The gameplay itself is a strange mix of strategy, RPG, and Interactive Fiction; the usual macromanagement of the clan is spiced by individual decisions of the nobility and story choices made in a Gamebook-like format. Should Voskandora the war-leader engage her opposite directly using her axe and battle magic, or try to keep herself safe behind her thanes? Should the clan pay the extra five cows worth of goods to try to find a wife for one of the ugly carls? These are all in the player's hand and might have seemingly unrelated long-term consequences.
The game was originally released in 1999, but received an iOS port in 2011, featuring new scenes and tweaked gameplay. In 2012, GOG.com released a patched 1999 version
compatible with modern PC operating systems. In 2015, Steam released a remastered PC version that includes the iOS changes and additional bonus content. GOG.com finally caught up in 2017 and updated their release to the remastered version as well, though the 1999 version is still available as an extra download.
The spiritual successor, Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind, was released in June 2018.
King of Dragon Pass provides examples of:
- 0% Approval Rating: The legendary Bad King Urgrain. If you screw up badly enough, people will compare you to him. One legendarily awful deed includes hearing two clans to settle a disagreement, taking gifts (per Orlanthi custom in legal disputes), then ruling in neither one's favor, simply out of greed.
- Actual Pacifist: Chalana Arroy, goddess of healing, who not only does not fight herself but sometimes intercedes to prevent the other gods from killing their enemies. Due to her example, her followers are forbidden from killing—although, being Orlanthi, they may fall closer to Technical Pacifist themselves.
- All Myths Are True: Heroquesting is a ritual based on the idea that re-enacting the deeds of the gods can tangibly affect the temporal realm. And it does.
- All of the Other Reindeer: The rest of your clan to Thadart, who has been captured and transformed by the Tusk Riders. As the clan leaders, however, you do have a chance to make sure that he's not just accepted, but respected and beloved by the rest of the clan.
- All Trolls Are Different: Here they are only one of the usual dangers a clan can face in winter. Until some nobles try to explore the far north...
- Alternative Calendar: Made up of five seasons lasting eight weeks, and the two week "Sacred Time". Sea season is roughly equivalent to mid-spring, Fire Season is summer, Earth season is autumn, Dark season is winter, Storm season is late winter to early spring, which then gives way to Sacred Time. There are alternative weekdays, too.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The forces of Chaos, which want nothing more than to murder and defile everything alive. Someone saying that they love Chaos is grounds for immediate execution, because it's fundamentally impossible to love both Chaos and the world it is eating away at.
- Amazon Brigade: The Worshipers of Vinga, the Orlanthi goddess of adventurers and female warriors. Kallyr is a particularly notable example with her own dedicated event chain. There's also a clan known for being led by Vingans.
- Ambadassador: Any noble with high combat and bargaining stats is this, and is a good choice for long trade expeditions.
- Ancestor Veneration: Your clan ancestors expect you to abide by the choices you (or rather, they) made in clan creation, such as whether or not to take thralls. You can even build them a shrine and sacrifice to them as if they were gods. The ancestors can also show up in person if you please them by following their ways, or anger them by abandoning those ways (or by quoting too many proverbs).
- Animal Jingoism: Orlanthi are cat people, thanks to a Bad Dog (yes, that's his name) in mythology. They hate dogs, and you may be approached by worshipers of Yinkin who have heard that another tribe has dogs and would like your help in killing them off; helping nets approval from your ancestors.
- Anti-Advice: Listening to everyone's opinion at every opportunity will demonstrate that tricksters and certain personality types give some hilariously poor advice. On numerous occasions, they say nothing useful or suggest something that isn't even in the list of options. Other situations can invoke The Complainer Is Always Wrong.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- “The Making Of the Storm Tribe” is a hero quest that needs to be done fairly early on when you are unlikely to have a lot of qualified heroes. Fortunately it is also the easiest hero quest in the game, with even a mediocre clan member being able to complete it as long as you answer the choices correctly.
- After committing to the endgame event chain, your tribal monarch cannot die of old age.
- Appeal to Force:
- In general, this is a dumb idea, even if Orlanth's first law is "Violence Is Always An Option." You're not at the top of the food chain in Dragon Pass, and attempting to oppose the surrounding powers is likely to lead to one of several events labeled Clan Destruction. Furthermore, to become King of Dragon Pass, you need an alliance, which can't be won by violence. Remember Ernalda's law: "There is always another way."
- There's one case where you might be able to do this and take the plot Off the Rails: If you're the tribal monarch, and the clans rise against you, you can win against the combined might of the rest of your tribe, and this does regain the tribe's loyalty for the moment. Don't count on it, though.
- Artifact of Doom: The Pharaoh's sorcerers are armed with a few. You can keep them, if you don't mind the curse on your herds... or trade them away to your unsuspecting neighbors.
- Aside Glance: The artwork for some of the more unusual events tend to include a random guy looking at the "camera" with a perplexed expression. Two such events are Troll Hero and Duck: Tribe Membership.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Orlanthi respect combat ability a great deal and determine leaders by individual merit. Orlanth and Elmal are both mighty warriors, and their followers are prime picks for Chief. The unique character Kallyr is the daughter of a penniless outlaw, but her talents (particularly Combat and Leadership) are so phenomenal that she can become your clan's Chief at the age of 14.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Do everything right in the long game, and your leader becomes King or Queen of Dragon Pass in a ceremony officiated by an oracle dragon and attended by everyone in the valley.
