Hurrah for the counting story! I loved it! And Martin - it's good to see Deville back.
>TTrotsky_at_aol.com>
> My reasoning was that AFAIK, the Red Goddess had to pledge to destroy
Orlanth as part of the conditions of attaining
godhood at Castle Blue.
That's the traditionalist Orlanthi POV. Another way of looking at it is that she merely wanted to "tame" him, and make Orlanth accept her. Which has been done in many of the provinces.
>2) What would a cult of Orlanth Bridegroom be able to acheive that the
already existent Cult of the Seven Mothers cannot?
Fitting Orlanth comfily into the Imperial pantheon, which fits Orlanth's worshippers comfily into the Imperial political structure.
> If I could prove that the Pamaltelans who believe the Greater Darkness
precedes the Lesser were
Wrong, doesn't this devalue their worth as a believable culture? And
how
do I account for their magic still working, despite this Hideous Gaffe?
Hurrah! Well said.
But what if I decide the objective nature of my Glorantha is to be subjective?
> However, in order to function as a Game World, a common structure and actual
truth to myth must be decided. To say the Deities are subjective is to
effectively say they don't exist.
Not at all. Look at RW religions & philosophies, all of which have differing interpretations of the nature of the world, the place of humans, the nature of deities, Truth, and all that jazz. Is any one of them really right, with all the others being completely wrong? These various religions & philosophies all work for their practitoners. Glorantha is the same way.
> and that the cycle of the LBQ and what we know as Central Genertelan myth
was going
to be the "truth".
This is a lot like stopping history. Newton defined the laws of the universe as he knew them. Three hundred-odd years later, Einstein came along. Should we ignore all Einstein's ideas, because his new world difficult to pigeonhole and makes some of us uncomfortable? Where does that get us? And, what about the people who LIKE playing with relativity theories? OTOH, Newton is still quite useful when playing in 1600 Sartar... er... at slow speeds.
>Deities have an independent existence from their worshippers.
Indeed they do. But the farther away from its worshippers the deity is viewed, the more fuzzy it gets.
Frex:
Objective: The Earth Goddess, the Bounteous, Mother of all All the
world mourned her loss in the Darkness.
Subjective:
In Prax she is Eritha, mother of beasts. Milk & meat are her great
gifts.
In Peloria she is Oria, mother of humans. Her daughters & sisters
(masks) are mothers of grains, animals, and gods.
In Sartar she is Ernalda, mother of humans, beasts, grain, etc. She
must be propitiated, or she will leave. She is not always generous.
Sometimes she is spiteful, and people starve. (THis aspect is missing
from Eritha, and I haven't seen it in Oria yet).
In Tarsh she has six faces, from virginal to elderly, generous to blood
thirsty.
Objective: The Sun God. Shines. Often linked to horses and raptors.
Subjective:
In Dara Happa: Emperorer. Dispenses justice. Also a fertility figure.
A creator of humans.
In Sartar: Elmal - A loyal thane. God of horses. Known for honesty and
some fertility.
Old Wendaria: an ersoon- - completely unimportant deity. Only
worshipped occasionally.
Pelanda: the ersoon linked to a male oppressor deity/figure.
Ralios: Ancestor of Galannini, the horse-hsuncheon.
Pent & Grazelands: Yu-Kargzant, warrior, ancestor, leader.
Sun Dome: not very important, except as the father of Yelmalio, (ruler
& fertility figure)
As Greg said, different cultures view the gods very differently, thought they do have basic similarities. Frex, no culture is going to view Ernalda as a Chaos god.
TG Compromise:
> Has there been any case in Glorantha where a God arrives uncalled by
worshippers?
No, but it's not clear that the gods ever used to do that, either. It's kind of a tree-falls-in-the-forest puzzle. How do humans know if the gods flitted about unbidden before humans arrived? The stories we have from humans before the great darkness - many in the Entekosiad, all mention humans having to invoke the gods then, too. But the stories do seem to agree that it was easier to invoke the gods then.
So, I agree with you that the most Gloranthan cultures agree that world has changed since the Darkness. But they don't all think of it changing in the same way. And most of them don't think of it as the classic Manirian "Compromise".
Before you go lamenting the loss of the old, "this is the way it is" basic version of Glorantha, read the newer material. Rather than wondering why "Humakt couldn't kick YT's ass if he were the REAL Humakt unless that foul scum YT CHEATED", you can wonder about how the local death god's role is influenced by the society. Frex, Humakt places a big emphasis on honor when worshipped in a society without a strong central ruler to enforce codes of behavior (proto-Sartar). This honor aspect receives less importance in a culture where another diety is looked to as the legal enforcer (Carmania). But no version of Humakt is ever likely to disavow killing and revere lying.
That's the way I see it. (And a lot of others who have read the newer Gloranthan lore.) Ignore the POV if you like, but understand that's where we're coming from with the ideas like "Orlanth the God has no overriding opinion on slavery".
Back to the grind...
Pam
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