Cults of RuneQuest: The Prosopaedia is a supplement for Chaosium's RuneQuest line with no game data, only lore. It showcases Glorantha's rich mythology in dictionary format, describing a myriad of deities, heroines, demi-goddesses and even some mystic concepts like illumination or the several schools of Malkioni faith, all of it in alphabetical order. This makes it a somewhat weird book: it has no direct application for gaming, and it is downright odd to read from cover to cover. Then, what is it for? Below I'm outlining several suggestions as to how you can use this prosopaedia and, in so doing, I kind of review it. <<Sigue el enlace para leer esta reseña en español>>.
N.B.: Chaosium sent me a copy of the book so I could review it, but this is my objective assessment, so I point out the good and the bad aspects. However, if you think I have been biased by this, please let me know in a comment below.
1. A lovely book
The Prosopaedia is an awesome-looking book that stands out thanks to its colorful great art. All the art in the book is by Katrin Dirim, giving it a coherent look. Katrin's style is reminiscent of the depictions of gods and goddesses of ancient times, so it perfectly matches the "Bronze Age" feel of Glorantha. The original plan was to publish the whole Cults of RuneQuest line of books as two huge tomes, but then Chaosium realized they could make them more accessible by dividing them into a series of supplements. Since the Prosopaedia was going to be left as a somewhat awkwardly independent book, they decided to make it more attractive by commissioning all the art to just one artist: cover, back cover, interior art and even decoration. The result is a book worth enjoying in print, and also easy to read thanks to its combination of brief texts and great art.
The cover art combines many goddesses and heroes described in the book, with a central circle representing the elemental deities that make up the world itself. For example, the woman holding snakes is Ernalda or Gata, as she is the Earth goddess. Below, the dragon in the water must be Sramak, god of the Great River that circles the earth, while the smiling, tusked face underneath stands for Nakala, the primordial goddess of Darkness, which is used to represent the Underworld. The profusion of figures occupies the whole cover and is an attractive representation of the contents of the book, making it standout with its vibrant colors. On top of that, using the cover and back cover you can play a small game of finding out what deity or heroic character each figure stands for. All these characters are described in the book, you just need to correlate each figure with its description. Have you matched all the figures yet? :-)
The interior art uses the same vibrant colors as the cover and is quite numerous. There are many small pieces, about a quarter page, but there are many other sizes, up to a full page. Most could represent frescoes on the walls of Gloranthan temples, but others depict followers of certain gods. All are identified by a caption so you know who it is. One of my favorites is a full-page piece depicting several souls waiting to be judged by Daka Fal at the Court of Silence. Over each soul there is a symbolic depiction of the deity who is defending their follower before the Judge of the Dead, but one soul is looking anxious because she has no deity defending her before the Judge. Maybe she was a bad initiate in life or did not devote herself to any god, so she may not be destined to any paradise: a dire prospect indeed!
Simply put, The Prosopaedia can be used just to enjoy its art. You can also use it to play the identification game with the figures on the cover and back cover. Moreover, thanks to its nice visual content, it is easy to use as a casual read. As a dictionary, you don't need to read it from a to z. You can just open it on a random page and see what stories of gods and goddesses you learn this time. This is why it can be a good gift for someone with only a passing interest or mere curiosity for the mythology of Glorantha.
2. A reference book
Since the deities and heroic characters are listed alphabetically, this book will be most commonly used as a reference or look-up source. For example, while reading another book about Glorantha you may find a name you do not know, with no explanation or context. No problem, you just open up the prosopaedia, look up that name, and catch up immediately in just several brief paragraphs. There are many deities that are not described anywhere else: heroes, demi-goddesses, great spirits such as Earthmaker, concepts such as New Hrestolism, and even magical phenomena such as the Syndic Ban. But there is more.
On top of the description, you get the pronunciation of each name, which is interesting. I think it is perfectly OK for anyone to pronounce the names in Glorantha as they prefer. For some reason, I had always pronounced "Orlanth" with a stress on "-lanth", but here I found out that the stress actually falls on "Or-". So if you are inclined to pronounce "Orlanth" as Greg Stafford imagined the sound of the word, you should say "ORlanth". Still, I have been saying "orLANTH" for so long that I'm not going to change now, but it is anyway interesting, even if just a mere curiosity. Of course, if you want other Gloranthan fans to understand you better while speaking in person, it is easier when everyone is on the same page in this regard.
More interestingly, many of the descriptions include related names. These other names are often deities with a close relationship to the one described in the entry, such as spouses or children, but also the names a deity is known by in different Gloranthan cultures. It is like the interpretatio graeca of the Romans. For example, the same way Ancient Greeks assumed Zeus had to be the same god as the Egyptian god Amon, a group of Gloranthan scholars now extinct (the God Learners) equated, for example, the Grazelander sun god Yu-Kargzant with the Pelorian sun god Yelm. That's why the entry of Yu-Kargzant includes that "other name" others in Glorantha call the sun god by... which you can also look up. Even though they both are basically the same sun god, each has different myths and, sometimes, totally different ones (like Zeus and Amon!). So this is useful to get your way around the multitude of names in Glorantha's mythology, and it also goes to show how Glorantha imitates the mythologies of our own world.
Although I still have to read it, it seems Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God delves into this very topic. This is seemingly the origin of the title: thanks to Andrew Montgomery's awesome blog I learned that "prosopaedia" is a word Greg Stafford coined by mixing two Greek words: prosopon (mask) and paideia (education, knowledge). As "paideia" is the second half of "encyclopedia", the prosopaedia contains the knowledge of the masks of the gods, the different names each culture calls their deity by, which at the end of the day are merely approximations or facets of the same entity, never fully understandable.
