From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
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Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Sun, 04 Sep 1994, part 3
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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Humakt on Ygg's Isles?
Message-ID:
Date: 3 Sep 94 22:03:11 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6028
Tim Minas in X-RQ-ID: 6012
> A couple of random thoughts first. Do the Humakti of Ygg's Isles
> have tales of Sword Maidens descending to the battlefields to take
> the slain noble warriors up to Humakt's Einherjar? Whether riding
> winged beasts or just flying, it sounds like a good tale!
Certainly does. However, I am not so sure they'd worship Humakt; I'd
expect a different name at least, more likely a similar cult, but
with a totally different structure. Something along the lines of the
Tyr cult from Vikings, with a different name of course, and a couple
of radical changes in the myth. No wolf to bite off the hand, fights
against other deities (aldryami, uzhim deities) rather than Vanir
and giants. Ygg himself can't really be described as one of the main
Viking deities (Thor, Odin) directly, IMO.
> Elk/Moose/Whatever
> Could everyone who has a real strong opinion on this just outline
> the following details. I don't want any Latin, or "common" names
> that will set off arguments again, but "Just the Facts, Ma'am"
> (To quote another older US TV show!)
Ok, here comes what I thought of when describing the presence and
role of Hsunchen in my comments on Ygg's Isles. I restrict the focus
of my interpretation on northern Fronela.
> Name of Hsunchen tribe (Eg Aleci, Pralori etc)
Pralori (might become Aleci, or something very different)
> Description (in terms of size, habits, eating habits, etc, not
> RW analogues) of the Totemic beast
RW-analogues nevertherless:
The swamp-dwelling large herbivore with the elongated, horse-like head
known from the "Alaska" TV show (with Dr. Fleischman from New York), the
beast inhabiting Scandinavia.
An excellent swimmer, solitary, extremely hard to see in the wild, tasty
dark meat reminiscing of beef, _large_ spoon-shaped antlers (to be found
in the coat of arms for East Prussia, and the brand of the Trakehner
horses), the heaviest (or second-heaviest) land-dwelling mammal of Europe
(the Wisent, or European Bison, might be a contender, the brown bear to
my knowledge isn't). Diet is mosses, birch leaves, lichen, woolly grass,
and berries (blueberry and several other species common on the fjells of
Ygg's Islands). Within the fringes of Winterwood add rowan, hazel and the
occasional acorn or beech analogues of the scarce but existing
non-conifers of that forest.
> Area(s) where these guys can be found
Northern Fronela: inland fjords of Ygg's isles, the fringes of Winterwood,
Tastolar, Porent, Upriver, Rathorela (rare because of pressure by the
Rathori), northern Erigia.
> How many of them there are in each of these areas
I haven't got my Genertela Book at hand, but IMO the number given for
Fronelan Pralori gives a fair estimate for the total number of this
sort of "Pralori" in Genertela west of the Thunder Delta and north
of the Nidan Mountains.
Aleci in northern and eastern Seshnela (the outskirts of Erontree Forest,
also in Oranor in Fronela) and Ralios (border areas of Guhan, Lalia and
Lankst towards Ballid forest, Ormsland and East Wilds) have a similar,
possibly identical species as their totemic beasts, but they don't live in
the harsh arctic regions their northern cousins (both men and beasts) do,
and may (for all I care, although Jonas might feel differently) be regarded
as Bullwinklings.
> Any other points on them.
The "Pralori" of Fronela cohabitate with the more numerous Uncolings.
They prefer the river, swamp and coastal areas where they and their
amphibic totem beasts have the advantage of terrain, but they are willing
to share. They are excellent boat builders (in order to be able to keep
up with their totemic beasts) and live in small family groups. They hunt
their totemic beasts mainly for rituals, but they prey on all the other
beasts of their habitat. The "Pralori" provide a lot of beaver and otter
furs, they hunt the water fowl as well as stray reindeer happening to
enter their territory.
Their strength as warriors is independent action in difficult terrain.
They make excellent scouts, and their guerilla warfare is a terror even
to warbands of the Kingdom of War - think of the trappers in the US
independence wars, which could reduce a warband (well, regiment) on
the march into a bunch of headlessly fleeing lost men. The "Pralori"
always strike with missiles first: horn bows (made of the antlers of
their totemic beasts), javelins (actually harpoons) and thrown axes
(yes, tomahawks), then they might rush in, slay a couple of unaware
foes, and rush off again, melting into the landscape once they are 30
metres away. For people of their size, they hide and sneak extremely
well. They swim excellently.
> Name of Hsunchen tribe (Eg Aleci, Pralori etc)
"Pralori" as per Genertela Book (again), this time the Wapiti-folk
> Description (in terms of size, habits, eating habits, etc, not
> RW analogues) of the Totemic beast
This beast, while quite tall and heavy, doesn't really compete in size
with the heavy horses of the Loskalmi knights and clibanarii. It behaves
like an oversized deer, which means it lives in family groups rather than
solitary, has roaming solitary stags, feeds on the undergrowth of the
forests in the more pleasant areas of the taiga, and wouldn't survive an
autumn, let alone winter, on Ygg's Isles or in the Porent tundra.
