A Conspyramid of Chaos in Glorantha

Chaos in Glorantha started as the pretty clear-cut mark for the “bad guys”, a tool for gamemasters to scare their players, and for those players to kill some monsters without remorse. But I’m a Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green player at heart, with some early formative years spent on Vampire and Cyberpunk, so I want my grey moral areas, my secret cults, my conspiracies, and my mission-giving patrons that turn out to be corrupt assholes! So let’s look at how to make Chaos in Glorantha a bit more insiduous and nuanced.

Simpler Times

In the early RuneQuest editions, Chaos was simply the entropic void that exists outside of Glorantha. It invaded the cosmos during the Gods War, materializing as deformed, oozing, tentacled monsters that all deities had to band together to fight back. Even after the Great Compromise and the beginning of Time, Chaos keeps finding ways to seep into the world. In the “Monsters” chapter of the 1st and 2nd edition rulebook, we are given about a dozen monsters that are “tainted” by Chaos, often exhibiting a fun mutation called a “Chaotic Feature”. Chaos was simply equivalent to “nasty monster”.

The “Creatures of Chaos” supplement continued along this line, with a bunch of Scorpion Men and Broos that a GM can randomly throw at their players. Later, “Snakepipe Hollow” brings some historical context to Chaotic creatures, giving them a reason to be “here” rather than “there”, and living in an ecosystem that make at least a bit of sense. Not so much random monsters anymore, but monsters with a claim to their portion of Glorantha.

Then “Cults of Chaos” and “Griffin Mountain” put Chaos among, or next to, broader populated zones. It’s still clearly signposted as “bad guys here”, but we at least see how these different factions interact with each other: intelligent Broos who pick their fights, undercover Chaos agents, or people who hate these creatures but decide to placate them rather than risk fighting them.

Still, this is all rather black and white. You have evil Chaotic creatures over there, and you have honest, hard-working Orlanthi down here. The membrane between the two worlds get explored a bit more in the next decades of material, but I think only “Shadows On The Borderlands” thickens that membrane a bit more.

We Are All Us

The lore of Glorantha promises Chaos that corrupts, but you don’t really see that in the published material except in a cosmetic sense. As I mentioned in the introduction, being a Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green kind-of-guy, I want my Chaos to be more than that. More insidious, more attractive, more dangerous.

Sure, it’s fun to throw some wave of disease spirits or Broos raiders at the player characters’ village. And it’s even more fun to figure out why these disease spirits attack now, or where these Broos live and how and who they are. But the most fun for me is when these raids are also a logical step in a certain history of the local communities. Not so much Chaos as an “us” against “them” affair, but Chaos as an integral part of region and the people living therein.

Maybe I should go play with Warhammer’s Chaos instead, which actually does all that and more… but hey, Greg Stafford said Your Glorantha Will Vary, so let’s make it vary a bit, yeah?

Chaos as Organized Crime

Let’s start with my rule of thumb: I treat Chaos in Glorantha as a form of organized crime.

If you ask someone in real life what they think of drug lords and mafia bosses, chances are they’ll say these should always be avoided or opposed, and if ever possible killed or thrown in jail indefinitely. These are evil people who live in secret secure compounds, protected by armed guards, surrounded by sociopaths, and tended to by captive servants. They kill and torture and rape and cheat and steal. You’d be crazy to have anything to do with them, right?

And yet many people do. Rarely directly but often indirectly. There are connections between these evil people and the street gang in your neighbourhood, a famous actor you like, your favourite restaurant, or the new CEO of your company. There’s a network of money, bribes, drugs, sex workers, influence and favours and more. This network somehow connects “honest” people to “the absolute worst evil” in only a few jumps. This “gradient of evil” is what fascinates me, and drives my mental model for Chaos in Glorantha.

Sure, your Orlanthi cousin would never deal with a Broo shaman of Mallia! But he has this good deal on half a dozen mules’ worth of wine amphorae from a new supplier. One time only! That would be great for the Earth Temple’s next holy-day festival, and you can still charge them full price and split the difference. Who’s the supplier? Oh you don’t need to know right now, and the provenance stamps have been tampered with, but that’s fine we’ll re-stamp the lot with my brother’s vineyard’s mark. Obviously he’ll need his cut too. Everything good? Nothing Chaotic here!

