>He wanted to be a wizard.
That official? Where from?
Vadeli rumours etc.: Good course, Loren (and others). This was about what I had in mind when I mentioned necrophilia...
Tim Ellis
>In Digest #122 Daniel Fahey argues
>>Cragspider became Arachne
>>Solara, but still exists in her castle, which reaches into both planes.
>I know there is some conection between Arachne Solara and the Cult of
>Aranea, and between Cragspider and the Cult, but not of a more direct
>link between the Firewitch and the Mother of Time!
I tend to side with Daniel. Look at the known myths from the Theyalan culture. The spider is a very recent character in the actions, in fact she appears first at the culmination of the LBQ (and the IFWW as well, IIRC).
>We know little of Cragspider - She was born before time and "Even the
>dragons were not sure of her ancestry, for she lived in her mountain
>long before they were hatched" (WB&RM).
The mention of her mountain is a bit curious, since there are several myths about the origin of the mountains there, all after the arrival of the dragons.
>She was probably not born a
>troll(1), but underwent the Ritual of Rebirth, and emerged as a Dark
>Troll.
IMO she still is a nymph who (for reasons of her own) chooses the guise of a Dark Troll as her humanoid appearance. Spidery attachments optional.
>She subsequently Heroquested to return Troll fertility to its
>"Golden Age" level
A very "nymphic" activity, the (early) nymphs being the Grower equivalent of the true Mostali wrt Maker.
>(1) The Miscellanea in White Bear & Red Moon contains a myth of a God
>called "Soul Arranger" - one of the Lawgivers, who arranged the future
>populations of most men. After dealing with the east, the south, and the
>west he rested at what became Dragon Pass before spreading "his seed and
>his word" in the north [Anyone any idea whose myth this is? or who Soul
>Arranger is?].
Larnste, God of Movement, has this epithet. Check King of Sartar.
>The Duchy of The Blue Moon, however was never planned by
>the Soul Arranger "Who had been seduced away from his work by a
>masterful witch nymph later called Cragspider."
The Duchy of the Blue Moon has been suspiciously absent from more recent scriptures by Greg. A lot of its "previous" territory has now become the land of the Bird People of Jarasan and later Kestinliddi. Of course, the area north of these has been mentioned only once, in the fall of Sedenya, which does correlate with the Blue Moon Plateau myths known earlier.
Still, the arrival of the Blue People of Pelanda continues up/down the Poral and Listor into (what became) Thunder Delta, and since they settled everywhere they left their lakes (Sweet Sea, Lake Listor, Lake Oronin) it is quite possible that they settled also in northeastern Peloria, beyond the lands of the (northern) Bird People of Jarasan (the Suvarians are very birdish in their myths, too).
It is also interesting to note that the Blue People of Pelanda immigrated from the West, at a time when the Cosmic Balance had already been disturbed, and that the Pelandans have myths about sorcerers from the Kingdom of Logic long before the march of the 10,000 of Syranthir Forefront.
Blue or otherwise strangely coloured skin was not that rare in the Kingdom of Logic, it seems. In one early text the Dronals are mentioned as the brown-skinned children of Malkion and a lesser wife, and Menena is blue-skinned. Waertag, another less legitimate son of Malkion, is green-skinned, as are his descendants.
See below for the connection between necrophilia, Blue Vadeli and Annilla...
On another tangent: We know that the Jord Mountains "have no roots" because they rose when the top of the Granite Man's palatial hill was shorn off by Gerendetho, leaving the Hungry Plateau and a pile of rubble south of them. (GRoY Ivory Pages p.94f) Does the Blue Moon Plateau "have roots", or was it entirely formed by the ruined shell of whatever semi-dead moon goddess (Annilla, Sedenya, any others?) fell down there?
(The existence of such plateaus in a once glacially covered, volcanic area makes sense geologically, or so I was told. There are similar phenomena in Iceland.)
>I find it hard to equate Nymph with Troll!
Why? Nymphs are shapeshifters, able to take human form, and also able to take Aldryami form (and this for the dryads only). She has chosen to side with the trolls during the Darkness. Her guise as Dark Troll is appropriate, since she has fire powers. The only troll deities with fire powers, Zorak Zoran and Argan Argar, have a myth of being burnt by the infant Great Enemy, and are depicted as Dark Trolls. Dark Trolls originated when the Evil Sun invaded Wonderhome and burnt away the blissful state of the trolls. IMO ZZ is the first Dark Troll ever...
>This same passage goes on to talk about the inhabitants of the Duchy of
>the Blue Moon as being "children of the Blue Moon, an unborn deity
>decaying in it's mothers bowels." - Does this remind you of any recent
>topic of discussion in the digest? - You've all been looking to the
>West for Vadeli, and they are behind you all along!
The circle closes... I'm afraid I started this entire Blue Vadeli frenzy with my casual remark:
>>>Since everybody described the Blue Vadeli as cold guys, I noticed a
parallel to the blue people of Pelanda in the Entekosiad. There blue is the
colour of age, or of the dead. Dead are cold, aren't they?
