RIP Firu ba Yeker

I was deeply upset to hear of the passing of Professor MAR Barker, the inventor of Tekumel and what must surely be the first dedicated RPG setting, the Empire of the Petal Throne. I am a proud possessor of the original EPT box set, even if it is rather more battered than the one depicted here. Some of my earliest gaming memories are of composing notes and props in the amazing Tsolyani script. And my box set still contains my version of the first level of the Jakallan underworld, made from 4 sheets of A4 scientific graph paper taped and stapled together. I even have several pages of the key. Sadly, I only ran the system for a few sessions, because then Runequest 2 came out and we all switched over to that pretty quickly (apart from a few diehards who decided Chivalry & Sorcery was their "improved" game of choice.)

I never had any personal interaction with the good professor, but the great Dave Morris did. His moving tribute is here.

Sandy Petersen, creator of Call of Cthulhu and long-time Chaosium guru, created some RQ3 rules for Tekumel, which are available at the Tekumel site. They should be convertible to Legend with a few tweaks.

As I've mentioned before, my vision of Glorantha's Kralorela has more in common with Tekumel than the official version. I shall now spend more time trying to bring Lur Nop to life in homage to Jakalla.