- Badass Pacifist: The goddess Chalana Arroy canonically manages to overcome Elmal, Orlanth, Malia, Urox, and Humakt— all through the power of healing.
- Bad Moon Rising: The red moon in the northern sky is so Chaotic that good Orlanthi try not to even look at it.
- Barbarian Hero: While they wear more clothing than is normal to the trope, pretty much any Orlanthi weaponthane counts.
- Barbarian Tribe: Aside from your Orlanthi, you also have the following near or in Dragon Pass:
- The Telmori are a primitive tribe of werewolves, who will occasionally raid your sheep. Making peace with them is a necessary step once you form a Tribe.
- The Praxians are not one tribe, but a bunch of them to the east in a land called Prax. They're famous for riding just about any creature that isn't a horse. In fact, they see horses as unclean. Animals they ride include llamas, bison, zebras, sable antelopes...
- The Orlanthi themselves are a Zig-Zagged example, as while they do enjoy a raid from time to time, they're just as happy tending to their steads, and hold tradition particularly high.
- Beast Man: Beastmen, also called Beastfolk, are a powerful force in Dragon Pass. Just as their name implies, they are sapient creatures who combine human and animal characteristics. The ducks, minotaurs, and centaurs are the most commonly encountered types, but others are also mentioned, such as fox people and wasp people, and one encounter even features a tapir-man.
- There are also the Broos, creatures of Chaos best described as beastmen with the reproductive cycle of a Xenomorph. If they start showing up in decent numbers (or Urox forbid, spawn from your own cattle), it's safe to say you have a Chaos problem on your hands.
- Berserk Button: Dragonewts have been known to calmly watch Orlanthi looting their temples while only appearing mildly agitated, only to flip out and kill everyone for doing something as innocuous as stepping on a mushroom.
- The Berserker: One of the blessings Urox can give you is Berserker, which increases your chance of victory but with more deaths and wounds on both sides.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted; your warriors all end up looking scarred and grizzled, no matter how pretty they might look at the start.
- Birthmark of Destiny: Subverted by the two events about Voballa, a girl born to your clan with a prominent birthmark above her right eyebrow. Devotees of Lhankor Mhy soon arrive and claim that Voballa is destined to be a hero because she closely resembles a sketch from an old prophecy. If you allow her to be adopted away, it soon becomes evident that Voballa is quite ordinary, but her new clan is willing to risk killing her in an attempt to draw out heroic potential she doesn't have.
- Black Magic: Chaos worshippers can do some weird things. One notable sorcerer has a hand for a head— and collects other people's hands for evil purposes.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Common, given the plethora of species and cultures on Glorantha.
- The Orlanthi have some odd preferences and customs, and you're advised to not bind yourself to a modern moral system. You have to think like an Orlanthi, and even more so think like an Orlanthi who follows his or her clan's history.
- Dragons also have a very strange moral system as well; for dragons, particularly dragonewts, they very strongly desire to recover their bodies after death, but won't be bothered if you sold that body to another clan or made a suit of armor out of it. They also have utterly bizarre Berserk Buttons (i.e. clearing one's throat, slapping a mosquito, or humming).
- Body Horror: A few examples, from Chaos infestation, to an elven curse that causes vines to grow uncontrollably through the human body, to land-dwelling crayfish that apparently lobotomize their victims.
- Boisterous Bruiser: Largely expected of Orlanthi men, to the point where the stereotype is that women have to do the thinking because men are simple-minded. This goes double for Storm Bulls.
- Buy Them Off: Wergild is required when someone important is killed. The price in cows depends on the dead person's rank. If the dead person was one of the Ducks, they'll demand wergild in silver because they have no use for cows in the marshes.
- Brutal Honesty: Followers of Humakt are expected to speak bluntly and truthfully, even if it would be undiplomatic in the circumstances.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Your ring members might be hypercompetent stat-wise but still exhibit certain eccentricities, such as an obsession with cows or an inexplicable hatred of elves.
- Tricksters may also qualify. They're incomprehensible troublemakers most of the time, but Trickster Magic can be invaluable to the clan.
- Capital Letters Are Magic: There's chaos, and then there's Chaos. Sometimes the former causes the latter, but not always.
- Cargo Ship: Eurmal apparently once married a post, then committed adultery with a broom. As god of Cloudcuckoolanders everywhere, this is probably one of the more "normal" things he's done.
- Cassandra Did It: The Ducks spend quite a lot of time trying to get the humans of Dragon Pass to help them fight the undead. This doesn't stop certain clans from believing that the Ducks themselves are minions of a necromancer— specifically, the necromancer the Ducks are trying to defeat.
- Chaotic Stupid: Tricksters are willful idiots with little grasp of dignity or proportion. Their schemes also tend to be Crazy Enough to Work, and they work magic that sane people can't. Placing one on your clan ring puts those talents to work - and makes the clan chief personally responsible for the fool's antics. Is it worth it? Who knows!
- An example of Chaotic Stupid at its finest: Tricksters might give away a score of cattle to another clan because the cows "looked funny".
- And then those cows turn out to have been incubated with chaos spawn. Who's laughing now? The Trickster, as always.
- There are, however, big advantages to having a Trickster on the ring. Only worshipers of Eurmal can provide a bonus to Heroquests, for example, and simply having them on the ring provides more clan magic. Also, if the Trickster DOES screw up, it's expected, and you can simply eject them from the ring immediately to placate the offended partynote .
