Not long ago Pam Carlson commented: " We've been playing around with trying to make each culture's myths work without introducing conflict from an foreign pantheon. In short, why does the Evil Emperor of the Orlanthi myths always have to be some Solar furriner? And does the Murderer of Yelm (if that myth is even believed) always have to be an unwashed Orlanthi barbarian?"
I was quite disappointed by the reponses given by the (obviously overly-God Learner influenced) scholars of the Digest. A sample response was given by the Mighty Mr. Metcalfe:
>" A bit of a futile dream IMO. The cultures have now come into contact with
each >other and are aware of each other. Plus 500 years ago, the God
Learners did a >good job of screwing the original myths to such an extent
nobody is sure what they >were. What was true then, is no longer mythically
true now. "
It is true that Heortling-Dara Happan cultures have had two periods of intense interaction: during the First Age with the Council of World Friends and the Gbaji Wars (which resulted in a Dara Happan occupation of Dragon Pass and Esrolia, and later, a Heortling occupation of Dara Happa). I would certainly agree that during the first age there was some (undetermined) level of culteral contact, reaching a peak at the end of the First Age with Harmast's "resurrection" of the Cult of Orlanth and the later Heortling occupation of Dara Happan (when presumably the Heortlings imposed themselves on the DH mindset).
However that was quite a while ago. Since then, the tribal folk of the Storm Mountains have been seperated from the DH by the long interlude of the EWF (when I suspect DH influences on Heortland were pretty minimal) and the Inhuman Occupation of Dragon Pass when there was NO CONTACT between Peloria and Maniria for over two centuries. By the time of the resettlement of Dragon Pass, DH influence on the Heortlendings must have been pretty darn minimal (I'm afraid that there is no earthly parallel to the Dragonkill that I can think of). So what possible reason could there be for the Heortling clans (who were pretty darn isolated from other cultures between the Inhuman Occupation and the Closing - Esrolians and Shadow Plateau Trolls were about their only major cultural influences) to continue a ritual and ceremonial obsession with a long-irrelevant northern culture except in a most generic and debased manner.
"What about the God Learners?" I can hear Peter ask. Well, what were the GL influences upon Heortland? The Zistori of the God Forgot Islands and of the Coast? Too alien IMO to have a spiritual impact on them. In fact their atheist experiment may have reinforced the theist background of the Heortling clans. We know that Esrolia was conquered by the God Learners - Slontosites, but Heortland and the Shadowlands weren't.
Of course that leads us to another question, just what sort of influence did the God Learners have on the illiterate clansmen of the hills? Certainly they warped the minds of the poor benighted scholars of Nochet and the cities with their cosmopolitan and relativistic ways but what of the hillsmen farmers? Just because a foreign culture has a dramatic impact on the beliefs of literate and urbane scholars doesn't mean that it has a corresponding influence on the traditionalist agrarians who make up the majority of the population.
Naturally, all of this is within the context of my own campaign, which takes places in Ormsthane Vale during the mid-1300s. I would agree that during the century and a half or so of Lunar expansion into Dragon Pass, the identification of the Evil Emperor with the DH Sun God was remade (possibly imported from the Tarshites, who, as Southern Pelorians, developed on the "wrong" side of Dragon Pass after the Dragonkill).
Yours truly,
Jeff Richard
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #81
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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