From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
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Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Fri, 02 Sep 1994, part 3
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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Moons and their mothers
Message-ID:
Date: 1 Sep 94 15:24:14 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5993
Harald Smith in X-RQ-ID: 5973
> Since I haven't seen anything other than GRAY on Entekos, I'm probably
> not in a position to comment with any certainty on the nature of the ur-
> Entekos. I would accept the following as true: she is Pelorian, not
> Dara Happan, in origin and is associated therefore with the ancient
> earth cults; she is linked by Plentonius with a host of air related
> titles (I concede that it is unlikely for her to transmute herself); she
> is the Mother of Moons.
Right Air: ths title might apply to any Earth deity which succeeds to
tame a Storm god, and the "Right" might be verbal tense. Earth wins over
Storm, right?
The symbols around GW II-1's legs could symbolize air. My new
interpretation would be plants: Entekos is the deity under whose
feet plants sprout.
II-2 to II-5 are the four aspects of womanhood, with Naveria and Lesilla
somewhat overlapping.
If Naveria is the goddess of wives, whose wife was she? (The Dara Happan
emperor's in the story Greg read at Convulsions?)
Ditto for Lesilla, goddess of mothers. Whose mother was she?
Lesilla's rune reminds very strongly of Moon: both the half and the
quarter moon. Plentonius fails to make the Lunar connection.
The Rune above Entekos' head is that identified as Dendara in the Copper
Ledgers and in "The Perfect Sky" (in DHBE). I take it to mean Earth in
Peloria - the four corners have become the four quarters.
> Is Entekos a Green Age or Golden Age entity? Given the general Dara
> Happan feeling towards goddesses and the patriarchal tendencies of the
> Golden Age myths, I would call her a Green Age entity.
Greg said in his introduction to his readings of the Entekosiad, that
these were the Pelandan myths. He said the Pelandans say they're older
than the Dara Happan myths, whereas the Dara Happans say these were
Flood time myths, when everything fell back to primitivity. Possibly
they are a mixture of both pre-Dara Happan and Flood-time myths, confused
by later oral tradition.
> If this is the
> case, does she exist before Aether exists? If she does, she can't be
> an entity of air.
Only a mother of air (gods) (as well as a mother of moons, which are
unlikely to have existed before there was a sky, too).
> If after, then she can certainly be an 'air' figure.
Ernalda has become associated to Storm via Orlanth and his sons (Thunder
Brothers, not necessarily Barntar).
> Another possibility: is she either the true child of Aether/Gata OR the
> twin of Umath? The idea of a twin appeals because it suggests the later
> Orlanth/Red Goddess dichotomy.
Twin of the element? I'm not sure. The story about Entekos meaning "Right
Air" needn't mean that this was the origin of either name or deity.
The goddess which came to the court later could be the same as the one
in the story I referred to earlier.
> (And while I'm on that train of thought,
> is the Red Goddess perhaps the reincarnation of Entekos?)
One of her daughters, most likely. My bet would be on Verithurusa,
one of the Wedding Contest participants, somewhat identical to
Verithurus, and certainly sharing his/her rune. Verithurusa could
be the Vinga of the Yelm pantheon, a daughter acting as a son, a
common theme in Solar myths - think of the two Balazaring incidents:
Dykene, and her descendant Starnia Stormrender.
DHBE p.45 has the Red Goddess as a granddaughter of Dayzatar, but gives
no name. Plentonius doesn't give other descendants from Dayzatar than
Ourania, her daughters, and (perhaps) Pole Star.
Strange enough that the arch-chauvinist Plentonius admits a mistress...
Aside:
Let's assume Ourania is the Light of Knowledge Lhankor Mhy quests for
in the LBQ, does this raise the possibility the Red Goddess is his
daughter?
When Plentonius recounts the fall of Mernita, he mentions a "false sun"
Sedenya, who crushes down onto her city. Mernita is marked with the old
(or Pelorian) form of the Moon Rune (according to "The Perfect Sky").
