I love where this is taking us.
> > Mushroom drinks from Dagori Inkarth - the write up from Cults
> > of Prax seems to go on about this an inordinate amount.
It was the '70s, I suspect, and the entheogenic origins theory of religion was in the air. I just want to linger for a moment on the fact that the cult exercises a monopoly on trade with the voralan community that makes it. It's a Darkness drug.
> > Borabu Nightmare - who is this guy? What's his story? Was he
> > a foe of Waha! that Waha! defeated? Was he a friend of Waha?
Drastic Prax has him as "first shaman of Waha" and "first to recognize the rising Waha ... and learn the secrets of the Founder," for what that's worth, as Chris notes below. While that may never have been canonical, if we accept the story their early relationship may have been complex but we know he works for Waha now.
I like this because buried in the subtext is the reminder that while shamanistic praxis (what we call "animism" or Runequest would roll into "Other Spirit Cults") may be rich in structural parallelisms, two shamans can still undergo radically different training and interact with the spirit world very differently.
Daka Fal has shamans. Waha has shamans. I imagine Daka Fal's shamanic initiation as something close to classic RQ ethnography, with the introduction to the Horned Man, fight with the Bad Man and so on.
Waha shamanism may not go quite that way. Borabo might function as their Bad Man and mushroom drink may facilitate the encounter and transmission of inner truths and secret relationships.
What we know for absolute sure is that Daka Fal does not incorporate mushroom drink or mushroom drink visions in their rites because Waha priests monopolize the trade thereof.
If I was in a fighting mood I'd ponder whether the lack of mushroom drink is why Daka Fal is so "powerless in the face of the gods" nowadays.
> I don't think there's much out there about either of these. My story is that Borabo Nighmare was the first shaman of Waha. Think about that this means in a historical context.
I love a historical context!!
>The dawn has just occurred. Time has started. Waha is gone (IMG at least). Elstorana is in charge. There is only one herd.
This is a pregnant statement in itself. You've alluded to an original monotribal "system" before. When and how did that evolve into the ritually segmented Plaines we have today? Can the texts shed any light?
I ask this one because it's tricky to point to essential distinctions between the tribes that don't require magical maintenance. Everybody is happy to eat, milk, own, breed (?) every kind of beast. As far as I recall, only riding an inappropriate animal is taboo. There are natural genetic preferences in terms of riding beast (the little guys can't handle the llamas and vice versa) but unless you're a rider -- of Waha -- folks is folks and beasts is beasts and merrily tribes may mix.
Presumably the riders segmented themselves when Elstorana's sons decided they were all different.
Rhinos may trace their lineage back to Waha, skipping the maternal line. Bolos, as mentioned a minute ago, may be fit in via Elstorana but not the sons. "And that's why they're not Great Tribes today."
And the horsemen who share the vast Wastes with us don't have Waha or a multiple totem moiety system at all. They only got the one herd and kept the one herd.
>The people are all clustered around the Paps. The ancestors are unreachable when they used the be hanging around as ghosts. When time starts, no one knows how to do magic. Before time, magic was just a part of your nature. Connecting with the other world has never been done before because the other worlds were not separate before!
Love this. Sure, the gods are eternal. But religions evolve in the Glorantha we have. Cults rise, fall, spread and dwindle, die and come back. Even in Dara Happa, sometimes they adopt a toga woven at the Dendara Temple and sometimes they prefer pants. The Plaines are no different.
So how close are we here to the original Freeing of the Protectresses and driving Dark Eater from Prax? This question matters to me because it helps us establish early relationships with Dagori Inkarth, troll cults, Shadows Dance where mushroom drink comes from.
I know my take on "dream magic" in a world where direct communion with the gods is commonplace may be considered eccentric, but when I hear the word "nightmare" in this part of Glorantha first thing I think of is troll magic, shades from Hell Dark.
Borabo "Nightmare." Who knows how mushroom drink works (first Waha shaman) and who to talk to up in Shadows Dance to procure same.
What exactly happened to Waha after he "entered the cave and searched for his mother's daughters [and] found them behind a one-way wall?"
Arkat is not the only man who walks like a troll, but I'm just going to leave that one hanging. Waha and his dark brother. Father of morokanth.
> Also, IMG, he's a Morocanth. Why not?
More trivia from the Drastic tale of the Freeing of the Protectresses: The text *explicitly* (although, as always, quasi-canonically) describes this incident as the origin of the Covenant itself:
"Since Waha rescued the Protectresses from the forces of darkness and death, there has always been a special relationship between the people and animals of Prax."
This relationship is the Covenant, the foundation of Wahaist society and food economy alike. What's good to think and what's good to eat.
If the tribal storyteller running the Freeing of the Protectresses heroquest knows his stuff, Waha Fights Trolls is the origin of the entire Praxian system. And as always, undigested traces remain: mushroom drink, nightmare brother, where the morokanth came from and whether they cheated.
What tapirs are doing in the savanna at all.
Thanks guys.
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