Tarsh, Sartar, and Balazar

I've decided to go forward with the wilderness campaign and file the "Dark as a Dungeon" campaign away for some other decade.

A month or more ago I was thinking I'd be creating the wilderness expedition campaign from scratch. Then, I discovered the Griffin Mountain campaign book. The more I read it, the more I found it fit perfectly with my vision for this campaign. It will serve as "this side of the mountains"...the first half of the campaign. The second half of the campaign..."the other side of the mountains"...I plan to create from scratch, assuming the campaign gets that far.

Griffin Mountain is officially part of the Glorantha setting, for which almost four decades worth of books are available to study. It's quite overwhelming, so I'm ignoring almost all of it for this campaign and just focusing on the Griffin Mountain book. On the other hand, a wilderness expedition without any context is rather pointless, so I've found some material online that describes the PCs homeland and culture.

One of the neat things about the Glorantha setting is that many of the cultures are described in a series of documents called "Voices of Glorantha". They take the form of brief narratives of "What my father told me." and "What the priestess told me." A nice way to get an understanding of the PCs culture. Here is the Voice of the Tarshites.

Next is an informative summary of the Kingdom of Tarsh. This provides useful info on its towns and countryside, its internal politics and conflicts, and its external rivals and enemies.

With those introductary reads in mind, I now describe the context of the wilderness expedition:

The Kingdom of Tarsh is the southern border province of the Lunar Empire. Its situation and location means that Tarsh bears the brunt of angst against the empire: its own rebels, its barbarian neighbors, and beasts of chaos. It stands to reason that, of all Lunar citizens, Tarshites are the least softened by the corruption of prosperity that entrance into the empire has brought.


To the southeast of Tarsh is the Kingdom of Sartar, located in a region of monsters and barbarians called Dragon Pass. The empire has been attempting to conquer and hold this strategically important location for many generations. There is much adventure to be had here in the area of Dragon Pass, but it is not the focus of this campaign.


To the northeast of Tarsh is the primitive land of Balazar, which has long been too poor and barren for the empire to bother conquering it and bringing it into the fold. There is no reliable map of Balazar. Much of Balazar is unknown to the Lunars and unmapped. On the other hand, the natives have intimate knowledge of their realm.

Taking Balazar would provide a long-term strategic advantage against Sartar. Balazar and Sartar are separated by the nearly impassable Rockwood Mountains. The movement of an army over or through the mountains from Balazar to Sartar would be exceedingly difficult. Instead, the empire wants to determine if there is another way over the Rockwoods further to the east. Legend tells of one.

What lies over the mountains that far east is entirely unknown. There are rumors of a fertile land called The Hidden Greens. Surely such a land would hold many riches and be easy pickings. If nothing else, establishment of a connecting trade route would benefit the Lunar Empire. As mentioned above, the ultimate goal is to pressure Sartar from the east.

Enter...the PCs expedition.