AF>> Hrm, I dunno about this. Does Yelmalio _have_ a favourite breakfast
>> cereal,
>...no pigs or grain (earth associated, and Yelmalio is severed from
>Earth); we just blew away any chance at bacon and eggs, cereal
>and milk, or steak (for Texans).
I doubt that Yelmalions can't eat grain. While Light Priests have to divorce earth cultists, Light Sons can marry only earth cultists. So Porridge is in. But since Yelmalio has lost his fire powers, using a lowfire to heat his food is sacrilege. So Yelmalio's favourite breakfast is cold porridge.
V S Greene:
>I'm thinking that lost draconic secrets of Pavis might
>resurface. And of course Pavic gives one some skill in Auld Wymish,
>although I'd suspect not the truly enlightening and empowering aspects.
I've been thinking about this. As Auld Wyrmish is learnable by humans (up to a limit), the part that was removed by the Inhuman King was not the spoken portion but rather the portion that allowed them to connect draconically to the Otherworld.
Previously the secrets of Draconic speech is only known by Drolgard and her lover, the Inner Dragon, and could only be obtained by undergoing a mystical dance. Now the God Learners(*) are said to have stolen the secrets in a _spirit_ raid. Thus IMO the portion that allowed the EWF mages to do draconic magic was a special spirit or 'Inner Dragon' that resided within them and it was this spirit that the God Learners caught and duplicated. The various initatory dances (such as the Waltzing and Hunting Bands) created the inner dragon within the listener/participant.
So the Inhuman King in order to devastate the EWF merely needs to kill the Inner Dragon and *poof!*, everybody's speak auld wyrmish is completely and utterly useless.
In the early stages of the EWF, people did outrageous things to themselves (cf the example of Rostand the Splitter) so they could increase their mastery of spoken Auld Wyrmish or at least think more like a dragonewt. Considering that Argrath does not have these things and his 'Garrath' secret-identity is very interested in Auld Wyrmish leads me to believe these techniques were by the invention of written Auld Wyrmish.
IMO written Auld Wyrmish would have bypassed the natural human limitations in speaking it. The unspeakable visual, empathic and olfactory components were replaced by lexical symbols which would be 'voiced' by merely thinking them. The effect was the same as if it had been spoken by a normal dragonewt.
(*) Of course, the late 6th century is remarkably early for God Learner activities in Maniria considering that elsewhere they only start an making an impact abroad in the middle of the next century. I suspect that the people who did the raid (probably Slontans or Nochet Malkioni) were later subsumed into the God Learner philosophy.
>Humans might at
>least aspire to draconic enlightenment even if it is limited, but
>maybe the dragons/Inhuman King might remove or reduce the limits.
I've noticed that it is possible for humans to do some sort of draconic magic *after* 1043 ST. Bostanios the Fang and his family (mentioned in 'Argrath of Pavis' in KoS) transform themselves into the dragons teeth in order to survive the Dragonkill War and Ingolf uses the Wings to survive the downfall of the EWF and even transforms into a Dragon to participate at the DragonKill War ('the One Dance').
Presumably in the world where Arangorf is dead, one has to quest to find an actual dragon to form a yrtgal with in order to do dragon magic. This would explain why Ingolf was immune to the curse of the Inhuman King. Argrath would have gained his Inner Dragon by summoning a dragon using the Giant's Cauldron as was suggested here some time ago. Or one could use the spells developed by the True Golden Horde that required the consumption of a (poached) Dragonewt Egg in order to gain an Inner Dragon. Or perhaps one could worship a hero who was skilled in dragon magics such as Ingolf or Argrath although this would be weaker than the other methods.
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #548
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