On November 30, 2018, Runelord, a Swedish power metal band, released The Battle for Greatness on Stormspell Records. Underneath Stormspell’s banner heralding the label as “old farts stuck in the 80s and proud of it,” underneath’s Runelord’s identifying particulars, underneath the play controls that had “Heimdall the Wizard” cued up and ready to rock, was a page element unlike any other on the label’s Bandcamp. There, in bold powder blue, was an additional link to “Download Runelord Adventures Role-playing game pdf.”
Ooo, is that malware? a smart person might think. Why the heck would I want to play rando RPG? a sane person might think. “EXTRA BONUS: Download Runelord Adventures Role-playing game pdf and join the epic battle for greatness!” the liner notes exclaimed. Did I click the link? I clicked the link.
Runelord, the band, is the baby of Fredrik Holm. Holm writes the lyrics and outsources the music to Cederick “Ced” Forsberg, he of a billion other powered up tradsters such as Blazon Stone, Rocka Rollas, and Cloven Altar. Forsberg confirmed this relationship in a 2019 interview with Powermetal.no.
Runelord is a «hired gun» project where a guy called Fredrik writes lyrics and hires me to write and record all music. I have previous Blazon singer Georgy Peichev [Mosh-Pit Justice] on vocals for that project. A third and last album is in the works.
https://powermetal.no/cederick-forsberg-i-really-want-to-a-have-a-fully-functioning-band/
Two Runelord albums have been released, both in 2018. A Message from the Past dropped in April.
And the aforementioned Greatness in November.
They’re pretty okay. Think Manowar filtered through Ced’s other work, like the Running Wild-obsessed Blazon Stone. And Holm’s lyrics are no clunkier than your average Euro heavy metal battle cry.
He’s the man of purified hatred. Who will slay or be slain. In the very end of time of righteousness, he’ll call upon his father’s reign.
Who will strike them with lightnings…Yaa, yaa. yaaaaooo!
“Purified Hatred,” from A Message From the Past
Yaaaaooo, indeed. This is, of course, a long way of writing that nothing about these relatively normal albums prepare you for the 99-page RPG manual.
“The RUNELORD ADVENTURES Role-playing game (RPG) takes place approximately fifteen years into the future, at the point where the grand spell of Loki is losing its power over our planet,” Holm writes in the manual’s introduction. He goes on to layout the basics: Players roll “heathen hero[es]” and navigate scenarios executed by the dungeon-master-esque “Gamelord.” Seems pretty cut and dry, right? Your usual tabletop mace swinger? Welp.
Before we get rolling, I really don’t want to dump on Holm because he’s (a) writing in a second language, (b) obviously bursting with uncut imagination out of all of his orifices, and (c) had the drive and enthusiasm to create an entire RPG world from the DNA up. The multilevel detail and panoramic scope is impressive. Like, I have never seen something with even a sliver of this kind of ambition through, as all of my exes can attest. But the density of the information is, dare I write, a double-edged sword.
CHAPTER I
The manual is broken down into the following chapters:
CHAPTER I goes over character creation along with a light overview of game mechanics.
CHAPTER II provides background on “Odic powers,” those being the powers bestowed onto humans by Odin to “defend [humans] from the prehistoric black magic, demonology and necromancy that were used against them.” There’s a Loki-derived evil inverse of Odic powers known as Obic pow-oh, cool, all dating apps just banned me. This chapter is when it becomes clear that the world is very Norse-centric in its mythology.
CHAPTER III details “skills & battle,” with my favorite skill being “COMMON KNOWLEDGE”: “The skill includes things we learned in school, biology, society knowledge, history and language – book knowledge in general. Also facts from society like trends, celebrity names and so on.”
CHAPTER IIII [sic, for the remainder of this piece] is RUNELORE, otherwise known as the Runelore Encyclopaedia. Oh yeah, we’re coming back to this one.
CHAPTER IIIII contains the evil forces bestiary, where one can learn the difference between a “real dragon” and a “beast dragon.”
CHAPTER IIIIII goes deep on weapons, armor, and vehicles. A tasting pour of the “Obic Sauser” vehicle: “The frost giants have silver coloured spacecrafts which they can fly in space, alternative space, visual sky and alternative sky with.” The chapter ends with BREAKING THINGS, a table that defines the OHD (one-hit destruction) and BP (body points) for items such as…the human heart. 5 OHD if you were wondering. Or, in my experience, one viewing of Snoopy Come Home. Goddamnit, Snoopy. Come home.
