Need some mythic help.

[khazwind]

New campaign. Orlanthi clan, PCs are all kids (15 yrs old) and I want to give them a simple playground where they can gain experience etc before taking on the Empires.

I'm thinking a Gondolin style city hidden in the mountains with the usual suspects for low-level PCs looking to "level up": rubble runners, skellies, scorpion men, maybe a walktapus and an eventual war to cleanse the city by destroying a full-strength scorpion man tribe plus Queen.

The problem is, I'm having trouble coming up with a mythic history to account for the city, its isolation and the fact that Chaos is there, not too much but enough to have eliminated the inhabitants before Time.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[EricJ]

Instead of a dungeon crawl, give them minor missions. They can have choices of approach that will lead them to different futures. Tie these into initiation rituals.

Do they fight the trollkin raiders, negotiate with them, run away from them, or try to capture one during the day?

At a inter-tribal court case (think Njal's Saga), how do they deal with the neighboring opposing tribe? Perhaps one falls in love with a girl from the opposition?

Don't try to make RQ like D&D.

 

[Cleombrotus]

Whilst ultimately you can do absolutely anything you want, I think it could be quite difficult to explain a city like you describe in Glorantha. Or rather, it is difficult to explain a city like that full of nice, easy monsters for a beginning party to kill.

I would have difficulty explaining to myself why no one had previously explored/looted such a city.

I would be thinking of something from the days of the First Council and if it's chaos you want then the Nysalor/Gbaji route would seem the logical one.

Rather than a city I would go for something large but 'Gloranthan' (YGWV) and what springs to mind is Olympia or Delphi - some sort of communal shrine or gathering place with an ancient and ruined feel that would have served as a meeting place for all the races that got on so well during the days of the First Council.

As the cracks began to appear in the unity of the council, the place fell into disuse as the various races turned their backs on each other, and in the ruin brough by Arkat, became forgotten by all except your scorpionman tribe, who broke into the vaults left by the other races/tribes and have since put a network of tunnels in for their hive.

If you look at a map of Olympia, you will see all of the cities of Greece kept vaults there for treasuries, etc. Certainly there would be Mostali tunnels below a Dwarf vault, as well as troll stuff. Lots of justification for all sorts of skeletons and other undead, ghosts and rubble runners.

Think large open amphitheatres where people could have addressed large crowds of many different races.

Perhaps it would be in the Nidan Mountains, but then why wouldn't the Mostali know of it if the local Orlanthi do? These are the sort of issues I would try and think around.

 

[Deleriad]

The secret is all to make the myth work for your game and not adhere to some notion of Gloranthan purity.

For example, at its simplest. The city was hidden away by its god during the chaos wars. However it was supposed to be helping in the war and so it was cursed (e.g. by Orlanth) to remain hidden.

Since time began the city has been living in stasis though the inhabitants don't know that. They have continued to live & die as per normal.

100 years ago, God Learner scholars investigating an arcane and confused myth about a member of the storm tribe who ran away and hid during the chaos war try some heroquesting but with no obvious results. So they give up.

However, the result of this was a crack in the curse and some of the local chaos tribes started to find ways in and out. Meanwhile, for the last 900 years a rather poor, isolated Orlanthi clan has been living in the mountains. They've had their sheep raided by odd *things* recently and there have been strange portents etc. With the weather getting worse in recent years they've been exploring deeper into the mountains and come across the city after finding a new pass.

Depending on where you start the campaign either the PCs find the city (trapped in a ferocious snow storm they find the pass) or else the Orlanthi have started trading with it and the PCs are there for the first time when something kicks off in the market place.

Least ways, that's what I might do off the top of my head.

 

[Sinisalo]

Off the top of my head...

The ruined city with its own feral chaotic ecology is slap bang in the middle of a Troll clan lands. The trolls are incapable of wiping the place out (they've tried and suffered heavy losses) so have blockaded the place. Bands of even stronger chaotics (who intend to take over the city's numerous but weak occupants) are dealt with by the trolls as they try to enter.

The city could be much like Zombie Town in the sense that it has a fully working chaotic economy and thus self-generating. Because they have no access to priests or cults they are kept under control. The trolls raid regularly to keep it that way.

Chaos hunters (Storm bull and other troll clans) regularly cross into the city, while gifting the trolls.

Internal Consistency
------------------------
Broo - where are they getting their mates?. The Fertility influence (see secrets below) may come into play and you may have (oh my god) female broos! Else they breed with goats, rabbits, rats, voles and birds or anything that evade the troll blockade.

Why haven't the trolls kept trying to wipe the place out - they're chaos fighters aren't they?

