> 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.
All good. I didn't say any of this was sane, only that the structural parallels -- and not equivalences -- are worth gnawing on.
> 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.
What makes Waha a bigger spirit?
> There are many victims of the god's war. The Father of Independents and Daka Fal are far from unique in that.
How many do we still talk about?
> 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?
I'm not calling Daka Fal a loser. I'm pointing to structural parallels between him and a loser.
But let's go back to that text, because it fairly artfully marries the divine recognition with the "loser" (inferior) status:
Daka Fal was named by the gods to be the Judge of the Dead, for it was he who first knew that power and who holds all of the secrets of Death. 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.
Named by the gods. No actual power in the face of the gods.
We can also debate whether dying represents loss here or not. I think there's something tragic about the story at least. He failed. He died. He's the archetypal dying man. The Great Darkness messed him up somehow.
These aren't winner traits. Winners can recognize something valuable in the story and make room for it in their society without forgetting that it's a story of loss. If it wasn't, there'd be no death and nothing for a judge of the dead to do.
> I thnk you are conflating two things. The Dead Place is not an avoidance of the separation between the living and dead.
I wouldn't say "avoidance of the separation." I'd say "a place where the separation breaks down." There is no spirit world there. Spirits become physical. The line between spirit and flesh ceases to exist.
> 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.
I said it was the pinnacle of crazy, after all. Some crazed tribal mystic may think so. We need more crazed tribal mystics.
Orani is a great alternative. Which makes Daka Fal what, Waha's brother? And it brings the [western-leaning] lion men into the picture. Their god died too.
Another option is that there were endless Grandfather Mortals and the Orlanthi had one and Orani was another and there's maybe even one hiding under the complex we now call "Genert" and a fourth whimpering over at the Dead Place. Some of them get conflated at different points by different people. Some get deliberately pulled apart.
> - 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.
All great avenues for tribal magicians to explore. The last one especially.
Does he have a grudge against Storm Bull, do you think? What's their relationship like, in your Glorantha?
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