Every Orlanthi is defined by his clan; even if he is away from home seeking adventure or in exile, to understand him we need to know his clan. The clan gives the heroes somewhere to come from, people to fight for, and prizes to quarrel over. Threats to the clan and tensions from within the clan itself are a wellspring of adventure.

This questionnaire should help you understand the really deep background that underlies your character's reality. It shows what part your ancestors had in making Glorantha. Think of this as something your character knows his ancestors did, a really long time ago.

We provide this web-based clan questionnaire below to walk you through the process of creating a clan.

Many groups like to create their own clan together. As they establish the clan's attitudes and goals, they define what they want the game to be about. The narrator should ask the questions, but the players should decide on the answers. If the heroes are from the same clan, we recommend that the players reach a consensus on each answer. If the group has trouble with this method, the narrator can instead select a player at random and ask him the first question, then ask the next player in line the second question, and so on, until all of the questions have been answered.

If each player character is from his own clan, take the time to go through the questionnaire with each separately, so that they can reveal their own clan's history to each other later, during the game, and to protect their secrets.

The material here is addressed to you, but the decisions would have been made by those ancient folks who live on in your characters, their descendants. Your clan profile is determined by the answers that you give to this questionnaire.

Creating your own clan using the Clan Generation Questionnaire has another advantage - it introduces the players to the setting. As they answer the questions in the clan questionnaire, they learn of, and are involved in, myth and history without having to read background material.

We recommend agreeing to the details of your clan before you begin creating characters. This is especially true if your game will center on clan life. In such a game, the most interesting characters have relationships with the clan's leaders and support or oppose the clan's direction and beliefs. Deciding these before you create characters may inspire you in their creation. If you have a game where everyone has left home seeking adventure, then you might be able to do it later but it could give ideas on why they left and what they left behind.

This web-based questionnaire provides sample answers for each question (including some that were not in the original book version). If you come up with an entertaining answer that is not on this list, then please contact us with your ideas and we may incorporate them in a future version. Please imagine the consequences of the answers and work out how they fit with the existing framework before you make your suggestions.

You want to know what sort of clan the players want to be from; so let them make informed choices. No answer is better than another, just different. Feel free to give the player characters abilities that reflect from their clan's secrets. Finally, use your judgment when allowing players to choose some of the answers provided here, if they do not seem appropriate to the questionnaire results that far.

It began in the lost mists of creation. The world was made. The Old Gods of the Celestial Court have failed to maintain the world. The New Gods are rearranging the Cosmos.

Everyone knows that First People were made by all the gods, working in harmony and conjunction to create a new form of life. It worked. They created the first mortals: Darhudan and Darhudana, Grandfather and Grandmother Life.

Grandfather and Grandmother Life are your oldest ancestors. They started life in the hands of the gods. They walked with the mighty, and were as they in those days. They had hundreds of children, who in turn had hundreds of their own. The Cosmos was at peace, but slowly awareness started. Your clan''s awareness began when they recognized that they were different from other people.

The council of Pairs were eight Old Gods of the Celestial Court who embodied the great, opposing runic powers. They resided in the Cosmic Mountain at the center of the world and had equally contributed to the creation of Darhudan and Darhudana. However, each child of Grandfather and Grandmother Life favoured one Old God over the others.

The Goddess Asrelia, the Empress Earth, gave out many treasures to the descendants of Grandfather and Grandmother Life. The treasure she gave to your people awoke them from the formless Green Age and named them as something specific.

At first, no one was ever hungry, for Asrelia contained enough to feed everyone. But suddenly some people were hungry! Ernalda stopped the hunger by teaching people how to do the right ceremonies. These allowed people to find her sister Esrola, who had been trapped behind a terrible mask by Angdartha, the cruel servant of the Bright Emperor. This was the first worship, one of the actions that separated mortals from deities.

The Bright Emperor enslaved everyone and demanded absolute obedience from everything. But there was one force he could not control, and that was freedom. One little freedom became many, and they began to bring bigger freedoms. Finally, the Great Sky lay upon the Fertile Earth and begot Umath Ever-Changing, the First Storm, who would bring change to the Bright Emperor's stagnant realm. Umath was an upstart god at first, with only a few crazy and dangerous brothers at his side. Gradually he gathered gods and men to his band and with their help reshaped the world.

Death was the first thing that set people apart from the gods. Grandfather Life was the first to be killed with Death and afterwards was called Grandfather Mortal. Because of that, all of his descendents have been set apart from the gods, even after death came to the gods as well.

Umath was destroyed by the Emperor's bloody lieutenant, the Red God Jagrekriand, which set off the horrible time called The Gods War. In that turbulent era, the parts of the world fought itself; gods grappled, and threw landmarks at each other. The Old Gods of the Celestial Court were destroyed and shattered.

Amid the destruction, the mortal peoples adapted to survive or died off. Different peoples had different ways to cope. Umath's youngest and wisest son, Orlanth, was initially one of the many upstart, rebellious deities bent upon conquest of the world. Orlanth's unique contributions at the time were his honor and his kinship to the deities of Air. Where the Bright Emperor sought to control people through fear, force, and hollow laws, Orlanth gathered his people by force of virtue, character, and example.

You fought in the many wars that Orlanth undertook to conquer the world. These wars helped shape the world. Other more peaceful deeds shaped the world as well.

Orlanth wooed the forces of Earth and after many tribulations, adventures, and discoveries the storm god proved himself worthy of marrying Great Ernalda, the Earth Queen. The two of them created the Marriage Oath and thereby established a great harmony in the world through this sacred bonding.

You, a loyal member of Orlanth's army, were there at the wedding. When you went into the ceremony, you were asked which side you wished to stand on: the right (Air) or left (Earth) side.

Vingkot was a son of Orlanth and the first great king of the Orlanthi people. The Vingkotlings were great, with full baskets and fat herds and always victorious over their foes. The people set up many altars where the gods lived and so established the relations of worship. King Vingkot led and sent many expeditions against the enemies who wanted to take it away. Vingkot is still worshipped for the great deeds he did, and for his leadership of the gods when Orlanth went away.

Vingkot married the Summer and Winter Wives and with them he had five sons and five daughters. The bloodline of Vingkot was unique and was necessary to be a king. Each son and daughter founded a Vingkotling tribe, except for the Second Son, who traveled to the edge of the world. Vingkot chose his eldest son Kodig to be the high king of all the Vingkotlings and his son's bloodline, called the Kodigvari, were the Royal Tribe of the Vingkotlings.

When the world fell apart, Vingkot welcomed refugees and reorganized the devastated clans, so that all might survive. He asked you to shelter the people of a ruined clan, but let you choose what status to give them.

You had the choice whether to make them into thralls (slaves) or adopt them into your clan.

The foes of the Vingkotlings were many. As time went on, you found yourself fighting against the same foes over and over again. One enemy in particular plagued your people consistently during the era. Your ancestors fought these foes so often that they developed special magic to combat them.

Even today, your clan does not get along with the descendants of the Ancient Enemy, and your wyter is especially effective against them.

Eventually, the Great Darkness descended on Glorantha. Many gods died, others slept, and even Orlanth abandoned his people to try to save the world. Everything in the universe seemed hostile, and was at least uncaring. You saw many die and many strangers joined the surviving clans. The adoption rites were made at this time, and used extensively so that everyone could survive.

At last, only monsters, demons, formless Chaos, and their victims remained. Many were so terrible that nothing could withstand them. Clans, tribes, kingdoms, and nations disappeared in the terrible time. Some things could be resisted with fire, magic, and spear, and all peoples alive today descend from someone who survived that time. A particular foe pursued your ancestors; although you do not know why, you are still plagued by that form of Chaos.

Even mighty Orlanth and his companions eventually abandoned all humans to their fate. Only a few deities, small ones or weak ones, remained. The world died. Even the greatest of the gods were locked into static lifelessness or were out of control as a destructive force. Only a handful of minor or diminished deities struggled on, helping and being helped by their human accomplices. Everyone who survived the Great Darkness did so because of a survival secret they learned. Most were saved by a Living God, who protected them until Orlanth and Ernalda eventually returned.

The entire world was on the brink of destruction, and it came down to one person to resist Wakboth the Devil. That person did, and so the world was saved. You learned in the initiation rites of your people that you were that individual. Heort the King is the one who teaches you this, and so you are called one of the Heortling peoples.

King Heort guided your people out of the Great Darkness. He reinstituted sacrifice to the gods, organized the peoples into clans, gave out the new laws for society, and arranged the first new tribe. In his honor, you became Heortlings. He also arranged alliances with all the nearby Elder Races and formed the Unity Council. For the first time ever, humans and the elder races worked cooperatively. During this time of peace and cooperation, your ancestors made many unexpected allies.

Under King Heort's leadership the clans prospered and soon his Heortling Tribe became many tribes. There are eleven ancestral Heortling Tribes. Everyone knows which one they belonged to during the Dawn Age, even though none of them exists any longer.

While the rest of society worked to protect, feed, and just survive, the First Priests worked to re-establish links with the ancient deities. A new harmony between people and deities was made and the world was slowly improved. The gods returned from the Underworld with the First Dawn. Time and history began.

Orlanth always encouraged personal ambition. No one thought there could be too much personal advancement until a priest named Lokamayadon took upon himself the powers of High Storm. He tried to replace Orlanth, peacefully at first and then by killing all who worshipped the God.

Many people went along with him because he was powerful, but most Orlanthi resisted, though it cost them greatly. Now everyone hates "Lokomoko," who was revealed as a Chaos god.

Lokamayadon helped create a new god called Gbaji, which brought Chaos back. It would have destroyed the world except that the great hero Harmast Barefoot performed the Lightbringers Quest and brought back the destroyer of Gbaji.

Arkat was the destroyer. He was a man who had lived before, a sorcerous demon in the shape of a man, or maybe just a trickster. Arkat helped everyone, then betrayed them. He deserted his army when it fought Dara Happa and he finally even left Harmast in the clutches of his worst foe, so that he could betray the whole human race and become a troll. Everyone hates Arkat, even though he destroyed Gbaji and saved the world. It does not matter what fate your clan suffered at his hands, they suffered, but survived, and that is all anyone needs to remember.

During the Second Age, a dragon approached you, in either its own form or that of a human with the soul of a dragon. The dragons had always been hostile, or at the very best utterly uncaring, but now it offered to share knowledge with you. Orlanth has always been the dragon-slayer, but many priests of other clans embraced these new ways and formed the EWF, the Empire of Wyrms Friends. Your clan did not, or you would not be here now.

The EWF was corrupted by the dragons and finally destroyed when the dragonewts killed its leaders.

Afterwards, several great armies invaded Dragon Pass from the north, east, and south. After decades of warfare, hundreds of dragons (including the great dragons) appeared, some as big as the sky, and ate every human being they found, hostile or otherwise. A few incredibly lucky people survived, said to number only ten humans. Any hatred people had for the dragons was replaced by unconquerable fear.

At some point, the actions of ancestors are less "something that they did" and more "something that we did." That point comes now.

After the Dragonkill, your ancestors lived in Heortland. The Hendrikings ruled Heortland from the great fortress of Whitewall, themselves allies of Ezkankekko the Only Old One, a Darkness demigod who lived in a huge volcanic palace on the Shadow Plateau. Ezkankekko ruled with justice and indifference, collected tribute, and kept the peace.

One day, 193 years after the Dragonkill (1313 S.T.), a man swam ashore and caused trouble in the land of Kethaela. Over the next five years he fomented war and rebellion against Ezkankekko, rightful ruler since the Dawn of time. He made enemies, found new friends, woke Silver Age heroes, and finally overthrew the rulers and deities of the Shadowlands (1318 ST). Their conflict released cosmic powers, and the Obsidian Castle shattered, covering the verdant plateau with black dust. The usurper killed Ezkankekko, and thereafter called himself the God-King.

This God-King went throughout Kethaela and established his rule. When he came to the kingdom of the Hendrikings in Heortland, he used deceitful magic to overcome the Hendrikings. He destroyed the ancient Hendriking tribe and Heortland became part of his own kingdom. Whoever could not change got their people together and moved.

By the time the God-King came to Heortland and started a civil war, you heard that the lands to the north (in forbidden Dragon Pass) were now open to humans. The movement of clans there is called the Resettlement. Your clan was one of these clans.

You settled in the best lands you could find and hold and farmed and raised livestock as was appropriate for those lands.

The Haunted Lands of Dragon Pass were not unoccupied. The Elder Races had thrived here away from humans as had remnants of peoples forgotten elsewhere. The Elder Races and their allies resisted our resettlement of our ancient lands.

As clans settled, they began to fight one another. Some were conquered, some received tribute from dozens of others, and some formed alliances. These were the early tribes. Look at the tribal map on page 222 [of Sartar, Kingdom of Heroes] and pick the tribe your clan joined. Try to pick a tribe with territory like that you chose in Question 21.

About a hundred and fifty years ago, a man named Sartar came to your land of warring tribes. His ways were new and strange, but his magic was powerful. He made this place into the kingdom that now bears his name.

Recent times include everything within the memory of people now in the clan. These events are part of living memory, not ceremonial memory.

Lunar Missionaries

High King Sartar exchanged ambassadors with the King of Tarsh to promote peace and trade. Men and women in red robes came after his apotheosis, and for the first time people in Sartar learned about the Lunar Goddess. The Red Moon had risen in 1247, a bad omen that surprised and frightened the Heortlings. Everyone became uncomfortable when they learned that the red missionaries worshipped the red thing in the sky, for all the Sartarite prophecies warned that the Red Moon was a foe. Nonetheless, the Red Goddess' missionaries came through Sartar, seeking converts to her way.

The Lunar Empire conquered Tarsh many years ago. They tried to conquer Sartar as well. The great High King Tarkalor led everyone to years of victory, until his terrible defeat of Grizzly Peak.

16 years ago, the Lunars won the war and occupied Sartar. They closed down the city temples of Orlanth, levied taxes, and enslaved those they deemed criminals or rebels. They imposed many laws that were impossible to obey, just so they had excuses to tax the clans and arrest anyone.

With no Orlanthi king on the throne of Sartar, many of your countrymen took advantage of the opportunity to settle old grudges or steal land from neighbors. The tribes fell to fighting with one another. Clans from several tribes attacked the Telmori Tribe of wolf-men, for example. The Imperial troops mostly kept to their cities and roads.

Five years ago, many clan chieftains and tribal kings, led by the Kheldon Queen, Kallyr Starbrow, took part in an uprising against the Lunars. Perhaps your chieftain knew, from experience in previous wars, what might occur here.

When the Lunars conquered Sartar, they sent assassins, demons, and gods to kill all heirs of the House of Sartar. However, during Starbrow's Rebellion an heir was found in the south, a scholar named Temertain. He claims to be the "Philosopher King." His dynastic blood was proven, but he could not light the Flame of Sartar that the Lunars extinguished in 1602. So far, his philosophy seems to primarily involve close collaboration with the Lunars. However, even Lunar supporters know that he is weak, just a Lunar puppet.

The Lunars blamed Starbrow's Rebellion on the durulz or ducks, one of the beastpeople who had been loyal to Sartar. A proclamation was made that any Sartarite who delivered the body of a durulz, dead or alive, would be relieved of one year of the heavy tribute imposed by the Lunars.