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As an aside, if Earth is able to control Fire, maybe Mahome should be a (minor) aspect of Ernalda.
If Lodril is (now?) an Earth god rather than a Heat/Fire god, maybe it does make sense for Mahome to be associated with Earth too. What, to me, seems harder to rationalise is why the other Lowfires (Oakfed and Gustbran) should also be descended from Earth, and not from Heat/Fire
Am still struggling with saying, at least in Peloria, that Lodril is an Earth god now-- especially if he is still Yelm's kid brother (maybe he isn't Yelm's kid brother any more either?)
In the dim and distant past of RQ2, the rune we now associate with Yelm and mostly call "Fire", was called Fire/Sky. If you had to give it a one word name, you could actually call it a "Sun" rune, since the sun is the ultimate source of both light and fire. There was also a symmetry about:
Dayzatar, the oldest, being about pure Light and lacking Fire;
Lodril, the youngest, being about Fire (or "Heat" as the sub-rune is called), but lacking Light; and
Yelm, the middle brother, having a healthy balance between Light and Fire, which is why he is Emperor
To me, this is why the name 'Fire/Sky', though awkward in some ways, gets to the heart of what I think Yelm, and his element, are all about.
I know Lodril is 'earthy' and associated with fertility, that some of his magics use heat to make the earth more fertile (though, at least from the old Cults Compendium write-up of Lodril I know better than the later sources, others are more like straight Heat powers), and that most of Lodril's Pelorian worshippers are farmers. From these things, it does make sense to associate him with Earth (though he always was associated with Earth, by marriage, anyway).
But wasn't it the 'volcanicity' of Lodril which gave him some additional Fertility to combine with the Earth in the first place? (Without the Heat connection, he's just one second-tier Earth god, pairing off with another second-tier Earth goddess)
Maybe it's just me (though some earlier posts have suggested that maybe it isn't just me), but I'm not (yet) convinced as to how and why re-branding Lodril as an Earth god will generate more light than heat, if you'll pardon the pun.
Richard Hayes
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