Misc. stuff

From: Andrew Larsen <aelarsen_at_facstaff.wisc.edu>
Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 01:47:29 -0500

    A couple of questions about Orlanth:

1. What is his relationship with the Water Gods? He fights Magasta, and achieves the Well of Wisdom, and rescues/kidnaps Heler and Huraya, but what exactly is this all about. His relationship with the Sky deities seems fairly clearly hostile, and his relationship with most Earth deities is relatively co-operative, but his relationship with the Water gods seems less clear to me. Anyone care to enlighten me?
2. What is the Orlanthi attitude to adultery and concubinage? Orlanth has a wife who is clearly his equal, but he also has a concubine, Huraya, and he woos Inora as well. He may also have other women that I'm forgetting. So he's clearly not committed to monogamy. This suggests something of the Zeus-Hera relationship, with Orlanth being constantly on the make and Ernalda being jealous, but two women on the side doesn't seem like that much, compared to Zeus' total of 115 women/goddesses. And what about the Thunder Brothers? There's a lot of them--are they all Ernalda's kids, or are some of them Huraya's? Some presumably were originally mortal heroes, but part of the process of become semi-divine is usually the discovery that one's parent (usually the father) was actually a god.

    Regarding shapechanging, the general impression that I'm getting from the list is that the gods who shapechange themselves are generally the tricky ones, like Eurmal. Orlanth, being something of a trickster at times, might do it occasionally, but doesn't make a habit of it. It is a manifestation of the Movement/Change rune, so those who shapechange have that rune, but not all those who have the rune shapechange. Thus Mastakos and Issaries don't shapechange? Mastakos I think would shapechange, since he owns the rune and therefore ought to have a pretty broad mastery of it.

    Shapechanging others, on the other hand, doesn't have such a clear consensus. On the one hand, we have the suggestion that changing someone else's shape is a manifestation of chaos, mainly Pochorngo. On the other hand, Sartar could do it (which suggests that Issaries can as well, since Sartar was an Issarion heroquester), and TTrotsky says that Anaxial's Roster has stories about it. There doesn't seem to be an easy answer to whether it's chaotic or not.

    I rather like Mikael Raatovera's story about Zorak Zoran stealing Orlanth's thunderbolt. In the original Norse myth, if I recall correctly, there's a suggestion that Loki might have actually done the stealing, so I'd suggest that Eurmal stole the Thunderbolt, perhaps to get himself out of trouble with ZZ over some other incident. Stealing doesn't seem to be ZZ's style. Then in true Trickster form, he turns around and helps Orlanth reclaim it (or more likely, Orlanth forces him to help out--perhaps Lankhor Mhy fingered Eurmal for the deed).

Andrew E. Larsen

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