Actually, he has come up with a cover story that satisfies me as well. Instead of referring to their god by his proper name, the inhabitants of Yuthuppa refer to their god as The God most of the time, and sometimes those outside Yuthuppa mistake the title for a name. Particularly as Yuthuppa means Gods Boat, and it is, in fact, Anaxials Boat, so you can see it would be a natural way of referring to him. The cover story rings true, so its another one of those confusing little details that makes Glorantha seem more realistic, rather than a dodgy sounding coverup like most of the Elmal/Yelmalio explanations.
>As we all know, some of the earlier (and dodgier) Dara Happan mythic
>concepts (Hastatus, Sagittus, Hippoi, Alkor, Raiba, Yuthu...) flew almost
>completely out of the window when the DH WIPs were produced, but did so
>without any attempt to ground the later books in what "we know" 17th-century
>Gloranthans say about the DH gods. This is IMO a flaw.
I agree. A concordance, or an overview from a 17th century viewpoint, would have not only solved many arguments (though probably created a few), but would also have made much of the deep background stuff a lot more useful immediately in play. Knowing a whole lot of information about, say, Urvairainus was pretty much useless for most games until we had any idea whether anyone worshipped him anymore, or even remembered who he was.
>Have any Dara
>Happans, other than the educated priestly patriarchs, ever heard of Anaxial,
>or Murharzarm, or Antirius?
Yuthuppans certainly have heard of Anaxial, I think most of them are aware of him by that name, but they mostly refer to him as Yuthu. They are aware he saved humanity in the flood, and that he founded Yuthuppa, and he is the cities patron god. I think he is probably held in more reverence (and has more magic) than your average city god/ heroic founder. I can't remember the number of worshippers he had offhand, but it was in the list in EnclosurebuI think, it was thousands at least IIRC.
As to whether any outside the priestly patriarchs are aware of Murharzarm and Antirius as separate entities to Yelm, I don't know. One of the things most drastically missing from the Dara Happan stuff is a straight forward thorough description of the modern Yelm cult, which would tell us a lot about Dara Happan society.
Witness the absurdity of having to argue about 17th century concepts of Ccitizenship (and as it relates to membership of the Yelm cult) in Dara Happa based largely on 1st century sources, as we have done on the digest a few times. Yet this is absolutely fundamental to Dara Happan society and has not been made that clear (Lunar citizenship, more or less - Dara Happan citizenship, no).
Cheers David ------------------------------
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