Turns out the wine comes from the domain of some noble from a neighbouring tribe who needs quick cash to pay back debts towards a gang of thugs he’s been using occasionally for his affairs. That gang provides “services” in protection, intimidation, racketeering, smuggling, and the occasional kidnapping. The gang’s leaders are the only ones who really have contact with Chaos cultists, dealing with some intermediaries to a nearby Broo settlement who need their services. They did once or twice host some clandestine “meeting” with them, but they’re still dealing with the consequences of that and are not eager to do it again. The Broos are pushing for one leader to initiate into a Chaos cult to prove their “commitment” but that obviously comes with a host of problems. Still, the Broos provide some advantages. Their shaman can send Mallia spirits to select victims, loot from Broos raids can be smuggled and sold off through the gang for a sizable fee, and so on.

So there, the Earth Temple’s holy-day wine is somehow indirectly connected to some Chaotic activity… and then someone finds three severed hands in one of the amphorae, and shit hits the fan.

The Chaos Conspyramid

Kenneth Hite’s vampire techno-thriller game “Night’s Black Agents” introduces the concept of the “conspyramid” to represent enemy organizations that the player characters are up against. It’s a great way to visualize things, but the globe-trotting spy drama of NBA dictates a geographical organization of the pyramid. In my case, the whole campaign happens in and around one city-state so I instead organize the conspyramid in “levels of involvement”. Here it is, more or less, heavily tweaked and slightly expanded for the purposes of this article:

A campaign or investigation usually starts from one of the leaf boxes at the bottom but not necessarily. Obviously, the goal is to tear down the organization by making your way up the chain, and eliminating the first couple levels. This is of course not the only way to represent and approach evil organizations, but I like it so that’s what I used for my RuneQuest game.

Let’s look at what kind of GMCs we find on each level.

Level 5: The Unsuspecting

At the bottom are people who don’t suspect that they are somehow involved, directly or indirectly, in Chaotic activities. They are in good standing with their cults, and generally don’t even do anything illegal or “shady”.

For instance, Nurse Little Shala might administer a sleeping concoction to a patient on orders from her boss Eobar Softvoice, not realizing that the goal is to keep the patient from waking up until after some event has happened, because otherwise the patient could say the wrong thing to the wrong person. The Black Shields warband, part of the tribal king’s retinue, is sent after some troll raiders, not realizing that it’s less to protect the city’s farmlands, and more to protect the Broo settlement where the people near the top of the pyramid reside.

Level 4: Those Who Benefit

At level 4 of the conspyramid, people do engage in questionable activities. These generally aren’t Chaotic, but it’s still not great.

Eobar Softvoice takes bribes from Legamus, a local noble, to prioritize who gets what treatment at the local Chalana Arroy hospital, and sells drugs designed by a collective of Dark Elves. The Thunder Jumpers are a street gang in the city who regularly steal from, beat up, or kidnap people, most often on Legamus’ orders. They did a couple of secret murders, but they get paid extra when that happens. One of the gang’s members feels really bad about it and may confess to his cousin who is a God-Talker at the local Orlanth Adventurous shrine. Benius, a local clan chieftain, was elected on lies, and is now in Legamus’ pocket.

Level 3: The Complicit

At level 3, we still don’t really have any Chaotic people, but they know. They deal directly with Chaotic cultists, and are either complicit, lay members, or hoping to be initiates in the future. Some of these people may have a small Chaos Rune affinity, or other faint “taint”. It generally flies under the radar, but it’s still scary when some Storm Bull cultist or troll comes sniffing around.

Legamus tries to keep his hands clean but he definitely knows that those who helped him become a wealthy noble are, really, Mallia cultists. Garan Fastread was passed over twice for promotion at the Issaries temple. After running carrying “hot goods” for a while to inflate his margins, he realized it tied into a local Cacodemon cult. Instead of being horrified by this like most people would, his analytical mind went to work. Now hopes to use his Cacodemon cultist friends to eliminate the aging local merchant priest, and take over the city’s market. Nindukugga is addicted to the Puffcap Collective’s drugs. Shadowy figures visit regularly, requesting some bodies to be moved or replaced. She don’t know who they are, but deep down she knows what’s going on. Her next hit helps her forget.

