Transcript
Estimated play time: about 3 hours 30 minutes.
This game was played in French. This page is an English translation of the original transcript.
This translation preserves the turns in their real order, the Bets, dice, corrections, and procedural exchanges that actually contributed to play.
The PROCEDURE annotations were added retrospectively and are explicitly marked as such.
Finding Tal through play
[TIME]
Session Zero.
Before creating your Hero, I'll give you only what they might know before their story begins.
We are in Dragon Pass, at a time when the established political order seems solid to those who serve it and much less so to those who live beneath it.
This story will begin far from great heroes and famous battles. At first it will concern ordinary people, their obligations, their gods, their neighbours, and something that disturbs a local balance.
Your character will emerge from this Situation, gradually. You do not need any particular prior knowledge of Glorantha.
To begin:
What perspective do you want to inhabit?
1. Someone deeply rooted in an Orlanthi community of Dragon Pass.
2. Someone who belongs to that society but already feels a little cramped within it.
3. Someone from elsewhere, for whom local customs are not self-evident.
4. Someone connected, in one way or another, to the Lunar world.
5. You would rather choose nothing yet: let the fiction show me who I am.
[TAL]
I like the idea of a character who belongs to the community but isn't satisfied with his lot or with the world he lives in.
[TIME]
So you belong to this community. You know its customs, stories, obligations. It is not a foreign world you reject: it is your own world that is not enough for you.
But there are several ways to be dissatisfied.
When you look at the life expected of you, what weighs on you most?
A. The place you have been given. You are supposed to become someone you do not want to be.
B. The elders' decisions. You may respect them, but you think they accept the way things are too easily.
C. The limits of your horizon. The same lands, the same quarrels, the same stories... you want to know what lies beyond.
D. Something in your traditions troubles you. You do not reject them, but a truth presented to you as obvious no longer feels obvious.
E. It is not that clear yet. You only know that when you imagine living here twenty years from now exactly as you do today, something in you rebels.
Or tell me directly what's wrong.
[TAL]
D. I have trouble taking an absolutely anti-Empire position, but I also have trouble condoning their customs and actions. So I feel not only torn but orphaned. As if something were missing.
[TIME]
So you are not a rebel out of certainty.
When the elders speak about the Empire, their words are simple: they invaded, we resist. The stories know very well where to place everyone.
You, less so.
You have seen enough to understand why some people can look toward the Empire and see more than enemies. But you have also seen what it demands, what it transforms, what some of its men allow themselves to do. And something in you refuses to call that simply the price of peace.
The problem is that this hesitation has brought you closer to no one.
It has left you between two certainties that are not yours.
And that word you just used — orphaned — touches something deeper. Perhaps what you lack is not only a political opinion. Sometimes you have the impression that other people possess something you do not: an obvious sense of their place in the world.
So let's return to something much more intimate.
When did you first feel this lack?
Was it already there when you were a child?
Or can you remember a precise moment when something cracked?
[TAL]
Maybe when I saw the benefits of the Lunar way of life: baths, buildings, organization, a way of handling conflicts by presenting their different sides. Very different from our rougher way of life, more wind, sometimes violent. And yet Lunar society is also the Crimson Bat, slaves, domination.
[TIME]
Yes.
You encountered the Empire in another way than through stories told around the fire.
You walked streets that rain does not immediately turn to mud. You knew the heat of the baths, the water, the stone, buildings whose size and order say they will still stand long after their builders. You met people for whom a conflict does not necessarily mean immediately deciding who is right and who is wrong — people who can examine several sides of it.
And you liked some of those things.
Perhaps that is what is difficult to admit.
Because the same civilization capable of all this puts men in chains. It subjugates peoples. And somewhere beneath the same Moon that lights those baths and temples exists the Crimson Bat.
You cannot turn either of these truths into the lie that would let you accept the other.
And when you return among your own people, you find the wind again, the bonds of clan, the gods you have known since childhood — but also the old angers, the quarrels, and sometimes the ease with which force becomes an answer.
So perhaps your feeling of being orphaned comes from this:
you discovered that several ways of living existed without yet finding one to which you could belong entirely.
But now I'm missing something important about you.
You do not know these Lunar things only by hearsay.
How did you discover them?
Did you spend some time in a city under strong Lunar influence? Travel with someone who worked with them? Stay among Lunars? Or is it something more personal still?
[TAL]
Maybe a merchant uncle and I often accompanied him into Tarsh.
[TIME]
Your uncle is a merchant.
Not one of those men who speak about Tarsh without ever having seen it. He goes there. Regularly. And fairly early on, he took you with him.
At first, probably because an extra pair of arms is always useful on the road. Then you learned: watch a cargo, recognize who can be bargained with, listen before speaking, understand that a man with whom your clan might have an old quarrel can become, elsewhere, someone with whom you share a meal.
With him, you crossed the border into Tarsh several times.
That is where the Empire stopped being an abstraction for you.
And your uncle became important in this story. Because he showed you that world without necessarily explaining what you were supposed to think of it.
One evening, on the way home, the two of you are alone. Behind you, the lights of a Tarshite city slowly disappear. Ahead, the road home.
Your uncle notices your silence.
After a while he asks:
— So? What do you envy most about them?
What do you answer?
[TAL]
I was young, excited: “did you see their buildings? Their statues? Their clothes? Even the women's clothes (I blushed).” At the time I had only seen the facade.
[TIME]
Your uncle bursts out laughing at your last remark.
Not mockingly. A full laugh that makes you blush even more.
— Ah! Women now. So that is the finest gift Lunar civilization brings our youth.
He lets his mule walk a few paces.
Then his amusement fades.
— The stones are beautiful. The fabrics too. And their baths... I admit their baths make coming home particularly cruel.
He looks back toward the last lights.
— But whenever you admire a great house, always ask yourself who carried the stones.
You probably did not understand immediately why he told you that.
