<quote>
The unificary function of the "many I Foughts" is a God Learner artifact.
I have currently determined that the myth known as "I Fought We won,"
wherein Second Son overcame Chaos; is a strictly Heortling/Dragon Pass
Peoples myth. They didn't even share it with the other Orlanthi that they
discovered for the simple reason that they had their own tale of "How We
Survived the Darkness."
In many older (ie, RQ era) documents state otherwise. They are wrong. No
westerners attended I Fought We won. They too had their own version of "How
We Won Against All Odds." These collected stories were naturally collated
to be a single event by the God Learners. It seems from the data at hand
that the might have called them all to be "IFWW," hence originating the
error.
</quote>
I am going to try putting a spin on this. It seems to me that IFWW cannot be "strictly Heortling" though it could be "strictly Dragon Pass Peoples". I think I know that, after the dawn, the Heortlings, Uz, and Aldryami banded together in Dragon Pass because of a shared, fundamentally defining experience at the end of the darkness. There are a couple names for this that I thought I knew were the same: IFWW and the Unity Battle. If this is not true, what was it that brought ancient enemies together?
If it is true, it seems to me to be less than 100% true that the IFWW is a "God Learner artifact". It seems like it would have started existence as a Unity Council artifact. The God Learners certainly found it later and exploited it ruthlessly. So maybe it is like 80% true that it is a God Learner artifact.
I recognize that Greg was trying to quash a specific idea: that Malkioni participated in something like the IFWW known to Heortlings. His rationale certainly does so. It is not strictly necessary to his rationale for the members of the Unity Council not to have experienced a common IFWW. So I hope that idea survives.
Chris Lemens
End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #366
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