Newish thoughts on elves

From: Lemens, Chris <CLemens_at_exchange.webmd.net>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 11:17:41 -0400


I've been thinking about Aldryami a lot lately. Hopefully some of these ideas make them playable, if still very strange.
  1. I asked a while back why elves would be cannibals rather than eat water, earth, and light, like other plants. (No, not air. Elves don't recognize air as a separate element from sky/light; rain is a manifestation of water; lightning is a manifestation of fire.) The reason has to do with their survival in the Darkness. When the Sky was Dark, the Earth was Stony, and the Water Burned, they ate their siblings' dormant, vacant bodies.
  2. Elves recognize six elements: Water, Earth, and Sky/Light and Darkness, Stone, and Fire.
  3. Chalaneron is a blue elf (associated with Eron), Vronkal is a green elf (the "Vronkali", after all), and High King Elf is a white elf, associated with Halamalao. That would account for historical associations between elves and Yelmalio/whatever worshippers in some areas. White elves are related to cacti. High King Elf's title is a double entendre. It derives from (a) the fact that the cactus forests were high up on the slop of the spike and (b) the recognition of his as the leader of elves in Genertela during the darkness due to his unrelenting heroism after the destruction of the spike. Vronkal is a different guy, a green elf. I suspect he is still alive and living in the winterwood, which is the remnants of the great Greenwood that used to stretch all the way to Dara Happa.
  4. A key concept for elves is "Unity". A good source for what the elves mean is the Unity concept presented in the Julian May Pliocene Saga, Intervention, and the Millieu Trilogy books.
  5. The Aldryami are internally divided over the traditions they received from the Darkness. During the Darkness, most of their gods and heroes were in Genertela. High King Elf and Vronkal set the traditions for the Genertelan Aldryami. The dryads set the traditions for the Pamaltelan Alydrami. It turned out that the Pamaltelan traditions were superior in staying power. The norther version has seven members on the ruling council. The southern version has seventeen. I think the northern seven started as seventeen, but the seventeen eventually became the Unity Council, on which there were eventually ten sports reserved for non-elves. Errinorou was the High King Elf reincarnated. He tried to impose northern ways. He did not go over too well with the Dryads.
  6. Even Genertelan elves are divided over their attitude to Osentalka/Nysalor. Generally, there are four possible attitudes:
  7. Who?
  8. Big mistake to try to balance Oblivion and Potential.
  9. Mistake in execution in attempting to balance Grower and Oblivion, leading to the dwarves and trolls balancing Taker and Oblivion in Gbaji.
  10. It was right and he was right. We still honor him.
  11. Elves have six seasons and a six day sacred time. The six seasons are named for the elements and are composed of six weeks of eight days each. The names of the seasons are ordered differently in the Genertlan and Pamaltelan traditions, resulting in different ceremonies being performed during those seasons, which results in different weather and different reactions to the weather in the two regions. The first three are the same in north and south: Sea, Earth, and Light, which mimics the order of their creation in Aldryami myth. In the South, it continues Darkness, Stone, Fire, which continues the mythic progression. In the north, the ordering continues Fire Stone, Darnkness, which correlates to some human calendars. The southern version is more effective magically. The northrn version may have been introduced during the Nysaloran era.
  12. Bebester the Taker has lots of interesting aspects. When presented as an image, she is usually a beautiful dryad carrying an axe. This is a very contradictory image for an Aldryami. She is the spirit of death and war. She possesses the powers of fire, stone, and darkness. She is the Aldryami trickster in the same sense that Zorak Zoran is the Uz trickster.
    (See http://members.aol.com/pmichaels/glorantha/uztrick.html, a truly
    excellent exploration by Peter Michaels.) Although adult Aldryami recognize her place in the world, she makes young and rootless elves very nervous.
  13. Sanarana is another interesting one. When presented as an image, she is usually not presented as plant matter of any sort (like a tree, an elf or a dryad); she is usually presented as an animals that eats animals
    (like a hag or a spider). She usually carries a blooming staff. She is the
    spirit of rebirth and renewal.
  14. Because all elves are reincarnations of spirits that had previous lives, and because of the strange mechanics of elfin reproduction, family lines are pretty unimportant. "Aldrya is the mother of us all." Discovering who you were in a past life is a way to heroic powers. Kinship among aldryami is primarily measured by being part of the same forest. The size comparison among humans would be the Orlanthi or Praxian tribe or the Dara Happan city. Relations below the level of the forest are much less important than sub-tribal relations among humans. Sprouting near one another is one aspect of kinship, as is having the same parents.
  15. Aldryami are animists. They tend to use integration with their own spirits, but may trap enemies in fetishes.
  16. The various Hill of Gold stories have grains of truth about how Zazakzor/Zasara ate Halamalao. The mythically correct sequence is for Zazakzor to each Halamalao, then Gata, then Eron, then Falamal, thus reversing creation. I think that, prior to each, there is a story about how Zazakzor took a part of the element combined it with an opposite portion of his nature, and made (not grew) the Taker's elements. The Taker's elements face off against the Grower's elements. Thus, you get Enorakka facing Halamalao at the site of his death. (I just made up Enorakka, in case you are wondering, but the parallel is obvious.)
  17. If Zazakzor the Taker ate Falamal the Grower, the digestive consequences (to put it obliquely) must have been the Taker as Bebester and the Grower as Sanarana. I get an Athena-like image of Bebester springing full grown from Zazakzor's, er, guts, sorta like in Alien. Sanarana would arise from Zazakzor's dead remains.
  18. Genert is the Gardener. Elves hold him as the proto-typical elf-fried
    (to put the Tolkienesque shine on it). I cannot figure out how he fits into
    the devolution of the Grower-Taker Seed. Did he arise during the moment when Grower and Taker were balanced? During the late stages of working out the Grower concept (say, along with the non-forest plants, such as the grain goddesses)? Nothing seems to be obvious about it.

Chris Lemens


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