Years have passed since then.
You went back to Tarsh with him. More than once. And you began to look behind the facades.
But something else happened as well: you grew up.
Today, in your community, people no longer see you as the boy his uncle takes on the road. They are starting to expect you to take your place among the adults.
So now I need to know what place they imagined for you.
In your family, what would people naturally have expected you to become?
Warrior? Herdsman or farmer? Craftsman? Merchant like your uncle? Servant of a god? Something else?
[TAL]
I think people expected me to be a merchant like him except I'm not interested at all. Very little chance I end up initiated into Issaries, or else I'd be a poor initiate. Inside I was aspiring to something else actually. Lhankor Mhy could have been a lifeline: myths, history and knowledge and the possibility of travelling.
[TIME]
Trade should have been your path.
Your uncle likes you, you already know the roads, some Tarshite customs, perhaps even which faces to smile at and in front of which ones you should count the coins twice. Everything seemed to point toward Issaries.
Except you.
Goods bore you. Their prices even more. But while travelling, you constantly ask questions that are not very useful for business.
Why is this stele here? Who lived here before? Why do the Tarshites tell this story differently from us? How can two peoples know the same god and not tell the same myth?
And above all: how do you know which one tells the truth?
Perhaps this is how Lhankor Mhy entered your life.
Not as an obvious vocation. As an opening.
Someone in your community, or someone you met during your travels, understood that your questions were not just those of a curious young man. This person showed you something you barely knew existed: texts, genealogies, accounts preserved precisely because human memory distorts things.
And it seized you.
Because for the first time, perhaps, you glimpsed a third way. Not having to choose immediately between “our people are right” and “the Lunars are right.”
Search.
Compare.
Understand.
So tell me: who opened that door for you?
Someone from home? A sage met in Tarsh? Or would you rather this person enter your story now, without you yet knowing who they will be?
A possibility: Lhankor Mhy, then the choice to play it
[TAL]
Out of character: I don't know what scenario or Situation you've planned, but yes, it could be really nice to play this all the way to initiation. I'd like it to be tied to a play Situation.
[TIME]
Then we will not decide now “who recruited you into Lhankor Mhy.” That encounter — and even the possibility that you might be judged worthy to go as far as initiation — will happen in play. Your character does not know the outcome.
A few years have passed since that conversation with your uncle.
You still travel with him sometimes. Not because trade interests you any more than before, but because the roads offer something home cannot.
This time, you are returning from Tarsh.
The day has been long. The wind has risen. Your uncle walks ahead holding the reins of a loaded mule; the second is your responsibility.
Then he stops.
At the side of the road stands an old stone you had already seen on previous journeys. A boundary stone, you thought. Covered in ancient marks eroded enough that nobody paid them much attention.
Today, someone has cleared away the earth around its foot.
And beside the stone, sitting in the grass despite the wind, an old man is copying the inscriptions onto a tablet.
Your uncle looks at him.
— We should keep going.
But for the first time, you can make something out in those marks.
They are not merely decoration.
It is writing.
The stone by the road
[TAL]
- Uncle Grimar, it's been a long day, couldn't we take a break? Actually my objective is to manage to establish contact with this old man. Here's what I'm betting on: my uncle agreeing to stop, offering to share some salt with the old man in the name of Heortling law, my curiosity. Against me: my uncle could be against stopping (not the time to stop with this wind), ....
[TIME]
Grimar narrows his eyes at the sky.
— A break? Now?
The wind pulls at your cloaks. The mule whose reins you hold lowers its head.
But you're not merely asking to stop: you want to establish contact with the old man. That's uncertain enough for us to resolve it.
Focus
Your Bets seem justified to me:
- Grimar is your uncle — you have travelled with him often; your request is not a stranger's.
- Sharing salt under Heortling hospitality — once you have stopped, you have a culturally legitimate way to approach the old man.
- Your curiosity — it is genuine, and awakened precisely by what he is doing.
I add a counter-Bet made visible by the fiction: the wind is rising and the road is still long.
And Grimar himself provides the other: he explicitly wanted to continue.
So that gives us 3 Bets against 2.
Your objective is not to make the old man your friend in one roll. If you prevail, Grimar accepts the stop and you gain a real opportunity to enter into a relationship with the stranger.
You are still deeply of your world: for this resolution, your perspective is theist.
Roll 3d6 and give me the three raw results.
[TAL]
2,3,6 -> 2,5,6: I pulled out every trick to convince my uncle and invite the old man to share salt.
[TIME]
Your final result: 2, 5, 6 → 2 Successes.
I roll the opposition's two dice:
3, 1 → 0 Successes.
Feat
Grimar rolls his eyes.
— Fine. But if we arrive soaked, you can explain to your aunt why yourself.
You lead the mules a little way off the road. Then you take out the salt and some food. The old man has noticed you stopping, but he continues his work methodically.
You approach and perform the gestures of hospitality.
This time he stops.
His eyes move from the salt to your face, then back toward Grimar.
— So the laws of hospitality are still taught to young men. That is knowledge I thought was fading.
He accepts.
But your Feat gives you more than the chance to speak with him.
As you sit down beside him, he hands you his tablet.
— Since you seem so curious... look.
He points in turn to the tablet and the stone.
— Tell me what's wrong.
You know almost nothing about ancient scripts.
But now that you are truly looking, something strikes you.
What he copied onto his tablet does not exactly match what is carved into the stone.
[TAL]
I narrow my eyes. So if I understand correctly, it looks the same if you look superficially. But my curiosity and quick mind immediately made me see the differences. I point out every difference I can see. The game amuses me. A bit like a spot-the-seven-differences puzzle. I almost forget politeness. I have absolutely no idea why there are differences, but at this stage I see them, I observe them and strangely the fact that it's reduced to the stone and the tablet calms me a lot. As if the world finally became less heavy, more understandable.
