Jonstown Jottings #83: Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces is a supplement for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which provides support for the scenario, Hydra! It is also sufficiently versatile to do a fair bit more.

It is a seventy-four page, full colour 14.91 MB PDF.

The layout is slightly untidy in places, but the artwork is decent.

Where is it set?

The contents of Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces are set in Lunar Tarsh and the Lunar Provinces of Aggar, Holay, Imther, and Vanch.

Geographically and culturally it makes accessing supplements such as A Rough Guide to Glamour and Citizens of the Lunar Empire easier.

Who do you play?
Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces requires characters with backgrounds connected to either the Lunar Empire or the Lunar Provinces, but supplies content to facilitate the latter.

What do you need?
Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and The Book of Red Magic. In addition, Cults of RuneQuest: The Lightbringers, Cults of RuneQuest: The Earth Goddesses, and Cults of RuneQuest: The Lunar Way and Cults of RuneQuest: The Solar Way will be useful.

What do you get?

Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces is at its most basic, a set of pre-generated Player Characters, all of them from the Lunar Provinces Aggar, Holay, Imther, or Vanch and members of the Lunar army, for use with the scenario, Hydra! There are some twenty of these, belonging to one of six cults—Humakt, Jakaleel, Seven Mothers, Waha, Yanafal Tarnils the war god for the Native Tarsh Corps, or Yelmalio, and originally from one of six Lunar provinces—Lunar Tarsh, Aggar, Holay, Imther, and Vanch. All possess more Rune points to reflect their military service and experience. Included with each are an illustration, their family histories, created using the provided tables in Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces, personality descriptions, plus mounts and familiars where required.

However the supplement is more than just a set of pre-generated adventurers, although that is what it started as. It also gives description of the Lunar Provinces, supporting both the backgrounds of the pre-generated Player Characters and any that the players might create themselves. There are maps latter as well of the provinces, and it might have been more useful to have them close to their descriptions rather than further on in the supplement. Similarly, the timeline of the Lunar Provinces could have better placed towards the front of the book. To support the latter feature, Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces includes all of the additional information needed to create Player Characters from the six Lunar Provinces in conjunction with the rules in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Thus there cultural modifiers for Runes, skills, and weapons, and this followed by ‘Family History for the Lunar Provinces’ which gives substitutions to reflect these Player Character experiences rather than those given in the core rulebook. Additional tables suggest regiments that a Player Character could have served with if created for general play or could be still serving with if intended for use with the scenario, Hydra! and the battles they would have fought in as members of those regiments.

A more personal guide to the Lunar Provinces is presented in ‘Jonstown to Eneal’, which describes the wayward wander around the Lunar Provinces by Salvatrix the Sober, much in the manner of the travelogue of Biturian Varosh, the merchant prince of the Issaries cult, found in Cults of Prax. In comparison, it is more picaresque. In addition to being a pleasant read, what ‘Jonstown to Eneal’ does illustrate are the collection of encounters that follow, which can also act as plot hooks. They include Etyries Merchants, Gargoyles from the Plain of Stones, Tusk Riders from the Stinking Forest, and more, all with full stats. The Game Master will have to look to their appearance in ‘Jonstown to Eneal’ for direct inspiration on how to use them, or simply comes up with ideas of her own.

Lastly, the supplement includes a couple of pieces of plunder from the Lunar Provinces, both more dangerous than they look, and some additional content for use with Yelmalio. These consist of new Spirit magic spells—Cold Sun Spear and Cold Sun Dart; new Rune spells such as Defend Against Darkness and Summon Hawk, the latter summoning a Vrock Hawk which will fly to the caster and serve him, though this can take second or it can take hours, and new gifts.

Although it is in need of a reorganisation, Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces can be a very useful supplement. It is definitely of use if the Game Master wants to run Hydra! and it is definitely of use if the Game Master wants to expand Player Character (let alone NPC) background options from those presented in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It also opens up easier options for Player Characters wanting to explore the Lunar Empire or even visit Glamour. Overall, there is a lot of Player Character information here that will remain useful until such times as official source material is published.

Is it worth your time?

Yes—Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces is a useful addition for the Game Master wanting to support the scenario Hydra! or wants a wider range of both Player Character and NPC options.

No—Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces explore both a region and character backgrounds that my campaign is unlikely to visit or need.

Maybe—Hydra – Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces provides and supports more Player Character and NPC options than is currently available, both of which can be useful even if the Game Master has no intention of running Hydra!

A Delta Guide

The Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is the fourth setting supplement for Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game following on from the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, and The Gamma Quadrant. It completes the quadrant sourcebooks for the roleplaying game and does a whole lot more. Where the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook updated the timeline for Star Trek Adventures from 2372 to 2375 to encompass the whole of the Dominion War and its aftermath, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook advances it another four years to 2379 and the return of the USS Voyager after its long journey home from the Delta Quadrant, some seventy thousand light years from Federation space as told in Star Trek: Voyager. It encompasses details of the species and worlds that the crew of the Voyager encountered and suggests ways in which another starship and its crew might find itself flung across the galaxy, isolated and alone, with only their wits and training to rely upon in surviving and then travelling the long way home. One of the major species that U.S.S. Voyager encountered were the Borg Collective, not once, but many times, and this included crossing the vastness of Borg space. The prominence of the Borg in Star Trek: Voyager, not least because a liberated Borg drone, Seven of Nine, would join her crew, is reflected in the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook, which is as much a sourcebook for the Borg for Star Trek Adventures as it is the Delta Quadrant.

The Delta Quadrant Sourcebook begins with a map like the three books in the series, but not an actual map of the Delta Quadrant, or even of the territory encompassed by the Borg Collective. Where the other supplements in the series have maps of their quadrants, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook begins with a series of maps showing the flightpath that the U.S.S. Voyager took to get home. It shows an incredibly narrow slice of the Delta Quadrant, but so it should, and so too, does the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook. What this reflect is the fact that although U.S.S. Voyager undertook exploration during its journey home, it was never its primary objective. In fact, exploration was secondary, or even tertiary to its prime objective. Consequently, its encounters with cultures and species and worlds and spatial phenomena was fleeting, lacking the time that scientific rigour would otherwise demand. Thus its reports and analysis can only be seen in most cases as the initial cursory examination of a probe exploring a new region. This is highlighted in one of the pieces of colour fiction in the book and what it means is that once a Game Master has got her Player Characters and their ship to the Delta Quadrant, there is huge scope for her to develop her own content and even change details about a species or culture or a world because Star Fleet knows so little about the Delta Quadrant.

Unlike the earlier Beta Quadrant Sourcebook and Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is not as easy a supplement to use in chronological terms. As it depicts an area of space between 2371 and 2379 and given its distance from Federation space, it is difficult to use in the Star Trek: The Original Series or Enterprise eras of play. Options are suggested, but there are far more of them set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation era. The overview of the various species, from the Devore Imperium and the Haakonian Order to the Vidiian Sodality and the Voth, taking in the Hirogen, the Kazon Order, and Species 8472 along the way varies from entry to entry. The length of entry is determined by how many times the U.S.S. Voyager encountered them, thus the Devore Imperium is given a mere half page, but the Hirogen, the Kazon Order, and Species 8472 over a page each. There is good, solid detail here, but it is let down by the lack of art. Only the Hirogen and Species 8472 are illustrated, whilst the rest are given a physiological description and given that they come from a visual medium, this is not really enough. There are descriptions of some of the worlds visited by the U.S.S. Voyager encountered as well.

