The World of Glorantha

The setting for the Torang Engine is Greg Stafford’s mythical world of Glorantha. This is a fantasy setting that mixes elements from the Bronze and Iron Ages of Earth, with a great amount of magic and wackiness thrown in.

People are organized and tribes, city states, petty kingdoms and confederations. They work and fight mostly with bronze tools and weapons, although iron exists in some places. More importantly, gods and spirits exist, and worshipping them grants magical powers and useful blessings.

By default, the Torang Engine specifically focuses on playing in the Lunar Empire. This is an expanding nation that occupies the central part of Glorantha’s northern continent. Its military ambitions, and its unique religious pantheon centered on the fearful Red Goddess, puts the Empire at odds with its many neighbors. And within it, some people plot the downfall of the Empire.

For more information about Glorantha, please refer to Chaosium’s publications on the topic. For instance:

Elements of Glorantha

Glorantha is built around a certain number of key pillars that the gamemaster and player may want to keep in mind:

  1. Gods, Spirits, and Magic: The gods and spirits truly exist, and magic is available everywhere. Giving offerings to a fertility goddess does provide tangible benefits during harvest, and the god of storm does let his worshippers summon lightning to vanquish their foes. Diseases are caused by evil spirits, not germs and viruses, and the course of a river may suddenly jump around if the naiad that inhabits it becomes upset.

  2. Heroquesting: The events that gods and spirits did before the beginning of time can be leveraged. Worship allows participants to enter the stories of mythology as the protagonists, exploring and creating alternate versions of these traditions. If successful, these participants may bring new magic and knowledge into the world.

  3. The Runes: The cosmic building blocks of Glorantha are the Runes, and through mastering them, one can yield the power of the gods.

  4. Chaos: Outside of Glorantha is the formless enthropic void of Chaos. It seeps into the world and seeks to destroy it. This Chaos manifests as corruption and annihilation, but in expert hands it may also be yielded to great effect.

The Runes

Runes are what Glorantha’s mythical fabric is made of. The very first deities embodied the raw forces of nature through identification with the main Runes. Everything in Glorantha has an affinity with one or more Runes. This defines their nature, personality traits, and ability to cast Rune magic, among other things.

See the chapter on Runes.

Money in Glorantha

Equipment prices, seasonal income, and other monetary values are expressed in “Lunars”, using “L” as a symbol. So 12 L mean 12 Lunars. A Lunar is a silver coin minted by the Lunar Empire, a sprawling and expanding nation that occupies the central part of Glorantha’s northern continent. Other nations have other types of coinage with different names, but traders across the continent maintain a conversion system. These include “Wheels” (gold coins worth 20 L each) and “Clacks” (copper coins worth one tenth of a Lunar each).

Trying to model a realistic ancient world economy for an FRPG is both undesirable and impractical, so the value of Lunars is simply set on the following rough scale:

  • Value of a sheep or goat: 2 L
  • Value of a cow or ox: 10 L
  • Yearly income of a farming family: 20 L
  • Yearly income of a soldier: 50 C to 100 L (depending on rank)