Level 2: The Initiates

Here we go: these are the Chaos cults’ lay-members and initiates! You can start stabbing without feeling bad! (yes, I always try to make my players feel bad about who they stab… it rarely ever works) These people have a definitive Chaos taint, and actively worship Chaos deities and spirits. Some don’t do it by choice, but most do. Do you even want to check before stabbing anyway?

The Cacodemon cult is mostly humans and ogres, with a couple of miscellaneous agents of other natures. Several members live in the city-state proper, hiding their nature with season-long spells. They have a few clandestine places to gather at in the city, and regularly visit their Mallia “colleagues” out in the wild to coordinate on some aspects of the operation. The Mallia cult is mostly Broos, although the human minority has been growing. They live near the edge of the city-state’s frontier.

Level 1: The Leadership

If you meet anyone sitting at the top of the conspyramid, stab as hard as you can, or run away! These are the Runemasters of this whole Chaos organization. They are irredeemable, and doing anything other than stabbing them would probably be a moral failing on the PCs’ part. Of course, I always try to get my players to compromise their values and strike at least some temporary alliance to achieve a bigger goal… it almost worked once!

The “Collector of Sorrows” is a Broo shaman who loves to collect carefully selected souls from the city’s human population. He keeps them trapped in various enchanted talismans, forever slaves to his will. The “Kings Below” are the Cacodemon Runemasters who live in a secret underground complex. They are rarely seen outside, except for one, who is an ogre able to shapeshift into the appearance of anybody he has eaten according to some magic ritual he gained during a heroquest. He has no name, and can be sometimes seen walking the streets of the city. Of course, you wouldn’t know who he is, since he looks different each time, but local shamans recognize and fear his powerful aura. There are urban legends about him.

Hold On A Minute

I can already hear some Gloranthan fans protest. “Hold on a minute! Is that Legamus guy an Orlanthi? He can’t deal with Chaos! That’s against his vows!”, or some other similar point.

Well yes it is against his vows. Guess what else is against religious vows? Half of the entire history of any religion! When I read “Orlanthi all vow to oppose Chaos”, I read it in the same way that, say, “Christian monks all vow to remain chaste”. That is: with a big wink, a big nudge, a giant bag of salt. If there’s a rule, someone’s going to break it. That’s, like, sort of what defines humanity. Most of us are utterly flawed. And I don’t know about you, but I like my Glorantha to be populated by actual human beings, not automatons who submit to “the lore”.

Plus, isn’t Chaos supposed to be corrupting? So there. It corrupts. Sometimes it corrupts a bit, and sometimes it corrupts a lot. That’s how you find yourself going up the conspyramid.

Okay, it seems these fans aren’t leaving: “But it’s not the same! Magic, spirits, and gods exist in Glorantha! You can’t do that sort of thing without facing consequences!” Well, I mean, in theory it’s the same on Earth. You’ve got your neighbours watching, the police, the Inquisition, and so on. And yet still, people find a way. Sure, magic exists in Glorantha, but it exists on both sides. Whatever magical means the “good guys” have to find the “bad guys”, there surely are magical counter-measures. Case in point, the “False Form” spell that Cacodemon has. As for gods, are you talking about those gods who can’t do shit because they’re bound by the Great Compromise? And spirits… well, let’s leave that for another article, actually.

My point is: there’s going to be a way. People always find a way. That’s why even under the harshest of authoritarian regimes, or under the strictest prohibition laws, there’s always some shenanigans going on. People in Glorantha will also find a way because, well, again, they are people.

Everything is Linked

When Arachne Solara created Time, she bound everybody together in her web, including Chaos, which she ate. So Chaos is part of the fabric of Glorantha. That’s why I like to sprinkle it a bit everywhere like bacon.

Bacon always makes things better. Chaos does too.