- An example of Chaotic Stupid at its finest: Tricksters might give away a score of cattle to another clan because the cows "looked funny".
- The Chosen One:
- What the prophecies say the player's chosen king/queen is, though failure is possible.
- Late in the game, a complicated quest chain involving a supposed-Chosen One named Saraska can occur, in which the titular would-be Queen approaches your clan, claims to be the Queen spoken of in the prophecies, and asks for your support. You can conduct a divination that might either say she's a fraud, or prove she's actually telling the truth, and based on that you can either support or oppose her. Even if the divination says she's the Chosen One and you provide her your full backing all the way through to the end, she'll always be killed by the gods in the crown test, proving her not to be the prophesied ruler; if you backed her all the way, you'll be thrown into damage control to make up for her failures, which you can turn around to potentially jump-start your own rule.
- The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: In the tutorial of the iOS version, the game recommends that you never keep a trickster on your clan ring. However, there are plenty of events that you CAN'T solve reliably without a trickster on your ring. Also, having a Trickster in your ring makes heroquesting (something needed to win the game) easier.
- Covers Always Lie: An unusual example, as the events on the cover can happen. The thing is fighting the Feathered Horse Queen is probably the last thing you want to do, however cool they made it look on the cover. One of the main goals of the endgame and criteria to get the best ending is to earn her hand in marriage.
- Creator Cameo: Some possible noble portraits are in fact portraits of members of the dev team.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: There are plenty, given this is a world with abundant magic, hostile spirits, and a variety of unpleasant fauna, but the heroquests take the cake in horrible fates for your nobles, with Elmal Guards The Stead being by far the worst.
- Curbstomp Battle: If you push the dragonewts, trolls, dwarves, or beastmen too much, you'll get a "dire warning" event, where they tell your clan to knock it off. Provoke them after this event, and they launch an attack that will completely destroy your entire ring, most of your animals, and three-quarters of your population. Provoke them again and your clan is history, no questions asked.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: You can send nobles on Heroquests, wherein they step into the shoes of a god and beat the hell out of Chaos.
- Or step into the shoes of a god and go toe to toe with a god. Many gods get to be badass, but two go above and beyond: Humakt, who fights Orlanth himself to a standstill over several days, and Elmal, who gets dismembered repeatedly while doing his duty.
- And if you screw up, your hero gets dismembered as Elmal and comes back from the Spirit World as gibs. This is disconcerting to everyone involved.
- Or step into the shoes of a god and go toe to toe with a god. Many gods get to be badass, but two go above and beyond: Humakt, who fights Orlanth himself to a standstill over several days, and Elmal, who gets dismembered repeatedly while doing his duty.
- Deal with the Devil: You can sometimes choose to propitiate Chaos gods, rather than sacrificing to the Orlanthi patron deities. It's cheaper, but there's usually a long-term downside, the most obvious of which is the fact that you just pissed off your deities.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: The Orlanthi have a very tribal value system. Peace between clans typically means only occasionally raiding each other for cattle and goods, foreigners are never to be trusted (at least, not above your own people), and while secret murders are prosecutable crimes, killing openly only allows the wronged party to seek vengeance. The manual even says that to succeed, you must put aside your modern morality and think like an Orlanthi.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The relationship between Earthshakers (triceratops) and dragonkin is hinted at, speculated upon, and occasionally stated outright. Some of the Dragonewts even look like anthropomorphic dinosaurs, such as the hadrosaur mage who asks you about your values.
- Disproportionate Retribution: A random event has your trickster putting an effigy of Eurmal in one of your temples, because Eurmal told her to. You can then send someone to put that effigy in another clan's temple to sabotage it. If you send your trickster herself, and she's caught, the other clan gets extremely offended and well... it doesn't end well for the poor trickster. Seems too harsh a punishment, but then again, we're not Orlanthi.
- This is also a trademark of Bad King Urgrain, who (among other things) responded to a bard writing a mocking song about him by having the bard tortured and killed, and then having everyone who attended the performance killed as well. Naturally, invoking this yourself is a bad idea.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: Two of them.
- Humakt isn't the cheeriest god in the pantheon, but he's decidedly one of the good guys.
- Ty Kora Tek is even more grim and cold than Humakt, but also firmly a benevolent goddess.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Though it never uses the r-word, one event has two young married men being abducted by outlaw women on horseback. It's up to the player whether the trope is played straight, where the men are charged with adultery- one of the worst crimes the Orlanthi have, which practically guarantees they'll be outlawed- or averted, by declaring that they were forced and are therefore not guilty of anything. There is no option to punish the women, though.
- Child by Rape: After the above scene, the bandit women return with babies as proof of "adultery". Legally, that's enough proof for them to be in the right, regardless of whether or not the men were kidnapped and forced into it. As morally reprehensible as it is, unless you can find a loophole, you'll have to punish the men or else suffer for it.
- Dumbass Has a Point: Eurmal, and by extension his Tricksters, are quick to question less reasonable Orlanthi laws and think some old traditions must be discarded in order for peace to truly reign. Considering what happens in the route to the best ending, they were right all along. Also Tricksters are able to give extremely good advice in specific events.
- Dump Stat: Clan fertility and children— while it's hypothetically helpful to have more hands on deck, it comes with quite a few downsides. Children require as much food as anyone else, don't farm, craft, hunt, tend herds, or fight (though the children of hunters and craftsmen tend to become hunters or craftsmen themselves), and they take a decade and a half to become useful. Furthermore, investing in too much human population can backfire as eventually the clan will get too crowded for your tula and a bunch of population will split off to create their own clan— taking a bunch of cows and silver with them. It's better to negotiate to gain allies and buffing artifacts than to to grow your population in an attempt to overpower your enemies, if that is even possible in the first place.
- Early Game Hell: Stabilizing your clan in the first few years can be tough, especially on Hard mode. No one wants to trade with you, the gods don't want to share their secrets with you, the Horse Spawn like to come steal your horses and if your crops fail, you don't have any reserves to fall back on.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: It can be inferred that the "Long Way Home" (it's capitalized, implying it's a cultural concept) the Horse-Spawn reference is this trope. It's not the fastest way home, or the one you expect to take, but it's the one you'll be most grateful to have when all ordinary paths are cut off. Theya tells the Horse-Spawn that, in this situation, allying with the Orlanthi is their Long Way Home.
- Eldritch Abomination: Chaos has lots of these.
- Elective Monarchy: Orlanthi tribes are ruled by elected kings or queens, who don't necessarily have to be chiefs or ring members in their own clans. Once a monarch dies or steps down, it may be a while before another member of their clan can become ruler of the tribe—it's famously hard for a clan to produce two monarchs in a row. In order to win either the Short or the Long Game, you must first form a tribe and then get one of your nobles elected as the king or queen.
- The Empire: the Lunar Empire with whom the Tarshites go to war.
- Egopolis: Eventually, your tribe will build a town with two others, and your clan ring often wants to name it after themselves.
- Elves Versus Dwarves: Both species are connected to the earth, but dwarves represent inorganic stasis, while elves represent life and growth. Dwarves can even give you a treasure called Necklace of Axes, which "helps those who hate elves", and they say that it "Kills Elfs. Dead."
- Enemy Mine: The vast majority of your enemies can also be your friends, given the right circumstances. Usually those circumstances involve Chaos, which everyone hates. Even the ravenous hordes of trolls, and the people-eating dwarves.
- Ethnic God: The tribe the player controls are humans who are part of a broader culture that worships Orlanth (who controls rain, lightning, and air) as their primary god, admiring and following him to the point where they call themselves Orlanthi.
- Everything's Better with Rainbows: Orlanth is the Storm God, so rainbows are sacred to Orlanthi. Seeing one increases your magic and provides opportunities for raiding or making friends.
- Fake Ultimate Hero: A few of these crop up from time to time. Saraska, the prophesied queen, is a big one, as even in the best-case scenario with divinations proving her legitimacy and the full backing of every tribe, she'll still be declared unworthy and struck down by lightning at the crown test, leaving the legitimate rulership in question.
- Fantastic Caste System: From lowest to highest, it more or less goes: Thralls (slaves), Cottars (freemen), Carls (landowners), Weaponthanes (soldiers), and Nobles. They are more like social classes than actual castes. The nobles represent the best and brightest of your clan, and their positions are not hereditary. If you manage to own cows, you automatically qualify as a carl. If you can afford (or in some cases, get donated) horse and weapons, you're applicable as a weaponthane, and anyone at all can end up as a thrall if they get taken as prisoners of war and their relatives aren't able to ransom them. Even thralldom is not hereditary - the children of thralls are cottars.
- Fantastic Racism: No-one likes the Beastmen, at least not at first. Your avian neighbors can nevertheless prove themselves worthy allies against the undead.
- Some nobles will also have peculiar grudges against particular races, such as the elves, blaming them for everything bad that happens to the clan.
- The Ducks prove themselves time and again as noble warriors who can best even your elite combat leaders, but even when they earnestly seek alliance, lampooning their efforts is a perfectly valid option.
- Your clan has to have a grudge against someone as part of the clan creation. These can be trolls, beastmen, the Praxians, elves, ice demons, or the ocean.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Orlanthi culture has Celtic/Germanic overtones.
- Culture Chop Suey: They also practice Eastern-style kite-fighting, and are on the run from a guy calling himself Pharaoh.
- Developer's Foresight: Should your king/queen have finished the crown test but died before the marriage, the epilogue will note this too.
- Fertile Blood: Shrines to Maran Gor increase your crop yields when people are killed on your territory.
- Feuding Families: One event chain has one of your families start a feud with a family in another clan. It starts with a stolen horse and continues for decades, costing several lives even if you manage to keep the clans as a whole out of it. If the game continues long enough, eventually the great-granddaughters of the original feuders make peace—and then your people start seeing the ghosts of a previous generation still fighting.
- Fiery Redhead: All Vingans seem to have red hair, even into old age. It's possible that they dye their hair for religious reasons, making this an Invoked Trope.
- Food God: Your people have even more of these than they have gods of war, including Ernalda (the queen of the earth, mother of most of the other food gods), her son Barntar (god of farmers), Uralda and her many fellow animal mothers (including Mralota the goddess of swine and Nevala the goddess of sheep), Esra and the other grain mothers, and the hunt god Odayla. Even Orlanth and Elmal, primarily worshipped as war gods, chip in with the harvest.
- Freudian Trio: Your Chieftan is the Ego, your Lawspeaker is the Superego, and your War Leader is the Id.
- Although it's certainly possible to have a Chieftan who is both your best Lawspeaker and Warleader (the chief usually is the warleader, especially with tribes that follow Orlanth or Elmal, who both are strong warrior gods, and so have strong warrior leaders)
- The Friend Nobody Likes:
- Uroxi warriors are famed as staunch hunters of Chaos and are some of the most powerful warriors in all Dragon Pass... They are also unruly, demanding, short-tempered, arrogant, and slow to forgiveness. Most clans tolerate them for their usefulness in eliminating Chaos, but it is made very clear almost no one can stand them.
- Among the gods there is Eurmal. He may be one of the Lightbringers and encourages people to be open-minded, but he is still a thoroughly Chaotic Stupid deity who incites discord and even introduced death into the world because he thought it would be amusing. This also applies to his Tricksters who are often much more knowledgeable than other clan members and have powerful magic unique to them, but are just as unpredictable and insane as their god.
- Funny Background Event: More often than you think.
- During the event where the ducks ask to join your tribe, hiding the text reveals a random guy imitating a duckbill with his hands.
- When a thief is caught trying to take your tribal regalia, you can see an older man pointing at the thief likely yelling something like “That’s what you get, you sneak!”.
- One event concerns a vampire that has attacked a clan member and vanished. Minimizing the event text reveals that the vampire was hiding behind it.
- Genghis Gambit: There are a few different circumstances when you can try this.
- Genre Roulette: a blend of a resource-management Simulation Game and a Gamebook, with some RPG elements. The game's main designer pitched it as a "storytelling strategy game".
- Giant Enemy Crab: One memorable Chaos monster faced in a Hero Quest looks like a great big vaguely crustacean... thing.
- Good Old Ways:
- Your clan's ancestors grant extra magic when you act in accordance with tradition. Tradition is ultimately one of the most important things to consider for the Orlanthi. If you hated dragons centuries ago, then you are expected to hate dragons now and forever. If you break from tradition, you'd better have a good reason to do so, and even if you do, you will be punished for it somehow. However, when the Orlanthi are presented with an entirely new situation (like the civilized duck people), they have no idea how to react, and it's one of the few situations where every option is perfectly valid.
- To become King of Dragon Pass, you have to avert this and make new traditions.
- Guide Dang It!: It'll take a lot of experimenting to figure out how to play the first few times unless you have help. The remaster tried to fix this by giving the player a tutorial the first time they play; it does help but there are still a few things like battle tactics and what ring member stats assist in that aren't elaborated on.
- Guile Hero: The Talking God Issaries and his followers. Also, Tricksters. Sometimes.
- Hate Sink: One of the most annoying events involves a woman known as the Unrepentant Agitator, a foul tempered and shrill lady who complains about everything and will constantly lower the clan's mood every time the event repeats. If you get her married to someone else, she may get divorced and come right back more annoying than ever. The best way to get rid of her is to outlaw her, but then there is a small chance she may stay anyway or make the clan unhappier with her banishment being seen as too harsh.
- Head-in-the-Sand Management: A chaos attack event gives you a choice to simply wait until the creature passes your tula rather than attacking it, except that no matter how many times you choose that option the monster would never leave. Instead, the flavor text will mention how you keep waiting while the chaos creature eats your clan children one-by-one until you finally attack it.
- Honor Before Reason: Many Orlanthi live and die by this axiom. Luckily, you often have a chance to take a reasonable and honorable third option when they bring their problems before the Ring.
- To the extent that it's perfectly legal to storm into someone's clan hall, brazenly say you will murder the entire clan in their sleep, and then do so. It would actually be considered worse to murder the clan without telling them first—and secret murder, committed without warning and by stealth, is among the worst crimes an Orlanthi can commit, up there with adultery, rape, Chaos worship, and kinslaying.
- Hunter of Monsters: Followers of Urox the Storm Bull specialise in hunting Chaos, and followers of Humakt specialise in hunting the undead.
- Ice-Cream Koan: Your ring loves to spout them, some more apropos than others. Your dead ancestors might actually get sick of this and come up to complain.
- Insufferable Genius: Lhankor Mhy, called the Knowing God by his worshippers and the Know-It-All God by his detractors.
- I Surrender, Suckers: It's possible for a feuding clan to come up to yours and offer reconciliation, only for them to murder your emissaries (which will probably include a few members of your Ring) during the follow-up negotiations. This obviously goes against Orlanthi principles, and you can call on Orlanth or the other clans to punish them for this.
- Kubrick Stare: One of the younger trickster portraits does this.
- Leeroy Jenkins: "Take insane risks to win the battle." Unsurprisingly, only nobles with very high Combat will even survive this combat event. There's also a special event if you have an undead-hater on the ring where he'll get reports of undead monsters and immediately grab a bunch of weaponthanes and go after them without waiting for backup.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: Vinga's Fyrdwomen blessing turns your famously gutsy but otherwise passive housewives into fighters when you're being raided, allowing them to defend the tula.
- Light Is Not Good: Orlanth's archenemy was a sun god known as Yelm the Bright Emperor. The Orlanthi's own sun god used to serve Yelm until Chalana Arroy convinced him to defect along with her.
- Loophole Abuse: The Orlanthi are a highly legalistic people, but often have few qualms about exploiting technicalities in their favor. Like the angry divorcee who wants her dowry of ten cows back. She demands the exact same ten cows, despite those cows being long dead.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: Given the narrative format of all events, any less-than-optimal conclusion for your clan is spelled out in a downright depressing level of detail. Messing up the Long Game at the last moment causes a Bittersweet Ending where your clan might pitifully try to assert that having a lot of cows or good relations with neighbors is nearly as good as becoming King of Dragon Pass.
- Made a Slave: Captives taken in battle can be made into thralls, if your clan practices thralldom.
- Made of Iron: During battles and most events, your nobles are very hard to kill. They can be thrown through walls, cut dozens of times, stabbed in the chest, and trampled under a stampede of horses, yet recover fully after a few seasons. If the game doesn't say they're dead, then it's only a flesh wound.
- Meaningful Rename: Should you train the Earthshakers (triceratopses) as draft animals rather than war mounts, you are given the option to rename your clan Earthshaker, which increases your reputation and standing with your neighbors. If you win the Long Game with a tribal queen, she can take a new name during the "mountain mating" event, being symbolically reborn as the daughter of Kero Fin.
- Moral Myopia: Freedom is what Orlanth treasures most, and all Orlanthi are willing to die rather than be enslaved by the Pharaoh. The clans that take thralls don't seem to see anything hypocritical about what they're doing to their fellow Orlanthi. This all falls squarely under Deliberate Values Dissonance.
- Some of the dialogue choices (especially ones that come up when someone is airing a grievance against the clan ring) make it apparent that there's not much in the way of actual law enforcement. Obedience is expected socially and the traditional laws are everywhere... but the only true rule is, "No one can make you do anything."
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: If your clan runs too low on people, it's Game Over. If you raid an enemy clan repeatedly, they'll first hire more weaponthanes to defend against you. If you nonetheless continue to successfully raid the same enemy clan, they will eventually pack up and relocate across the map to a place too distant for raiding.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Elmal, appointed guardian of Orlanth's stead, fights The Eater of Skin, the Author of Sores, and the Maker of Bad Growth. The Teller of Lies doesn't sound that bad until you learn one of its other names is the Breaker of Souls.
- Nonstandard Game Over: You have a clan. It can muster raiding parties. Your neighbors have realms. They can muster armies. It's difficult to get warnings, but if they start, pay attention.
- Specific examples include sufficiently-alienating the Trolls, Dwarves, Telmori, and Ducks. Likewise, even though he was your sworn enemy, alienating the Pharaoh's emissaries and scouting parties too much can also lead to a swift end. And if the Uroxi cult decides that you're tainted by Chaos, they'll purge you (though you really have to go out of your way to get this to happen). After you form a tribe you now have your own armies to call upon, so you don’t have to worry about being devastated by the aforementioned empires anymore no matter how much you pester them. However, it can still happen; if you alienate your own tribe enough, every clan will turn on you in a huge battle you can’t win.
- You need the Feathered Horse Queen's blessing to form a kingdom and win the game. Alienate the Horse Spawn too much and this becomes impossible. Likewise, in the game's climax, you'll need to complete a series of difficult decisions and skill checks relevant to this. Failure here means that your clan will be shouldered aside while someone else unites Dragon Pass.
- Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: Your clan ring tends to end up as one of these. Your tribal council pretty much inevitably does.
- The Oathbreaker: Oathbreaking is a huge offense among the Orlanthi. And the god of oaths is also the Grim Reaper...
- Off the Rails:
- In the Orlanth and Aroka heroquest, it's possible to simply kill Daga instead of taking the canonical route. This counts as a victory, but your clan will be seriously weirded out.
- Otherwise, this is strongly discouraged, as a key element of success in heroquesting is following the script as closely as possible. Deviate and at best, your champion will simply fail in their endeavor and be booted out of the realm of the Gods, with the quest being labeled a failure. At worst, your champion can wind up throwing off the narrative so much that they wind up lost and wandering in the Gods' domains, which will likely end with their death, or something much worse. Obviously, this is also considered a failure. Even in the rare cases where ditching the script manages to work out, your clan will have serious trepidation over what your effective-rewriting of the myths actually foretells.
- Order Versus Chaos: The main cosmological conflict. Your people clearly favor Order, seeing as how their bitterest enemies are creatures of Chaos.
- Orphan's Plot Trinket: Both major heroes.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Intelligent, sly and ultimately unfathomable. Not to mention very dangerous. There's a good reason no one's settled in Dragon Pass for hundreds of years. There's also their strange, humanlike relatives/larval forms, the dragonewts.
- Permadeath: Your nobles can die in battles or random events, or of old age. There are circumstances where they can be resurrected, unless they're devoted to Humakt, the god of death. They also can't be brought back if they died of old age.
- Plague Master: Malia, chaos goddess of sickness.
- Plotline Death: Destinies sometimes end with defeat.
- Practical Currency: The baseline unit of Orlanthi currency is the cow.
- Press X to Die: Slaughtering all your cattle will instantly end the game in failure. You can also go bother Cragspider repeatedly to be destroyed by the trolls (Remastered/iOS only), or raid your duck neighbors several times in a row to be destroyed by the beastmen within a year or two.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Eurmal shows shades of this, giggling maniacally when he discovers he can kill people permanently with the sword Death.
- Punch-Clock Hero: Of a mild sort, Tricksters. They're actually religiously obligated to cause trouble for the clan.
- Pyrrhic Victory: You can invoke this if your tribe turns against you and you have the Earth Clod, which is essentially a magic weapon of mass destruction that causes a catastrophic earthquake. The rest of the tribe will still successfully dethrone and destroy your clan, but the losses you make with the Earth Clod ensure the other clans are just as beat up as yours which leads to the tribe as a whole to dissolve. This still results in a Non-Standard Game Over, so it mainly serves as a way of
getting back at the tribes who turned on you. - Railroading:
- The final questline requires you to take certain actions in a prescribed order, or it either won't advance or you'll lose. When dealing with the Feathered Horse Queen, you are not giving orders, you're following them.
- One way or another, Saraska's kingdom is doomed to fail. Orlanth will not allow her to be crowned.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: The goddess of rape is part of the Unholy Trio, right up there with the goddess of disease and the god of evil himself.
- Refuge in Audacity: Tricksters live this. In particular, this is the player's hint that the trickster randomly giving away a massive heard of cows because they "looked funny" isn't just random madness, everything a worshiper of Eurmal does is for a reason.
- Relationship Values: With the farmers, with the thanes, with other clans, cults and of course with the Elder Races.
- Religion is Magic: Just about all magical power is granted by the gods, though there are some exceptions; A clan's ancestors will also give magic if they are pleased by the behavior of the clan, and shamans gain their power from spirits unaligned with any pantheon. Magic not derived from either the gods or ancestors is thought of as dangerous at best and wicked at worst, which are not unfair assumptions most of the time.
- Religious Bruiser: All your warriors are this, but the Humakti best fit the trope with their particularly rigid vows.
- Resurrection Sickness: Through Chalana Arroy's Resurrection blessing, a hefty sacrifice and good luck, sometimes people can be brought back to life, but they're not quite the same as they once were.
- Revenge Before Reason: Happens quite a bit, since the Orlanthi are so protective of their honor.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Expected as a matter of course. Orlanthi have no patience for a king (or chief) who isn't actively involved with the day to day problems of the people.
- Rules Lawyer: Practically the job of your Lhankor Mhy ring member. Asking his advice will usually have him talk about your legal rights, but sometimes following precedent will come across as being stingy. There's also the small matter of legal claims having Reality Warper power, such as exorcising a haunting spirit or destroying a prison-cube in the Making of the Storm Tribe hero quest.
- Sacred Hospitality: Hospitality is a prime Orlanthi virtue, but there are a few loopholes in the customs that allow you to treat your guests like dirt without technically being inhospitable.
- Satanic Archetype: Ragnaglar the god of evil. Not only is he the originator of almost all evil in Glorantha but his appearance is based off of Baphomet, complete with goat-head and dark wings.
- Save Scumming: Downplayed. While reloading an earlier save is perfectly doable, complete with a log of everything that happens so you know exactly when and what went wrong, the game wipes out everything that had happened after your loaded save point, which are fixed at the end of every in-game year. This makes it downplayed because instead of the freedom of jumping forward and backward at any time they choose, save scummers must weigh the benefits of righting a past wrong decision with the downside of forfeiting all the success that may have transpired since, with the added hindrance of being limited in the specific time period they go back to.
- Played straight, however, in the endgame of the long game, where you get a large amount of story events and if you fail even one you can’t get the best ending. If you built your king/queen well you don’t have much to worry about, but even then RNG is in play and can still screw you over for no real reason. The game’s manual even encourages save scumming to get this part of the game done.
- Secret Character: Explore the Kero Fin mountain enough times and you might unlock the shrines for Wind Spirits and Kero Fin herself. Another random event might allow you to build a shrine for local hill spirit called Tarard Riel. Unlocking any of these requires a fair bit of luck however.
- Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Some of the gods are portrayed on various levels of it.
- Intellectual Animal: Uralda, goddess of cows, is a cow who can speak like a human. She's also daughter of Ernalda, a completely human goddess; no one comments on precisely how that's possible.
- Beast Man: Yinkin, a minor god of cats, resembles a grey-furred human with a lynx's head, tail, and digitigrade legs with paws (though he has furry human-esque hands). He's also a brother of Orlanth, who appears completely human. (Their mother is a mountain.) There is also Urox, another of Orlanth's brothers, who is essentially a minotaur.
- Spirit World: By physically reenacting a myth, your nobles can enter the spirit world and receive various blessings.
- Start My Own: If your clan gets too big, it'll have problems staying together and eventually you'll have to split the clan. Whether this is an amicable divorce or not depends on how you handle it.
- Stronger with Age: Because of the way the stat system works, it's entirely possible that your most fearsome War Leader will be a sexagenarian.
- The Starscream: Nobles with high leadership may try to get the current chief deposed.
- Strange-Syntax Speaker: Dwarfs positive their modes of speech, thank much. Keeps smooth functioning on schedule.
- The Strength of Ten Men: Weaponthanes under Humakt's "truesword" blessing. Otherwise they've only got the strength of five.
- Token Jackass Clan Leader: Tricksters can get away with crimes that would get other Orlanthi outlawed. Unless, of course, you expel them yourself.
- Eurmal himself is essentially a Token Chaotic Team Mate in the Orlanthi pantheon. He's tolerated because the results of his mischief are generally better for Orlanth than his enemies.
- In gameplay, this works the same way. Sure, a trickster won't always give stellar advice, and will sometimes bring bad things upon your clan. They can also do fantastically against certain common event chains. Of course, most people take one for the fun factor.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Since the game involves closely-adhering to the Orlanthi traditions and laws, there are a few things that fit.
- Secret murder is a grave offense, and usually can't just be bought off. (Open murder is perfectly fine, though.)
- Your clan is required to choose an ancestral enemy at the beginning of the game. You are required to always be hostile towards them, or at best, neutral and dismissive. If you ever try to act peaceful or cooperative with your clan's mortal enemy, this will be your ancestor's reponse.
- Kinslaying is one of the worst crimes an Orlanthi can commit. Nothing short of full-on disowning will do (after which the killer's life is usually forfeit by his vengeful family.)
- Top God: Orlanth is the official chief deity of the Orlanthi pantheon. Your clan, however, may primarily venerate Ernalda or Elmal as their own chief deity instead, for theological reasons related to your particular creation myth.
- Trickster Archetype: Eurmal and his followers.
- Unwinnable: Even the manual advises to save a lot after the appearance of the Feathered Horse Queen. One wrong move, one failed test and you might not even realise that you are out of competition.
- The Usual Adversaries: Your clan's traditional nemeses tend to show up a lot. To the Orlanthi in general, the Horse-Spawn fit this trope.
- Unwinnable by Design: Alienate any of the natives too much and they'll muster an unstoppable army and wipe you out. Depending on how events play out, you might reach a point where this is completely unavoidable. Likewise, piss off the Pharaoh too much and he'll send an army to set the whole of Dragon Pass straight. Oh, and once the Feathered Horse Queen shows up, play nice with her and the Horse-Spawn (or as nice as you can, anyways) or you can kiss your shot at kingdom (and thus victory) goodbye.
- At game's spawn, there is a pre-made tribe called Colymar. Depending on circumstances, a few other clans might conspire to assassinate their king. They might try to get you involved. If you agree but the attempt fails, and the Colymar find out you were involved, it will not end well for you.
- Just for reference, you can expect frequent raids of upwards of 40 weaponthanes and 400 footmen, when you can, realistically, manage about 15-20 and ~150, respectively, at that point in the game. And they'll be raiding you at least once a year, if not more. Recovery, much less victory, is exceedingly-unlikely at that point.
- At game's spawn, there is a pre-made tribe called Colymar. Depending on circumstances, a few other clans might conspire to assassinate their king. They might try to get you involved. If you agree but the attempt fails, and the Colymar find out you were involved, it will not end well for you.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Towards nobles. And Earthshakers. And your people will become immensely happy if you protect them, hold feasts, and win battles.
- Befriending the Ducks, helping them by either sending warriors or initiating a sucessful ritual to help them in their fight against the undead, treating them as equal Orlanthi despite the cultural differences between your races and even managing the difficult task of convincing your tribe to accept their membership.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- You can raid rival clans, take them as slaves, and sacrifice them to your gods. You can even force them off their lands which will kick them all the way across the map. Then you can petition Eurmal to send curses at them. Or ask Maran Gor to ruin their harvest.
- Humakt's sword actually gives you a massive boost in battle when you choose to "kill as many enemies as possible."
- If you're going to raid, the game mechanics encourage picking one clan and raiding them over and over again. The game tracks their soldiers and wealth being whittled down, so each raid is easier than the last until it eventually triggers an event where they send a diplomat to beg for a cease fire in exchange for tribute.
- Violence is the Only Option: Inverted, eventually. Initially averted, as while military matters are important, they are generally no more so in conventional gameplay than diplomacy, trade, religious rituals, or exploration, with most problems having a multitude of options. However, as one progresses through the game, they may find that the only way to win is through careful diplomacy and peaceful rule.
- That said, the god of death has expectations. Even peace focused clans need to raid occasionally if they want to receive his blessings when they're needed.
- War God: The duties are shared among Orlanth (king of the gods, and probably the closest thing to a generic war god), Vinga (goddess of adventurers and female warriors), Urox (god of fighting Chaos), Humakt (god of death, with a side line in aggressive war) and Elmal (as "loyal thane," the god of defensive war and patron of weaponthanes and warhorses).
- Warrior Poet: A few pop up. Some of your nobles might even qualify.
- What the Hell, Hero?: If you sacrifice thralls to Chalana Arroy while having her devotee in your clan ring, said devotee will berate you for sacrificing humans to the goddess of healing and quit from your ring.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: If your clan is forced to disband (i.e., if you run out of cattle), you're treated to an epilogue where you learn of the fate of the members of your clan ring.
- Women Are Wiser: While Lhankor Mhy is generally in charge of knowledge, he's also cantankerous and stubborn. Ernalda the earth goddess is supposed to be the guardian of hidden secrets. In Ernalda's honor, Orlanthi women are expected to be cool-headed and astute. It is mentioned in the game manual that men are considered feisty and passionate, while women are calm and calculating.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: To an extent. Most of the currency of the realm is in silver, but being an agrarian society, Orlanthi prefer to barter. Silver is thrown in with the rest of your clan's bric-a-brac as generic "goods". Cattle is much more important, and your clan may actually be wildly disappointed when presented with chests of silver coins instead of cows.
- As far as the Orlanthi are concerned, the Horse-Spawn suffer from this trope; the Horse-Spawn see cattle-raising to be the profession of slaves, and will be insulted when offered cows.
- Goods are the equivalent of cold hard cash, in a way. Cows give various benefits, even if you never sell them. They breed and give you milk, while still being roughly equal in value. Essentially, goods are liquid assets, while cows are long-term investments. Although both can be traded freely in game.