Only the stags have antlers.
> Area(s) where these guys can be found
Tastolar, Gharkor, Easval in Loskalm (and neighbouring Winterwood,
being unwanted guests in either), Dona, Mortasor, southern fringes of
Rathorela, and possibly Charg.
There might be such Hsunchen anywhere in Seshnela, Ralios or west
Maniria where there is forested wilderness left.
> How many of them there are in each of these areas
Once again, use the population numbers of Genertela Book, Fronela chapter,
with a pinch of salt (multiply by 0.8, and allow for a mistake in the order
of 80%).
> Any other points on them.
These Hsunchen are tall, but far from towering, and less powerfully
built than either the Rathori or the northern moose-people mentioned
above. They hunt and collect the fruits of the woods, relying more
heavily on nuts, acorns etc than the moose people. They use no barbed
harpoons since they rarely hunt on lakes, and have no special skill in
boat-building. Instead, they are renowned as runners in difficult
terrain.
They prefer dry, fairly open woodland as a habitat. Mixed pine - beech
forests are their (and their totemic beasts') favorite habitat.
> Name of Hsunchen tribe (Eg Aleci, Pralori etc)
Uncolings
> Description (in terms of size, habits, eating habits, etc, not
> RW analogues) of the Totemic beast
The Reindeer, the wild European variant, not the sad excuses found along
the E6 tied to tent-posts. (Sandy, or other biologists, is this identical
to the Caribou?)
It is about deer-sized (too small to ride upon), both sexes
have very hard antlers suitable to make spear-points which can survive
penetrating even a bear's hide (as opposed to deers' antlers, which are
too soft for this application). Its main diet are the mosses and lichen
of the fjells and the tundra.
> Area(s) where these guys can be found
All along the edge of Valind's Glacier: northern fringes of Winterwood
(including the interior of the larger among Ygg's Isles), Porent,
Tastolar, north Rathorela, northern Erigia, and (split off during the
gray Age, when the Ice receded from Peloria) in north Pent. There might
be an odd pocket of peak-dwelling reindeer people somewhere at the foot
of a glacier or snow-field in the Rockwoods, but this would be likely to
have suffered severely from inbreeding for the last 2-3000 years.
> How many of them there are in each of these areas
As per Genertela Book for Fronela, uncounted for northern Erigia or
North Pent (likely to be as many in either region).
> Any other points on them.
They domesticate a few of their totem beasts to act as beasts of burden
and as decoy for the hunt. Their life-style is closer to (hypothetical)
Praxian foot nomads than to Hsunchen, in that they live mainly on their
totemic beasts plus the yield of gathering efforts. This includes the
hunt for small animals and occasional fishing.
They use ski and simple reindeer-drawn sleighs (largely bundles fixed
on a pair of skis and drawn by two long poles tied to the antlers of
their beasts).
For their life-style, read "The Reindeer People" and "Wolf's Brother"
by Magan Lindholm. Their religious life will be somewhat different,
but the overall impression will catch their essence.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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From: CHEN190@csc.canterbury.ac.nz (Peter Metcalfe, CAPE Canty)
Subject: The Blue Wizard speaks out...
Message-ID: <01HGPWXZRA6AED5EAA@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: 5 Sep 94 03:41:39 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6034
Oh god. A very big post from friday full of my favourite speculative topics.
you have been warned!
Joerg
=====
>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?
Given that Yelm originally tried to name Umatum by this name, I belive that
Entenkos is and was a Storm Diety.
>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.
Plants IMO also. I am still believing that II-1 is Dendara, with the following
places on the Gods Wall her cult stations (similar to Yelm the Youth, Elder the
Archer, Sun Lord, Yelm Imperator and so on)
>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?)
I think Naveria is actually the wife of Yelm. Given that Dendara is the bright
face of the Earth brightened by Yelm (and Gorgorma is the dark face - look at
the moon for what I describing), Dendara would be the daughter of Yelm and when
Yelm married her in Naveria (IMO this explains why the land goddess Naveria is
seen as the marriage aspect of Dendara) this would fit the myth.
>Ditto for Lesilla, goddess of mothers. Whose mother was she?
Presumably Lesilla was the place where Dendara had her children.
>Lesilla's rune reminds very strongly of Moon: both the half and the
>quarter moon. Plentonius fails to make the Lunar connection.
Mr P. failed to make the Lunar connection because he didn't know of one! No
red moon in 244 ST and the Blue Moon is secret! It wasn't until Thorloss the
scribbler made a study that we even knew of a moon rune.
>[Description about the Entekosiad]
>Possibly
>they are a mixture of both pre-Dara Happan and Flood-time myths, confused
>by later oral tradition.
My feelings on the matter.
