The Way the Moon Turns
Stop Press
3 March 2002: Issaries, Inc. have just extended the errata for Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe to acknowledge this error, only ten months after I mentioned it to them. Praise the Goddess -- perhaps now they'll get it right in the forthcoming Lunar Books?
Another Victory for Common Sense!
About the direction of the moon's rotation: if you look at the map for the boardgame Dragon Pass, our first source for Glorantha, the Red Moon rotates in the direction shown on my site's spinning logo, i.e:
The phases go:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
This order of rotation also appears in Entekosiad p.112 (the diagram of Rufelza and the Lunar Cycle). There may be other RQ-era references; I can't recall. I've used this consistently in my Lunar work, including the Phases article and Calendar on this site. And it's the same direction as the rotation of the real-world moon (for what that's worth).
In Oliver Jovanovic's deservedly popular Runes font, he associated the seven phases of the moon with the numbers 1 through 7 (presumably linked to days of the week), but did it with a backwards rotation to the Dragon Pass/Entekosiad version:
 |
This version seems to have caught on, though Issaries now acknowledge that it an error: it appears on the calendars in Thunder Rebels pp.104 et seq (phase associations with days of the week in Heortling lands), and on Wesley Quadros' map of the Lunar Phases (though not his mighty Map of the Lunar Empire, thank the Goddess!), and would also perhaps account for Natha's "Empty Half" rune being reversed between the Entekosiad p.112 (correct) and Hero Wars p.82 / Glorantha p.97 (mirror image). (Though Yanafal Tarnils correctly retains the old Natha rune, if this association was intended).
Glorantha, HeroQuest, Hero Wars, and Issaries are trademarks of Issaries, Inc. The contents of this page are copyright by Nick Brooke , 2001; any material derived from Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha is also copyright by Greg Stafford. Glorantha is the creation of Greg Stafford, and is used with his permission.
