This sourcebook provides a classic “Sartarite clan saga” campaign framework for RuneQuest, focused on the Far Place, an area in north-eastern Sartar. The Balkori clan of the Bachad tribe is the player characters’ home, and the focus of the campaign.
The Balkori Saga begins quite earlier than other RuneQuest campaigns, with 1611 as the starting year. It also features optional rules to create younger characters than the default seasoned adventurer. The goal is to place the players in a fairly isolated place, with little experience of the wider world, in order to let them discover Glorantha progressively — the setting, the magic, the cults, and even the game system. While the adventures of the first chapter are very much local and representative of the everyday struggle of an Orlanthi clan, the second chapter opens up ways for the (by then more grown up) characters to get away from the Far Place and take part in bigger events in Dragon Pass, Prax, and elsewhere, all while representing their clan back home.
The Balkori Saga is set in the Far Place, a dangerous area of north-eastern Sartar that was settled only a generation ago by refugees coming from the nearby Kingdom of Tarsh.
Back in 1582, the Tarsh was invaded by the Lunar Empire after the decisive Battle of Grizzly Peak, which your ancestors lost. Beaten and tired by several decades of wars and rebellions against the Lunars, some Tarshites gave up and adopted the Lunar culture. Others retreated to the mountains around Kero Fin from where they still savagely, and desperately, oppose the Lunar occupation. But your ancestors decided otherwise: they moved east, to Sartar, where kindred barbarian tribes were still, at the time, fiercely independent. They migrated past Alda-Chur, a city mostly founded by tribes of similar Tarshite ancestry and who had just succeeded in stopping the Lunar army from expanding further than Tarsh after the Battle of Grizzly Peak.
In the hills and valleys of the eastern Far Place, they built a city named Alone, for they only wanted to continue their life in peace. But it was never meant to be, if only because this area was previously unsettled for good reasons: its proximity to a ghoul-infested forest, a mysterious Dragonewt city, a Troll-filled mountain range, blood-hungry giants, and many more threats... and of course, the unsatiable expansionism of the Lunar Empire.
What are you going to do to protect your family and your clan from all these dangers? Will you stay loyal to your chieftains and face wild beasts, Chaotic monsters, and creatures of Darkness with the pride and recklessness that Orlanthi people are known for? Or will you follow your Earth Runes and try to setup alliances, truces, even if that could anger your elders?
In 1602, only two decades after your people tried to escape the Lunar occupation of their lands, they find themselves again under the boot of the Empire’s soldiers. The Imperial Army marches on Sartar’s capital of Boldhome and extinguish the flame that united the kingdom. In all Sartarite cities, Lunar occupation starts, bringing foreign laws, taxes, and unrest to the barbarian tribes.
At the beginning of the campaign, even more trouble is brewing. Harvar Ironfist, a member of the Aldar-Churian Vantaros tribe, is moving his army of Yelmalio spearmen to take Alda-Chur from Sartarite control. With the blessing of the Lunar Province of Tarsh, he kills many clan leaders and outlaws Orlanthi worship in all local tribes. Things are going to go from bad to worse for the tribes of the Alone Confederation.
How will you survive the Lunar occupation under Harvar’s brutal reign? Will you cooperate and convert to the Solar and Lunar traditions, in the hope of saving your clan from Harvar’s violent bullies and unjust tributes? Or will you rebel, seeking out to join the anti-Lunar conspiracies that are forming in the heart of Sartar, or in the eastern lands of Prax?
The Balkori Saga offers a mix of several styles of gameplay: