Of Man and Mostal from peter metcalfe on 1997-12-28 (Glorantha Digest Vol 05)

From: peter metcalfe <metcalph_at_voyager.co.nz>
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 1997 21:05:47 +1300 (NZDT)

Stephen Martin:

AJ>>I am not an expert on what is in which written source, but pray tell;
>>in which written source does it say that the [...] Dwarfs are _not_
>>descended from the Man Rune?

>Dwarfs, on the other hand, by their own Mythos were _created_ by the
>Ancient Mostali, who in turn were created by Mostal. Nowhere in this
>whole series of myths (see both Elder Secrets and the series of dwarf
>articles now available on Chaosium's Web Page) is the Man Rune,
>Grandfather Mortal, Old Man, or any such figure mentioned.

This is hardly a complete refutation as there are many things that get dropped out of people's mythologies and many things that get added in. For example:

The RW Gypsies claim in their myth to be descended from the Pharaoh who drowned when Moses crossed the Red Sea. Their language OTOH demonstrates that they originally came from North India and not from egypt.
The Dara Happans deny that anybody ruled before the coming of Yelm. Looking at the Entekosiad OTOH reveals the existance of the White Queen who ruled before Yelm.
Virtually every Ralian's myths about Arkat will have lies, misunderstandings, omissions and deliberate half-truths. There may be a grain of truth in their mythology but I personally have my doubts.

>Nowhere does it say that Argrath is NOT Gbaji reincarnated, but that
>doesn't mean that he is -- in a world as incompletely described as
>Glorantha, lack of reference cannot be used as proof of something, can
>it? Shoot, that doesn't work in the RW either, as I recall. It can be
>used as _support_ for a theory, but certainly not proof.

But the _fact_ that the mostali are human based and use sex to procreate does imply that they are descended from the Man Rune. If they had a seperate origin then why were they chosen to have two arms and two legs, two eyes, a mouth etc? Why not something like the trimanes or the gobblers or the tinimits? In this case Occam's razor indicates that there is an omission (aka Gold Mostali software upgrade to prevent occurence of openhandism) of anything resembling Grandfather Mortal from the myths than the complete absence of grandfather mortal in the actual making of the mostali.

The immortality of the mostali proves nothing because it is not unconditional (unlike the mistress race trolls) in that becoming apostate turns one mortal - in this they are akin to the Brithini who are most assuredly descended from the man rune. Likewise the Morokanth and the Newtlings are not man-rune creatures yet they are mortal.

On a related note, I'm very suspicious about the myths which has Kyger Litor copulating with 'the man-rune' to begat the race of Uz. I do not believe that the original Uz myths would have such a mention in them. If anything they would follow the Rathori women and claim that Kyger Litor and Korasting were (note past tense) so fertile they could begat children without men. That would remove at a stroke any human connection yet it changes not the fact that the Uz are descended from the man-rune.

--Peter Metcalfe