>Me> I don't think that Arkat has a meaningful role within the Loskalmi
> > (and Carmanian) memories of their war against Gbaji. They remember
> > Talor as being the hero who saved them from that Great Evil and
> > his association with Arkat was only passing at best.
>Talor = Light (& Right). Arkat = Dark (& Right/Wrong). Gbaji =
>Light/Dark (& Wrong). [later: Jrusteli = Light (& Wrong)].
>Whether this is the original Fronelan/Talorian belief or its subsequent
>Carmanian Dualist reinterpretation, I don't see why we should jettison it
>altogether.
Given that I've never seen this interpretation before, it's a bit much to accuse me of trying to jettison it. In any event, I am not convinced that the early Loskalmi would equate Talor with Light considering that his people are not Light worshippers and Talor's motif is a black dog.
I could accept Syranthir's mob associating Talor with the Truth and Gbaji with the Lie (given that his name literally means "damned liar"). Right AFAIK is a Jrusteli concept (cf Return to Rightness Crusade) and I doubt the Carmanians would accept that.
>Your account is like saying that the Fronelans have never heard
>of Arkat.
Well I don't see the Ralians or the Seshnegi having any meaningful role for Talor in their memories of the Gbaji Wars, despite the fact they have heard of him. Hence it is not a given IMO that the Loskalmi must give Arkat in a meaningful role in their mythology.
>Besides, even eliding Arkat, we still need to consider Gbaji...
Who is light despite your scheme and another prominent light god on the enemy side would be the Sun (halted famously at the Sunstop). So I do not see how the early Loskalmi can portray Talor's struggle as a War between Light and Darkness.
> > IMO [Syranthir's] dualism was a reaction to the intense philosophical
> > debates that had ravaged Loskalm since God Learner missionaries introduced
> > their revelations there in the past century. Syranthir would have
> > been one of those conservatives affronted by the God Learner doctrines
> > and saw it as an invention of the Devil. Dualism followed when the
> > forces of darkness started winning...
hmm. Should be forces of the devil.
>Talor offers a template for struggles of Light (T) vs. Dark (A),
But he never struggled against Arkat.
>I prefer not to believe that all this mythic baggage was created
>wholesale by Syranthir and his allies in response to the
>advent of the God Learners.
I didn't say it was created wholesale, I said Syranthir became dualist as a result of God Learner successes. Although the early Loskalmi might have viewed Gbaji as an embodiment of the Lie before Syranthir, I do not think that they viewed the Lie as being equal in power to God or the Truth.
>It is more satisfactory IMO for it to be a
>preexisting theme within the Talorian church of Akem.
Minor Nitpick: there is no Talorian Church of Akem, despite what the the Genertela Book says about Talor defending the fledging Kingdom of Akem. Talor founded the Kingdom of Loskalm and Akem is properly that property surrounding Sog City.
A more serious nitpick is that I do not believe there to be such a thing as the Talorian church. IMO, I think there were a whole bunch of likeminded Loskalmi states each with their own distinct traditions, churches, caste laws, forms of government and so forth.
The unifying glue of Loskalm would be the knights of each state, who recognize as being true brothers of Hrestol or something like that (this being Talor's achievement). At the same time, each state had its own criteria and doctrines for becoming a knight. So while Syranthir and other knights of Jorri may have devoutly believed in the renunciation of the Lie, another state might have been zealous monotheists and eliminated paganism within their lands while a third (probably Tarnwal) became knights by transmuting their souls to be harder than iron. That way, I can divorce arguments about what Syranthir believed from arguments about what the early Loskalmi believed.
FWIW although the God Learners did go a long way to erasing these differences, they still show through in current Loskalm IMO.
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