> Cryptically, "in Prax his worship has had no actual power
> in the face of the gods. In times of crisis, when the gods
> fail their worshippers, this cult gets very popular."
>
> So in normal Waha-oriented Praxian contexts, Daka Fal is
> actually something to be disdained if not scorned, a
> powerless if not "ridiculous" ritual complex.
...
> DAKA FAL: judge of the dead, the dying god, the former sacrifice,
> the psychopomp, "no actual power" in normal times
>
> FATHER OF INDEPENDENTS: ferryman of the gods, the cripple,
> victim of the Gods War, ferryman of the gods, "wretched thing"
...
> When things get bad, as we've been dancing around, Waha and
> the others fail their worshippers and "occasionally" are
> eclipsed by the more desperate Daka Fal practices.
I don't agree with this take. Daka Fal is the great spirit of ancestor worship. Neither the ancestors nor the judge of the dead are scorned or wretched.
The fact that the ancestral spirits are powerless in the face of gods doesn't really say much. Any small spirit gets blown away by a bigger one.
Waha does not provide a spirit for every situation. That means that turning to Daka Fal does not mean desperation or last resort.
Daka Fal was not a sacrifice in Praxian terms. He was simply the first to die.
There are many victims of the god's war. The Father of Independents and Daka Fal are far from unique in that.
Would Waha have recognized Daka Fal as judge of the dead if he was as much of a loser as you describe him to be?
> Meanwhile, the Dead Place was once more magically bizarre than
> the super-desert we all know and dread today. In Nomad Gods,
> how the mechanics actually worked is that everyone got slow
> and hungry (herds don't go there and support is impossible),
> "gods are reduced to a mean status" and spirits "function
> as normal physical units."
>
> In other words, the Dead Place is so dead that the normal
> separation between life and death, body and spirit that
> Daka Fal enforces does not apply, at least as Nomad Gods
> conceived of the place.
I thnk you are conflating two things. The Dead Place is not an avoidance of the separation between the living and dead. The Dead Place is where Storm Bull lay when Eiritha gave him all the power of the earth supporting him. It is permanently drained of everything that makes Glorantha function: ferility magic is an example. If there are more numerous spirits there, that is because the nomads never go there, so they have not been laid to rest. Any spirits that are there woudl be continually drained by the effect of the area, so they will be weak.
> Maybe the FOI is in fact lying. But if it means so much to him
> that the lie is actually built into his name, maybe the lie
> conceals some deeper secret about the way the Wastes actually
> work.
This seems more interesting, since anything that we can say positively about him is pretty much speculation.
> And here's the other thing: I doubt those early Wahaist
> tribes (however many there were then) at the Dawn were
> talking about how Humakt the Sword killed the first
> man and that's why we have Death.
There was probably one tribe up until very close to the dawn, depending on whose numbers you like. The area around the Paps can support at least the 3,000 that has been talked about.
> What *I* would argue at the pinnacle of crazy is that the
> ur-Praxian Dying Man was named Genert and we call his
> pathetic shade the Father of Independents. He who once led
> the freaks and vestiges of the Garden before Waha taught his
> people another way. He who can navigate the Dead Place. Prince
> of hyenas. Garzeen's quest. The old law.
It's MGF is you like to go down this path, but I think it over simplifies. Genert was clearly not the first death, and we know that Daka Fal was. I tend to identify Daka Fal with Orani, who was a son of Storm Bull, after whom Orani's Mistake is named. I like to think that he died fighting Basmoli invaders. But I think that is contradicted somewhere in the canon.
> FOI is either primeval or he's very new.
>When did he come in? Who brought him?
Here are some altneratives:
- He was associated with a place that was crushed when Storm Bull fell on it.
- He was with Storm Bull when Storm Bull dropped. We was either crushed by Storm Bull ("I'll catch you!") or was an earth entity whom Eiritha sucked dry.
- He's something chaotic that was fighting Storm Bull and got crushed or sucked dry.
- He's a part of Storm Bull. Storm Bull has lots of parts that got broken off of him. Maybe he is Storm Bull's cunning.
Chris
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