I'm not sure whether Orlanthi questers experience night when travelling through the Storm Age. Day or night are irrelevant to the journey between story nodes.
It may be a feedback from the mundane world where the questers and possibly their opponents or quest elements are anchored.
I am no great fan of the concept of stationary quests into the Hero Planes that appears to be the current canon. I like the older concept of entering the Otherworld at one place, doing whatever there is to do on that path, and then emerging somewhere else in the Mundane Plane. Without that, Ethilrist's journey through Hell would be impossible, or the southward travel from Cliffhome to Stormwalk Mountain during the Starbrow Rebellion, described in Wyrm's Footprints.
> That's the wrong way to look at them. When the worshippers
> voyages into the mythic ages, they will see days and nights,
> which will be like their mundane days and nights.
If they happen to look for them. I think this is a similar effect as the question where John Wayne went to the loo in the Wild West movies - irrelevant stuff like that simply doesn't happen (another such dramaitc reality is the reloading of fire weapons - this too only occurs when it is dramatic; an archer will almost run out of arrows only if it is dramatically aproppriate). Questers go hungry or thirsty if the story demands it, otherwise the need for food and drink is no issue. Most often, food and drink serve as social interaction rather than to satiate any physical need.
> Therefore days and nights existed in mythical times.
In recollection of the events, perhaps. The human questers will (probably collectively) add all those things they expect in a landscape and on a journey, much like our brain completes the image of the blind spot in the center our retina where the visual nerve displaces receptor cells.
> Likewise Joerg downplays references to mythical references to
> Yelm's movement when he is supposed to be the immobile centre of
> the cosmos.
> If the myth say that Yelm was at Ersorianen making the first people
> (when he was Emperor) then he was there outside the Throne Room.
A deity can be in multiple places. Yelm can appear at Ersorianen without leaving the Throne Room. Everywhere his rays can go, Yelm can be manifest.
My point about Yelm's immobility is this - in the Gods Age and in the Storm Age, there is just one place for the sun to be, and that is overhead. In the later Storm Age, that overhead can be rather lower, close to a landmark and thus away from the zenith (in the meaning of 90° overhead, not in the meaning of the Gloranthan stellar body of that name).
There is no walking around for the Imperial Sun. Sunset is a singular (and world-shattering) event, sunrise did not happen in the myths.
A quester who enters the Hero Planes may notice this, and accept it. He may still experience days and nights, but he won't experience a sunset or a dawn, or an absence of the sun (unless the mythical period prescribes its absence). The sun may be shadowed, hidden behind obstacles (clouds, mountains), but while it is there it is there.
I guess it helps having experienced the arctic day (days without sunset) and the arctic night (days without sunrise), and especially those days of the arctic night with dawn appearing and disappearing without showing the sun, or with the first sun rays touching the mountain tops.
This is a quite special experience, and it does create a sense of wonder of the kind that I would associate with every travel into the Otherworld.
> Any contradiction between this and another myth that says Yelm
> never moved from his Throne Room because he was the Perfect
> Emperor is an inconsistency.
> Resolving the inconsistency will have many solutions but
> the simple denial of a myth on the grounds that it should be
> understood as a poetical license is the wrong answer.
Inconsistencies needn't be resolved. They simply are.
Was Yelm at Ersorianen? Yes, of course. He looked at it, so he was there. He did something there. No need to leave his throne for that.
Likewise Orlanth is there and can do something there wherever a wind moves or a breath is inhaled or exhaled, unless there is an active effect preventing this (like the windstop of the new Reaching Moon temple).
I am less concerned what an Orlanthi quester will perceive in the Golden Age. A Dara Happan quester will expect to perceive the golden sky dome, and perhaps the disaster of it turning blue when Lorion invades.
We know that the Darkness Age brought the Night into the Sky. Night was the first of the dark deities to reach the surface, and in a sense she was present for all the rest of the Storm Age and the following ages. While there were still Antirius and Elmal up in the sky.
So, if an Orlanthi quester experiences "day" in the Vingkotling Age, Night will be present, but not prominent. If he experiences "night" in the Vingkotling Age, Elmal will be in the sky, but not prominent.
A Dara Happan quester will experience Antirius in the sky. There will be night - but possibly night is experienced as a place (outside the influence of a weakened Antirius) rather than a time.
David Scott said correctly that the questers express their experiences in a narrative using mundane world references to convey their experiences to those who lack the direct exposure.
I get a similar frustration trying to convey how my arctic experiences may influence the perception of the quester. I haven't been to an Otherworld, but I have been to a place where the rules were changed in a significant way.
It is one thing to intellectually accept that the sun doesn't reach the places in the arctic during winter, or that it is always up in the sky in summer. None of this can replace the experience, and all the little wonders that result from that. I guess that another such experience you have to make yourself is the weightlessness of free fall - which probably is another staple experience for both Orlanthi questers flying to their holy mountain and Dara Happan questers experiencing Yelm's Court.
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