Over a fifth of the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is dedicated to the Borg. This includes an examination of who and what the Borg are, how they and their Queen function, how a species in danger of being assimilated might react, and so on. There are some interesting ideas here, such as the potentially immoral option of treating the Borg as invasive vermin, a threat to flee from, and as a viral infection. Another is restricted to worlds with cultures or resources which the Borg has deemed suitable for assimilation. If not yet technologically developed, a culture might regard the Borg as gods who will make the worthy immortal or demons who will steal the unworthy away... Types of drone are detailed, including maintenance, medical, tactical, and adjuncts. Throughout, there are in-game reports from the various governments and polities of the Star Trek universe. For example, the Cardassians are interested in making contact with the Borg Queen, the Dominion is wary of them, and Section 31 of Starfleet are still concerned about how much of a threat Juan-Luc Picard represents following his liberation from the Borg as Locutus. All of these add flavour and opinion that can help the Game Master portray these interested parties in her campaign. In this way, the use of the in-game fiction in this way is far better than has been in other supplements for Star Trek Adventures. In terms of worlds, the supplement is really rather clever. Instead of naming specific worlds, it examines the types of worlds that the Borg Collective is interested in. This enables the Game Master to create some interesting settings for encounters with the Borg, such as aboard their technologically advance floating platforms in gas giants or in the forcefield-protected facilities of demon worlds.

Under Lifepath Options, the most notable addition is that of the Liberated Borg. This is given as being for the Star Trek: The Next Generation era only, representing when they are a more frequent occurrence. This is not to say that they cannot appear in the other eras, but this is not really explored in the supplement. For the player Character, the Liberated Borg is a treated as a Mixed Species character and must have the Borg Implants Talent. This gives the Player Character three implants such as a Critical Array (interlink Node), Cybernetic Arm, or Ocular Sensory Enhancer. Their presence hampers social interaction as much as they grant technological advantages, but they can be removed. This takes a story milestone for each implant and only once all three have been removed, can the Talent itself swapped out.

Other species for the Delta Quadrant presented as fully playable characters include the Ankari, who use the energy from a nucleogenic lifeform to power their starships, the administrative specialist Jye, the Monean who live on a massive waterworld and are good swimmers and as former star nomads, also good navigators, the Occampa, and more. The guidelines suggest how the character generation process of Star Trek Adventures can be used, adjusted, or simply renamed to suit the Player Character.

For starships, the Borg feature again, with write-ups of Borg Octahedron, the command and control vessel for the Borg Queen and the Bog Torus which handles construction, along with the Borg Probe Ship and the Borg Tactical Cube. The Delta Flyer built by Tom Paris is detailed again, but more specific Delta Quadrant starships include the Kazon Raider, Hirogen warship, the Krenim Timeship with its time manipulating technology, Species 8472 Bioship, and many more. Stats for numerous NPCs are also given. Most of these are generic and unnamed, such as the Talaxian Smuggler, Occampa Explorer, or Hirogen Hunter, but there are named NPCs given too. These include Annorax, the Krenim officer and temporal scientist who turned the manipulation of the timeline into a weapon of war; Hugh, the Borg drone rescued by Starfleet; Commander Elizabeth Shelby, who became a tactical expert on the Borg following the battle of Wolf 359; and the Borg Queen. Perhaps the only NPC missing here is Rudolph Ransom, the captain of the U.S.S. Equinox, who used Ankari technology which drew power from nucleogenic lifeforms, to fuel his ship. Given that the Ankari are included, it seems odd that he is not.

The last part of the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is dedicated to encounters, both the Borg and with other species in the quadrant. These all make good use of the details presented throughout the supplement. They including being caught at an outpost when a captured member of Species 8472 escapes and begins picking off victims one-by-one; Annorax, the Krenim officer and temporal scientist, seeking asylum with the Player Characters’ vessel; helping with a mass planetary evacuation ahead of the Borg arrival; attending an auction for the means to hack into the command structure of the Borg Collective, but the means turns out to liberated drones; and several more. There is discussion of possible ideas for Delta Quadrant-set campaigns, including a more swashbuckling style with non-Starfleet Player Characters, and also of the dangers of running a Borg-focused campaign. This is primarily because the Borg remain one of the most dangerous threats that Starfleet has encountered and going toe-to-toe with them is likely to end in death, disaster, and assimilation. Instead other means of defeating them are explored, typically involving either reprogramming the Borg systems or hacking into them.

Physically, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is a decent looking book. It is generally well-written and decently illustrated—though not always effectively—with a fully painted images. With so many species to illustrate, this is definitely a supplement which needed more artwork—and needed more artwork with good reason. It does need a slight edit in places. The layout is done in the style of the LCARS—Library Computer Access/Retrieval System—operating system used by Starfleet. So, everything is laid out over a rich black background with the text done in soft colours. This is very in keeping with the theme and period setting of Star Trek Adventures, but it is imposing, even intimidating in its look, and it is not always easy to find things on the page because of the book’s look. The other issue is that the none-more black pages are easy to mark with fingerprints.

Throughout the supplement, the descriptions and game content are supported by a series of in-game documents, reports, diary excerpts, and the like. Some of these feel a bit too long, but their focus, as with the book as a whole, on the Borg and the Delta Quadrant, means they too are focused and better for it. 

If the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook was three books in one, covering the Dominion, the worlds in and around Dominion space, and the Dominion War, then the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook is two books in one. One of them focuses on the Delta Quadrant and the other on the Borg, and with such two narrow foci, the supplement feels all the better for it. The supplement presents only a narrow strip of the Delta Quadrant, leaving vast swathes of space for Game Master to develop of her own, and that is even before considering adding the Borg. The Borg content will, of course, be useful throughout the Star Trek: The Next Generation era of play, but whenever or wherever she decides to bring the Collective into play, it should done with care lest the Player Characters be overwhelmed and outmatched. Overall, the Delta Quadrant Sourcebook nicely brings a slice of Delta Quadrant space to life and launches the Borg Collective as a formidable foe for Star Trek Adventures.

A Gamma Guide

The Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is the third setting supplement for Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game following on from the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook and the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook. Effectively, it lies at the far end of the Bajoran Wormhole which connects the Gamma Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant and it is what comes through the Bajoran Wormhole which is the primary focus of the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook. For the supplement is as much a setting update as much a setting sourcebook and as much a companion to the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook. What the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook did was to examine the world of Bajor, and the major polities of the region, including the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance, the Tzenkethi Coalition, the Breen Confederacy, and the Tholian Assembly. It also looked at the Bajoran Wormhole and explored its ramifications of upon the quadrant, in the process, updating the default starting year for Star Trek Adventures of 2371 to 2372 as the early years of Deep Space 9 was explored. The Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook goes further. Not only does it update the default starting year from 2372 to 2375, but it also examines the whole of the Dominion War, looks at the major factions and events involved, supporting with details of new species, ways to involve the Player Characters and run campaigns set during the war, and more. What this means is that the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is really only a book for one of the period settings in Star Trek Adventures, that of Star Trek: The Next Generation rather than the earlier Star Trek: The Original Series or Enterprise.

What the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook does not include is a map of the Gamma Quadrant. As with the television series, Deep Space 9, it remains for the most part, a great unknown, its exploration and possible contact with worlds there made all the challenging by the presence—both implied and actually present—of the Dominion. Nevertheless, there is plenty of scope for the crew of a starship to explore beyond the Bajoran Wormhole, make contact with the various species there, begin to learn hints of the Dominion, its masters and subject species, and wonder at its strangeness. In fact, almost a half of the supplement is dedicated to examining the Dominion and the Dominion war itself. The former starts with the history of the Changelings, how they fled, hounded by the ‘solids’—as they call most other species, to eventually find a world where they could be safe their Great Link, the world-spanning gestalt formed of their combined bodies and minds. It examines their politics, best described as a ‘fascist theocracy’ in which they are worshipped by their subjects upon whom they impose a strict order through their agents, the manipulative Vorta and the feared Jem’Hadar. Numerous worlds and species both within Dominion space and adjacent to it, are also detailed, such as the Drai, who serve as the Dominion’s geneticists and are thus regarded as a privileged member of the Dominion, and the T-Rogorans, a warlike species that aggressively expanding from its homeworld before encountering the Jem’Hadar and being almost wiped out… Notable worlds include the Founders’ Homeworld, essentially rock with little more than an atmosphere and the Great Link as a singular ocean; an Hur’q Outpost, an archaeological treasure house for anyone interested in Klingon history, the Hur’q having fled the Klingon homeworld thousands of years ago; and the Cursed Penal Moon, where the incarcerated are forced to fight in an ongoing war between two factions again and again as they find themselves resurrected each time they are killed. None can leave lest they die. All of these worlds and many of the species are ripe for visit by the Player Characters, whether as members of Starfleet or another faction.

Besides examining various species in the Gamma Quadrant, the supplement also looks at the various species in the Alpha Quadrant and their relationship with the Dominion. This includes the Breen, Cardassians, the Son’a, and the Orions, as well as potential allies like the Tholian Assembly, the Gorn, and the Nausicaans. The consequences of these potential alliances are also explored. Perhaps the most interesting inclusion here is that of the Kzin, a species rarely mentioned by Star Trek. Originally appearing in ‘The Slaver Weapon’, an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series adapted by Larry Niven from his Known Space setting stories. However, they have been reintroduced into Star Trek in passing, or at least in mention. No stats are provided for them though in the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook.

A detailed timeline of the Dominion War is also provided. It provides a background to the conflict as well as a look at the Cold War in which the Dominion began to infiltrate the Alpha Quadrant, secure allies, and foment conflict. This would lead to wars between the Klingons and Cardassians and then the Klingons and the Federation. Options are discussed for roleplaying in this Cold War period, before moving on to the loss and recapture of Deep Space 9, and coming to close with the current state of the war in 2374. Fortunately, supplement does not leave it there. Rather, it both gives 2374 as a default starting, ready for the Player Characters and their starship to become involved in the final operations against the Dominion, and then outlines the events of 2375 ready for the Game Master to run a campaign through this period.

To go with the numerous species discussed earlier, some twelve new species are given stats and details to make playable as both NPCs and Player Characters. This includes the Changelings! Their inclusion, of course, allows a player to roleplay a character similar to Constable Odo from Deep Space 9, and to that end, there is a discussion of how to include ‘Non-Starfleet, Unusual, Or Unique Characters’ in a Star Trek Adventures campaign. This is not confined to Changelings, of course, and there are plenty of species in the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook, such as Lurians, Rakhari, or Wadi, which could be added as an unusual character to a campaign, let alone those in other supplements. A campaign based in a starbase, whether on a planet or in space, would more readily support this option than perhaps aboard a starship, but there are plenty of examples of such characters aboard a starship seen in Star Trek. Another option for a Changeling Player Character is to have them as infiltrators, undermining the efforts of Starfleet, the Federation, and its allies from within. Such an option does need careful handling, by both player and Game Master, with potential for redemption once the Changeling has been revealed and perhaps the person it was impersonating rescued from imprisonment. Notably, neither the Vorta nor the Jem’Hadar are included here. Instead, they remain adversaries, and are fully detailed in the core rulebook for Star Trek Adventures.

Numerous starships of the Gamma Quadrant are also described. These start with those vessels of the Dominion and its allies. Thus, the Jem’Hadar battleship and the Vorta Explorer, and the Son’a flagship and battlecruiser. The majority of the vessels are those of the Dominion War, all of them notable vessels. Amongst them are the U.S.S. Prometheus, the first vessel capable of Multi-Vector Assault Mode and the U.S.S. Valiant, the Defiant Class operated by members of Red Squadron from Starfleet Academy. An interesting option given is the vessels from the so-called ‘Frankenstein Fleet’, which saw starship frames previously mothballed by Starfleet upgraded with more advanced equipment and technologies. This would result in a radically different and genuinely unique vessel, a mixture of the old with the new.

Lastly, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook includes a wide selection of encounters and adversaries. Alongside a handful of encounter seeds for the Gamma Quadrant, there is a discussion of the Bajoran Wormhole and the role of the Prophets, and the nature of exploring the Gamma Quadrant. There is discussion too, of the types of campaigns that can be played throughout the period of the Dominion War, accompanied by several mission seeds and encounter types. Major NPCs given include General Martok of the Klingon Empire, Kai Winna Bajoran Vedek, the Cardassian leader, Gul Dukat, and the leading member of the Vorta species, Weyoun. Their inclusion enables the Player Characters to encounter and interact with some of the major adversaries of the Dominion War.

Physically, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is a decent looking book. There are some inconsistencies in the layout, but otherwise the book is generally well-written and decently illustrated—though not always effectively—with a fully painted images. It does need a slight edit in places. The layout is done in the style of the LCARS—Library Computer Access/Retrieval System—operating system used by Starfleet. So, everything is laid out over a rich black background with the text done in soft colours. This is very in keeping with the theme and period setting of Star Trek Adventures, but it is imposing, even intimidating in its look, and it is not always easy to find things on the page because of the book’s look. The other issue is that the none-more black pages are easy to mark with fingerprints.

Throughout the supplement, the descriptions and game content are supported by a series of in-game documents, reports, diary excerpts, and the like. These typically reflect the mysterious nature of the Dominion and then the fraught nature of facing them and their agents in war, adding a sense of desperation in terms of its flavour and feel.

The Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is three books in one, covering the Dominion, the worlds in and around Dominion space, and the Dominion War. It is also a companion volume, that to the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, which will provide the setting material for the Bajoran end of the Wormhole—Bajor, the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance, the Badlands, and the Demilitarised Zone. Like the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook sort of tiptoes around the subject of Deep Space 9. Yet despite this omission, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is actually the most enjoyable and the most useful of the three sourcebooks dedicated to Star Trek’s quadrants to date. This is because it does not spread itself as thin as they do, its focus being firmly on the Dominion and their allies, the Dominion War, the consequences of the war, and involving the Player Characters. All of which is backed up by solid advice on running a campaign during just four or five years of Star Trek’s history.

To get the best out of the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook, the Game Master will want access to the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, as that will anchor one end of the Bajoran Wormhole and Dominion War. Nevertheless, the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook is the definitive guide to the Dominion and the Dominion War for Star Trek Adventures, as well as the other end of the Bajoran Wormhole.

Jonstown Jottings #50: The Company of the Dragon

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
The Company of the Dragon is a campaign for use with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It is based on a campaign developed on the author’s blog.

It is a sequel to the author’s earlier Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, which can also be run as a standalone campaign.

Notes are included so that The Company of the Dragon can be run using Questworlds (formerly known as HeroQuest: Glorantha) or 13th Age Glorantha.

It is a two-hundred-and-seventy page, full colour, 222.29 MB PDF or alternatively a two-hundred-and-seventy page, full colour hardback book.

The layout is clean and tidy. It uses classic RuneQuest cartorgraphy,  the artwork is good, and although it requires an edit in places, is well written and easy to read.

Where is it set?
The Company of the Dragon is set across Sartar in Dragon Pass. Specifically, it is set between Earth Season, 1620 ST and Darkness Season, 1625 ST.

Who do you play?
If The Company of the Dragon is played as the direct sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar, the Player Characters will be dispossessed and on the run members of the Haraborn Clan, broken following a confrontation with the occupying forces of the Lunar Empire.

Alternatively, if The Company of the Dragon is played as a standalone campaign, the Player Characters should be Sartarites who have been rendered clanless due to the actions or influence of the Lunar Empire and therefore have a dislike of either Chaos or the Lunar Empire.

What do you need?
The Company of the Dragon requires RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the Glorantha Bestiary, the RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack, and The Book of Red Magic. The Startar Campaign may also be useful.

What do you get?

The truth of the matter is that like Six Seasons in Sartar before it, The Company of the Dragon is not one thing. Both are campaigns and both are more than the sum of their parts, for each and every one of those parts stands out on its own. Not necessarily because they are gameable, but together they contribute to the campaign as a very satisfactory whole.

First—and most obviously, The Company of the Dragon is a campaign and a sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar. In Six Seasons in Sartar, the players and their characters, newly initiated members of the Haraborn, the Clan of the Black Stag, the 13th Colymar clan play out the last year of existence before its sundering at the hands of the Lunar Empire. Brought to the attention of Kallyr Starbrow, the last few members of the clan—including the Player Characters—are on the run, hunted by both occupying Lunar forces and the empire’s indigent servants. They have taken to hills, one more dispossessed band of the clanless, relying at best on the generosity of those Sartarite hill clans prepared to support the victims of the Lunar Empire. Some—mostly the ‘gentrified’ Sartarites of the towns and cities—instead view them as bandits and rebels in the face of the peace and prosperity that comes with being a Lunar client state, and the divide between the Sartarites of the towns and the hills is an important aspect of the campaign.

As a campaign, the focus and setting for Six Seasons in Sartar was narrow—the Vale that is home to the Haraborn and the six seasons which run from 1619 ST and into 1620 ST. It did not so much take the Player Characters out of those confines, as force them out at the end of the campaign. The Company of the Dragon takes place between Earth Season, 1620 ST and Darkness Season, 1625 ST, during which time the Player Characters and their band, will crisscross Sartar, often with the enemy dogging their heels, potentially participating in the great events of the period, such as the Battle of Auroch Hills. Ultimately, as the campaign comes to a climax, the Player Characters will participate in the Dragonrise (which takes place just weeks before the beginning of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha) and the ascension of Kallyr Starbrow. Chronologically, this equates to the same period that players are rolling the family backgrounds for the active five years of their characters’ own adventuring in character generation in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. What this means is that The Company of the Dragon could be used as a means not to simply generate the backgrounds for the Player Characters, but rather play them out. This would work playing the campaign as members of the Haraborn clan or simply the dispossessed if run as a standalone campaign.

As a campaign, The Company of the Dragon consists of some twenty-seven seasons, covering some five years, into each of which can be slotted the campaign’s episodes. Some of these come pre-filled, such as The Forging, the campaign’s starting point, and then The Battle of Auroch Hills, Famine, Dragonrise, and Kallyr Starbrow. The rest are left empty for the Game Master to populate as best suits her campaign and her players. Over half of the book is dedicated to these, each broken down into its what, when, where, who, why, and how, before presenting potential exits. Some are connected, but many are standalone and many can be repeated, such as encountering ‘rival’ bandits, escaping from capture, facing the famine which besets Sartar due to the Great Winter, being hunted by the authorities, and so on. In many cases, these episodes can be varied slightly so that they do not feel repetitive. The episodes range in tone, some are merely exciting, others epic, and some truly horrific and creepy. Depending upon the players, there are some episodes which are of a mature nature and so may not be suitable for all groups, even though their roleplaying potential is still very high. 

Second, The Company of the Dragon is a means to quantify and run an organisation—in this a band of rebels which will rise above mere banditry and become a warband associated with and allied to Kallyr Starbrow. As a band on the run, the organisation becomes the Player Characters’ community, a mobile one, but a community, nevertheless. This is the ‘Company of the Dragon’ itself and the Player Characters form its Ring, its heart and ruling body, along with any other surviving NPCs from the Haraborn Clan, if the campaign is being run as a sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar. The community/warband is done as a Player Character in its own right, complete with Community characteristics, Runes, Reputation, and even skills. The Community characteristics interact with the world around in two ways. One is directly against another organisation, for example, against a Lunar force sent to track them down, and this is handled with opposed rolls, whilst the other is as resources, for example, donating food to a starving Clan and in doing so, depleting the warband’s Community Constitution. Throughout the campaign, the Player Characters must constantly keep track of and maintain the Community characteristics to ensure the warband’s survival.

Third, The Company of the Dragon is also a guide to Illumination, for the warband is also its own cult and has its own Wyter. This stems from the final scenarios in the earlier Six Seasons in Sartar, and ultimately the loss and replacement of Clan Haraborn’s Wyter. The Illumination involved is neither that of Nysalor or the Red Goddess, but that of Draconic Consciousness. Here The Company of the Dragon resolutely veers into ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’ territory and the author’s interpretation may not match that of the Game Master running the campaign. However, it does push the members of the company to become something more than a mere warband and perhaps achieve the mythic, if in a very different fashion.

