> The Unholy Trio myth (despite being reprinted in the Guide) strikes me
> as an Orlanthi "Just So" myth as to how Bad Things happened rather than
> an actual myth (one in which the Orlanthi actually see what is
> happening) of what happened.
Sounds to me like "an actual myth" in which foreigners participated at one point and the Orlanthi repeat to each other now, but perhaps without inner understanding much less anyone assigned formal cult roles. Much as they might collect stories of how troll or grazer religion works. Go back far enough, the just so story becomes "an actual myth" again, but at that point it may no longer be an "Orlanthi" myth.
Forcing a non-volunteer to fill one of these roles that no upstanding cultist can or will play -- scapegoating or demonization -- doesn't seem to lay a big role in our current view of Gloranthan religion. Maybe it can come back. Maybe the trolls remember how it works.
[...]
> Another issue is the strong disconnect between the
> myth of Malia as a scheming plotter against the Cosmos and the
> embodiment of a natural force (how does one leave the conspiracy
> anyway? who can tell?)
"Leaving the conspiracy" is a great question. The Malians (wherever their religion comes from and what's happened to it Since Time) evidently spread this part of the story and have gotten the Orlanthi to believe it. Maybe it's "true" in the sense that every Gloranthan myth is apparently true. In that case, something inside the Malia cult can (partially) overcome chaos like something inside the water pantheon can wash the taint away.
But the texts here point otherwise. "Not even her greatest worshiper is safe from her embrace" (unless accident or some other factor does him or her in first) so Malian propitiation is never perfect and she herself "has never freed herself of the taint." This is not a way to eliminate chaos, to "leave the conspiracy" once and for all. It's a way to live with a more nebulous association. (Between COT and LOT, Malia's ability to bestow Blessing of Chaos goes away.)
So maybe the etiology here is another contagion metaphor: the Malian lie has infected Orlanthi religion and while the affliction hasn't been fatal, it's weakened the bonds to the truth of the gods. Malia is still chaotic because she lies ("oh, our goddess is death by natural causes") and her lies weaken the world as her spirits weaken the body. The center of pestilence hides in plain sight. Her real chaotic sin is lying, and that lie corrupted her original portfolio of spirits much as Ragnaglar's fall corrupted the goats.
Not even the Prosopaedia will say for sure.
In a non-Gloranthan context I always liked the story of how Freud and Jung are on the boat to New York and Jung is chattering about how great it is to introduce America to psychoanalysis and Freud leans over, says something like "you know we're bringing them the plague, don't you?"
That's my riddlers of Nieby come to Tanisor, bringing the new disease. Introducing a new religion works like introducing the people to a pathogen. Maybe it's an immunization and maybe it's the real deal; everything depends on which aspect of Malia you're working with. Arkat rejects the vaccine as poison.
Six follow-up questions, some a little tangential, about the cult ecology in the world here:
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