Orlanth the Potter.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_csmail.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 01:18:59 +0100

Simon Hibbs, in another excellent and evocative post writes:
> He's also realy interested in pottery. Hralf goes on a
> Heroquest to Orlanth's hall and while there comes face to face
> with his God. Hralf is realy happy, and decides perhaps
> Orlanth would njoy taking up pottery in his spare time, after
> all it realy elps Hralf to relax. How much interest will
> orlanth show in pottery? Is it even remotely possible for
> orlanth to show any level of understanding of pottery? A human
> being could, because human beings have free will, and can
> choose what to be interested in. If orlanth were a free
> thinking being, you wouldn't need to perform much of a
> heroquest to make orlanth interested in pottery, you'd just go
> and talk to him about it, but you can't. Orlanth can't make
> decisions like that, because he is storm, and he can only ever
> be what storms are, and do what storm do. He can only manifest
> as a king of the storm tribe to the extent that this is
> compatible with his fundamental nature.

But... if I'm remembering my Thunder Rebels correctly, there _is_ a sub-cult of Orlanth for crafters, and by inclusion at least, potters, isn't there? If there is indeed, then this would suggest that either a) this sub-cult has managed to 'acrete' something to Orlanth's fundamental nature other than what it was 'before'; or b) that his fundamental nature is, and always was (or was changed to be?) something different from, and in several sense broader than, simply "storm" as such.

Without presuming to answer my own question, I think one might ask two others. Firstly, as someone else said, if there were no humans on Glorantha (and in particular, no Orlanthi), would there still be storms, and almost equivalent, would there still be a storm god? But also in the second instance, one might ask, would those storms, and would that storm god be unchanged, if this were suddenly the case? My own feeling is that those questions have very different answers.

Cheers,
Alex.

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