[TIME]
You bring the tablet closer to the stone.
At first your finger hesitates. Then it runs.
— There.
The old man says nothing.
— And there... This stroke goes lower on the stone. Here, you copied two marks, but I see three. And this one...
You lean closer.
The wind almost disappears from your awareness. Grimar, the mules, the road: everything recedes.
— This one is the same... no. Wait.
You turn the tablet.
— It's reversed.
You smile despite yourself.
You find another.
Then another.
You even forget that this man is your elder and that you only just met him.
— And here too!
A silence.
At last you look up.
The old man is no longer looking at the stone.
He is looking at you.
He gently takes the tablet back from your hands.
— Seven.
You do not understand.
— There were seven differences. You found all seven.
Then, with an expression that is hard to read:
— But you did not find what I asked you.
He places the tablet on his knees.
— I did not ask how many differences there were.
His finger points at the stone.
— I asked what is wrong.
Behind you, Grimar lets out a small amused grunt.
The old man continues:
— You assume that my copy is wrong.
He turns the tablet back toward you.
— Why not the stone?
[TAL]
And then I didn't understand. Too young. “What do you mean wrong? It was here before your tablet. You're the one who made mistakes copying it. Or are you one of those Western sorcerers?”
[TIME]
The old man stares at you for a second.
Then bursts out laughing.
Grimar too.
— A Western sorcerer!
He seems genuinely delighted by the accusation. He picks up the tablet and holds it in front of his face as if seeing it for the first time.
— That would explain a great many things.
Then his expression changes. Not much. Just enough for you to understand that he is going to answer seriously.
— You are right about one thing: the stone was here before my tablet.
He taps the stone.
— But was it here before the man who carved it?
You hesitate.
— And that man, had he seen what he carved? Or had someone told him? And the one who told him... had he seen it?
He gives you back the tablet.
— You did exactly what most men do. You found two different accounts and decided that the older one had to be true.
He points to your seven differences.
— Yet there was one thing you could know for certain without knowing a single one of these signs.
He smiles.
— They do not say the same thing.
The wind blows between you.
Strangely, you feel that sensation again.
Not the feeling of having obtained an answer.
Almost the opposite.
But the question has become smaller. It fits between a stone and a tablet.
And that makes it bearable.
The old man begins putting away his materials.
— My name is Hendrik.
He observes you.
— And you, young accuser of sorcerers?
[TAL]
“Tal, Talimar, son of Calimar and Urestona, carls of the Grey Heron clan, of the Colymar tribe, and you just Hendrik?” I say, showing my disappointment that he only gave me a simple name by listing as much as possible about my lineage, which I hope will encourage him to do the same.
[TIME]
Hendrik raises an eyebrow as the list grows.
— Talimar, son of Calimar and Urestona, carls of the Grey Heron, of the Colymar tribe...
He nods gravely.
— I see.
Then:
— Hendrik.
Grimar coughs behind you. You strongly suspect he is hiding a laugh.
You stare at the old man, incredulous.
Hendrik lets your irritation last just long enough.
— You just gave me your name, your parents, their rank, your clan, and your tribe. That's a lot of answers to a question I did not ask.
He tilts his head slightly.
— But since you seem to consider a man without a genealogy necessarily suspicious...
He straightens with obviously exaggerated solemnity.
— Hendrik, son of Enderos, Grey Sage of Lhankor Mhy.
He pauses.
— And if it reassures Talimar of the Grey Heron: no known Western sorcerer in my family.
This time Grimar laughs openly.
But you stopped listening at Grey Sage.
Hendrik notices immediately.
— Ah.
A small smile.
— There's another difference you spotted.
[TAL]
“But what kind of Grey Sage are you? The grumpy kind who drones on about Heort's laws, or do you read Lunar writings so you can fight them better? Have you travelled beyond?” I say that because we actually have an initiate of Lhankor Mhy in the clan, an old traditionalist man who rambles on, completely flavourless, whom I questioned and harassed with questions and who without meaning to made me understand that there are other Grey Sages, the opposite of him.
[TIME]
Hendrik does not answer immediately.
He looks at you with new attention.
— What kind of Grey Sage...
He seems to savour the question.
— The kind who knows that Heort's laws deserve better than to be droned on about.
He glances toward Grimar.
— And that to understand why the Lunars are wrong, you must first risk discovering the places where they are not wrong.
That sentence strikes you.
Hendrik picks up his tablet again.
— I have read Lunar texts. I have spoken with their priests and scholars. With Tarshites who love them, others who serve them, and some who hate them much more intelligently than people who have never met them.
You wait for the rest.
— And yes, I have travelled beyond.
He counts on his fingers.
— Tarsh. Esrolia. Prax. Part of the Holy Country. I even met men from the West long enough to know that they do not all turn insolent young Colymar into frogs.
A pause.
— Only some of them.
You are not entirely sure he is joking.
Then Hendrik suddenly points a finger at you.
— But you, Talimar son of Calimar and Urestona of the Grey Heron...
He deliberately imitates your long introduction.
— ...you did not ask me what I learned.
His finger turns toward the old stone.
— You asked how far I have gone.
He smiles.
— Why?
[TAL]
“because that's where I want to go too,” I say through my teeth, a little afraid my uncle will hear.
[TIME]
The words come out more quietly than you intended.
Hendrik hears them.
And judging by the silence behind you, Grimar does too.
You do not dare turn around.
The Grey Sage, meanwhile, is no longer smiling. His eyes remain on you for a few moments.
— Where I went?
You nod.
— No.
The word falls without harshness.
— If all you want is to go far, stay with your uncle. Merchants travel more roads than many sages.
Grimar speaks behind you:
— For once, listen to him.
Hendrik continues:
— I stop in front of stones while sensible men continue down the road.
He taps the tablet.
— I go where a question compels me to go.
Then he points to the stone.
