Re: Invisible Orlanth

From: Kevin McDonald <kpmcdona_at_...>
Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 15:23:44 -0500


Greg illuminates the Invisible Orlanth issue:

> When I first entered this into the canon, back in RQ days, my intent
> was that it was an entirely false religion, a sham, a bunkum cult to
> divert power and piss off the dude's mother, the Taloned Sorceerss.

To piss off the dude's MOTHER. That is very interesting. It makes sense to me, except for the bit where his brother the Heirophant won't declare the cult to be a heresy. I assumed both Saranko and the Heirophant to be pawns of the Taloned Countess. Maybe they are both rebelling against her. Or maybe they both THINK they are rebelling...

> Now, with the modern revelations, I beleive it to be, or posibly to
> be, misapplied worship.

Or both at the same time, as is the case in my game. The spin I use is that Saranko stumbled across the Tarumath cult in the hinterlands and decided that he could use it to look dangerous and (as of Greg's current admission) piss off his mom. He was as surprised as anyone when some of his followers discovered new "truths" in the cult and it exploded in popularity. Now he has become the cult's public face while a new breed of heroquesters are exploring the "truths" revealed when Carmanians joined what had previously been a Brolian cult.

What did they discover? In my game it was that "Orlanth" is the Breath of Idovanus, which carried the Voice of Creation. These new heroquesters (not including Saranko) fused archaic Pelandan myths, which described Idovanus creating the world through acts of speech instead of pure thought, with the Tarumath "High Storm" myths.

So... it is a bogus cult that wields real magical power through misapplied worship and the conflation of mythical entities.

Otherwise, I use Peter's great ideas. I use Nick's stuff too, since the cult is new and obviously not all that concerned with tradition. I don't see why some of the cultists believe that IO is the healed Breath of the Creator since Tarumath is closely associated with Nysalor (who is thought to be closely related to the Red Goddess by some folks).

I probably piss my players off no end with my philosophy of "Everything you read is true, even the stuff that isn't."

YGWV :) ~Kevin McD

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