You may be thinking of the Elk People, whose Fancy Name I forget. (That's "elk" as in wapiti, not _Alces alces_, before Baron von Moosehausen strikes again.) Some other bunch of deer-types hang around the Ralios area too, whom I forget yet more thoroughly.
> Bagog is a ruling god in the
> sense that she is the prime determining factor of an entire race, albeit
> a minor one. Kyger Litor is the same in this respect.
KL is the head of a medium-sized pantheon. Bagog is a "ruling" god in no stronger a sense than is Mee Vorala, Thed, or the Cult of the Bloody Tusk. I confess to being a bit confused: I'm not sure if you're claiming that these Ruling gods really are (all) merged, too, or if you're arguing for some sort of pleading (that is, the theory really is "multi-RL => merged or ruling cult").
> the current Orlanth cult was, I
> believe, two + separate Storm God cults in the Grey Age, and
> possibly/probably even in the First Age.
I'm not familiar with the term "Grey Age", but I'm guessing it means Lesser Darkness. I'm quite prepared to believe the "current Orlanth cult" was several separate cults around the Dawn. It's not unlikely that some approproximation to the current Orlanth was "created" by the First Council, I think, and this is where the Theyalan get their strange ideas about the Compromise, a contradictory Godtime etc, from. (In a sense, it still is, as the regional variations are large enough to make it effectively so.) What I don't believe, and have seen no evidence for, is that two distinct ur-Orlanths were merged around this time (or at any other), one corresponding to the "Thunderous" aspect, and another to the "Adventurer" aspect, retaining distinct priesthoods, and that this distinction has been preserved in that form throughout history.
If you believe this, then I have to disagree, and challenge you to provide any evidence for it internal to the Orlanth cult(s).
If you're merely saying that the cult just _happens_ to be "merged", and just _happens_ to have two RL ranks, with no causal connection between the two, then I don't understand the purpose of the theory.
I think myself that the "aspects" of the modern cult all originated from _within_ a pre-existing religion, by Orlanthi HeroQuest or endogenous and progressive cultural development. We know the Rex subcult has a historic Founder, and the same could loosely be said for the Lightbringer aspect, though I have my doubts about whether this cult dates back continuously to Harmast in all regions: it seems to be a relatively recent introduction for some. I think essentally the same is true of the Adventurous aspect.
> And what about the Seven Mothers -- you don't mention that at all?
It was "covered" by the phrase:
[> >] Two of these have structures which fairly clearly don't correspond
[> >] to their historical origins [...]
... those being, from [deleted] context, 7M and Yelm.
> The Rune Lords are very clearly transplanted from Yanafal Ta'arnils,
> while the priests seem to sort of mush the other gods together.
I don't think this is clear at all. 7M Rune Lords are so much more broader, while at the same time more limited than are Scimitars, that it's hard to see any direct correspondance. One can become a Lord of the 7M cult without ever picking up a sword, and learning only (say) Deezola's magic and skills, if I recall the writeup correctly. (Perhaps not a very Lunarised thing to do, though.)
> >You mean, none of the other "multi-RL" cults? Several other cults
> >have shamans as their single "priest" rank, so I don't see the real
> >significance of this.
> Actually, I seriously disagree with this. The concept of a "shamanic
> cult", such as the hsunchen deities, is a misnomer, IMO.
Only if one interprets the term "cult" in an extremely narrow way. All the cults with shamans in them in GoG seem to contain varying degrees of the Divine model, and the Shamanic; not as synthetic mixtures, but in terms of which of the somewhat artifical "God Learner/ RQ3" Types of Magic they happen to most resemble. In the case of Horned Man the divine element is almost completely absent, but for the other cults there's a significant such component. How it ought to be best represented in game terms is another matter; the RQ3 treatment is just an approximation for convenience, as would be treating them (or Aldrya) as purely shamanic.
As Stephen seems not to be arguing that shamans are the results of cult merger in the same sense he claims 'Lords are, and as he (at least temporarily) concedes my and others' Yelm counterexample, I'll snip most of that discgrussion in the hope of making it below my fighting email weight of 12K or so.
[Theyalan shamans]
> We have exactly one reference in print that I remember, from KoS -- where
> does it necessarily suggest they are separate from the Orlanth cult?
Old references to Theyalan shamans associate them with "Umath"; KoS calls them "kolating". No Orlanth writeup has ever even hinted at a shamanic class of membership. Seems like a pretty big set of hints to me.
> But even admitting that point, I still stick to my suggestion.
I'd be delighted to hear some "Glorantha-level" reasons for an O. shaman. "Old time" spirit magic use among the Orlanthi clearly occurs, must have used to occur much more (by assumption), and sadly, hasn't been drawn out to any real degree at all. While my personal inclination is towards treating them as unreconstructed devil-may-care "independants", I'd be more than happy to see them described as a (sub)cult, so at least as to add some colour into the argument.
But reasoning like "all the other multi-RL ruling gods have one (apart from Yelm), therefore so should Orlanth" leaves me (at best) cold.
> I can look at Waha and see that
> his anti-chaos roles are pretty much passe now that Storm Bull is around,
> yet they are still important to his mythos and his nature.
The Praxians don't believe that Waha pre-dates the Storm Bull, so a theory predicated on that assumption would be somewhat a-mythic. I don't think you have to look far for a notion of why Waha has both K(ha|ah)ns and shamans; there seems to be a fairly strong parallel with native American chiefs and medicine men.