— This one, for instance, has already cost me six days, two nights in the rain, and an argument with an Orlanth priest who considers some questions a particularly irritating form of impiety.
An amused glint returns to his eyes.
— And I still do not know why it lies.
He stands and begins putting his things into a bag.
Behind you, Grimar finally says:
— Tal.
You know that voice.
Not the hurried merchant's.
Your uncle's.
— Look at me.
When you turn around, his arms are crossed.
— What did you just say?
The encounter becomes an apprenticeship
[TAL]
And maybe that night my uncle and I came to an agreement for me to become an apprentice under Hendrik. Maybe there was a sealed agreement: my parents being carls and my uncle a merchant, I think they could have provided enough to pay for my upkeep with Hendrik.
[TIME]
Grimar does not answer immediately.
And eventually, you tell him everything.
Not only that you want to travel. He already knew that. You tell him what perhaps you had never managed to formulate: that you do not want to spend your life knowing how much an amphora is worth in Alda-Chur or how much wool a mule can carry. What you love on the road are the things you do not yet understand.
Hendrik listens without interrupting.
Later, all three of you sheltered from the wind, the discussion becomes much more concrete.
Grimar negotiates.
Of course.
He even negotiates your apprenticeship as if buying a cargo, which irritates you enormously.
Hendrik demands that your family provide for your upkeep: food, clothes, writing materials, and enough contribution that a Sage can devote time to an apprentice rather than his own work. Grimar bargains over the terms, discusses the seasons when you might still be required to return and help your people, and secures that nothing is finally committed before Calimar and Urestona agree.
Then Hendrik sets one condition that is not negotiable.
— I can teach him to read. To write. To search. To distinguish what he knows from what he thinks he knows. I can show him how to preserve what other men have learned.
He looks at you.
— But I do not promise to make him a Grey Sage.
Grimar frowns.
— Then why would we pay?
— To find out whether he can become one.
Your uncle stares at him for a long time.
Then bursts out laughing.
— I already hate the way you do business.
And that night, something really is sealed.
Not your initiation yet.
Not even your destiny.
But your apprenticeship under Hendrik.
A few weeks later, for the first time in your life, you leave the Grey Heron without following Grimar.
Your mother carefully packs your things. Your father entrusts you with a knife that belonged to his own father. Grimar gives you a small purse and far too much advice.
Hendrik waits for you on the road.
He does not ask if you are ready.
He simply hands you the tablet from the stone of seven differences.
— Carry this.
And he starts walking.
After a few steps:
— First lesson, Talimar.
He points to the road ahead.
— Where are we going?
You wait for the answer.
It does not come.
Hendrik keeps walking.
— Well?
PROCEDURE (retrospective annotation) — The [TAL] proposes that the encounter lead to an apprenticeship agreement; the [TIME] plays out its social and material consequences rather than summarizing “Tal becomes an apprentice.”
[TAL]
And then I follow him, throwing out every answer I can think of. Obviously he doesn't answer. But inwardly I assume he's amused, not realizing that actually he's sizing me up. “Where are we going?” “To your home?” “To a temple of Lhankor Mhy?” “Wherever our steps take us?” “To a clay-tablet shop?” “Wherever the wind shows us the way?” “Into the Underworld like the Lightbringers?” “There are only two of us. Are we going to find the other five?” “We're going to the edge of the world.” “We're going where the waters of the world fall?” “We're going to defeat the Red Moon?” “...” “...” And so on... mostly to pass the time. And that is how I entered Hendrik's teaching. Along with other young people.
Tal's training
[TAL]
I think at some point it would be good to present the myths of Lhankor Mhy, then deal with initiation. At this stage there's also the question of Runes. I think things are clear now, what are LM's Runes?
[TIME]
Yes. And now that Tal is beginning to exist, the Runes become interesting because we can recognize them in him, rather than assign them abstractly.
For Lhankor Mhy, the two fundamental Runes that stand out from the sources are Truth and Law. Storm Tribe has him born of Orenoar, Mistress of Truth, upon Mostal, the Mountain of Law; there he discerns and states cosmic Law. The same book explicitly calls him the god of “Truth, Knowledge, and Law.” Later HeroQuest formulations translate this into the affinities Knowledge, Law, Literacy.
And that makes our Tal rather interesting.
Truth, for him, already seems almost obvious to me. Not “I possess the truth,” precisely. More this inability to be satisfied by an answer because it is comfortable. The Orlanthi/Lunar contrast threw him into crisis because he discovered that what he had been told was no longer enough. And before the stone, he was immediately absorbed in: what is actually there?
Law is more surprising — and potentially more interesting. Tal does not seem at all in love with social law, tradition, or established order. But Lhankor Mhy's Law is deeper: the idea that amid the noise of the world, there are relationships that can be understood, distinguished, named. That is precisely what calms him before the stone and the tablet.
So I especially do not want to conclude too quickly: “apprentice of Lhankor Mhy = Tal receives Truth + Law.” His god possesses these Runes; Tal still has to show how he resonates with them.
A few years of apprenticeship can now let us discover three things: Tal's own Runes, his growing understanding of Lhankor Mhy's myths, then the moment when Hendrik decides — or not — that he can attempt initiation.
I would even suggest not choosing the Runes now. Hendrik has several apprentices. We play 2 or 3 very elliptical Situations from his training, each posing a different problem for Tal. His answers should let his runic affinities emerge naturally.
Then Hendrik teaches him the myths that give meaning to what he has just lived: the birth upon the Mountain of Law; the loss of Elasa and the Light of Knowledge; the invention of writing; Lhankor Mhy among the Lightbringers; his successes but also his failures during the Quest. Storm Tribe also insists on an idea I especially like for Tal: Lhankor Mhy embraces all knowledge, but mortals never can; their knowledge necessarily remains incomplete.
And only then: initiation.
