Talimar's Road
Talimar's Road is an actual game of Glorantha Perspectives, published as a playtest chronicle.
It serves two purposes at once: following the story of Talimar “Tal”, a young Orlanthi of the Grey Heron clan, and showing concretely how GP works at the table — including the players' choices, Bets, dice, Time's rulings, mistakes, and what emerges without having been prepared.
Reading a session
Each session is preserved in four complementary forms:
- Transcript — the actual play in its real order, word by word and die by die, including table corrections;
- Story — the same session told as a continuous story, for readers who want to follow Tal without the game procedures;
- Time Backstage — the Situation, Forces and Pressures, what was prepared, what emerged, what was improvised, and how Time reacted;
- Living Portrait — Tal's state exactly at the end of the session.
Living Portraits are historical snapshots: the Portrait from one session is never rewritten by later ones. This makes it possible to see the Protagonist appear and change through play.
The Time Backstage pages reveal the preparation for sessions that have already been played. They do not expose secrets or threads that are still active for the rest of the campaign.
Sessions
Session 0 — August 31, 2026
About 3 hours 30 minutes of play. Tal's creation is itself played: funnel, meeting Hendrik, apprenticeship, discovery of the Runes, and initiation into Lhankor Mhy.
This “Session 0” therefore has the length and density of a full session. The number describes its function: bringing the Protagonist and his starting point into existence through play.
Session 1 — September 12, 2026
About 3 hours of play. Soon after his initiation, Tal accompanies Hendrik to Jonstown and takes part in his first investigation as a young Grey Sage, concerning a death during a cattle raid.
Session 2 — September 14, 2026
About 2 hours of play. Karest has survived and can finally testify. Tal first takes the risk of returning alone to the House of Peace during the night, then carries the affair to its conclusion: reporting a truth that remains incomplete and handing it over to those who must decide what to do with it.
Session 3 — September 15, 2026
About 2 hours of play. A dispute over the legacy of a dead Sage eventually wears Tal down. He leaves the matter to Hendrik and turns his gaze elsewhere: the roads, news from the north, then the history of Sartar. The session thus moves from a very local archival quarrel to the discovery of a much more open sign: the Rune of Sartar, drawn in the margin of a text about those who still secretly maintain his strength.
The session also documents a deliberately imperfect playtest: an ambiguity in staging and a mismatch between the prepared Situation and the kind of breath sought by the players become material for understanding how a Protagonist can move the story through what they choose to look at.
Tal before the sheet
Tal fully belongs to his community, but the way it tells the world is no longer quite enough for him.
He travelled in Tarsh with his merchant uncle Grimar. There he saw roads, buildings, baths, organization, and certain Lunar ways of examining several sides of a conflict that fascinated him. He also knows that this same civilization practices domination and slavery, and that the Crimson Bat exists beneath the same Moon.
This contradiction was not written to complete a character sheet. It appeared during play and became one of Tal's central truths.
The Road begins there: with a few truths strong enough to play, but without yet knowing exactly who Talimar will become.