Tekumel Resources

FANTASY ADVENTURE ON AN ALIEN PLANET

We present the Tékumel Bundle, featuring the astonishing science fantasy
campaign setting Tékumel created by Prof. M.A.R. Barker.

In the roleplaying hobby, home to the Forgotten Realms, Glorantha, Jorune,

and other detailed settings (to say nothing of Middle-earth), Tékumel has no
parallel. Tékumel is the tabletop peer of computer games like Dwarf Fortress
and EVE Online -- not so much a pastime as a field of study, a lifestyle. Its lore
beggars comparison. An entire room in the late Professor Barker's house
holds the filing cabinets stuffed with setting minutiae he diligently compiled
starting at age nine. For 70 years Barker mixed influences from Mesoamerica,
Moghul India, Egypt, China, and Arab cultures to create a setting that is
exotic, bizarre, intensely flavored, and incomparably intricate.
The prehistory of Tékumel, its ancient unrecorded past, starts 60 millennia in
our future, when human explorers discovered the planet, conquered the
native Tékumelani (the subterranean Ssú and the insectoid Hlüss),
terraformed the world, and colonized it alongside a dozen alien species. But
when Tékumel's entire star system fell through a spacetime warp into a
pocket dimension, technological civilization collapsed. After several titanic
wars, each species withdrew into enclaves.
Following a Time of Darkness lasting some 30,000 years, new empires made
contact with enigmatic, amoral planar beings: the Tlokiriqáluyal, the Five
Lords of Change. These powerful entities infused some of Tékumel's races
with magic-like psychic powers. For 1,500 years the Lords of Change
supported princelings in countless petty wars that culminated in the 3,000-
year rule of the splendid First Imperium.
When a lone human accidentally contacted a new pantheon of beings -- the
Tlomitlányal, the Five Lords of Stability -- a wave of religious schisms swept
aside the First Imperium, and a new caste of Priestkings established Éngsvan
hla Gánga, "the Kingdom of the Gods." After ten thousand years, this
flourishing empire perished suddenly in a planetary cataclysm. A worldwide
interregnum, the Time of No Kings, spawned legendary figures: Subadím the
Sorceror, great Thómar the Ever-Living, fumbling Turshánmu the Summoner of
Demons, and many more.
Modern history begins between six and ten millennia later with the Second
Imperium, the glorious Empire of the Petal Throne that rules the continent of
Tsolyánu. The first Emperor wielded an ancient technological device, the
Seal of the Imperium. The modern calendar dates from his succession, "After
the Seal" (A.S.). In the present year, 2,369 A.S., a many-sided civil war has
just ended. The continent of Tsolyánu seethes with intrigue and factional
politics. Emperor Mirusíya, "the Flame Everlasting," faces the monumental
task of repulsing invaders and restoring the Empire of the Petal Throne.
If this epochal history made your eyes glaze over, you're not alone. Though
universally respected, Tékumel has always been a tough sell. There have
been five different official Tékumel RPGs, all short-lived and rather
haphazard. It's hard to communicate the setting's signal virtues. Many of its
most devoted fans are the players privileged to participate first-hand in
Barker's own long-running Thursday Night Group. And believe it, these fans
are devout. They write monographs about Barker's pantheons and
constructed languages; they build scale models of Tsolyáni temples; and
they've set up the nonprofit Tékumel Foundation to protect Barker's works.
The Foundation kindly approved this offer that gathers .PDF image scans of
the Empire of the Petal Throne RPG (TSR, 1975), its successor Swords & Glory
(Gamescience, 1983-84), plus maps, histories, and treatises for a bargain
price. This thorough introduction to Barker's world showcases its attractions.
And if you fall in love with Tékumel, as so many already have, a lifetime of
exploration awaits you.
Any gathering of published Tékumel material, no matter how comprehensive,
is perforce a "starter collection" -- but for just US$6.95 you get DRM-free
.PDF image scans of all six titles in this particular Starter Collection (retail
value $37), including the complete Empire of the Petal Throne RPG, plus the
Five Empires maps and the Jakálla city map; two lengthy histories, The Ever-
Glorious Empire and Deeds of the Ever-Glorious; and a compilation of lore from
Professor Barker's own long-running campaign, Notes From the Thursday Night
Group.
And if you pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $16.95
to start, you'll level up and also get our entire Bonus Collection with five
more titles worth an additional $50, including Swords & Glory v1 and S&G v2
(as well as the Combat and Sorcery Summary); two language books (a first for
the Bundle of Holding!), The Tsolyáni Language and Tsolyáni Primer; and Tékumel
Journal #1 and Journal #2.
Most of these files are .PDF image scans of the original 1970s and '80s
hardcopies. (This is most obvious in Empire of the Petal Throne and Swords &
Glory, where Barker went through the printed pages and manually added
accent marks.) The text is crisp and readable, but no optical character
recognition has been applied.

TÉKUMEL RESOURCES
• Start with Tékumel, The World of the Petal Throne, its Gaming on Tékumel
page, and its page of Tékumel links
• Intro to Tékumel by Patrick Brady (.PDF link)
• Empire of the Petal Throne TVTropes page
• The Tékumel Foundation
• Brett Slocum's Tékumel Site
• James Maliszewski's Tékumel-related posts at Grognardia
• Chris Kutalik of the Hydra Collective (a frequent Bundle contributor) has
lots of good Tékumel material on the Hill Cantons blog
• Howard Fielding's blog, The Tékumel Project
• Tékumel Collecting