I think that one, unlike the years of apprenticeship, probably deserves to be played.
The three testimonies
[TAL]
Tal is ready to discover this new world.
[TIME]
The first weeks with Hendrik quickly destroy one illusion: becoming a Grey Sage does not consist of listening to a fascinating old man tell myths on the road.
There are other young people with you. Some already read better. One girl has an infuriating memory. One boy seems able to recite whole genealogies without hesitation. Hendrik does not appear to be looking for the same thing in each of you.
One morning, he leads you before a store of tablets.
He takes out three.
— Three men witnessed the same dispute between two clans. Three men then told what had happened.
He places the tablets before you.
— They agree neither on who started it, nor on the words spoken, nor even on how many men were present.
Another apprentice asks:
— Which one is telling the truth?
Hendrik answers:
— That is precisely the wrong question to begin with.
He assigns each of you a tablet.
Your task is not yet to decide who is lying.
You must establish three things:
what your witness claims to have seen himself; what he reports from others; and what he presents as obvious without ever explaining how he knows it.
The others begin.
And Tal finds something he already knows.
A stone.
A tablet.
A world small enough to be looked at.
But soon the difficulty appears: your witness is clearly on one clan's side. He describes his own men as patient and reasonable; the others as angry and provocative.
And yet some of what he reports is extremely precise.
Hendrik walks behind you.
— So, Talimar: what do you do with this testimony?
[TAL]
“He has no balance at all. If we listened to him we'd side with his clan. I'd need to read the other witnesses. And even then it's not certain we'd know the truth... only LM knows.” I meant the total truth inaccessible to men. But I think I've already taken in that finding truth is one of the powers of Grey Sages.
[TIME]
Hendrik nods at the first part.
— Yes. Read the others.
Then at the second:
— Yes. Even then, you might not know.
But when you add “only Lhankor Mhy knows,” he stops.
— No, Talimar.
He takes your tablet and slowly traces the sign of Truth.
— Do not turn our ignorance into an excuse to abandon the search. Lhankor Mhy knows truths we do not. But he also taught us to seek them.
He gives the tablet back.
— A Grey Sage can discover that a man is lying. He can recover what was hidden, distinguish a contradiction, make writing speak, preserve knowledge everyone else has forgotten. And some truths, through Lhankor Mhy, can indeed be revealed to him.
Then he points to the three testimonies.
— But even a Grey Sage must learn this sentence: “I don't know.”
He lets you read the other two.
And something changes.
The second witness belongs to the other clan. Unsurprisingly, his account almost exactly reverses the responsibility.
The third is stranger. He belongs to neither clan. His account seems much more neutral...
...until you notice that he completely omits an event that both enemies, for their part, mention.
Hendrik returns later.
— So?
This time, the question is no longer merely who tells the truth?
You have before you three imperfect fragments of an event that is gone.
What does Tal look for first to begin reconstructing what actually happened?
[TAL]
Since I have absolutely no idea maybe a resolution could solve this puzzle?
[TIME]
Yes. Here, Tal is really trying to draw something from contradictory fragments, and we do not know whether he succeeds. That deserves a resolution.
Intention: reconstruct enough of the real sequence to formulate a solid hypothesis — not magically obtain the whole truth.
For your Bets, I already see two that clearly come from what Tal has become:
- Curiosity — probably his most obvious trait so far.
- Hendrik's teaching — you learned to distinguish what was seen, reported, and assumed.
And I would propose a third coming directly from what you just did:
- “Truth can remain incomplete” — you no longer have to force the three accounts to produce a certainty they may not allow.
Against you:
- Three contradictory testimonies.
- Each account has its blind spot.
So 3 against 2, again.
You are still an apprentice, not an initiate: no magic of Lhankor Mhy comes to provide the answer. It is Talimar investigating with what he already possesses.
Theist perspective.
Roll 3d6.
PROCEDURE (retrospective annotation) — It is the [TAL] who explicitly proposes resolving the puzzle through GP when he does not know how to perform the investigation himself.
[TAL]
4,5,2
[TIME]
4, 5, 2 → 2 Successes.
No 6: nothing extends.
The opposition: 1, 5 → 0 Successes.
Feat
You do not suddenly discover the truth. You do something more methodical.
You begin with what the two enemies agree on.
They disagree about intentions, responsibilities, words. But some facts survive their mutual hostility: one man arrived after the dispute began; a weapon was drawn; an animal ran away; above all, both mention the same event that the third witness omits.
So you reverse your reasoning.
If two men who want to tell two incompatible stories nevertheless preserve the same detail, that detail deserves your attention.
And the absence in the third testimony stops being empty space.
It becomes information.
You begin scribbling: what all three confirm; what only two confirm; what only one claims; what contradicts; what is inexplicably absent.
At the end, you still have not reconstructed the whole dispute.
But you can show Hendrik something more valuable:
where to look next.
Hendrik examines your work for a long time.
— Good.
Then he brutally crosses out one of your conclusions.
— That, you do not know.
He circles another.
— This, on the other hand, nobody told you. You discovered it.
And during the months that follow, that distinction becomes almost an obsession for you.
What I propose for the rest of Session Zero is an ellipse: Talimar learns.
To read and write correctly. Compare sources. Question without immediately putting the answer into the mouth of the person he asks. Memorize. Recognize certain scripts. Know genealogies and precedents. And above all learn the sacred stories of the one he hopes someday to serve.
A few years pass.
And among all the stories Hendrik teaches you comes the one he presents differently from the others:
the birth of Lhankor Mhy.
This time, he does not ask you to take out your tablets.
— This one, you must hear first.
And Tal listens.
Table correction: the Feat, then the myth
[TAL]
Out of character: I know it isn't easy and requires a lot of improv but I don't think the Feat was narrated well in terms of consequence. I think that day Tal earned Hendrik's admiration but also that of the other apprentices. Even if the puzzle's solution isn't known, Tal gave one possible interpretation that explains the 3 testimonies but humbly admitted it wasn't enough to assert it because he was able to give another interpretation too. In short, a memorable moment in the young man's life.
