Which Major Human Cultures of Glorantha Does the Site Introduce?

Updated

The glorantha.com home page names "Major Human Cultures of Glorantha" as a section heading, but the page excerpt available here does not list the individual cultures or describe them. What the page does establish is the geographic frame those cultures sit in: the mortal Inner World is a huge cube of earth floating in an endless sea, with two major continents, Genertela in the north and Pamaltela in the south, plus many minor islands. If you want the actual cultural detail, the page points readers to Chaosium's store and to The Well of Daliath, described as "A resource for exploring Greg Stafford's Glorantha."

What the page actually tells you

The site is the home of Greg Stafford's mythic world, and the page opens with a relocation notice: Glorantha "has returned home to Chaosium," and "our store has moved over there." Information formerly on this site is now at The Well of Daliath. So the home page functions more as a signpost than as a reference article.

The substantive content it does carry is cosmological and geographic:

  • Cosmology: Glorantha is "the mythical world that can be found on the Other Side of our consciousness." The world is a cube of earth about 5,000 miles wide, surrounded by the limitless Sramak's River. Above it is the Sky Dome, where stars and planets move at night; the Sun rises from the Gates of Dawn, crosses the dome, sets at the Gates of Dusk, and travels through the Underworld before rising again.
  • Genertela: the northern continent, largely temperate, 3,125 miles long and 1,100 miles wide, with winds generally west to east and often from the north during Dark Season. Dragon Pass, the Holy Country, the Lunar Empire, and Prax are all located here.
  • Pamaltela: the southern continent, mostly tropical, 4,200 miles long and 2,000 miles wide, with winds generally east to west and occasionally from the hot south.

The page also notes that Glorantha has been explored across several games, including Dragon Pass, RuneQuest, HeroQuest, and King of Dragon Pass.

How to read the cultures section

Because the excerpt stops at the heading, treat "Major Human Cultures of Glorantha" as an entry point rather than a summary. The cultures it covers are human cultures tied to the two continents above, so the continent descriptions are your best orientation: a culture placed in Genertela belongs to the temperate north, while one in Pamaltela belongs to the tropical south. The named Genertelan regions—Dragon Pass, the Holy Country, the Lunar Empire, Prax—are the settings most likely to anchor the cultures discussed.

Where to go for the detail

  1. The Well of Daliath — the page's designated resource for exploring Glorantha, and where information formerly on this site now lives.
  2. Chaosium's store — the relocated shop, for published material.
  3. The games themselves — RuneQuest, HeroQuest, King of Dragon Pass, and Dragon Pass present these cultures in play.

Practical takeaway

Use glorantha.com for the cosmology and the two-continent geography, and go to The Well of Daliath or Chaosium for the cultures themselves. The page gives you the map; it does not, in the text available here, give you the peoples.