On the negative side, sometimes the entries are not complete enough in regards to these related names. For example, if you read first the description of the god Yu-Kargzant, below it points you to the entry about Yelm, but if you look up Yelm, that entry does not mention Yu-Kargzant below nor any of the other names the sun god is known by. This makes some relationships one-directional, reductionist, and therefore detract from a fully plural point of view. It is as if the authors claimed there is one version of the sun god (Yelm) that is more valid than the rest. But that is terrible, because every culture in Glorantha knows, as it is logic to them, that their gods are the most important in the world. Still, at the beginning of the book it is said that it is a compilation written by the God Learners, so under the premise of being a diegetic or Gloranthan text written by Gloranthans, you can forgive it not being 100% objective.
Aside from that, it would have been useful to have all names in the PDF linked to their respective descriptions. This way it would have been a sort of wikipedia of the gods that would have made easy looking names up and following their relationships. This would have also made it easy to fall down the rabbit hole like when you read articles on the Internet and keep jumping from one link to the next as your interests and curiosity dictate. Despite that, the hardcover book can be used this way up to a certain point thanks to the related names that take you from one entry to another (although it is not perfect).
3. A way to make up the pantheons of many regions
Glorantha is a vast world and the official publications only get so far. Even the Cults of RuneQuest line of books does not cover all Gloranthan gods in detail, basically only the most widespread in the northern continent of Genertela. Therefore, the prosopaedia is a useful tool to group together all the deities worshipped in regions only vaguely described in the books. And you may want to do this in order to know what cults your PCs can follow if you play a campaign there. For example, say you read The Guide to Glorantha, you fall in love with the Doraddi culture and you decide to run a campaign in the savannahs in the center of Pamaltela, which the nomadic Kresh traverse on their huge wagons that carry their houses. So what gods do they worship? You just need to open up The Prosopaedia and write down all the goddesses, gods, and heroic figures of the Doraddi tradition. Since the descriptions include the pantheon each deity belongs to, you just need to search all of them and make a list. It is easier if you use the word index Chaosium inserts at the back of all their books. Look for "Doraddi" and you will find all the pages where that word is mentioned. Go to each of them and write down the list of the Doraddi mythology:
Aleshmara, Goddess of Women and Food; Amuron, the Great Horned Serpent, Guardian of the Spirit World; Aranea, Goddess of Spiders; Balumbasta, Lord of Fire; Bolongo, the False God; Bredjeg, God of Storm; Chermata, the Sky Witch; Cronisper the Wise, Grandfather Sky; Famorde, the Dark Earth Goddess, Faranar, the Good Daughter and Hoe Mother; Dama, God of Night; Enjata Mo, Goddess of the Dead; Hon Hoolbikut, the hero who led the rebellion against the Six-Legged Empire; Jmijie, the Homeless God; Kendamalar, the Sun God; Keraun, Goddess of Good Wind and Rain Clouds; Langamul, the Creator; Mwara, Goddess of Sweet Grass; Noruma, the Great Shaman; Nyanka: Goddess of Life and Birthing; The Plant Brothers, Children of the Earth; Pamalt, Earth King of Pamaltela; Rasout, God of the Hunt; Sedaia: the Queen of Kothar and Cereals; Sikkanos: Foe of Mankind, the Dust Storm; Tamakderu: God of the Oceans; Vangono: God of War; Yanmorla: the Wise Woman.
In a campaign with the nomadic Kresh, the Earth deities would be less important than the deities of animals, and perhaps the Wandering God is their main god together with Pamalt, Aleshmara and Faranar (BTW, these 3 cults are described in The Earth Goddesses). Then you need to assign what Rune and spirit magic the main deities provide, and The Red Book of Magic, can help you out, because it lists dozens of Rune spells ordered by rune. Now you have a good base to begin playing and creating player and non-player characters.
The same goes for other Gloranthan cultures not yet covered by official supplements: Fonrit, Umathela, Maslo, Vithela, Kralorela, Vormain... Whatever draws your attention. Therefore, even though it only contains lore, once you combine it with The Guide to Glorantha it is a valuable resource for playing games.
In a nutshell
Even though it is by no means essential to play, in this odd review I hope I have managed to show that you can enjoy Cults of RuneQuest: The Prosopaedia in several ways: by its attractive look, as a quick reference book, and as a source of lore for campaigns set in regions off the beaten track. However, it could have been even more complete had it included more bidirectional references between the entries, and also if the PDF had included links in all the names.
Finally, there is another matter to consider: if you already own a copy of the old Gods of Glorantha from the 80s, the original prosopaedia is included in it, and in that case, you may be wondering: "Why do I need the new edition?" Well, basically the new edition includes many more entries, so it is more comprehensive and up to date, as well as much better looking. For example, the old prosopaedia was barely over 30 pages long, whereas the new is 140 pages long. On top of goddesses and gods, the new edition includes heroines like Jar-Eel the Razoress, heroes such as Argrath and Arkat, and demi-gods such as Belintar. Whether that is enough to justify paying the price of the new book is for you to judge.
You will love it if...
- You love the colorful art by Katrin Dirim.
- You would like to know more about Glorantha's rich mythology in a casual way.
- You need it as a reference to look up names while you read other books on Glorantha.
- You would like to play games in a region not yet covered by the official publications.
Stay away if...
- You'd rather focus on other supplements with gaming material.
- There is no space left on your bookshelves (even for a slim book like this) and you already own Gods of Glorantha from 1985.
Cults of RuneQuest: The Prosopaedia is available from Chaosium for 38$ (the hardcover book includes the PDF), from your FLGS, and in PDF on DrivethruRPG for 19$. Well, I hope you liked my review. If you already have the book, would you say it is worth purchasing? :-)
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