> On 3/15/2013 3:47 PM, Chris Lemens wrote:
>
> 1) The Broken Mythology of Prax
>
> Although I see what Chris is getting at, I'm not sure that broken or fairy tales are the right description. The Heortlings and Dara Happans are fairly unusual in surving the Great Darkness the way they did compared to other societies (the Talastari or the Galanini).
>
> I think the Praxian mythical landscape is pretty conventional. They have myths about how such and such came to be and can see those places on the
> Other Side. It's only when they get into the Wastelands that things become strange and weird. Any connections with the Golden and Storm Ages are gone, destroyed by chaos. What remains is the ancient and exotic magics of the Giants which have filled the local Other Side with an alien landscape.
I agree with Peter up to "What remains is the ancient and exotic magics of the Giants which have filled the local Other Side with an alien landscape." I don't believe it's an alien landscape to the Praxians. It's what they know best, as Waha knotted it into their mythology and stories. It may work differently to the rest of Glorantha, but that is the nature of the Wastelands.
> 2) Waha: the Man with No Origin.
>
> Chris calls Waha a Silver Age Hero. The problem is his recorded deeds are too numerous for a mere Silver Age Hero. I'm not aware of another
> Hero in the same period who invents an entire culture by himself.So I think he's not.
>
> Many of his myths are more appropriate to the great cultural founders of the Golden and Storm Ages. What I think has happened was the myths were retaught in the Great Darkness/Gray Age (by whom is unimportant) and so the Praxians have bleak myths rather than the kinder, gentler Golden Age ones.
In my Prax, I'm portraying Waha the following way. In the Great Darkness, Eiritha is deep in the underworld with her mother and sisters, sleeping in Yelm's courts, already pregnant with Waha. Waha is in the Great Dream of the Earth Goddesses and is instilled with Dharma. Above, the only people who remain in contact the Earth goddesses are Earth Witches. They know the world is ending and try a last desperate act - organising the birthing of Waha from his dreaming mother and bring him into the world (or another variation is they go in and get him). I can imagine the Earth Witch chants at his birth being - "O Waha, lead us on the path of Rta, on the right path over all evils" (apologies to the Rig Veda). Waha instinctively knows what he must do and sets about tying all of the disparate parts of the Wastelands, peoples, etc. together in what comes together finally as the ritual of the net. If he doesn't, the Wastelands will drift apart and be lost to the other side. The Praxian nomads don't need to know what has gone on before as the stories and myths of Waha knotting the wastelands together provides nearly all of the stories they need to live (for men).
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