Fourth, The Company of the Dragon is an initiation into the mysteries of Glorantha. These are primarily explored through the alternative form of Illumination, but The Company of the Dragon continues the writings in Six Seasons in Sartar which examined initiation rituals. Six Seasons in Sartar included detailed initiations for both Orlanth lay worshippers and Ernalda lay worshippers, but here expands on that to detail the rituals involved for Orlanth Adventurous, Vinga, Humakt, Babeester Gor, and Storm Bull. The last one detailed is that for The Company of the Dragon itself.

Fifth, The Company of the Dragon, much like Six Seasons in Sartar, is a toolkit. Take the various bits of the campaign and what you have is a set of tools and elements which the Game Master can obviously use as part of running The Company of the Dragon, but can also take them and use them in her own campaign. So this is not just the advice and discussion as to the nature of initiations and how to run them, but also the rules for creating and running streamlined NPCs—supported by a wide range of NPCs which the Game Master can modify, a guide to running character and story arcs, running and handling communities, and of course, advice on running both the campaign and RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in general.

Sixth, The Company of the Dragon, much like Six Seasons in Sartar, is a conceit. Throughout the campaign, commentary is provided by a number of notable Gloranthan scholars and experts in Third Age literature, not necessarily upon the campaign itself, but upon the events detailed The Warbands of Sartar Under the Pax Imperii by Temerin the Younger, a Lunarised Sartarite who was intrigued enough by the ‘rebels’ of The Company of the Dragon to want understand what motivated its members. Again there are excepts from later authors, such as ‘Bands of Brothers, Circles of Sisters’ – The Warbands of Ancient Sartar by Deborah Abadi, or Miguel Moreno’s ‘Between Two Nations: Temerin the Younger’s Identity Struggle’ from The Journal of Heortling Studies, October 1998. As before, this device enables the author himself to step out of the campaign itself and add further commentary, not just from his own point of view, but from opposing views. Beyond that, the conceit pushes The Company of the Dragon as a campaign from being a mere campaign into being an epic, because essentially, it is what a heroic poem does.

Of course, The Company of the Dragon comes to an end. The climax manages to be epic and monstrous, gloriously involving the Company of the Dragon and the Player Characters. It enables them to be involved in the most pivotal events of the recent Gloranthan history and likely prove themselves to heroes worthy of myth and legend. 

Is it worth your time?
Yes—The Company of the Dragon is a superb treatment of community, myth, and destiny in Glorantha, which pushes the players and their characters to build and maintain their own community, to create their own myth, and ultimately, have them forge their own destiny. Packed with tools, advice, and discussion, this is exactly the sequel that Six Seasons in Sartar needed and whether as a sequel or a standalone campaign, is a superb prequel to the events of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the Sartar Campaign.
No—The Company of the Dragon presents an alternative campaign set-up, one which takes place prior to the default starting date for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and requires you to play out season by season—and you may already have begun your campaign.

Maybe—The Company of the Dragon includes content which is useful beyond the limits of its campaign—the initiation rites, the notes on heroquests, rules for streamlined NPCs, quick resolution rules for battles, and more. That more consists of almost thirty fully detailed adventures and adventure seeds which can be drawn out and developed by the Game Master. All useful in an ongoing campaign. 

An Alpha Primer

The Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is the second setting supplement for Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game following on from the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook. It is home to Federation member worlds such as Betazed and Tellar Prime, but its dominant powers are the Klingon Empire and Romulan Star Empire. However, these are not the focus of the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, which pushes out to the frontier where fractious borders exist between the Federation and the Cardassian Union, the Breen Confederacy, and the Tholian Assembly, whilst the Ferengi Alliance pursues between them all. Further, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook pushes out to the nexus of the conflict in the region—the planet Bajor, Deep Space 9, and the Wormhole (although the supplement is not a Deep Space 9 sourcebook)—and on a further year into 2372 from the 2371 of Star Trek Adventures and the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook. Although there are mentions of them here and there, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is not a sourcebook for a campaign setting during the periods of Star Trek: The Original Series or Star Trek: Enterprise.

The slimmest book to date for Star Trek Adventures, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is essentially a series of briefings given by Benjamin Sisko, the commander of Deep Space 9, to a Starfleet starship captain assigned to the quadrant. In turn, it covers the recent history of the quadrant with the recent liberation of Bajor from Cardassian occupation by the Bajoran Resistance, the discovery of the Wormhole through to the Gamma Quadrant, incursions by the strange forces of the Dominion from the other side of the Wormhole, and the Klingon Empire’s withdrawal from the Khitomer Accords which have maintained peace between the Klingons and the Federation for decades. Three worlds of the Federation are covered in some detail, Betazed, Denobula—probably the prime section of information for a Star Trek: Enterprise campaign in the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, and Tellar Prime, the latter completing coverage of the founding members of the United Federation of Planets. These are presented in some detail, not just Betazoid physiology, but also their political structure, legal system, culture, important locations, and more. There is a lot of nice background here, such as the Temple of the Great Houses where information about the no longer existing Great Betazoid Houses is kept, but which can be restored if descendants can be found; Quok’lox Trash Island on Denobula where everything on planet that cannot be recycled is kept and is rumoured to be home to Denobulans living apart from the rest of the planet; and the difficulties of Tellarite-Andorian relations, the former with their love of antagonistic debate, the latter with their propensity for martial action. Bajor, the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance, the Tzenkethi Coalition, the Breen Confederacy, and the Tholian Assembly are all given similar treatment, so for Bajor it looks at the effects of the Cardassian Occupation, the Provisional Government, Bajoran spirituality, whilst Deep Space 9 and the Wormhole are detailed under Places of interest. Full stats are given for Starbase Deep Space 9 as well. Included in the background to the Cardassian Union are details of Maquis, the resistance movement that resulted from the Federation-Cardassian treaty of 2370 which created the DMZ and saw some colony worlds transferred to the Cardassian Union, whilst the Rules of Acquisition are discussed in the section on the Ferengi Alliance. Various worlds of the Cardassian Union and the Ferengi Alliance are also described.

From the Arbazan and the flight-cable, bewinged Aurelians—complete with rules for flight—to the Ktarians and the Zaranites, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook introduces eleven new species available as playable options, including the Ferengi, whilst the inclusion of the feline Caitains and the tripedal Edosians are sure to please fans of the Star Trek: The Animated Series. Some ten starships are detailed for the Cardassians, the Ferengi, the Breen, the Talarians, and the Tholians. These range from the Cardassion Hideki-Class Corvette and Keldon-Class Heavy Cruiser to the Spinner and Weaver vessels of the Tholian Assembly. As in other supplements for Star Trek Adventures, these are poorly illustrated, or not all, and as with the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook, there are no starships given for the Federation, but again, this is less of an issue.

Rounding out the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, its ‘Encounters and Adversaries’ explore some campaign ideas and present various NPCs across the Demilitarized Zone, the Badlands, and the Federation Border. As well as background they come with encounter seeds and campaign ideas, such as a Maquis-themed campaign and a Federation Border campaign, and write-ups of major NPCs such as Gul Dukat, Ro Laren, Michael Eddington, and Thomas Riker. These are all useful and the campaign ideas point towards the potential of the Alpha Quadrant and the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook.