> Now maybe Orlanth has become too civilized to have shamans any more. But,
> I could see Orlanth shamans in some of the less-civilized areas, such as
> Brolia, still having an important role in the Orlanth cult.
I'm sure you're right in believing Brolia has significant numbers of shamans, but whether they're part of an "Orlanth cult" as such is more questionable. And this is at most a side-light to the matter of whether the "known" Orlanth cult, which in all it's incarnations has implicitly or explicitly concentrated on DP and/or Prax, ought to have a shamanic position.
> KoS makes it
> clear that _all_ Orlanthi men undergo the same initiation into Orlanth,
I don't think it makes this at _all_ clear, and have argued so elsewhere. I know that Greg has been toying with this as a model for initiation, but if it had ever been stated so unambiguously, either way, we'd have saved megabytes on this list.
Are you really suggesting that modern day Sartarites have separate initiation for each aspect, or at least, "as separate" as however you think, to pick your example, Chalana Arroy initiation is? (Elmal is a different case entirely, for reasons I won't get into.) Does this mean that Adventurous initiates have significant restrictions on getting magic from Thunderous temples, as would said CA?
I don't believe the above, but I do think each "subcult" or aspect has associated with it some degree of "sub-initiation" (braindead term, not feeling very inspired today). This is particular true of Hero cults, and things like the Magic Weapons, so "aspect-switching" may work similarly -- to however that is, exactly.
> >Mild soapbox: theorising about such things is all very well, but I
> become
> >uncomfortable when they're taken beyond mere speculation, and become
> >agitation for Glorantha to be "improved" to suit them better.
> My soapbox: RuneQuest is a _very_ imperfect representation of Glorantha,
> and I have no qualms about abandoning anything which seems to have been
> dictated by game rules or mechanics.
I can't see how this applies in this case. The GoG mini-cults all seem refreshingly Purged of spurious-Rune-Lord-ism, and other bogus RQ2isms. The fact that some RQ3 cults have structures which flaunt the Universal Cult Format rather brazenly seems to me to be a recognition, reflection, and indeed a celebration, of religious diversity, the very opposite of an artifical rules construct that needs to be Explained Away or Eliminated. To make a Universal Cult Format II, such as perhaps "all cults have initiates, acolytes if lucky, priests, shamans if ruling, rune lords if merged", or otherwise, would seem to be a retrograde step in the very sense Stephen seeks (actual) improvement.
I'm not talking about abandoning or improving RQ, and indeed, said nothing about it; as noted elsewhere, it's already abandoned us. I'm talking about "improving" Glorantha as it's "known" to be. My objection is to the "top down" approach -- develop a theory for how All Glorantha is, then argue for changing the cults to suit the theory better. (Notably this has been tried once, with results that were somewhat Curate's Egg-like). I have zero, nay, negative objections, to theories, however wacky, which at least purport to be based in extrapolations based on the culture or religion in question -- as it were, "bottom up" thinking (which isn't to say I necessarily agree with them all). The latter at least seems a more constructive approach to couch things in, even if one has some secret agenda of the former sort.
> Now, maybe the Orlanth cults
> were merged because they were inaccurate as separate cults, maybe because
> RQ was a God Learner invention in the late 80s.
To say they were "merged" is to imply they were ever "separate", in some established pre-RQ3 sense. It's true that the CoP Orlanth was explicitly the Adventurous aspect, noted as being the only one existing in Prax, and doubtless in other locations and/or eras, only (say) the Thunderous aspect was ever present -- I suspect this was true of resettlement era Dragon Pass, for example. It's hard to construe this as an argument for separate and _co-existing_ cults, though.
> what's the point of "theorizing" if we can't propose theories?
A truly illuminated question, and a very irrelevant one. The more theories the merrier, as far as I'm concerned. However, meta-theories invite meta-criticism, I think, in much the same way the more modest theories invite run-of-the-mill disagreement.
> I offered some possible evidence for it -- do you have any evidence
> _against_ it?
The rarity of cults in which there's any positive sign of this having happened (about two, by my reckoning) is one piece of "negative evidence". The presence of such cults where either the presented structure, or the mythic history of the cult would have to be "fixed" to fit the theory (7M, Yelm and Yelmalio, conspicuously, leaving aside the fuzzy "ruling shamanic" question) seems to me rather stronger.
> Some cult with two levels which can be proved to _not_ be a merged cult?
That wouldn't be Evidence, it would be Disproof. I've already argued that more of the multi-RL cults than not require a very large crowbar (over the head, in some cases) to be made to fit a model where each of their rune ranks correspond to an indentifiable precursor cult. The weaker standard of just some "merged cult" would be nigh-impossible; any cult with any "Subservient cults" could be argued to be one, never mind those with "extra" initiatory statuses.
To be clear: I think cults merge not infrequently. Sometimes this results in "extra" initiatory stages, and sometimes not. Sometimes these extra statuses are present for different reasons. Carmanian mystery cults, for example, I picture as having more ranks than one can shake a fist at, some of which may be "rune level" in some loose sense. Equally, I don't think the Malkioni church has, say Archdeacons and Canons because these belonged to two different sects which were then merged.
Slainte,
Alex.
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