HiG Issue 2 preview – Pdf (1.8 MB) - Hearts In Glorantha

Hearts in Glorantha winter 2009
ElfPak Designer
Notes
By Shannon Appelcline
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It began in Dorastor, as all good things do. The year
was 1994 and Avalon Hill had recently published
Dorastor: Land of Doom, the third triumphant
release in Ken Rolston’s RuneQuest Renaissance.
After years of neglect, Glorantha was coming back
to life under his able hand.
There were numerous additional books in
preparation or outline by the start of the year, and
my friend Stephen Martin had managed to get right
in the middle of that renaissance. When he was
working on Lords of Terror he asked me to write
up an NPC for him, which I did. (I think it was the
Daughter of Ralzakark.) He also got me onto the
email discussion list of another book, which would
have continued the focus on Dorastor. It was called
Oak and Thorn: Elves of Dorastor.
The Oak and Thorn
Genesis
Though Oak and Thorn was focused on the two
rather strange elf cultures of that ruined land, it
would have offered a pretty good overview of elf
culture in general. It perhaps wouldn’t have been an
ElfPak, but it would have still been the best look at
the elves of Glorantha ever. As a result, Rolston was
thinking quite a bit about the elves and what their
culture was really like. Thus, I began to hear word
that there was an “elf secret.”
Today it might seem pretty commonplace, because
it’s been pretty well integrated into both HeroQuest
and everything I’ve ever written about elves, but
back in 1994, it was revelatory. It was a fact about elf
culture that helped to explain the elves’ place in the
universe and what made them unique. It was simply
this: the elves were telepathic.
This was the true explanation of elfsense—that
elves could come to joint agreements for the whole
forest, through thought alone. There were some
details in Rolston’s original writings that haven’t
made it into my own. For example, he called the
group gestalt of elven thought the “Allspirit” and
he also imagined elfsense to be a very intimate
type of communication that depended on touch.
Nevertheless, the core idea that has influenced
everything written about the Aldryami since was
there.
At this point, I’m not quite sure how I became
a writer about elves, but sometime after I was
introduced to the Oak and Thorn discussion, I
offered to write up an elven mythos. Mythology was
one of my first loves and what got me interested
in Glorantha in the first place. Remarkably, Greg
Stafford, Ken Rolston, and the others were
interested in hearing my ideas. So, in 1994 I wrote
up my first draft of elven mythology, for potential
inclusion in Oak and Thorn.
Looking back now at what I wrote then, I’m
surprised by how much it’s stayed the same. I
imagined a very regularized and animistic mythology
where the earliest gods broke apart to form the
parts of the world. It’s the clear skeleton of what’s
eventually seen print, though I notice a few of
the names have changed. At the time, Greg was
already started to de-god-learner-ize the mythology
of Glorantha, and thus where my original writings
simply used the names of existing gods, like Yelmalio
and Triolina, what would finally see print used elven
names for deities, like Halamalao and Eron.
Of course we now know that early writing was
largely in vain, because the RuneQuest Renaissance
was doomed. Ken Rolston was soon to leave Avalon
Hill due to the insufficient support coming from
management and Oak and Thorn was never to see
print. It’s a pity; there were some great ideas there.
Even though the societal ideas for the elves have
emerged and taken what I hope is a final form in
my two books on the Aldryami, the details on the
Hellwood and Poisonthorn elves are still deserving
of publication on their own.
Creating a
Mythology
In the years that followed, RuneQuest floundered,
and thus there didn’t seem to be much reason to put
a lot of effort into Gloranthan writing. I worked at
Chaosium from 1996-1998, and I know I still talked
about elves a few times with Greg. I even revised my
short mythology in 1997. However, not much more
got done. One thing did come out of this time: Greg
and Stephen both came to think of me as the elf
guy. Ken Rolston really properly should have written
the book on elves, but he was gone from the hobby
by this time, so it fell on me instead. became
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