When I first started digging into RuneQuest a couple years ago, I learned that the reputation of the Pavis: Threshold to Danger box set (and its companion, The Big Rubble – more on that tomorrow) verges on the legendary.
Pavis is the major city in the region of Prax. Its history starts centuries ago, when the God Learners founded the city of Robcradle on the site. Giants living in the Rockwood Mountains far to the north would send their infants down the Zora Fel river in cradles filled with powerful magic, which the God Learners waylaid and plundered at Catchcradle Island. The giants naturally took exception to this and laid waste to Robcradle, founding their own massive city on the site. It was later re-conquered by Pavis, who renamed it in his own honor. The original city changed hands through war many times over the ensuing years, until it was left a ruin, now known as the Big Rubble. Eventually, Dorasar, an exile from the kingdom of Sartar, founded New Pavis outside the walls of the original city. When the Lunar Empire conquered Prax, they also seized Pavis and now use the city as the center of their civilizing influence.
This rich history, and the mix of competing cultures and religions left in its wake, is the backdrop for the majority of RuneQuest’s second edition and has, in some form, been included in most subsequent editions of the game. The box features a detailed, building-by-building guide, numerous important political figures and the classic scenario The Cradle, in which PCs must defend the first giant cradle sent downriver in 700 years. The adventure became so big it wound up crowding out two other scenarios listed on the back of the box. That necessitated Chaosium’s release of Big Rubble later in 1983.
I intend to run all the classic RuneQuest material as my next campaign and I can’t wait to get to Pavis…