[TIME]
Yes, I agree about the consequence. I treated the +2 as a better intellectual solution, whereas a Feat should also change something in the fiction around Tal. Your version is fairer: that day becomes a founding memory of his apprenticeship. He proposes a reconstruction that explains all three testimonies, then surprises everyone by producing a second, equally compatible one, and therefore refuses to pretend he knows which is true. Hendrik is impressed; the other apprentices begin looking at Tal differently. I retain that correction as the canonical consequence of the Feat.
For what Hendrik is about to tell now, however, I want to avoid making up a “nice Lhankor Mhy myth” from memory. I check the account in our Glorantha sourcebooks, then Hendrik will speak.
Hendrik waits until everyone is settled.
For once, no tablet is handed out. No stylus. When one apprentice keeps his on his knees anyway, Hendrik motions for him to put it away.
— You'll write it later. First, you need to know why we write.
He lets a moment pass.
— Lhankor Mhy was born of Orenoar, Mistress of Truth, as she stood upon Mostal, the Mountain of Law.
— Some say Acos, god of Law, was his father. Others say the Mountain itself was.
One apprentice smiles at the contradiction. Hendrik deliberately leaves it there.
— For ages, Lhankor Mhy remained upon the Mountain of Law. He sang Knowledge and Power. He could discern the cosmic Law that governs even the gods and state it. And he remembered everything he had seen or learned.
Hendrik looks briefly at Tal.
— Which does not mean anyone thought to ask him the right questions.
A few laughs.
— Until the day Orlanth needed to know where to find the weapon capable of killing Sh'hakarzeel, the Dragon.
Then the story darkens.
— Darkness came.
— The gods and goddesses of Light followed Yelm into the Underworld. Among them was Elasa, Mistress of the Light of Knowledge.
— She was Lhankor Mhy's wife.
— When Elasa disappeared, something disappeared from the world with her.
Hendrik searches for his words, rare enough that you all notice.
— Inspiration.
— Lhankor Mhy still knew what he knew. But his disciples could no longer receive from him what had passed between them before.
He looks at you all.
— So Lhankor Mhy did something none of you should ever forget.
— He invented writing.
This time, Hendrik takes out a tablet.
He places it between you.
— Since he could no longer share with his disciples as before, he placed something of himself into signs. Thus, when he left to seek Elasa, his disciples could continue to access his knowledge through what he left behind.
And suddenly the weeks spent copying, recopying, comparing, and correcting tablets take on another dimension.
Hendrik continues.
Lhankor Mhy left.
He underwent trials. He joined the formation of the Lightbringers.
And Hendrik insists on something strange:
— Never tell this story as the story of the learned god who knew all the answers.
— He succeeded. And he failed.
He knew how to defeat some enemies. Elsewhere, being right left him voiceless. At another point, he proved something so successfully that he could no longer write. Yet when Orlanth reached the Enigmatic End, it was Lhankor Mhy who gave him the key he needed.
And when the Lightbringers finally returned victorious...
Elasa returned with him.
The Light of Knowledge had returned to the world.
Hendrik falls silent.
Then comes the lesson he seems to consider more important than all the rest.
— Lhankor Mhy embraces all knowledge.
— We do not.
— No mortal can.
He looks at the apprentices one by one.
— Our knowledge will always be incomplete. And even what we know may not be what we need when the time comes to act.
Then finally:
— That is why we seek.
One apprentice asks:
— Then why doesn't Lhankor Mhy simply give us what he knows?
Hendrik smiles.
— Excellent question.
But he does not answer.
Instead he turns toward Talimar.
— You once said: “only Lhankor Mhy knows.”
— Now that you know this story...
— why do you think he lets us seek?
PROCEDURE (retrospective annotation) — The first treatment of the Feat from the three testimonies is corrected at the table: the canonical consequence includes the admiration of Hendrik and the other apprentices, and the fact that Tal formulates two compatible interpretations without pretending to know which is true.
[TAL]
“Because even he, who knows everything, keeps searching. It's his quest, it's our quest.” (And I note fragments of keywords Tal takes from the myth being told, even if the [TIME] has to repeat the myth.)
[TIME]
Hendrik remains silent for a moment after Tal's answer.
Then:
— Yes.
And, rare enough to be noticed, he adds no correction.
— It is his quest. And it is ours.
Then he begins the story again from the beginning. But this time more slowly. He allows you to take out your tablets.
Tal understands why.
It is no longer only about knowing the story of Lhankor Mhy. He begins looking within it for what the god does, how he confronts the world, what a man might try to reproduce.
Some things already seem worth writing beside the story:
Distinguish what is true.
Remember what has been learned.
Preserve knowledge through writing.
Seek what is missing.
And Tal hesitates before writing one last thing:
Continue searching even when one already knows.
Hendrik walks behind him and sees the notes.
He does not correct them.
— Keep them.
Then he adds:
— But do not make the mistake of believing that because you have written what Lhankor Mhy did, you already know what it means to do it.
And the teaching continues.
Tal's Runes
[TAL]
I can't wait to see how the Runes reveal themselves to Tal.
[TIME]
Then let's close the temporary debrief.
And precisely: I'm not going to offer you a list of Runes to choose from. Tal does not see his character sheet. He lives in a world where Runes are realities, and we'll see which ones seem to answer what he is becoming.
So we return to his apprenticeship.
The seasons pass with Hendrik. Tal now reads well enough to be entrusted with real texts, writes well enough for his mistakes to become embarrassing, and questions well enough that Hendrik may occasionally regret encouraging him.
Then comes a different stage of his teaching.
Until now, Hendrik has mostly taught you to look at the words of men.
This time he announces:
— You are going to learn to look at the world.