CHAPTER IIIIIII is titled THE END.
CHAPTER II
“This game does not use much of mathematics,” Holm writes. “But when is does all values that are divided in half are counted upwards throughout the game rules. That makes the value of five divided in two count as 3 (5÷2=2,5≈3).”
The entire manual is written like this, over- and under-explaining at the same time. It’s similar to IT textbooks in that the prerequisite is knowing everything before you can learn something. To that end, there are some jargon-heavy runs that really blow your bean. “Example: If your Berserk has 16 in the STR Attribute (16 – 10 = 6 in base value) and 10 in the WIS Attribute, you would have 10 points to raise the base value of the character’s Odic powers.”
On the other hand, plenty of hold-up! moments don’t get a followup. Take this throwaway line in the Archetype section on the “METAL DWARF” playable character, emphasis mine: “There are only male Metal dwarves and they often have large beards. If they settle down they often do so by marrying a Kobold woman – but mostly they do not, giving it all to the battle between good and evil.” Uh, hi, Wolf Rambatz from Plague Rages here. Question!
CHAPTER III
Runelore is heathen folklore and heathen religion in one. Within the Runelordean heathery there are a large number of tropes. As I, Fredrik Holm, being a Cunning man under Runelord, I am dictated by him to reveal as much of the basics as possible. Here is the 101 version of Runelore as it was told to me, between summer 2015 and winter 2016.
Fredrik Holm, Runelord Adventure RPG
Here are my Top 10 Shit Ton of Favorite Things Found in the Encyclopaedia:
- “CUNNING MAN/WOMAN: men and women with an active bicameral mind in contact with Runelord; today’s heathen shaman and bard-leaders”
- “RAGNARÖK PHASE TWO: is the total war good against evil, true against false, when all show their true face in the massive slugfest of Doom; a perfect setting for ARPG/MMORPG video games, motion pictures and such medias.”
- “WITHIN: what is not on the ‘outside’ we carry within, until it is on the outside, via recreation progress”
- “The description of a new Dark-age is pretty striking, with modern things like cars and tools taking part. Next to weapons, cash, gold and food, also owning gasoline becomes a measure of power, wealth and success, and the gas stations become drained one by one. Horses become more and more popular for transportations. Electricity works fine though. Heathens power up their Atari Jaguar for a night of Ultra Vortek and Brutal sports football, not worried at all…”
- “HOLY FEAST: is pork, beef, beer and mead; but foremost pork, as a symbol of resurrection and eternal life in Valhalla, and mead as the drink suited for gods and kings. Beef and beer has been added since gods and kings also value variation at feasts”
- “POSITIVE EXISTENCE: is the state of succeeding – the heathen way”
- “MONSTER: members of the Forces of death – necro men, reanimated skeletons, ghouls, ghosts, skeleton dragons, ghoul dragons, mental slaves, warlocks/witches, hags, beast men, beast warlocks, trolls, kobolds, beast dragons, beast hybrids, were men, lycanthropes, clay golems, stone golems, great oak ones, real dragons, obic rats, occult demons, flesh demons, imps, sickness spirits, cultists, zealots, possessed people, antediluvians, elemental giants, frost giants and darkest knights – are sometimes just called monsters”
- “NEO-DEATH: is the definition of undeads dying a second time, and hopefully for the last time”
- “This beautiful place, with an artificial peach coloured sky, with fantastic clouds, eternal warm summer breeze, harmonic forests, lakes, butterflies and birds, is inhabited by the female elves who long for love from heathen men. Since almost all their own men are gone they would love to mate and breed half-breeds between men and elves. If a heathen woman enters this place she will be approached by one of the few male elves walking down from a mountain peak in the distance offering her the same chance to mate. The elf men live as outcasts, renegades discarded for their weakness as beautiful cowards according to the elf women.”
