YGWV
I Fought We Won
A few words on this. I will be happy to answer questions here as well.
Officially, the I Fought We Won battle was performed by several masculine entities, cosmically and thus perhaps simultaneously. The individuals, unknown even to each other, went home and taught their form of individualized resistance to their families, clans and tribes. This resistance allowed those tribes to survive an initial onslaught of chaos. The IFWW heroes and followers, all of whom were from the Dragon Pass area, and agreed to cooperate?a real first since it included some individuals from all the elder races. But these forces together won the Unity Battle and defeated the larger chaos force assembled to destroy them. Continued cooperation allowed all the Dragon Pass tribes to survive.
The martial struggle of Heort is appropriate to his role as warrior
and culture hero. It is the manifestation of some raw masculine powers
of violence, destruction and general active, energetic role. In the
IFWW these prove ineffective, the individual is destroyed, yet some
part struggles on and, surprised, the chaos opposition is destroyed,
runs away or dissipates.
The subsequent reconstruction of the Hero is based on an
acknowledgment of the essential masculine role (I Fought), but it
encloses the Secret just learned (We Won).
He rearms, then goes forth and rescues his wife from the Ice Palace,
and teaches the secret to the men of his tribe.
The mirroring struggle by Ivarne, Heort's wife, is appropriate to her
role and feminine properties. She is the Culture Bearer, and the
manifestation of the raw feminine powers of peace, creation and
generally passive energetic role.
Abandoned by her husband, Ivarne must protect her kids from the
menaces of the Darkness. She doesn?t fight them: she runs, she makes
baskets to slide down an ice slope, she fools the wolves, she destroys
the imps with words, she finds food, she makes food, but on and on she
goes, losing friends, followers, then even her children to the cold
and monsters. She grows more tired and unable to act, and at last
finds a place to curl up and rest. (In the Kitori version, she even
feeds herself to her children before going to sleep.)
But these, her essential feminine passive power, is not enough for
her. She-- out of all her companions and friends and the whole world
that came before,--she wakes.
The subsequent reconstruction of the Heroine is based on an
acknowledgment of the essential feminine role, of bearing and being,
but it encloses the Secret just learned (You matter).
She finds her husband nearly dead, and she heals him in time to save his life.
These actions by the founding heroes are the secret survival methodology for the Heortling people. (And others of the Unity Council, though they always subjugated it within their more prehistoric mythology as one of many such struggles.)
Other surviving cultures have different stories. Most of these are of desperate families, each with some clan secret of survival. What is significant about the IFWW is that is was shared by a significant number of humans and other peoples. That cooperation is what allowed them to have an intact society and population in the thousands when Elmal rose.
The other population centers at the dawn had their own epic tales of surviving the Darkness. The self sacrifice of Xemela is part of the Seshnegi survival story. Joining together with the Great Living Rune (i.e., the eransachula Zzabur) to smash the glacier is another. The Kralori have their draconic story, the Pamaltelans have their Necklace, and the Dara Happans their wandering heroes, keeping alive and hiding the secret keys to life, humanity and heaven too. (The Vithelans may not have had a Darkness, so their tales is even more different.)
Issaries, Inc.
c/o Greg Stafford
1942 Shattuck AVe, #204
Berkeley, CA 94704 USA
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