And he takes you outside.
No tablet.
No testimony.
No prepared riddle.
He simply asks each of you to go off alone for part of the day.
— Look for nothing.
Obviously, someone asks what you are supposed to bring back.
— What you find.
The apprentices scatter.
And Tal finds himself alone with several hours ahead of him.
We are not going to resolve this with a roll: there is not yet any opposition or uncertain intention.
Where does Tal spontaneously go?
No need to think in terms of Runes. Just tell me what place attracts this young man when, for once, he is given several hours during which nobody tells him what to seek.
PROCEDURE (retrospective annotation) — For “Look for nothing,” the [TIME] explicitly announces that there is no roll: there is neither opposition nor uncertain Intention to resolve.
[TAL]
I think Tal's mind has been boiling for months. He's far from clan quarrels, worries about the Lunar Empire. He has already written to his family and knows that Old White Beard (that's what he calls the traditionalist Grey Sage of the Grey Heron clan). I think he longs for a shift: leave the intellectual excitement and find some calm. He'll try to climb as high as possible. He's looking for a point of view: he wants to feel the wind (away from the clan his roots seem closer to him and he misses them), but actually it's the air rather: not movement, the middle between two things, the interface, where the wind, moon, clouds are. He wonders about above: Yelm, then the stars. He understands scales and thinks about below: LM went there. That exists too. All these layers piled up. He gives himself over to the softness of daydreaming. That's what Tal needs after these intense months.
[TIME]
Tal climbs.
First along a path, then off the path when it stops climbing quickly enough for him. He is looking less for a particular place than for height.
When at last he sits down, nobody asks anything of him.
And for a long while, Tal seeks nothing either.
The wind reminds him of his clan. Not a law, not a quarrel, not even Orlanth: something much simpler. A smell. A sensation on the face. People he misses.
Then his gaze rises.
The clouds.
Beyond them, the sky.
Yelm crosses that sky. Later the stars will come. And somewhere, visible on some days and nights, that Red Moon that occupies so many human thoughts.
But here, for a moment, it stops being the Empire.
It is up there.
And Tal begins to dream in layers.
The earth beneath him. Air around him. The sky above. Further still.
Then his mind naturally makes the opposite movement.
Beneath his feet, the earth has depth.
Lower still lies the Underworld.
Lhankor Mhy went there.
For a few moments these are no longer names learned from stories. Tal almost physically feels that immensity: something exists above him, something exists below him, and he stands between the two.
Small.
But not crushed.
Strangely, it feels good.
When he comes back down a few hours later, almost all the other apprentices have already returned.
Hendrik does not ask:
— What did you learn?
He asks:
— What did you find?
One brings back a plant he did not know. Another watched workers for a long time and returns with a question about how they measure. A third found a strange stone and brought it back.
When Tal's turn comes, his hands are empty.
Hendrik looks at those empty hands.
— So, Talimar?
[TAL]
I found my nature: air (the middle) and harmony (reconcile opposites, see beyond differences...). (It's a little abrupt but at this stage Tal's Runes seem obvious to me.) And of course there's the Rune that started everything: movement (curiosity).
[TIME]
Hendrik looks at Talimar.
He does not smile. This time he seems to take the answer very seriously.
— Air. Harmony. Movement.
He repeats them slowly, as if he does not only want to hear the words but what Tal places behind them.
— You climbed up there looking for calm and came back with three Runes.
One of the apprentices stifles a laugh. Hendrik gives him a look.
— Do not laugh. That is often how they begin. We are taught their signs as children. That does not mean we have recognized them in ourselves.
Then to Tal:
— Explain Harmony to me.
He points to the sky behind you.
— Air, I can understand what you felt. Movement...
He knows you well enough to show a faint smile.
— ...I think we have all suffered the consequences of that one.
A few laughs this time, including among those who, since the affair of the three testimonies, regard Tal with a little more attention.
But Hendrik returns to the point.
— Harmony is a much stranger claim.
— You have spent years discovering that two accounts can contradict one another without one simply being false. You left home because your own people and the Lunars left you with truths you could not make fit together.
He pauses.
— And now you tell me one of your Runes is Harmony.
— So tell me, Talimar:
what is Harmony if opposites remain opposite?
PROCEDURE (retrospective annotation) — Air, Harmony, and Movement are explicitly proposed by the [TAL] after the Situation; the [TIME] had not offered them in a list to choose from.
[TAL]
It's the purpose of my quest: things are, even when contrary, they are there, together, and harmony is what binds them. Harmony is the antithesis of chaos.
[TIME]
Hendrik does not answer immediately.
Then he picks up two different stones and places them side by side.
— They are together. Is that Harmony?
He barely waits before continuing:
— Two clans can share a valley and slaughter one another. Day and Night belong to the same world. Orlanth and the Red Moon too.
His finger comes down between the two stones.
— You said something more precise: what binds them.
Then, when Tal speaks about Chaos, Hendrik's expression changes.
— That is a claim I understand better.
He moves the stones apart, then brings them together again.
— So Chaos would not be, for you, merely one thing different from the others. It would be what destroys the very possibility that they can belong together within one world.
He looks at Tal.
— If that is what you mean, then do not carve “reconcile opposites” too quickly on your tablet. You might end up believing Harmony requires one thing to stop being what it is so that it resembles the other.
— Perhaps your quest will be more difficult.
And Hendrik repeats Tal's exact words:
— Things are. Even when contrary, they are there, together.
A silence.
— Keep Harmony.
Then, with a trace of amusement:
— As for Movement, I doubt we'll manage to rid you of it.
And so, for the first time, three runic signs appear on the tablet where Tal records what he discovers about himself:
Air. Harmony. Movement.
Not because a Grey Sage assigned them to him.
Because Talimar has begun recognizing their presence in his own life.
Initiation
[TAL]
Let's play this initiation then.