Thus the Blue Vadeli practice either necrophilia or necromancy to prolong their lives, likely both.<<<
Which is to say: I got the inspiration for the death link exactly from the Annilla stuff (Troll Gods version), recently modified in the Entekosiad.
That said, I'm interested in other peoples' opinions on Annilla. She is a most strange composite deity, her Troll Gods (God Learner?) version containing myths from the Pelandan Blue People (with her as a water goddess), myths from the Good Giants (which may have been the way the God Learners learned about her, disassembling cradles in Feroda), and myths of the trolls. Somehow all of these got tossed together into a single Blue Moon myth. All of this looks very much like God Learner handicraft, or at least Theyalan Council myth meddling (which is where the experimental paganists of Jrustela learned their craft's basics).
Cragspider is quite naturally included in any greater myth around Dragon Pass and the Rockwoods, which might be a reason for her being mentioned above.
>Mind you, you can take this God-Learner parallels too far, - it has just
>occured to me that Brown Vadeli have to eat their children, and Kygor
>Litor cultists have to eat family members, Red Vadeli are cruel and
>viscious warriors, and Zorak Zorani favour red clothing, and some
>mysterious, virtually unknown Trolls worship the Blue Moon - Obviously
>Vadeli are either wannabe Trolls or Trolls cursed to look like humans!
I don't think there is any connection between trolls and Vadeli except that both are hellish peoples. The Blue Moon Duchy may well have original Kingdom of Logic (located in Brithos, not just a philosophical stage) humans, as well as some trolls, sharing the same mystic source of power from the blue Water/(Un, or Semi-)Death/Darkness/Sky source obviously present somewhere in that plateau.
Vadeli, Vampires, Vivamort the Tanisoran Kingdom during the early Gbaji wars have been mentioned in the same breath earlier. I like the lich version of the Blue Vadeli better than the Vampire version, although I don't think that the entire blue caste should be undead - only the more powerful ones, or those who have lapsed in their caste restrictions (whatever these are), should. Liches are more connected with Tapping than Vampires, too, which has an appropriate feel for Vadeli.
(Do Brown Vadeli tap? I.e. has this ever been "proven", e.g. as the "reason" for a pogrome?)
Is it just me, or is there a trend to make the Vadeli the projection of all the evil rumours about the medieval Jews into Glorantha? Recently there even was the rumour about a shit golem...
Vadeli ghettoes on the Genertelan mainland: IMO these are very recent institutions, having come with the Opening. The (brown) Vadeli have spread their ghettoes along the Genertelan Coast throughout the major port cities: Sogolotha Mambrola in Fronela (any other city in or around Loskalm? Northand Southpoint, Tarinwal?), Noloswal in Seshnela (Laufol being Brithini-ruled, Pasos having no sufficiently large cities...), Handra in western Maniria (quite probably several of the smaller New Coast port cities as well, recently expanding and attracting all kind of foreigners), Nochet in the Holy Country (Rhigos and Karse probably as well, Seapolis, Duchamp, Vizel, Refuge and God Forgot ports likely being too small for a full-sized ghetto), Dosakayo in Teshnos (Gio and Dombain probably as well), and of course the cultural testing area of Lop Nur^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Lur Nop in Kralorela. (Note that the first four of these cities not in brackets appear in MOB's list of five Gloranthan cities somewhat like Byzantium...)
There are more in Umathela, and possibly Fonrit, although those are quite different in appearance. There might also be Vadeli cities on Jrustela - some texts indicate some human presence there, despite what is said about the Elder Races island cultures, mainly the Dormal text description of the Vadeli arrival in Jrustela (Tales 10, p.15, or RQ-Companion, p.22):
"The Vadeli had few natural resources and immediately began carrying others' goods for profit [1]. They prevented any shipping from crossing the Brown Sea to the Jrusteli Isles. They themselves outfitted a magnificent fleet and went there claiming to be messengers of the god Dormal sent to rule the land and save the inhabitants from the sins of their ancestors [2]. Thus they ruled for eight years before others reached the island and fomented rebellion [3]."
[1] These goods likely included preserved (i.e. dried or salted) fish and walrus ivory from Ygg's Isles (thentime allies against the Loskalmi navy) and whatever the recently thawed Janube Valley produced for an international market in Sog City. I doubt that Loskalmi merchants ever made their way south of Tarinwal or Erontree Forest, that might have been spiritually unpure.
[2] From the description, most likely humans and not timinit natives. I have seen another early text of Greg mentioning descendants "of Brithini race" (i.e. Malkioni) on the Jrusteli Islands after the Closing, living in castles bordering upon a jungle. It is quite likely that even the combined efforts of Nature and the Waertagi did not manage to wipe out all human life. The survivors mentioned are living quite miserably when visited by a shipwrecked party almost immediately after the Opening.
[3] Again, others fomenting rebellion indicates that the inhabitants of Jrustela are human (and not "good" Vadeli either, even though northern Jrustela originally was part of the Vadeli Kingdom, compare the map in Uz Lore, p.7).
I choose to believe that this entry remained in the text not because of sloppy editing, but because there are some human inhabited islands along the northern rim of the Jrusteli archipelago.
Anyway, these are the known facts and educated guesses about the early Vadeli expansion in Genertela.
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #131
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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