Background:
The Imperial Lunar Handbook, Volume 1: The Lunar Empire has been a long time coming. The Glorantha setting has been used for various board games, role-playing systems, and creative writing projects for almost thirty years.* During that time the lion's share of attention has focused on the rebellious storm-worshipping barbarians of Dragon Pass (and Prax) in their desperate struggle to throw off the foreign yoke of Lunar oppression.

At long last, the first official look at the "badguys" we have loved to hate for so long has arrived - and the shift in perspective is staggering! For many people the first glimpse of the far-flung Lunar Empire was a lovely map released by Issaries Inc. and the Unspoken Word last year. The vastness that is the Lunar Empire was a real eye-opener for gloranthaphiles accustomed to the comforting confines of Dragon Pass.

The Imperial Lunar Handbook, Volume 1: The Lunar Empire (ILH-1) expands on this by providing a broad overview of the people living in the Lunar Empire. For people new to Glorantha, this book offers a much wider range of role-playing opportunities than any previous Issaries Inc. product. In fact, I personally can’t recall any role-playing supplement that offered such a wealth of character and story potential - all tied together with the rich history and mythology that is the hallmark of the Glorantha setting. The attempted scope of this supplement is its greatest strength - and weakness.

* The first RPG that used Glorantha as a setting was the venerable RuneQuest. A few years ago Glorantha's creator, Greg Stafford, founded a new company to publish a new RPG based on his world. That game, designed by Robin Laws, was called HeroWars. Issaries Inc. is currently set to publish a revised and updated version of HeroWars under the new title HeroQuest, which is due out sometime this July. Issaries says that ILH-1 is designed for HeroQuest, but is "backwards-compatible" with the old HeroWars rules.

Presentation:
This is a 72 page, saddle stitched, magazine sized book with a glossy color cover. The interior art is all black & white, which makes the included map a bit hard to read. The cover art depicts a plumed warrior astride his avian steed. Imagine an ostrich done up for Mardi Gras. The picture is well done, if a tad silly. My only real complaint here is that this picture, part of a larger work continued from Issaries' Barbarian Adventures, isn’t particularly representative of the Lunar Empire as a whole. I would have preferred that this cover wait for the Imperial Lunar Handbook: Rinliddi, where it would be more appropriate. Ok, so it’s a nit-pick. Mia culpa.

The interior layout is easy to read and replete with nice illustrations. The main portion of the content is presented in a "two-page spread" format where everything you need to read in a particular section can be seen without turning a page. This is a welcome innovation for Issaries and I sincerely hope it is continued in other supplements.

I do have a couple complaints about the interior presentation:

The first is that the map of the Lunar Empire contains two types of label ("PEOPLES of the Empire" and "PEOPLES in this book") that are distinguished from each other only by a sleight difference in typeface. As a result, I could not tell one from another without some real concentration. This is not a huge problem, but was frustrating.

The second issue is that Homeland and political region sections are mixed together, and presented as they occur going clockwise around the map of the Lunar Empire. I would have much preferred the homelands and political regions to be separated into discrete sections, and for them to be ordered alphabetically. This book is, at its heart, a reference work. It should be quick and easy to find information. The borders of the Homeland pages were nicely labeled for quick reference when flipping through the book, but the political regions were not so fortunate. It would have been nice for both to benefit from the border labels feature.

Content:
The Imperial Lunar Handbook: Volume 1: The Lunar Empire describes six distinctive cultures (called "Homelands") from eleven different political regions (called "Satrapies"). It's authors attempt to provide enough political, cultural, and religious information that a HeroQuest "narrator" can immediately get a game set in the Lunar Empire up and running. It succeeds at this goal with admirable success - obviously a great deal of creative thought went into this product! Each Homeland section contains a brief cultural overview, plus HeroQuest keywords to help the narrator or player create characters from that background. The Satrapy sections describe the physical and political makeup of a geographical region - brief descriptions of important locations, population numbers, trade products, wildlife and climate. In both the Homeland and Satrapy sections, a ton of information is packed into each two-page spread.

The book also contains a series of essays on the beliefs and institutions that hold the mighty Lunar Empire together. Government and law are discussed, as are economics, the military, and the pervasive influence of the Lunar religion. The history of the empire since the rise of the Lunar faith is presented in a timeline, which is handy but not all that exciting to read.  Travel within the empire is discussed, and a "Rates of Travel" table is provided - a first for the Hero Wars/Quest line if I am not mistaken.

The breadth of material attempted here is a departure from previous Gloranthan supplements, which tend to focus on one culture or geographic area. Thus, ILH-1 lacks the depth that we have come to love (and sometimes hate) in gloranthan RPG supplements. Largely missing are the travelogues, myths, personalities, and sense of place that make the best Glorantha RPG supplements so engaging. This book is a broad overview providing the framework upon which future products will expand. Depth will hopefully come with future books in the ILH series, which will focus on each of the Homelands listed in this book starting with the Lunars themselves in ILH-2.

Conclusion:
As immediately useful as it is, the Imperial Lunar Handbook, Volume 1: The Lunar Empire is at heart a promise of things to come, its eventual fate to be replaced by more fully realized future volumes. It is in these subsequent volumes that the series will either capture the imagination of the current generation of role-players or fall into the discount bin of gaming history. Either way, I am glad that Issaries has decided to take a chance and show us how the other side lives, north of the Dragonspine, through the Glowline, in the wide-open spaces beyond.

All Hail the Reaching Moon

~Kevin McDonald

Note: In the interest of complete disclosure, I was a playtester for an early version of this book.