We know that a moon crushed down onto northern Peloria - the Blue Moon,
whose ruins formed the Blue Moon Plateau. Could this be Plentonius'
version of this event? Ashrill, the land of Verapur, is shown in the DHBE
maps as the east shore of the Thunder Delta, southwest of the Blue Moon
Plateau. Dosvolos, the original land of Mernita, could be covered by
the remains of the Blue Moon...
Boztakang's realm was described as "joined the ice troll of the glacier"
in Uz Lore, and only when Chaos invades, Boztakang lives at Blue Moon
Plateau. It wasn't there when the trolls first migrated northwards.
> In regards to the Moon rune, we draw most of our evidence for the rune's
> source from the writeup of Annilla in Troll Gods where there are
> darkness and water connections. It seems to me that the rune may
> equally have an origin in the mix of light and earth (afterall, we have
> Moon Rocks, not Moon Water).
The same would apply to the planetary deities, the children of Yelm
and Dendara. Still we have no incling what makes a stellar body a moon.
Is it the "glow that is not light"?
I doubt that the Red Goddess has water connections other than Annilla or
the Young Elementals, or later marriages into local pantheons. Annilla's
Blue Moon is the moon of water, as its colour indicates, too.
> Yes, I know the earth rune is square not
> round, but the earth has dark tendencies that I think fit well. Thus,
> Entekos might be the child created in the first union of earth and sky,
> rose up to her place, and was then torn down by Umath, though she left
> a calm space where her moon had been.
The Pelorian Earth Rune might well be round. After all, the Pelorian bowl
is roughly round as well.
> Regarding Molanni [...] As
> for the dates, 5 years would not be enough for Plentonius to take note,
The date given by Peter was off for about 9 years - Argentium Thriile
usually is dated in 230, not 239. The date isn't that certain, though.
> unless the battle of Argentium Thri'ile was also a heroquest which
> altered the hero plane and Plentonius found he had to include a mention
> of her.
Hmm. Why should the traitoress and effective weapon against Storm be
included into the Dara Happan pantheon in a victory for the Storm
cultists?
The identification of Entekos with Molanni was not made by Plentonius,
but by us. It seems obvious. Is it?
Plentonius painfully fails to mention Vadrus, of whom we are told
earlier that he was a noted enemy of the Dara Happan Sun Gods. Unless
Vadrus is one of the Rebellus Terminus aspects. Plentonius seems to
think about Storm gods like Storm Bulls think (well, act reflexively)
about Chaos: Small Storm is all Storm, Storm is evil, kill Storm! No need
to distinguish. He seems to regard Air as an aspect of Sky, not an
element...
> I concede this as unlikely, but I would ask whether the
> beastriders might not have reached Dara Happa prior to the battle as
> mercenaries in the employ of the Theyalans who had been around since the
> 1st century reawakening old spirits.
Maybe Molanni was adopted by the Horse Rider Warlords as a weapon against
the Theyalans. GRoY mentions (p.43) the advent of the first Theyalan
missionaries in Dardaggus' (Eater of Flesh) reign. They were slaughtered,
and their stuffed corpses were displayed...
> - Starting up another line of heresy
> While I was working out my thoughts on the flood myths yesterday, I got
> to thinking about what Plentonius was doing. Since the Dara Happan
> empire had just reemerged, I would guess that he was trying to tie up
> lots of loose ends to get a comprehensive Dara Happan mythos.
I agree that the Dara Happan Empire had only just reemerged - to be
exact, the Theyalans had made Khordavu's teneous hold on the
Tripolis cities surrounded by Warlords (the Jenarong horse rider
nobility) and their hordes into a real empire. He did liberate
most of Dara Happa and quite a lot of neighbouring countries temporally
from Warlord domination (p.51), but on p.52 the Great Counterattack is
mentioned - in typical Dara Happan understatement the fact that the
hastily collected empire fell to the horse nomads and only the fortified
cities held out is omitted.
