> A question came up while discussing Glorantha with someone else I
> infected with the bug. Does anyone here know if the Aldryami (any of
> them) have any kind of relationship with or known attitude towards
> Heler?
An aspect/subcult of Heler, Helamakt, performs the Sivin Feat during the Plundering of Aron, fighting off ambushing elves with a lightning storm.
Helamakt is an embodiment of the combat magic of Heler other than in the usual ram form the other martial Heler aspects usually take. As a shared subcult of Orlanth and Heler, it is also Orlanth the combat mage.
Heler's fertility aspects on the other hand are appreciated not just by human worshippers. Esrola, the mother of the grain goddesses, has the two suitors Elmal and Heler, and balances their attentions. Compare this to Halamalao and Eron detailed by Peter in a previous reply.
> Heler generally seems oddly elusive considering his relative
> importance. I suppose he tends to get subsumed by Orlanth in many
> places. Still, as the rain god, the father of sheep and one of the
> children of Sramake, you'd think he would be more notable. I suppose
> I'm also curious as to any mentions of Heler or someone a lot like
> him/her under a different name outside of Theyalan culture.
Sure. Keraun, the good storm/rain goddess of Pamaltela, springs to mind (especially with regard to the gender).
Helerings feature in western myths riding cloud ships. One of the mythical maps has a Helering Sea in the southwest. Later, Helerings and Orlanthi meet on a battlefield on a western shore of Orlanth's lands, and leave the battlefield as allies. This seems to focus worship of Heler as a descendant of the primal seas on western Glorantha, so I doubt the eastern rain deities will bear much resemblance to the ram or the blue woman inside the dragon. On the other hand, as a shape changing sea descendant, Heler might appear as a dragon where the divine powers are dragon shaped - if so, the EWF would have capitalized on that.
Thrunhin Da (the Blue Dragon of the Eastern Seas) is different from Heler, as an entity of the Deep. Veldru as the good wind of the East acts as a countermeasure to the O(ho)rlanth hurricane carrying in the cold rains from the north, much like Storm Bull keeps the rain bearing Orlanth winds at bay in Prax and the Wastes (overdoing it in dry years, but what do you expect from a berserk deity?).
There is a reason why Heler is mostly absent from the other sea powers - he is as polluted with air as Lodril is polluted with earth (from a sky worshipping perspective).
Heler has become the embodiment of atmospheric moisture. As such, he remains the necessary source for most rivers feeding Magasta's Pool (Lorion's Sky River feeding the Creekstream River being a major exception). But, in a way, he has become "food" to the water tribe deities, rather than a constant source of replenishment.
I don't really think that the rain of tropical rain forest (basically a recycling of the humidity given off during the hottest part of the day) bears much resemblance to the sheep-like heavy clouds drifting over the land, releasing their rain in various degrees of intensity. The Yellow Elves of the Pamaltelan jungles (whose heart was poetically described as "dark, dripping") might look for the forest itself to provide them with the rain.
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