Orlanth Aspects

From: Bryan Maloney <bjm10_at_cornell.edu>
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 14:16:12 -0400

>I'd theorize that it's in part because at the Dawn there were a lot of
>cultures who worshipped Storm in some aspect. They all ended up worshipping
>Orlanth (who is after all a pretty major god -- his body is the air) but

To some extent, I would agree, however, I'm also prone to invoking vile monsters like the Godlearners or even the Lunars in explaining overly "extensive" cults. My way of looking at it was that there were about a gazillion different storm-related deities in the barbaric lands the Jrusteli came across. As part of their program to dominate the world via the Monomyth, they decided to invent or use a deity named "Orlanth" who would fold all these into a single cult. In addition, after the Godlearners got theirs, natural syncretism and assimilation occured, as you described.

An example of a "work in progress" along these lines might be foun in the "Gor" deities. Presuming that the Jrusteli intended to eventually gobble up the Yelmic cultures, they needed a way to subsume a potentially dangerous and hard-to-control dark earth goddess--the dread Gorgorma. Thus, they began to conflate any "darkish" earth goddesses they came across into the "Gor" cluster of goddesses, ultimately to use that as a handle to get hold of Gorgorma.

We are the Borg, you will be assimilated. We were the Jrusteli, the Borg will ultimately fail--we should know. We are the Lunars, the Borg will be assimilated.

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