A Hello to Sandy...

From: Peter Metcalfe, CAPE Canty <CHEN190_at_cantva.canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 15:46:52 +1300


Sandy:

lets loose with some friendly greetings that may look like abuse to the uninformed observer...

>Dendara/Gorgorma & Peter Metcalfe (think about it. Have you ever seen
>Peter and Gorgorma together? PROOF that they're the same person!)

Have you ever seen Mr P. and Jabba the Hut together? B] At least I'm not the target of several humakti gifts. (You wanted a gift to aid you in acting as a bodyguard of Alex? Why would you want to do that? Surely it would be a curse?)

But on to serious stuff. Sandy has seen fit to resurrect an old debate in attempt to give me and Nick a few bones (so that we may use them on each other a la 2001). For the record (so Nick doesn't flip a lid), I do repudiate any belief that Dendara was imported or reimported by Sheng Seleris.

>Before they [First Age Horse Nomads] conquered Peloria,
>they lived in Pent.

To confute this, I have to refer you to such 'trustworthy' sources such as Pletonius in the GRAY. Peloria is a BIG place and is more than the Dara Happan River Valley. Have a look at the ancestral territories of Jenarong fathers.

Furthermore, even if the Horse nomads did roam Pent, between them in Kralorela is Bliss in Ignorance wihich was dominated by Trolls at the time. The only agricultural diety they have of note is (I think) the Earth Eater.

My current feeling is that the Rinliddi (who worshipped Vrimak at the time) had contact with the Eagle Hsunchen in the Shan Shan through seasonal migrations. So they could have imported the Cult of Den Xi who became Dendara in the Dara Happan Pantheon.

>And
>they had contact with Kralorela both before and after the First Age.
>Note that the Kralori were well-aware of the existence of Gbaji. How
>else but through the animal nomads?

That's the Horse nomads to you. And irrelevant to this argument. Gbaji was AFTER the battle of Argentium Thi'rile but which time them nomads were now living in Pent.

> (B) The nomads did NOT try to transplant Gorgorma, in any
>case. She is considered Bad News to the horse nomads, and IMO is
>worse from their point of view than whatever the Pelorians worshiped
>before (probably just Lodril).

Deshkorgos (aka Zorak Zoran - Three eyes is found in Ramalian representations. Check the Prosopaedia).

> (C) any writings that "imply" that the nomads didn't go to
>Pent before the battle of Argentium Thri'ile are either
>misinterpreted or in error. Where did the nomads come from in the
>first place? They obviously weren't originally from Peloria -- after
>centuries they were still considered foreign outsiders.

The Jenarongi were at least from East Peloria and were considered to be the descendants of the Nivorahings. The Hyalorings and the Veshtargos come from similar places.

>What if the False Dragon Ring felt a need for a sun king? They
>saw similarities between the Kralori and the solar culture (both are
>rigidly authoritarian, with great respect given to the rulers), and
>felt a need to maintain their control over the people, who no doubt
>resented their presence. Their solution? Import the Sun Cults from
>Peloria -- with a hereditary noble caste based on Yelm it should be
>much easier to dominate the masses than by the irksome Kralori
>promotion-by-merit bureaucracy, which tends to let undesirables into
>positions of power.

I *LIKE* this idea! However it wouldn't be the Yelm Cult from Peloria they imported as such. IMO the False Dragons Ring imported the Ehilm Cult (which they would have records of) and the Pentan Nomads. The FDR probably got the Pentan nomads through captured Pentan mercenaries or thru slave trading or with the New Kingdom of Wisdom for prisoner exchanges. Now as the Pentan nomads are of Solar Descent, it becomes an easy task if the nomad is young (can we say Jannisaries?), to turn him into a fanatical Ehilmi (which is more suitable to running a civilized bureacracy). The FDR would trumpet this new cult as the cult of Yang Ti.

Presumably the Cult can still remain as a vestige of aristocratic landowners who are despised by the city dwellers. After all, some mongol nobility were co-opted into the Russian State after Ivan the Terrible declared independance.

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