> 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 my theory on Dendara being II-1 is correct, then were is Entekos? I place
her as I-12. This gives Umatum and Entekos *transparent clothing* which nobody
else haves thus indicating that they are air gods.
>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...
Perhaps it is an hint of what the original dara happan society was like. The
Ourania is a vigin mistress could indicate that the woman originally had a role
in the bureacracy of Anaxial Dara Happa. Another hint of this kind is the
Imperial Assembly which is based on the Aetheric Assembly of Dayzatar. Not
something we would expect from the Divine Authority of Yelm...
>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").
What does this look like to all those who do not have 'The perfect sky'?. Also
Nick identified Naveria as Sedenya.
>We know that a moon crushed down onto northern Peloria - the Blue Moon,
>whose ruins formed the Blue Moon Plateau.
Part of a moon, to be more precise.
>Could this be Plentonius'
>version of this event?
Perhaps. Sedenya has some connotations of fiery powers (P. referes to her as
the sun that comes and goes) which modern annilla does not have.
>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...
The Crown of Mernita was found in Elz Ast!
>> 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 think before the Red Moon arose, the word moon was largely a convention and
depended from culture to culture. The blue moon was so known because she was a
moon that was blue and the queen of a very important empire. It is only with
the identification of the Moon Rune that we have gone to thinking that all
moons have the Lunar Rune.
>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.
I was thinking of Darkness and Light or something like that. Of course the
Lunar Rune may not even be a element at all given the association with balnce,
time and illusion. It may be that the only reason why the Red Moon is such is
that the Orlanth myth of her being a wound in orlanth's body is correct. This
of course menas that the original rite of creating the Red Goddess involved a
means of wounding Orlanth.
>The identification of Entekos with Molanni was not made by Plentonius,
>but by us. It seems obvious. Is it?
A valid point that even I concede.
>Plentonius painfully fails to mention Vadrus, of whom we are told
>earlier that he was a noted enemy of the Dara Happan Sun Gods.
I think Vadrus is Gods Wall I-13. Given that he was killed before time, P.
might have had to name him as Umatum.
>> 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.
Perhaps after the war in the sky when Kargzant was weakened.
>> 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.
And also note that he had to acknowledge Alkoth as one of the seven Anaxialite
cities. Perhaps nobody knew what the cities were before this time? This could
mean that P.'s maps of the cities in the first map of Dara Happa (during
Murharzarm's reign) is a fake as it does not correspond to the last stable sky.
>> 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.
I should really explain my earlier posting and state that my belief is that
the Dara happan cult of Yelm is actually worshipping the Sun through the paths
of Murharzarm. The nomads of Pent originally worshipped Kargzant who would now
appear to be Yelm Kargzant. I am thinking that the Solar Orb is too powerful
to be worshipped directly and that all the Sun cults we have are actually
worshipping their avatars (Ehilm in KoL, Murharzarm in Dara Happa, Victorious
Zenith in Bliss in Ignorance and perhaps Solf in Teshnos - Nils?).
>Even the name Yelm seems to have been adopted from the Theyalans, who
>might have found it elsewhere - did they ever contact Kralorela?
They seem to have done. The Cult of Dendara is found in both places but I'm
thinking that there has been sporadic contact between the two civilizations
like China went to India for its buddhist texts.
>The
>Waertagi could have transported them after they had settled in the
>Rightarm Islands.
The Waertagi would have mentioned Ehilm.
>Or Yelm was the name of the sun in the drowned Spike
>civilisation somehow surviving into Theyalan myth, possibly via the
>aldryami.
Possible.
>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.
BTW Darve seems to mean foe of. We have a general Darvedekorgos who would thus
be Foe of Deshkorgos, a fourth row god in the Gods Wall.
>Maybe a linguistical analysis of the emperors' names will yield more
>hints - I feel that ever since KoS Greg pays attention to linguistics.
certainly.
>> 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...
Shar means Red. We know that much. Any idea on what Gash means? However
Shargash appears to have been a mortal human during the reign of Murharzarm.
Nils
====
>Sandy writes:
>> I suspect giant eagles in the Shan Shan
>> side of the Wastes, since the so-called "Eagle Hsunchen" (i.e., wind
>> children) are known there, so presumably there's eagles, too.
>Am I the only one to find Wind Children suspicious creatures? They
>have feathered wings and are known as eagle hsunchen in Kralorela.
>This would indicate bird/sky connections, but they are in fact air
>related. This is weird.
I think the eagle hsunchen and the Wind children are two different cultures.
The Players book in G:CotHW indicates so. The eagle hsuchen might be that of
the bird rebels and the worshippers of Veng who were driven from Dara happa by
the Jenarong Gamatae.
The Kralori may not notice depending on how interested they are in Hsunchen
Lore. Certainly the runespell to get wings would transform the arms into
wings. I'm thinking that the Windchildren are the Sky Spears of Genert's army.
--Peter Metcalfe
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