Effects of the God Learners

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_bigfoot.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 21:12:37 +1300


Brian Maloney:

>How do we actually know that Orlanth and Humakt existed virtually as they
>are "now" known before the Dawn? How much of "true" pre-Godlearner
>mythology still exists?

Greg's written quite a fair bit on first age Glorantha including Arkat's Saga (unpublished), Harmast's Saga (a portion of it is up as the myth of the month at www.glorantha.com), the Glorious ReAscent of Yelm (avaliable from Wizard's Attic) and the Last Song of Horned-Ulf (in Wyrms Footprints). In all these works, there's no noticable difference between Orlanth (or Humakt) then and now.

Nor has Greg actually said anything about how the God Learners affected the mythology of Orlanth (as worshipped by the Heortlings) or Yelm.

>The Godlearners didn't need to necessarily rule
>the Orlanthi to take over their myths--I would speculate that this was
>one of the things that their deep space missions discovered.

If the God Learners could change Orlanthi mythology in such a way, then why didn't they change the myths of the EWF, Arkat, Brithini, Fonritans etc to make their gods cease to exist?

>Indeed, isn't there a statement somewhere to the effect that the
>Godlearners were surprised to discover that deities they created (and
>Orlanth is cited as one such deity) were independent to the point of
>ultimately fighting against the Godlearners?

The statement you are thinking of is the False Gods Revolt.

	The revolt of nature against the God Learners brought
	ruin to their human pomp and arrogance.  The start
	of the downfall is marked by the False Gods Revolt
	of 901, when priests of Worlath, Ehilm and even
	Jogrampur (an imaginary diety invented in a God Learner
	experiment) shocked the world by displaying effective
	magic and destroyed the University of Yoranday.
				Elder Races Book p39.

which doesn't actually support your contention that Orlanth was created by the God Learners.

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