Paolo Guccione:
>If they can do that (reincarnate a dead being), why
>should they do it only for revenge purposes? Should
>they lose the wisdom a Gardener has accumulated
>in centuries when the individual dies?
>You made me think about one fact. Elves are the only
>race without an undying ancestry. Dwarfs are still immortal,
>Dragonewts reincarnate, Mistress Trolls do not age,
>ancestral Men (Brithini) live forever, why should all elves
>have been mortal from the beginning of Glorantha?
Definitely linked questions. In my mind, plants (and Aldrayami) did not die before the slaying of Yelm. During the darkness, some starved from lack of light and some were slain. After the Dawn, the Great Trees, being direct children of Aldraya and hence near godlings themselves, did not age, but their own children did, due to entropy being bound into the fabric of Glorantha. Now they age and eventually die. I think I read that Aldraya gathers their spirits and reincarnates them. _Except_ for ghosts that are too restless for Aldraya to gather them in. Hence, the mythic function of Babs in elfdom: incarnate ghosts so that they can obtain revenge, be gathered in by Aldraya, and be return to the world innocent of past memories as a new seedling. Grow is a very important concept to elves. Being a thousand years old is great, but no elf (or sentient plant) would trade in its memories of its sapling years when it was growing like a weed. The old ones live on because of the burdens of duty to the forests.
Alex Ferguson:
>Is that 437 people on the digest groaning loudly I hear, while 68
>are feverishly typing Massive Pan-Solar Monomyths, or rebuttals
>thereof? (The remaining 30 or 40 are merely saying "Huh?
>There's more than one Yelmalio?", I'd guess.)
I really don't think we need to get into this debate deeply. I just want to hear the various theories as they relate to elves. After all, they are probably _all_ correct.
Alex also posits the following:
1. Vronkal = HKE = Yelmalio in terms of the two footed critter scurrying
around the darkness.
2. Vronkal/HKE/Yelmalio =/= sun
3. Mythically, for brown elves, Vronkal morphed into HKE and Yelmalio to
give the brown elves some mythic respect. It was just too demeaning to be
saved by a green elf.
4. Nonetheless, Vronkal/HKE/Yelmalio is not responsible for the Dawn, but
some "natural force" is.
Critique: I like #1 and #2. I like #3 (and had not thought of this aspect before). My only problem with #3 is "Who is Mrel, after whom the brown elves are named?" I don't like #4 (though it is plausible), because I see these natural forces as caused by events in godtime and reinforced on the hero plane. Also, it is incompatible with my views on what plants were like before the dawn (see above.)
Personally, I am thinking that elves believe that some cultural hero (Mrel? Vronkal? HKE? Duh?) is responsible for the dawn because he recovered and reassembled the parts of Flamal (who was I believe, killed during the darkness by ritual dismemberment). Flamal planted himself and ripped open the earth with his roots, permitting the sun (and all those other godlings trapped down there) to escape from hell. I suppose this would be the hell crack in the north west of the praxian wastes. All the activity by this hero and Flamal in the areas would lead to the hidden greens in the areas. For his bravery, the sun granted this hero the title "son of the sun", which might translate in some tongues to "Yelmalio". It certainly would not explain why this type of Yelmalio would be associated with light _before_ the Dawn. It also contradicts the GL story of the Dawn, which (IIRC) says that Flamal was resurrected after the Dawn. But hey, what to they know?
Idea from the guy who failed his first year at Jrustela U: Hey! "Elf" starts with "El-", so they must be solar!
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #300
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