- “ORDINARY: is much less than epic”
- “MORE ONE: is an individual reaching next step in being “full potential”, becoming more of himself/herself”
- “METAL DREAM: Runelord’s message is heavy/power metal from the past now in the minds of the free for entertainment or for filling their beings with vital aggression”
- “FREYAN: is a super heathen human super babe”
- “ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: is the best description of the underlying structure which nature, all humans and societies work, including all companies and all states. It is not an ideal but a fact, if you ask Runelord. It is born in the ‘War all against all’ and continues all the way to the top by competition, greed, feud, conflict and war. It is described in its intellectual ideal-state as medieval Iceland or in the 19th century Wild-West but is all over, all time from the beggar to the king, suppressed or not, all raging free as anarcho-capitalists aiming for the loot and power. When things are at peace ‘anacho’ falls off and only capitalism remains – until anarcho comes back by historic determination”
- “It can happen to any bar in the world that the Raven inn realm appears on top of it. It is hard to notice the difference. What happens is that the beer gets enchanted without any change to the taste. The enchanted beer works as the alchemical Healing potion, healing BP. The ruler of the realm is the ‘Brew master’, a dwarf-spirit with the task to strengthen the heathens this way. The result is a magical party atmosphere of heathen craziness and anti-civilized behaviour: a perfect males’ den for both men and (often fewer by number) Freyans alike.”
- “Elves look like humans but they are the most beautiful creatures in the entire universe – a fact, not an opinion!”
- “EXISTENCE: is the coolest and most precious thing we got – a constant climax of awesomeness; it takes place in the historical climax called: now”
CHAPTER IIII
“Dwarf, we need to move!” I yelled. A troll, its hulking muscles rippling with anger, rushed into the clearing flanked by five or six kobolds. We must’ve tripped a trap at the foot of the mountain. Golems had to be close. The cunning women we met in town said as much. Our cunning man had been dead for, alas, was it nearly a week now? Cultists. Always cultists.
“Metal dwarf, you brute!” Embraham shouted back. I could see his jaw tighten under his massive beard. In one quick movement, he was wielding his war hammer.
I ran over to Embraham and looked him square in the eye. “Where there are trolls there are hags and where there are hags there are more trolls,” I rasped, my tone much like the irritated professors I once assisted 16 years ago in another life. “We’re outnumbered. Come.”
I grabbed Embraham by the back of his breastplate, hurrying him towards the underbrush. “You appear to be lacking in vital power today, viking,” he yelled. “Where there are numbers there is wisdom in steel!”
I didn’t have time for this. My head was pounding. I had been dizzy for days. Nidhugg’s climate-changing breath made restful sleep impossible. And, yes, yes, there was that obic sauser that I kept catching in my peripheral vision. Was it real? It was never there when I whipped my head around to face it. I felt its presence, though, like a pesky floater in the corner of my eye. A frost giant’s slave? There’d be food and shelter, at least. But, no, I was done working for zealots and egoists.
“By Loki’s scrote, fire up your chainsaw and join me in battle,” Embraham roared, his heels making two solid lines in the dirt as I dragged him to safety.
“Not today, friend,” I said, trying to sound more valiant than I felt in my gut. We had already lost too many. I wasn’t going to lose E. I looked up and saw the troll gaining on us. Something about its eyes unnerved me, that same glint, that sparkle, that…Jennifer had when the noonday sun was overhead. No. Could it be? Should we have burned her body? I missed her so much. Ever since the day she-
I tripped over a rock. It sent Embraham and I tumbling, tumbling, tumbling until I blacked out.
Nothing. Then. Gah. Everything. Consciousness flowed through me like a lightning strike. When I awoke, Embraham was standing over me. “You’ve returned from metal dreams,” he purred.
I jumped up reflexively, my hand reaching for my chainsaw. “Relax,” he said nonchalantly, “the troll is stuck outside. The door, or should I say ‘hole,’ has been closed.”
“Where are we,” I said, my breath short, preparing for a fight.
“It would appear that the legends are true,” he laughed. I heard two objects hit the dirt. I looked down. One was a caved in skull, its gold tooth soaking in the torch light. The other, the massive hand of a clay golem. The dismembered appendage was already melting back into the earth.
“Crypt of pain?” I gasped. I looked at Embraham, his lips curling into a smirk. “Crypt of pain!” I cried. My muscles eased, endorphins washing my adrenaline away. “Wait, you defeated these beasts by yourself?”
“Aye,” Embraham said while nodding. He laughed. “I was fed up and wanted to get back to those kobolds. Something about them seemed very…appealing.”
CHAPTER IIIII
On the 97th page, Holm writes “If something is unbalanced just change it.”
On…the…97th…page.
– Wolf Rambatz
Plague Rages 