[TIME]
A few seasons later, Hendrik simply stops treating Tal like an ordinary apprentice.
He does not announce it. Tal notices because the questions change. He is asked less often what a text means and more often why it deserves to be preserved. He is entrusted with documents the younger apprentices do not handle. Hendrik sometimes sends him alone to verify information.
Then comes the week of Truth.
One morning, Hendrik places the tablet of the seven differences before Tal — the one from the roadside.
— Do you remember your first answer?
Of course.
The tablet is wrong. The stone was there first.
— You were unbearably certain.
A smile.
— You've made some progress.
He takes the tablet back.
— Talimar, son of Calimar and Urestona, of the Grey Heron. I could teach you for years yet. But what you seek now, I cannot give you.
Tal knows the cult's customs well enough to understand what those words announce.
Hendrik continues:
— An apprentice learns from a Sage. An initiate asks Lhankor Mhy to accept him among those who pursue his quest.
This time, no joke.
— I am ready to present you.
Then he immediately adds:
— That does not mean he is ready to receive you.
And a few days later, for the first time, Tal enters not a place where Lhankor Mhy is taught, but a sanctuary where he is worshipped.
At the entrance, Hendrik takes away his tablets.
All of them.
Even the one where Tal wrote Air, Harmony, Movement.
— You are not taking what you know with you.
Tal may protest with his eyes.
— You are about to discover what remains when you can no longer consult it.
Inside, several Grey Sages wait. Some are old. One woman is much younger than Hendrik. Real beards, false beards, tablets, scrolls, objects whose use Tal does not know.
At the centre is traced the Rune of Truth.
Further on, that of Law.
And Hendrik does not remain beside Tal.
A Sage Tal has never met asks the first question:
— What have you come here seeking?
This time, it is not an exercise.
Tal knows he could give a learned answer. He knows many now.
But it is Lhankor Mhy he has come to find.
[TAL]
Tal spreads his arms and declares “I come seeking the agreement and support of the first among Sages, the grey-bearded god, the guardian of knowledge, the one called Lhankor Mhy. If he accepts me I would devote my life to Law and Truth.” And then Tal doubts, neither the Rune of Law nor Truth has been revealed in him (oops).
[TIME]
The Sage does not answer immediately.
And that silence is enough to make doubt arise.
Tal looks at the two signs traced in the sanctuary.
Law. Truth.
He knows their names. He knows their place in the stories of Lhankor Mhy. He has just offered them his life.
But Air, Harmony, and Movement, he recognized in himself.
Law and Truth... no.
The Sage watches him long enough for Tal to understand that he has seen his hesitation.
— You spoke with a great deal of assurance until those last words.
Then:
— Is it to Lhankor Mhy that you just offered your life, Talimar...
He points in turn to the two Runes.
— ...or to these?
Another Sage intervenes:
— A man does not need to be the Wind to worship Orlanth.
The young woman Sage continues:
— And a man who possesses Truth would probably not come here looking for it.
A few smiles appear.
But the first Sage is still not smiling.
— We did not ask which Runes you bear. We asked what you seek.
He steps aside, leaving Law and Truth fully visible.
— So do not correct your answer because you fear giving the wrong one.
— Look at your doubt.
— You just promised your life to Law and Truth. Now that this promise frightens you a little...
...is that still what you want?
[TAL]
Tal falls to his knees. He cries. “Thank you O guardian of secrets, you have just made me understand my mistakes. And that's why I want to be your most diligent disciple. Of course, what I took for Harmony was Law, the thing that binds things!! And now I've become a man, Truth is my reason for being and is my movement!!” He doesn't really know whether he succeeded or failed but it doesn't matter, he has the feeling everything makes sense, fits together, he even seems outside the world. Behind his tears, he feels as if he is in the world of the gods themselves.
[TIME]
For a moment, Tal no longer knows whether he is kneeling on the sanctuary stones.
The voices have moved away.
The Sages too.
Even Hendrik.
Before him, the two Runes are no longer merely signs traced by men.
Law.
What binds.
Not what erases differences. What allows different things to belong to the same Cosmos.
The stone and the tablet.
The three contradictory testimonies.
His clan and the Empire.
Earth, Air, sky, Underworld.
Tal had called it Harmony because he had glimpsed something without yet knowing how to name it.
And then:
Truth.
Not the answer.
The search for the answer.
The reason a difference between a stone and a tablet can stop a boy on a road. The reason two equally possible explanations must remain two explanations as long as nothing allows them to be separated.
And Tal suddenly understands why his earlier certainty was wrong.
Movement brought him here.
But what he was pursuing by moving was Truth.
He cries harder.
Something stands before him.
Or perhaps it has always been there.
A figure impossible to see all at once. A grey beard. Eyes that seem to have seen more things than Tal could learn in a hundred lives.
And the dizzying sensation that around them stretches something much larger than the sanctuary.
Words.
Signs.
Names.
Stories.
Everything someone has known.
Everything someone has forgotten.
And infinitely more still: everything that remains to be sought.
Tal could not say whether he truly hears a voice.
But a question exists.
The very first question.
The one from a windy road, before an old stone.
“Tell me what's wrong.”
Only this time, there is no tablet to compare.
There is the world.
And Tal understands that the question might take an entire lifetime.
Then everything returns brutally.
Cold stone beneath his knees.
His tears.
The Sages.
Hendrik.
Nobody laughs.
The young Sage has knelt before him.
With a damp thumb, she traces a Rune on his forehead.
Truth.
Then the first Sage traces a second.
Law.
— Rise, Talimar of the Grey Heron.
And Hendrik, behind them, simply says:
— Now, seek.
PROCEDURE (retrospective annotation) — No initiation roll. The reinterpretation Harmony → Law and Movement → Truth arises from the [TAL]'s response to the doubt that appeared in the scene; it had not been prepared as a correction to the character sheet.