The clan are a small clan who fled civil war. They seized this stretch of land and immediately attacked the city. After sustaining nearly 25% losses, thousands of chaotics still remaining and other troll clans ready to take them over should they get any weaker they blockade the place instead. They are boxing clever, sending in hit and run raids that do maximum damage for little loss and letting in Chaos hunters to do it for them. They even get paid for it.

The trolls rationalise their failure to destroy chaos by proudly displaying trophies of defeated chaos foes and their champions seeking combat individually against ever greater numbers. "You cannot call me coward, I fought 18 broo with only my teeth as weapons and my hide as armour"

Should a strong leader or priest (especially a priest) start organising the city then the trolls will have to change their tactics. This is why the trolls carefully probe and sniff all human visitors, trying to catch any clever Krjalki or illuminates.

Why haven't stronger Troll agencies attacked?
They have bigger fish to fry what with the EWF/God Learners pushing at their sovereignty. Besides they send chaos killers on a regular basis just not in large enough number to wipe them out.

Why haven't human agencies wiped out the chaos city?
The empire (either one) is fraying at the edges and troops have been sent to the borders. The trolls clearly have the place contained, though.

Secrets
---------
a) The city has some relationship to Fertility, maybe an old Earth Pantheon temple gone wrong?. Maybe an entrance to some part of the Heroplane where fertility and harmony holds sway?. Walktapi and gorp breeding may be no surprise but somehow skeletons and zombies doing so is. In fact they have evolved kin groups and social organisation of a sort. They have even formed a militia to at least oppose in some way the awful warmongering raids of non-chaotics. I would slowly present them as being innocent but flawed beings being preyed upon by evil raiders (ie the PCs). Watch as the PCs slaughter a Walktapi bronzesmith at his anvil. Marvel as they butcher a zombie couple and their three kids. Laugh as they mass disrupt three elderly broo playing dominos in the city square.

"Why will they not let us live in peace? We cannot alter the conditions of our birth!"

b) The trolls are slowly being infected by chaos. The incidence of mutation has increased and one or two trolls have gone bad. Twenty years from now who knows? Chaos army led by Krjalki trolls anyone?

Sorry gone a bit mad there...

 

[khazwind]

Instead of a dungeon crawl
<snip>
Don't try to make RQ like D&D.

Ironically, my inspiration was the Rubble; Gloranthga's biggest single adventuring location/dungeon/theme park. Which gives things a D&D flavour.

Of course, old-style dungeon bashing is precisely what I want to avoid, which is why I'm looking for a better rationale for the city than, "they're evil because it says so in the Monster Manual."

However, thank you everyone for the comments. I intend to mix "mission based" adventures with trips to the playground. Missions to help build up social contacts to help with the playground and playground adventures to build up experience to attract the attention of the powerful within the tribe.

I like the idea of Delphi. I'll probably use that.

Unfortunately, the idea of "cleansed chaos" creatures doesn't really work, yet. The players are completely new to Glorantha, so I want to use the stereotypes before I subvert them. But I like the idea and I'm going to use it once I've successfully indoctrinated the players to react instinctively to chaos.

What I've got so far, if you're interested, is a small outpost of Halikiv from before Time.

The trolls of the outpost, led by a daughter of Xiola Umbar (who the players have already met, though they don't know it yet), offered shelter to EVERY inhabitant of surrounding areas during the greater darkness. So we have temples to many different gods.

The city became isolated during I fought We Won. A dying dragon places itself across the entrance to the valley where the outpost stands and, with its dying breath, creates a barrier that Chaos cannot pass. This means that Chaos creatures inside the barrier cannot get out. Chaos, in a sense, wins. Everyone dies, but all that remains of the Chaos armies are a few scattered bands of Broo and Scorpion Men. Whatever Chaos Gods were with the army were killed.

This campaign is placed by that tiny spur of mountains at the southern edge of Halikiv**. There's a small tribe in that valley. The promise (from XU's daughter) still holds, so the tribe is safe from trolls (in the sense of no wars/invasions).

Yeah, I think this'll work.

Thanks again, everyone.

** BTW, what are those mountains called?

 

[duncan_disorderly]

What I've got so far, if you're interested, is a small outpost of Halikiv from before Time.

You might be intrested in Karia, in Newt's new fanzine Hearts In Glorantha, which is up in that area, and would easily allow such a place to be slotted in.

 

[soltakss]

My first thought was that this was like the Rubble.

What you could do is have a small Chaos Nest based around a GodTime eruption of Chaos and a city built on top of it or around it. So, the Chaos Nest will cause chaos to appear sporadically in bursts and continually at a low-level, allowing the inhabitants of the city to try and keep it under control and to cope with the bursts.

As to why you would build a city on a chaos nest, that's up to the GM. Perhaps it is a sacred site that needs protecting, or there are other advantages to living there.