There is a wealth of detail in the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, especially when it focuses upon the various polities at the far reaches of the quadrant and their particular worlds. The write-ups of the Betazed, Denobula, and Tellar Prime are all decent, as are those of the Cardassian Union and Ferengi Alliance, and the campaign ideas and adversaries all support the material in the supplement. Yet, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is far from perfect. Its problems are fivefold. First, it is not the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook, but the ‘Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook in 2372’, so there is no timeline and no sense of history to the region as if nothing really happened until recently. Second, it covers just a handful of worlds and third, whilst it gives numerous new species to play or use as NPCs, it does not give them a great deal of background or details of their worlds. In many cases, they are not illustrated either, leaving the Game Master to work with some really underwritten descriptions—for example, the reader is left with no idea what the Tzenkethi look like. Fourth, there is an avoidance of the technical elements that a Science Fiction setting and roleplaying game would seem to want. So, in addition to the lack of a timeline and the lack of illustrations for certain species, starships are not illustrated when detailed, worlds are pictured, but not mapped, and so on. Fifth, the writing is often unengaging, especially in the case of the sidebars, which all too often add flavour but not substance.

Physically, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is a decent looking book. There are some inconsistencies in the layout, but otherwise the book is generally well-written and decently illustrated—though not always effectively—with a fully painted images. The layout is done in the style of the LCARS—Library Computer Access/Retrieval System—operating system used by Starfleet. So everything is laid out over a rich black background with the text done in soft colours. This is very in keeping with the theme and period setting of Star Trek Adventures, but it is imposing, even intimidating in its look, and it is not always easy to find things on the page because of the book’s look. The other issue is that the none-more black pages are easy to mark with fingerprints.

Ultimately, just like the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook has much to cover—and it is a lot—but it is not quite up to the job. Again, there are whole sections, like the Cardassian Union and the Ferengi Alliance, the Badlands and the Demilitarised Zone, which could have had whole sourcebooks and campaigns of their own devoted to them, and as good as the information is on say, the Cardassian Union and the Ferengi Alliance, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook does not feel comprehensive. Further, the focus on the one period of Deep Space 9 and relations with the Cardassian Union and Bajor, do leave the treatment of both the rest of the Alpha Quadrant and its history lacking by comparison. The Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook is interesting and informative, but it never gets away from feeling like an introduction to a sourcebook on Deep Space 9 or the Cardassian Union, and again, the Game Master is left wanting more.

A Operational Approach

One of the interesting aspects of the treatment given Star Trek as a roleplaying game by Modiphius Entertainment is that it examines directly the role of crew and positions aboard ships and at postings in Starfleet. No other Star Trek roleplaying game has done this, but to date, there are three supplements for the Star Trek Adventures: The Roleplaying Game which focus on the six departments of Starfleet. These are organised division by division, so The Command Division supplement focuses on the Command and Conn departments, The Sciences Division supplement on the Science and Medical departments, and The Operations Division supplement focuses on the Security and Engineering departments. Each supplement details the various branches and departments within each division, their role in Starfleet, an expanded list of Talents and Focuses for characters within each division, plots and campaigns which focus on characters within each division, supporting characters from within each division—including canonical NPCs, and more.

As with much of the Star Trek Adventures line, The Operations Division supplement is presented as an in-game—and in-world—briefing to members of both the Engineering and Operations departments. It quickly sets out the roles of members of both departments, so that the Engineering officer is responsible for running and maintaining the ship’s engines and much of the technology aboard ship, as well as fixing anything which breaks down, goes wrong, or is damaged, whilst the Operations officer is responsible for handling day-to-day tasks aboard ship, plus roles such in security and at tactical stations. So at their most basic, the Engineering officer fixes the ship whilst the Operations officer runs the ship and protects it. In comparison to the roles defined for the other departments in The Command Division and The Sciences Division, those in The Operations Division are not quite as obviously flashy or as prestigious, and if the supplement were to keep to that remit, then it would not be very interesting. Fortunately, The Operations Division goes beyond that.

The supplement begins by highlighting the differences for the roles it covers between the three series that fall under the remit of Star Trek Adventures—Enterprise, Star Trek: The Original Series, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is because the divisions undergo the most changes between the three, most obviously the shift in roles and shirt colours for Engineering and Security officers between Star Trek: The Original Series, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Then it begins by examining the different agencies within Starfleet which make up the Operations Division—Fleet Operations, Starfleet Intelligence, Starfleet Corps of Engineers, and Section 31. Both are examined from two sides, what each agency’s mission is and what it actually does before discussing how it can be brought into a game. So Fleet Operations oversees the deployment and disposition of Starfleet personnel and resources throughout Federation space and oversees Mission Operations, Science Operations, Tactical operations, Shipyard Operations, and Starbase Operations. The section on Starfleet Intelligence highlights how it conducts enlightened operations in comparison the agencies of other galactic powers, such as Cardassia’s Obsidian Order, this in reaction not only to the practices of those other agencies, but also some of the morally grey operations run by Starfleet Intelligence in the past. Accompanying this section is ‘Recruited to Starfleet Intelligence’, a new career event for use during character generation, and some ideas as to how to involve plain Starfleet Player Characters in Starfleet Intelligence missions.

Of course, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers has a reputation as being made up of miracle workers, but that reputation often only extends as far as building, fixing, and maintaining starships. What its description makes clear is that it does a lot more, ranging from the investigation of alien technologies and disaster relief to distress call response to terraforming support. It also highlights how it works hand-in-hand with civilian agencies also, and together these all lend themselves to scenario ideas which can bring a Starfleet Engineering officer into the spotlight. A nice touch is the inclusion of the Starfleet Corps of Engineers Safety Regulations for ‘Investigation of Technological Elements of Indeterminate Origin’ which would add flavour and verisimilitude when running that type of episode. Lastly, there is Section 31. Now this is supposed to be the agency which handles threats which jeopardise the continued existence of the Federation by any means necessary, believing that the ends justify the means. What is not given here is a definite description of Section 31, but rather what it might be, so it might be a rogue agency, a complete fantasy, a story spun by one man—Luther Sloan, a plot by the Tal Shiar, and so on. This enables the Game Master to tailor Section 31 to fit her campaign and what she thinks the agency wants to be. In general though, Section 31 should operate through layers of intermediaries and obfuscation.

As per the other volumes in this series, the chapter on Operations Division characters present guides to creating Player Characters who have attended either Security School or Engineering School. For both there are guides to creating effective—or at least focused—Engineering and Security officers, along with  a range of new Focuses and Talents. So for Security officers, there are the Criminal Organisations and Forensics Focuses and the Combat medic and Lead Investigator Talents, and the Advanced Holograms and Reverse Engineering Focuses and Maintenance Specialist and Miracle Worker Talents for Engineering officers. For the Security officers there are possible roles a Player Character or NPC might have on a combat squad such as Explosive Ordnance Expert or Field Medic, and if the game is set during Enterprise, a guide to creating MACO or Military Assault Command Operations officers. 

