Smithers, who is that Horse God from the Dawn Age?

Glorantha is a famously deep but daunting setting. I won’t try to summarise it here, but open up any of the books and you’re sure to be swarmed by proper nouns you’ve never seen before.

The Glorantha-set King of Dragon Pass has one simple trick, continued in its spiritual sequel series Six Ages.

On most screens of the game you have a bunch of familiar faces. These are your circle, important people assigned to leadership roles, and the best thing about them is that you can click on each of them to see what they think at the given moment.

Often they’ll straight up tell you what they think you should do.

Sometimes it’s thinly-veiled gameplay tutorial stuff or a mini lore dump. Things that are annoying on a popup menu, but it's better coming from a person.

And it's always dripping with that bronze age Glorantha sauce that helps put you in the right mindset.

Yeah, why aren't we selling slaves??

This is great for a setting like Glorantha, where you won't always know what sort of things are accepted norms in this weird world, but I think it would be handy for a lot of TTRPG settings.

Still, I don't expect the players to cart around a team of seven advisors to handle every situation.

I think a single NPC following the group around spouting exposition is fine, but having two is much more fun, as you can have them disagree on things, or even give conflicting information on the setting. Use that latter one sparingly, though.

Now remember the trick with the Dragon Pass advisors is that they mostly give advice when asked, so avoid having the NPCs butt in with their suggestions before the players have even begun thinking about what to do. They can be proactive at times, but players are much more likely to be interested in what NPCs say when it's a question they've asked, rather than information they're being fed.

For Mythic Bastionland there are lots of ways to end up with NPC hangers-on, but squires are the most obvious. If your knights are new to the realm then have their squires be from here, with a smattering of local knowledge and their own conflicting opinions on what would be best for their realm.

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More Landmarks

The Mythic Bastionland realm creation procedure suggests a 12x12 hex Realm, but I've drifted more toward 12x18 mostly because it's a nice easy fit to print out on a regular piece of paper. A side-effect of this is that the realm feels a little bit sparser, so I sometimes compensate by including a few more landmarks than normal.

Lately I've also been experimenting with some alternative landmark types. The book has six, which I think work well together, so I'd use this as extras to include alongside them.

Bridges
Each guarded by a knight. Non-knights may pass peacefully, but knights can only cross if one of the company defeats the knight in single combat. The duel continues until one side yields, which the bridge knight will do only when mortally wounded.

Defeating a bridge knight allows permanent passage for your company and grants 1 Glory.

Ponds
These mirrored pools are especially hard to find, only discovered on a wilderness roll of 6 when passing through. They are always placed in pairs, scattered through the realm and plunging into one provides instant passage to the paired pond elsewhere. Perhaps some pairs even span to distant realms.

Traveling through the ponds is disorienting, causing d12 CLA loss. Each pair of ponds will only transport a person once per season.

Chapels
Humble buildings built as shrines to the forces of nature, usually home to peaceful hermits. Each is dedicated to a particular animal, the hermits willing to share that beast's wisdom and a temporary use of their gifts to the worthy.

They are easy targets for raiders. If protection is not put in place then roll on the "unresolved situations" table between seasons to see their fate.

Grottos
Impossible to find unless a local has given you the directions. These mystic caves are three, spread across the realm. Spending the night sleeping in one, utterly alone, grants a useful vision of the past, present or future, depending on the specific grotto. Such visions are too much for a knight's mind and cause d8 CLA loss.

In spite of their similarity, Seers will strongly discourage knights from entering these places, and will scold those who have.

Fountains
Natural springs found in the most difficult to reach areas of the realm. Those stumbling on them only see the spray of their water from a distance. Water from each of the three fountains has different properties.

Red Water: A flask of this water is somehow enough to share around a whole company, providing just the refreshment needed. It can function as any Remedy type (sustenance, stimulant, or sacrament).
Mossy Water: When poured on the ground, this water always runs toward whichever place, person, or thing, the pourer asks for.
Inky Water: Anyone splashed with a flask of this water loses all of their senses until thoroughly dried out, usually a whole phase.

If the company try to take more than a single flask of water the fountain suddenly dries up until they have left.

Willows
One for each season, only emerging from the woods during their own season. These great knotted trees conceal a doorway to another world, opened by freshly spilled blood. Knights that enter are faced with a series of challenges, their reward being the fabled fruit of that particular willow. Only one fruit is present each season, and is only enough for one person to eat.

Spring Willowfruit: Creates an intense feeling of awareness, as if all distractions were washed away. Reroll CLA and keep if higher.
Harvest Willowfruit: Cures any ailment or curse, no matter how powerful. The eater is restored to fantastic health. Reroll VIG and keep if higher.
Winter Willowfruit: A truly delicious fruit, though the eater will die peacefully at the end of Winter. They know this, and find themselves surprisingly at ease. Reroll SPI and keep if higher. In spring, the eater returns to the realm as they were in their youth.

For the challenges, make a mini dungeon using the sites system, with plenty of danger. It's otherworldly, so it doesn't need to make much sense.

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This post was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site the week after its original publication.

If you want to support my blog, podcasts, and video content then head over to my Patreon.