This fact has been reeinterpreted by the Dara Happans (already of
this time): Khordavu is said to have summoned the Eastern Horde to
counter the Theyalans approaching from the south, or vice versa.
> But if
> the tripolis had a unified mythos already, why would this be needed?
To ascend to the throne for the first time, Khordavu had had to kick
out Upon Hilltops aka Eusibus, son of Shargash.
> So...my thought is that the tripolis did not have a unified mythos, that
> each city and its surrounding area had its own unique mythos that
> Plentonius merged together.
I agree that each city had its own ruling deity, which was the one true
Emperor of Dara Happa (unless a Warlord had occupied that position). The
names Tripolis, Dekapolis or Septoli indicate a non-centralistic
structure rather than one central authority, maybe (like the Celestial
Court) a gremium of rulers (not unlike the council of egi which makes
up Takenegi, or the Red Emperor).
> Yelm, therefore, is a manufactured deity!
Yes, but differently so.
The composite role of _one_ sun god and _one_ emperor could have been
reverse-engineered. Plentonius work (like most compilations of myths
before 1950) was heavily politically motivated. Maybe Plentonius used
the fact of the combined sun of Time to combine all the local Sun
Gods (like Murharzarm). The combination of earlier suns above Dara Happa
apparently continued well into the Dawn Age - the contests between
Shargash, Kargzant, Lightfore and Antirius (in the order of their
defeat) are reported. Others might have been omitted.
Even the name Yelm seems to have been adopted from the Theyalans, who
might have found it elsewhere - did they ever contact Kralorela? The
Waertagi could have transported them after they had settled in the
Rightarm Islands. Or Yelm was the name of the sun in the drowned Spike
civilisation somehow surviving into Theyalan myth, possibly via the
aldryami.
The closest thing to "Yelm" the Dara Happans offer is "Yuthu", meaning
"god". The first time that the element "elm" appears in the emperors'
names is with Wanthanelm (epithet "the Cursed", btw), Mahzanelm,
Erzanelm, Khorzanelm, all of Khordavu's dynasty. It coexists with
"davu", probably another gentile deity.
Maybe a linguistical analysis of the emperors' names will yield more
hints - I feel that ever since KoS Greg pays attention to linguistics.
> The true Dara Happan sun gods are Murharzarm in the north (probably from
> Yuthuppa and brought from the city that won--hence the mythic city of
> Yuthubars);
Raibanth is my bet.
> Antirius in the central region (though many of his myths
> suggest a southern Pelorian origin, as do the later Sun Dome temples);
Another god of Raibanth, successor of Murharzarm (slain by Orlanth,
or as an effect of cyclical time or grand mythical pattern by
some other storm or thunderer god. Shargash?). IMO.
> and Shargash (or the earlier name Nemarthshar) in the south.
Good linguistical connection. Shargash's identification with Alkoth seemed
a bit artificial to me when I first encountered it. He seems too much
like Orlanth to me...
> Other
> areas sun gods were ignored or suppressed because they refused to join
> the 'empire', including Nivorah (possibly Kargzant) and the Theyalan
> lands (Elmal).
Most important: Mernita, the city of Sedenya, eradicated by the wreck
of the Blue Moon.
> Each of these gods faces a similar series of myths--the
> flood, the fall of the sun, etc. But when Plentonius puts them
> together, he rearranges them so that each important city's deities have
> a place and aren't forgotten.
Yes!
> (After all, if he leaves out Antirius,
> Raibanth will leave the empire. Similar for Shargash at Alkoth.)
While I doubt these direct associations, a grandiose work of myth
reconstruction! Kudos!
Other topics:
Voria's Father: IMO neither Yelm nor Orlanth, nor any other male. However,
this parthenogenic birth was explained by the associated male cults as
their god's daughter.
P.S.:
Sorry about the message to Hans appearing on the Daily, the address
landed mistakenly in the subject slot.
Everybody else is invited to the German RQ-Con in Berlin as well, of
course.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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