Thanks!
> Malia is a darkness rune deity and so that's probably where the troll
> association arose (even if by mistake). Xentha is a troll goddess by
> virtue of being Argan Argar's Mum.
Not sure I ever bought the Xentha association, speaking of "just so stories." But if you're entertaining the idea that there are actually trolls who venerate her, I'll go with it. Plus the fact that they're Arganargar trolls gives them a pass to be unusually open to foreign influences. I needed to figure out Arganargar anyway.
On Troll Malia, there's the picture and caption that AFAIK only appears in the Wyrms Footprints version of "Deities of Darkness" and not in the original WF 7:
"Design from a shaman's drum ["maw of Malia" image similar to Nomad Gods monster counter] representing Malia and her disease spirits. It is thought that the reindeer skull beneath her left foot depicts the Unkoli reindeer people, so the glyph probably represents a curse on those peoples by an enemy tribe. (ORAL-TA RUINS, FRONELA)"
I never really looked at it before, and only found it by accident after yesterday's posts. I'm on the fence on whether the drum is an actual artifact of the Borklak troll civilization or a copycat object made by a human enemy of the Unkolings depicting a darkness goddess and recovered from a troll ruin. Either way, it shows active Disease Mastery up in that remote vestige of trolland and an interesting continuity of iconography from the glacier's edge to Prax thousands of miles away.
A lot we don't know about Borklak, of course.
[more of your good stuff cut]
> > 6. Who is Chalana Arroy really? Where does she come from? Why is her son such a big deal among the aldryami?
> >
> The Aldyrami worship a water deity called Eron who has some life
> associations.
Strikes me that if anywhere on Glorantha remembers a hostile interaction between an aldryami water god and Malia shamans, it's Oral-Ta. Place seems pretty messed up.
But I guess an initially clearer form of the original question is whether Eron was adopted into Chalana Arroy mythology at some point (when? where?), Arroin came to the elves, a hypothetical third source spawned both figures or "it's all a coincidence."
This is relevant to Malia because one of the few concrete things we know about Chalana Arroy cult ecology is that she tends to compete with Malia propitiation as a medical system. "Bolthor's people are healthy, yet their Chalana Arroy priestesses are paupers."
Arroin is probably overdue his gregging but is evidently a third system (pharmacology) closely associated with both elves (Find Healing Plants) and the white healers. "During the Darkness, Arroin and High King Elf were close friends and Arroin was tended by dryads who died out of love whenever he was but wounded."
The relationship between disease, healing cults, elves, trolls, Arkat, chaos and the Bright Empire seems central to the question of who Malia is.
Elves hate darkness and love light. Even though IMO all the rigmarole about plant disease spirits is mind-numbingly dull, Malia is no friend of theirs. They're on Arroin's side.
Trolls hate chaos and love darkness. Reports of their worship of Malia are more hypothetical than fragmentary. They don't care about Chalana or her son. They have their own healing goddess who was also a friend of Arkat's. Xiola Umbar is aloof from the Malia/Chalana dynamic.
Arkat was raised to know elf ways and became a troll anyway. He hates disease and chaos. Disease is how the empire recruits, so he hates the empire. As the greatest heroquester ever to grace the lozenge, you can bet he changed the way Mal(l)ia operates. Maybe the Chalana cult evolved along new lines to fill the vacuum. Maybe this is how Arroin enters in.
Chalana may or may not be able to cure chaos but Arroin by definition never could. In the only example I can think of it ever happening, only water could remove the taint and then Chalana was the natural cult choice for the cleansed one. (Eron is a water god.) The cleansed one was a broo. Broos love Mallia. Broos are almost uniquely completely immune to disease.
Vivamort can "kind of" cure chaos by (re)opening darkness connections, unless we throw out everything new in LOT as junk.
Malia betrayed the conspiracy. Trolls betrayed the empire. Round and round.
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