>> I'm not sure how worship of Yelmalio trends towards loyalty towards >> Sartar given that the Sun Domers actually drift away from Sartar >> pretty quickly.
> I definitely need to do some reading here. My understanding was that
> the state nurturing of Yelmalio within Sartar and the granting of
> land for another Sun Dome enclave were something of a coup driving a
> wedge between sun worshiping folk in Sartar and the Darra Happan
> elements of the Lunar presence which had up until this point been
> seducing away these peoples to the Lunar cause.
There is no "state nuturing" of Yelmalio. That implies a political sophistication of Sartar which it does not have. What happened is that Tarkalor gave some lands to his friend Monrogh who in return swore fealty to him. However subsequent counts did not swear fealty to the Princes of Sartar.
There is no Dara Happan elements of the Lunar presence in Sartar circa Tarkalor's time. There was religious division among the Elmali between traditionalists and innovators. The innovators weren't actually saying let us adopt Dara Happan ways as Dara Happa was a mere place name hundreds of miles away. What they were struggling to come to terms with were the imposed constraints that Orlanth placed upon solar worship. Any tradition that argued otherwise, whether Esrolian, Draconic, Pelorian, Aldryami or even Teshnan were sources of inspiration for the Lunars.
When Tarkalor was King, the Lunars were still trying to maintain a friendly king in Tarsh. Bagnot and the Bush Range weren't fully subjugated until the battle of Grizzly Peak in which Tarkalor was killed. They simply didn't have the resources to field covert ops to exploit religious division in a backward kingdom. And when the Yelmalio cult got established, the Lunars promptly imported it into their own lands.
--Peter Metcalfe
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