> 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.
Peter is right that I haven't come up with exactly the right word.
> 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).
That is an interesting point, because those societies (and, to a lesser extent, the Malkioni, Pamaltelan, and Uz sociaties) are what we all seem to use as a measuring stick, if you will. I have to remember that this makes up part of my own misimpressons of Glorantha. There could be lots of broken mythologies out there. What makes the Praxians less normal is that they are quite successful.
> 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.
I agree up to here.
> 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 pretty much agree with this, too. That's why I call it broken: they can know that such-and-such a thing is true on the other side without knowing how it cam eot be that way. And their ignorance is deep: if you ask them why they don;t know such a thing, they will look at you like you are crazy. They is just the way it is; there is no why about it. Why do you have two arms? That's just the way you are.
> 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.
Can you expand on this? It is intriguing.
Some stories seem difficult to fit into this model, like digging the good canal or taming the elemental demons. But others seem like they would fit. Most importantly, it certainly seems like the Covenant would fit. It really seems like a golden-age foundation myth. The fact that we don't have any real stories about the founders or protectresses somewhat bolsters this viewpoint: they would be golden or storm age stories.
If this is what you mean, how do you explain that, when Praxians visit the Survival Contest on the other side, they see Waha presiding over it?
My own thought, which I might now abandon in the face of MoreGF, is that the Wastes were the first affected by chaos, so Chaos moved on from there earlier and never really returned. Storm Bull killed the devil. All of the other organized chaos (if that's not an oxymoron) marched out and was defeated. So, the recovery started "earlier" in Prax's grey age than elsewhere, which allows more events for Waha than for, say, Heort or whoever the solar equivalent is.
> 3) Waha and Jaldon
>
> My own theory was that [when] Waha was maimed by Pavis and later
> healed, he was forced to accept the Great Compromise. That's
> why he had freedom of action before and disappears afterwards.
> But he used his last bit of cunning to find a loophole in the
> Compromise and started raiding instead as Jaldon Toothmaker.
If adding the word [when] to the above is not correct, then I don;t understand. If it is, it seems like a consistent story. Not my preferred one, but certainly a world in which I would want to play.
My problem with it is that it means that Waha was literally riding around Prax for hundreds of years. I think that the big compromise thingie that happened at the dawn (trying to avoid any particular culture's labels here) prevents that. The awkward problem for me is that we have no stories of Waha's departure or how it was REALLY Waha that brought the dawn, returned Storm Bull to the sky, started time, or whatever. But of course, we all know it must have been Waha! Greatness is Waha! All hail Waha! Khan of Khans!
Chris
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