How Is the World of Glorantha Structured According to glorantha.com?

Updated

Glorantha is a cube of earth about 5,000 miles wide, surrounded by the limitless Sramak's River, with a Sky Dome arching above it and an Inner World of mortals at its center. That three-part frame—encircling waters, overhead sky, and the mortal surface below—is how glorantha.com lays out the setting's cosmology. The same page also notes that the site's store and information have moved to Chaosium, with former content now hosted at The Well of Daliath, so treat glorantha.com as an overview rather than a living reference.

The cosmological frame: river, dome, and gates

The site describes the world in three layers:

  • Sramak's River surrounds the cube of earth on all sides and is described as limitless.
  • The Sky Dome sits above the world; stars and planets move across it each night.
  • The Gates of Dawn and Dusk mark the Sun's daily path. Each morning the Sun emerges from the Gates of Dawn, crosses the Sky Dome, and reaches the Gates of Dusk. At night it travels through the Underworld before re-emerging at the Gates of Dawn to start a new day.

That cycle is the basic clock of the setting: day is the Sun's journey overhead, night is its passage below.

The Inner World and its continents

The Inner World is the world of mortals, shaped as a huge cube of earth floating in an infinite sea. Two major continents and many minor islands rise above the water's surface:

Continent Position Size (per site) Climate notes
Genertela Northern 3,125 miles long, 1,100 miles wide Largely temperate; winds generally west to east, often from the north during Dark Season
Pamaltela Southern 4,200 miles long, 2,000 miles wide Mostly tropical; winds generally east to west, occasionally from the hot south

Genertela is where the well-known settings sit—Dragon Pass, the Holy Country, the Lunar Empire, and Prax. The site also notes that the Sun comes closer to Pamaltela in winter and farther in summer, without implying that the southern continent's seasons are simply reversed.

What this structure is for

The cosmology and geography are the shared stage for Glorantha's games, which the site lists as Dragon Pass, RuneQuest, HeroQuest, and King of Dragon Pass. If you are orienting yourself in the setting, the useful takeaways are the Sun's gate-to-gate cycle, the cube-and-river shape of the world, and the north–south split between Genertela and Pamaltela. For deeper material, follow the site's own pointer to The Well of Daliath and Chaosium.