Unfortunately, the Engineering officer does not really have any more options like the Security officer, although both his player and the Game Master are likely to get fun out of the Technobabble Table. Similarly, they are likely to get a lot of use out of the Advanced Technologies chapter, which covers the tools and technologies to be found aboard a starship or starbase, and elsewhere. So micro-optic drills, engineering tricorders, hperspanner, sonic driver(!), and so on, along with starship systems like artificial gravity and inertial compensators, replicators and transporters, and more. Experimental technology covers some of the more dangerous technologies which Federation has explored, for example, Doctor Richard Daystrom’s M-5 multitronic unit and Synaptic Scanning Technique for transferring human minds into android bodies, or perhaps even into computers. In addition, rules cover jury-rigging devices, something that Engineers are probably going to find themselves doing a lot.

One of the best sections in both The Command Division and The Sciences Division is for the Game Master, suggesting how they might be used in storylines. It divides the possible plot components into red, gold and blue—diplomacy, combat, or science components respectively—and expands upon them. So red plot components can include conspiracies, diplomacy, first contact, and more, whilst blue components can include deep space exploration, evacuation, research, and so on. For The Operations Division, this does exactly the same for Security officers and Engineering officers. Again, this is a really good section for both roles, but bolstering it with details such as Starfleet Regulations for Away Missions, handling criminal investigations, recovering derelicts, diagnostics, and alien technologies. Just as with The Command Division and The Sciences Division, this is one of the best sections in The Operations Division.

In comparison to The Command Division and The Sciences Division, the ‘Operations Personnel’ chapter feels much shorter. It provides various NPCs, like the Starfleet Security Officer, the Engineer’s Mate, and the MACO Soldier Supporting NPCs and the Informant and the Engineering Specialist Minor NPCs. It includes three Major NPCs, notably Luther Sloan of Section 31 and Doctor Leah Brahms of the Daystrom Institute. She was only listed in The Sciences Division despite its coverage of the Daystrom Institute, so it is good to see her included here.

Rounding out The Operations Division is ‘Red Alert’. This is a set of skirmish rules intended to use Modiphius Entertainment’s miniatures and tile sets in order to handle small unit engagements. Although they could be run as a straight Star Trek miniatures combat game—and the rules are available to download for free to that end—they really are designed as an extension of the roleplaying combat rules. What this means that whole engagements can be handled more tactically with more detail. The rules cover squad creation, combat actions, and terrain particular to Star Trek such as Jefferies Tubes and Turbolifts. The support for the rules is not extensive, really only covering Federation, Klingon, and Romulan warriors and their weapons, so a Game Master may want to create her own content beyond the rules and support given. The rules come with a complete six-mission mini-campaign in which the crew of the Enterprise-D have to withstand a Klingon assault on the ship in the middle of a diplomatic summit. The rules are decent enough and they do give scope for Operations officers—Security officers in particular—to do more and bring their training to the tabletop.

Physically, The Operations Division supplement is again a decent looking book. Notably though, whilst the artwork is decent, it often feels bland and not really relevant to content it is placed alongside. There are fewer in-game reports, diary entries, and so on, and in many cases, they are not all that interesting or inspiring for the Game Master. The reduced in-game content also means the layout does not feel as busy and has a bit more room for its contents to breath. The layout is done in the style of the LCARS—Library Computer Access/Retrieval System—operating system used by Starfleet. So everything is laid out over a rich black with the text done in soft colours. This is very in keeping with the theme and period setting of Star Trek Adventures, but it is imposing, even intimidating in its look, and whilst it is not always easy to find things on the page because of the book’s look, it is easier in The Operations Division supplement because it is less cluttered than in other supplements for the line. Lastly, in comparison to the other books in this series, this feels less busy, better organised, and therefore a little more accessible.

In comparison to other supplements for Star Trek Adventures, what is missing from The Operations Division is more starships. This might have felt like an omission in any other supplement, but to be blunt, the treatment of starships has not always felt well-handled in those supplements, so the lack of them here is not really an omission. That said, what might have been useful here is the inclusion of some starbases since engineers are responsible for building and maintaining them as much as they are starships.

If there is an issue with The Operations Division, it is perhaps that it does not delve into the day-to-day aspects of running and maintaining Starfleet which Operations is responsible for. In places, it touches upon some of the approaches and procedures that Security and Engineering officers follow, such as for Away missions, but more would have added verisimilitude to running Star Trek Adventures. Not necessarily all of the time, but occasionally, at the very least, and what it would allow is to make the breaking or sidestepping of such procedures more dynamic. Which is, after all, what the Player Characters are going to do. 

Like the other two books, The Operations Divisions is at its best when dealing with specific elements of the Star Trek setting, but unlike the other two books, its treatment of Security officers and Engineering officers is better balanced, although it definitely feels as if Security officers get slightly better treatment. This is not counting the ‘Red Alert’ rules, the inclusion of which does favour Security officers, because the ‘Red Alert’ rules do feel a bit much like filler in The Operations Division since they are available elsewhere. This is not to say that a group would not get any play out of ‘Red Alert’, but of all the content in The Operations Division, ‘Red Alert’ is very much an option.

Overall, The Operations Division is a solid supplement for Star Trek Adventures. Fundamentally, what The Operations Division does is take the less glamorous roles in Star Trek—Security officers and Engineering officers—and makes what they do both interesting and challenging.

Jonstown Jottings #19: Six Seasons in Sartar

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the  Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford's mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is a short campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It is based on a campaign presented on the author’s blog.

Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is a commentary upon Six Seasons in Sartar, an epic poem by Usuphus of Jonstown, which tells of the tragic fall of the Haraborn, the Clan of the Black Stag, the 13th Colymar clan.

It is a one-hundred-and-forty-four page, full colour, 79.61 MB PDF.

Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is well presented, decently written, though it needs an edit in places, and includes a decent range of artwork. The front cover is good.

Where is it set?
Dragon Pass in Glorantha, specifically in ‘Black Stage Vale’, a narrow, vee-shaped valley high in the mountains between Mounts Quivin and Kagradus in the lands of the Colymar tribe, specifically between Earth Season 1619 ST and Darkness Season 1620 ST. 

Who do you play?
Members of the Haraborn, the Clan of the Black Stag, the 13th Colymar clan, not yet initiated, typically Orlanth and Ernalda worshippers.

What do you need?
RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and RuneQuest – Glorantha Bestiary.

What do you get?
Six Seasons in Sartar is not just one thing. Well, actually it is just one thing—a campaign, but it also is more than the sum of its parts, for each and every one of those parts stands out on its own. Not necessarily because they are gameable, but together they contribute to the campaign as a very satisfactory whole.

