Organisation • Cult Centres and Holy Places • Holy Days • Sacrifices • Initiate Requirements and Benefits • Subcults • Devotee Requirements and Benefits • Feats • Agents of Reprisal
These are the real meat of the entire section and incorporate a very large amount of interesting and playable information, especially concerning sub-cults, feat powers and plot hooks. They range from 14 pages for Orlanth to a mere 4 pages for Yinkin. Although nine cult write-ups may sound like a disappointingly low number considering the dozens of deities in Sartar, in fact many of the ‘lesser’ gods are included as subcults, which is how the Orlanthi both see and worship them.
The section ends with an excellent chapter detailing Heroquests; how they work, what they grant, and the rules for playing them. These simplified guidelines and mechanics are very easy to understand, and will be even easier to use in actual play. The traditional and mythically important Lightbringers quest is used as an example of how to structure and run a heroquest.
Book 3 – The Orlanthi Book
This section begins with a comprehensive collection of background material illustrating Orlanthi society and culture. It illustrates and describes Orlanthi attitudes to individuals, marriage, law, profession, responsibility, family, clan, tribe and crime. This is followed by a short history of the Kingdom of Sartar, its invasion and conquest by the Lunars (the main enemy of the region), the ongoing desecrations of the occupation and the inevitable Orlanthi rebellions which have thus far all failed. These pages underscore the current social and political strife between the warring Orlanthi and Lunar religions; especially the dissension between clans who continue to clandestinely resist their oppressors, and those who have become collaborators, reaping the benefits of the new regime.
The next subsection is a gazetteer of the twenty four tribes of Sartar, detailing their populations, kings, tribal seats, current Lunar sympathies, and several paragraphs of interesting history. Nice and short, they do not overwhelm or bore the reader with superfluous ‘fluff’. Interposed throughout this section are side texts presenting outsider tribes or famous leaders.
After tribes the gazetteer continues with Sartarite Places of Interest. This is a list mainly composed of cities, forts or geographical features, such as mountain ranges. Each one is described with a concise paragraph or two, and generally incorporates an interesting idea for a plot hook. It concludes with a detailed view of Boldholm, the capital city built by Sartar the hero, after whom the kingdom is named.
Following this is a section on travelling through Sartar, which describes the geography, climate, plant and animal life, ruins and roadways of the region. This progresses onto rights and etiquette when crossing clan or tribal boundaries, the dangers of bandits and a rather disappointingly short sketch of the monsters which can be chanced upon. To help game masters, a list of roughly three dozen adventure hooks is provided for travelling encounters.
Bringing up the rear is a subsection devoted to ‘Neighbours and Other Enemies’. This is an important chapter since it describes many of the protagonists which Orlanthi characters will experience in their adventures. It includes both the neighbouring human nations and the non-humans too. The list is comprehensive, everything from Esrolians to Sun Domers, and Aldryami to Uz. Most have at least half a page of text and are written from the point of view of that culture and/or race, finishing with a paragraph of what the Sartarites really think of them. They follow the old Gloranthan tradition of using the first person tense to grant cultural insight, yet several of the entries such as Dragonewts or Durulz break with this style and use a different tense, which is a little jarring.
As the main foe of the Sartarites, the Lunars receive an expanded section of their own, covering the aggregated nations (the Dara Happans, Pelorians, and Carmanians), the structure and leaders of their occupying imperial armies, and their conduct concerning taxation, retaliation against rebellions and suppressing the Cult of Orlanth.
The section concludes with an in depth presentation of the Colymar tribe, which is used as the basis for the campaign which follows. It relates the tribal history, its lineage of kings, the clans which compose it, and places of interest.
Book 4 – The Orlanthi Book
This sub-book is taken up with an entire campaign some 70 pages long, which puts to shame any other introductory scenario I’ve ever seen. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, this review won’t reveal any descriptions of the plot, but it should be pointed out that it has been carefully crafted to introduce players (both novices to Glorantha and returning old timers) to all the concepts and ideas presented earlier in the book.
Players begin by creating their own clan, the Orlmarth, which is part of the previously detailed Colymar tribe. Once they have completed their characters, they are given some mysterious tattoos and launched into an epic story which a game master can use as the framework for his own campaign. The individual scenarios are designed to be interspersed with other adventures, ones hopefully provoked from following the main plotline and many plot seeds are helpfully suggested. Eventually the characters deeds lead them into a memorable Heroquest in the underworld itself, which if successful, will promote them as major heroes in their own right in the approaching cataclysmic war against the Lunar Empire and the Red Moon.
As an introduction to Sartar and foundation for many hours of excitement, the Colymar Campaign succeeds very well; not only giving examples of encounters, contests and monsters, but also throwing players into the thick of Orlanthi politics and religious responsibilities.
Appendix
The book closes with an appendix containing a brief synopsis of languages spoken in Dragon Pass, the Gloranthan calendar, Sartarite holy days, and a timeline of the region.
In addition, SKoH includes a comprehensive and detailed index which allows readers to quickly look up almost anything or anyone mentioned in the book. This is particularly useful for those new to Glorantha who may become lost in the main text.
Final Analysis
I first encountered Glorantha in ’83 when it was the original setting for RuneQuest. The glorious magical world with its strange cults, Bronze Age armour and weapons, and reminiscent art work captured my imagination and I fell in love with it. But since those days of mythic splendour, Glorantha has grown steadily more sophisticated, growing stodgy under its ever deepening plethora of lore, and perhaps worst of all, lost its magic when the exotic societies became but shadow simulacra of real world cultures and lost their uniqueness.
Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes however, takes a huge step back on the path of time and returns to the exciting magic of those RQ2 days. The crushing body of knowledge has been pared down and rewritten to make it more accessible – and dare I say it, more appealing! Supporting this feeling of simplicity is the clean, clear layout and the transparency of the HeroQuest rules, which intrude minimally into the text. In fact, this book can be easily be used with any rule system which uses an opposed skill mechanic, or simply as a cultural sourcebook.
Perhaps best of all is the artwork, which is beautiful and evocative, harkening back to those wonderfully simple drawings of RQ2 and Cults of Prax.
If I must find anything detrimental about the book, it lays in the fact that there is little space devoted to the monsters and creatures of the setting. For example there are references to walktapi and scorpion men in the text, but save for a single picture no explanation is given to their appearance, nature or abilities. More frustratingly is that the Lunars are portrayed as the main enemy of the Sartarites, but whereas the Orlanthi cults have been granted descriptions of their magic and feats, none are available for the Lunar cults, which are mentioned in several places. Whilst this causes little trouble to those holding previously published material, it does pose a problem for Gloranthan neophytes who will not be able to fully flesh out these protagonists properly. However, these are minor quibbles which will hopefully be soon sorted out in future publications.
The comprehensive coverage of Orlanthi culture in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes may make this an intimidating purchase, especially to those who have never played in Glorantha before... but if you take the plunge, you’ll find Sartar a fascinating and addictive read, worth every dollar, pound, euro or bolg you paid for it!
Overall Ratings: Style: 5 Substance: 5
The book is available from the Moon Design website.
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