Because I am increasingly obsessed, this week I’m taking a look at a selection of Glorantha-based RuneQuest books. First up, the delightfully titled Cults of Terror.

First, a bit of convoluted history. Glorantha is a highly detailed fantasy setting created by Greg Stafford that predates roleplaying games; RuneQuest is an RPG system developed around Glorantha, primarily by Steve Perrin and Ray Turney. However, despite Glorantha’s detail and popularity, Chaosium (and later, Avalon Hill), attempted to launch numerous generic “Gateway” settings for Glorantha, none of which caught on (sort of – you can argue that nearly all the other systems produced by Chaosium, like Call of Cthulhu, are RuneQuest gateways, as they are all derived in some fashion from that system). Glorantha, meanwhile, moved from company to company over the years, supporting several non-RuneQuest systems (like the amazing Hero Wars). Got all that? Don’t worry, it is all confusing and frustrating.

Anyway, where games like D&D position their gods as remote, Glorantha is intricately entwined with its deities. Joining a cult and progressing through its hierarchy is central to not only the mechanics of the game, but also a character’s place and function in the world. Mythology is very much alive in the world and constantly re-enacted. Characters draw their power from their gods, while the Gods get a certain amount of agency in the world through their believers (unlike other fantasy settings, the influence of the gods of Glorantha is constantly felt but they are seldom, if ever, seen.

Cults of Terror offers up deities for the baddies, a bizarre mix of chaos and death gods – the god of the scorpion men, Bagog; the mother of the broos, Thed; the severed god Thanatar and more.