All Sorts

From: SimonPhipp_at_aol.com
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 21:59:49 -0400


>Actually, it is my belief that Glorantha is more like the real world than RQ players realize. We have
> simply been tricked into assuming that Gloranthan myths accuratly describe
history and the cosmos. I
> think they are just myths.

Aaargh!!!!!.
Glorantha is special precisely because the myths happened. The world is made up of the body of Ga, the Air is the bodies of Storm Gods, these things actually happened. The gods are real in Glorantha because you can go and meet them.
That is also why Alternate Earth never caught on - too sterile.

> But note that all the Gods were not killed in the KOS episode

No, only the proper gods.

> I've not answered it (not because I can't!) but because I think that
Simon's response to the hypothetical
> question above would be more informative than line-by-line replies.
Please clarify - does this mean "Do not answer points line-by-line in the Digest" in which case I will e-mail you privately or does it mean that a general case would explain where I am coming from? If anyone is sick of my detailed replies, please say so - I am still new at this and feel that some things cannot be answered in one or two sentences since they carry a lot of baggage around which needs explaining.

> There is a passage there which talks about the Priesthood being a typical
Sky-Earth marriage before
> this.

The cult was founded as an equal partnership, without the Fire-Female, Earth-Male correspondence. Later on, the cult became corrupted by the members who abused the partnership (an Earth/Sky marriage is Fire-Father, Earth-Mother, not at all like the deities). This was obviously caused by the gaining in prominence of foreign Solar cultists, or the influence of the Dara Happan culture where the Earth Mother/Sun Father is the norm. The new heroes had a good clean-out and rescued the cult.

> To see if we're speaking on the same wavelength, let me pose a hypothetical
question. If there is a cult
> of 'Yelmalio' among the Elves of Enkloso does this prove a) Yelmalio had
migrated from Genertela to
> Pamaltela and back again in his diverse career or b) the cult was imported
by somebody else and
> absorbed whatever native light hero cult there was?

It proves nothing at all.
Yelmalio was probably known to *all* the elves as the Forest Sun, as detailed before.
He did not migrate to Pamaltela because both lands were part of the same land with the Spike joining them. Yelmalio was present in both areas in the elven forests.
It would seem unlikely that a culture as insular as the Green Elves of Enkloso would have truck with any foreign cult, especially as there are elves there who lived during the Darkness.

> Earlier I took your TOE of Yelmalio as being the *history* behind the
diverse mythology of Yelmalio
> If you believe that myth is not history (*if* I understand you here
correctly), then why did you write up
> the various myths up as history?

Deep breath, here goes.
1. I wrote them up as a possible explanation as to how the Yelmalio cults could have been derived. (Actually, as just a bit of fun).

2. Think of it as like the view of the elephant and the blind men - one near the trunk thinks it is a sanke, one near a leg a tree, one near a tusk a spear and so on. Yelmalio (the big god) is worshipped in many ways by many people.

3. Great Gods devolve into minor gods. Umath - Orlanth, Storm Bull, Humakt etc. Aether - Yelm, Dayzatar, Lodril. Minor gods devolve into Aspects. Orlanth - Rex, Adventurous, Thunderous. Yelm - Sagittus, Imperator, etc. When a hero finds an Aspect of his god, he may be worshipped as an Avatar of that Aspect, but he has still only revealed an Aspect.

4. In my opinion, the GodLearners (and earlier, the followers of Nysalor) did not amalgamate small gods into large ones, as a rule. Instead, they found the different myths of Orlanth and recognised that they were of the same God. (OK, so they monkeyed around with demons, creating the Sky Terror for instance, but they proved that they were on shakey mythological ground by remaining as demons). Even Caladra & Aurelion are only worshipped together a few places, and the cult is only important in Caladraland.

5. Before you quote Arkat and The Red Emperor as examples, they are amalgams of minor heroes, in the RE's case, or a Hero and his mates, in Arkat's case, but they are still only minor Gods, not even in the same league as Yelmalio.

By the way, I don't actually think that anyone believes that Yelmalio was made up from another cult, or whatever. People believe that Yelmalio is, was and always has been.

> And a form of HeroQuesting is taking a cult practice from another cult and
grafting it onto *your* god,
> revealing the 'hidden depths'. Which is what people who say that multiple
stations is a sign of cult
> fusion have been arguing all along.

The end result is the same, the deity gets the powers/abilities, but the reasoning behind it is different.

> But they could have quite easily been cults of several seperate Light
Heroes who have been conflated
> over the ages.

Yep, but they were not, in my opinion. Depends on your point of view.

> Or rather who are Harshax, since there seems to be a dynasty of them.

A dynasty probably consisting of the same person, who "dies" and comes back again as his own heir. Anyway, from another world, not part of Glorantha as we know it.

Dwarf Food:
Dwarf food is good for you, it is clean, safe, has had all the bad bits taken out, is on the approved list and comes in nice, easy to eat portions. Outsiders food is dirty, messy, hard to cook, probably poisonous and generally disgusting.

> Herd men do not graze like bison or antelope. Their guts just are not
capable of digesting an almost pure
> cellulose diet. Possibly the covenant of Waha altered them a bit, so they
may have very limited ability to
> ferment coarse plant material, but it isn't going to be adequate for them
to live on it.

Wyrms Footnoes 9, Page 13, Alter Creature Spell "A beast that becomes a person gains 3D6 INTelligence and 3D6 CHArisma. It becomes omnivorous, requiring the same quality food that people eat. " and "A person who becomes a beast loses INTelligence and CHArisma. It becomes herbivorous, able to live off the plains."

Glorantha is a magical place, so herd men can eat and digest the toughest cellulose, no problem. Eiritha has ensured this, because she is so nice.


End of Glorantha Digest V2 #641


WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html

Powered by hypermail