First—and most obviously, Six Seasons in Sartar is a campaign. Much like the vale in which the Haraborn make their home and the events of the campaign play, its focus is very narrow, taking the Player Characters through the travails and tribulations of the last year of the Haraborn, the Clan of the Black Stag, the 13th Colymar clan. It begins with their initiation and takes them season by season through 1619 ST and into 1620 ST. These individual adventures will involve the Player Characters in a mystery concerning the sudden appearance of a ghost, the activities of the rebels holding out against the Lunar Empire’s occupation of Sartar, and the abduction of a guest. Ultimately, the campaign will reveal secrets about the history of the vale which bring it to the attention of Kallyr Starbrow and following a confrontation with an agent of the Lunar Empire, lead to a sundering of the clan at the hands of the empire’s indigent servants. 

In between the six parts which make up the campaign, the Game Master can weave various secondary plots and events—here called ‘episodes’—such as a birth or funeral, a romance or a cattle raid, and so on. Many of these episodes are optional, and whilst including them does lengthen the play of the campaign, they also add depth to its play and serve to involve the players and their characters in the community that is the Haraborn clan. Although their use is given as optional, the campaign will be all the better not just because of the extra added depth, but also because their use gives scope for the Game Master to focus on each of the characters in play, to give them time in the spotlight. 

Second, Six Seasons in Sartar is a description of a complete clan, the Haraborn. This includes the complete history and mythology of the clan, as well as its wyter, the chieftain and his Ring—the clan council, plus the geography of the vale that is the clan’s home. It explains who they are and what their outlook is—that of deeply conservative mountain folk who value tradition, have limited contact with the outside world, and are devoted to the Storm Tribe. It explains their Runic ties, predominately Air/Storm and Earth, though some may be ‘Troll-touched’ and tied to the Darkness Rune. Members of the Haraborn clan are also members of the White Hart ‘spirit cult’, and expected to be useful to the clan—that is, to not go off seeking adventure. This cult is entirely local and provides interesting cervine spells such as Stag’s Crown which enables the user to sprout a twelve-point rack of antlers or Deerbrother which creates a Mind Link with the nearest deer and allow the caster to see and hear what the deer sees and hears, as well as cast spells through the deer.

This description and background support both the campaign and explains the constraints placed on character generation. This is as per the normal process, but the characters have to be of the Haraborn clan, have either the Air, Earth, or Darkness Rune, and instead of having an Occupation, have what is really their parents' Occupation. Occupations such as Bandit, Chariot Driver, Fisher, Philosopher, or Thief are all unlikely, but this still offers plenty of choice. As to cult, no starting characters for the campaign yet belongs to a cult, for their choice of, and their joining a cult will come about through play. All characters are Lay members of Ernalda if female, Orlanth if male. Lastly, each character’s family history will end with their parents in 1618 and none of them will receive the standard skill bonuses. The end result is a youth between fifteen and sixteen years of age, ready to be initiated.

Third, Six Seasons in Sartar is an initiation into the mysteries of Glorantha. This can be seen in various elements of the campaign. Most obviously in two ways. The first of these is the essay on the nature of heroquests, supported by the rules for them later in the book. This includes the three types of heroquest—‘This World Heroquest’, the ritual re-enactment of Myth; the ‘Hero Planes Heroquest’, in which the heroquesters temporarily become gods to gain a boon or blessing, in particular for their community; and the ‘Otherworld Heroquest’, in which the heroquesters travel deeper into the God Plane to create a new of their own! It also suggests rewards for each and the means to begin them. The other form of initiation is the actual complete presentation of two initiation rites, one for Orlanth lay worshippers and one for Ernalda lay worshippers. They each form the two starting parts of the campaign, one for male characters, one for female characters. Mechanically, the process serves as part of the characters’ personal history, but they also work to point each character towards the cult they will ultimately become initiates of. For example, a Lay member of the Ernalda cult might lean towards Babestor Gor as a cult if she favours the Death Rune over the Fertility Rune during her initiation. Playing out the initiation also gets the player and his character involved from the start, forcing him to make choices in play rather than at the start and so make those choices significant.

Later events in the scenario might also be said to further initiate the Game Master into the greater mysteries of Glorantha, notably an encounter with Kallyr Starbrow. Pleasingly, despite her role in the forthcoming hero wars and past events, she never overshadows the efforts of the player characters and interestingly, she never quite comes across as wholly heroic. As to the initiations, these are absolutely fantastic tools for the Game Master to enforce Glorantha’s mysteries from the start, and it would be absolutely fantastic to see further initiations similar to this but for other cults on the Jonstown Compendium.

Fourth, Six Seasons in Sartar is a toolkit. Take the various bits of the campaign and what you have is a set of tools and elements which the Game Master can obviously use as part of running Six Seasons in Sartar, but can also take them and use them in her own campaign. So this is not just the advice and discussion as to the nature of heroquests and how to run them, as well as the initiation scenarios, but also the rules for creating and running streamlined NPCs, the streamlined rules for handling battles, cattle raids, and heroquests, events such as funerals and births, romance, and more. All of these can be separated from Six Seasons in Sartar and the Game Master bring them into her own game.

Fifth, Six Seasons in Sartar is a conceit. Throughout the campaign, commentary is provided by a number of notable Gloranthan scholars and experts in Third Age literature, not necessarily upon the campaign itself, but upon Usuphus of Jonstown’s epic, Six Seasons in Sartar. These often offer contradictory opinions and so mirror that of Gloranthaphiles about various topics on Glorantha. They include excerpts from works such as ‘Usuphus: A Feminist Perspective’ by Adhira Chatterjee and Noah Webber’s lecture, ‘The Symbolism of the Star Heart and Predark in Six Seasons in Sartar.’, and what they do is enables the author himself to step out of the campaign itself and add further commentary, not just from his own point of view, but from opposing views. Beyond that, the conceit pushes Six Seasons in Sartar as a campaign from being a mere campaign into being an epic, because essentially, it is what a heroic poem does.

Of course, Six Seasons in Sartar comes to an end. The climax manages to be both sad and satisfying, but it leaves the Game Master wanting more, the players and the characters wondering what comes next. Possibilities are discussed and suggested, most obviously about reuniting the scattered Haraborn, the aim being for the Game Master to write the next episodes of the campaign (and thus the poem, or perhaps a new one). Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see an official sequel, both in terms of the campaign and the clan, plus of course, to the epic poem, Six Seasons in Sartar. This could easily fit in the period between the end of the Six Seasons in Sartar campaign 1620 ST and the jumping off point for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha in 1625 ST.

Is it worth your time?
Yes. Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is a superb treatment of community, myth, and tragedy in Glorantha, grounding the players and their characters in the community, pulling them into the myth, and having them play out the tragedy. Whilst the tools and the discussion are undeniably useful, as a campaign starter it has no equal—it should be one of the first titles a prospective Game Master of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha should purchase from the Jonstown Compendium.
No. Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha presents an alternative campaign set-up, one which takes place prior to the default starting date for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, and you may already have begun your campaign. Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha also places limits upon character choice and your players may want to play characters who do not fit within its remit.
Maybe. Six Seasons in Sartar: A Campaign for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha includes content which is useful beyond the limits of its campaign—the initiation rites, the notes on heroquests, rules for streamlined NPCs, quick resolution rules for battles, and more. All useful in an ongoing campaign.