My thanks to those who responded
>From: "Weihe, David" <Weihe_at_danet.com>
>> The listing in the Prosopaedia says that she was born from her
>> mother's corpse, which doesn't make much sense, given that she's the
>> daughter of Ernalda and Ernalda wasn't killed during the Godtime. It also
>> offers a myth about B.G. running amok and slaughtering a bunch of healers
>> until Eurmal got her drunk. This suggests that her worshippers are
>> berserkers, and indeed she has the Berserk rune spell, but why use Berserk
>> when you can use Axe Trance and Great Parry instead?
>
>As example, the Goddess's corpse could refer to when the Earth Goddesses
>went to sleep after Yelm's death, with the comatose body seeming just like
>a corpse. Perhaps She wasn't originally Ernalda's daughter but of another,
>unnamed, Earth goddess, and then adopted by Ernalda. Etc, etc.
>
>One uses Berzerk because getting it is easier than getting both the Trance
>and Great Parry, or because it is easier to use than the other two together.
>Axe Trance seems like an all-out attack, while Great Parry an all-out
>defense;
>perhaps they tend to interfere?
My point is that Berserk significantly increases your chance of attacking, but it also significantly increases your chance of getting killed, since you can't parry, dodge, or cast magic, and there's a good chance you'll wind up attacking your friends afterward. Axe Trance, on the other hand, also greatly increases your attack chance (granted it does take MPs to do so), but you can still parry and cast spells, and you won't attack anything except your intended targets. Since you can parry, you can cast Great Parry and significantly increase your chance of surviving a combat. You don't get the freedom from fatigue and incapacitation, but if you can parry, that's not a real problem. On the other hand, Berserk seems to fit her myths more.
>> My own take on B.G is that she went on a quest to find the Shield
>> of Arran and to recover the Earth Axe from Zorak Zoran, and that she used
>> these weapons to kill a chaotic fertility spirit, symbolizing her own
>> abandonment of fertility.
>
>But she doesn't *abandon* fertility, unlike Maran Gor. Several myths have
>Her engaging in relations, and even having children. Granted, I cannot
>imagine that her mates last very long (except for Eurmal, who gets her
>drunk before sleeping with her), and I expect that she fosters out her
>young,
>but she no more abandons fertility than does Shargash the Destroyer.
The only place I can find a reference to that is in WF 9, and it seems kind of outside her cult's normal 'feel'. She's got the Dark Earth rune, which basically focuses on death instead of life and she occupies the Maiden position in the Babeester Gor, Maran Gor, Ty Kora Tek trio, which suggests that she's outside of fertility.
One reason I like that reading is that it allowed me to run the Impotent Bull mini-scenario from Tales 18 as a Babeester Gor initiation quest in which the character sacrificed her fertility to restore the Bull's.
>From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_bigfoot.com>
>
>> Wyrms Footnotes says that she goes invisibly and commands the
>>spirit of Silence, but nothing else seems to elaborate on this, and it
>>contradicts GoG.
>
>The GoG cult writeup is a shortform and does not include the many
>cult spirits that Babeester Gor would have access to. Merely
>because GoG does not mention that she gets a silence spell does
>not mean that her worshippers do not have access to them.
Hmmm. Suggests that there's a myth where she conquers the spirit of Silence. But what function does silence play in her cult? The silence of death? The silence of secrets (sounds more like Asrelia)? The silence of her womb (sounds pretty abstract)?
>>Snakepipe Hollow seems to suggest that she was turned into a
>>statue, but I haven't found anything to clarify this point.
>
>That's an idol of Babeester Gor, not the Goddess herself.
That's what I initially thought, but the text implies that the statues were people turned to stone somehow, and makes a point that her statue is defiantly facing the other way from the others. I can't say I particularly like this idea.
>Here is Greg's latest mythlet of her, which was part of the
>myth of the month at Glorantha.com several months ago.
Thanks for the mythlet.
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #159
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