>> Also, what happened to the Thunder Sisters? Or was >> Orlanth guaranteed to >> father sons on mortal women?
and received a couple of replies:
Jane Williams
> Vinga is one of the Thunder Brothers...
Yep, the one exception.
Peter Larsen:
> I'm not sure that Orlanth fathered any sons on mortal women.
Thunder Rebels p.225 mentions Niskis going around fathering, among others, Thunder Brothers. Mumela the Elf Princess doesn't sound like more than a demigoddess, if at all, and there are other examples.
We know for fairly sure that Janerra Alone was of mortal stock. There is also Drorgalar the ancestor of the Harandings who appears to be born to a mortal.
> His children were born before Time, when "mortal" wasn't a really useful
> classification.
This was the Storm Age (or even later), when mortal had a very useful meaning.
> Could you perform a heroquest to get Orlanth to father a
> child?
As far as I know, that was one of the standard procedures to get Orlanth's aid prior to Hantrafal discovering sacrifice.
> Probably, although it doesn't seem to be all that common (maybe
> it's just dangerous -- the only god-fathering I can think of off hand is
> Cragspider's experiments with Great Trolls).
Denesia the Lewd got the city god Raiba to sire Denesiod, in Imperial Age Dara Happa. Bina Bang got Lurker in the Dark to sire Pikat Yaraboom. Hon-eel had several divine lovers (Golden Bow, Maize God).
> The trick may be that with too
> little "divine essence" you get a relatively ordinary child; as you
> increase the closeness of the contact with the god you increase the chance
> of getting a demigod or hero but also increase the risks to the mother.
Spot on.
> I think all the "Thunder Sisters" are the Weaver Women --
> Orlanth's sons are Storm, his daughters probably take after their mothers
> (so most of the Storm Tribe daughters are Earth beings, his child with
> Kygor Litor is Darkness, etc.)
Ernalda's Weaver Women often predate Orlanth's birth, hence all the nifty marriages with Mahome's fiery brothers for about half the Ernalda subcults in Thunder Rebels.
Simon Phipp
> I thought that the Thunder Brothers were the minor descendants of
> Orlanth/Umath.
Minor e.g. by demigod birth status.
> Now you get the different aspects of Orlanth (E.g. OhOrlanth,
> Varanorlanth) as well, but you could treat them as devolved lesser forms
> of Orlanth.
I'm pretty sure that there were such mergers.
> I am not sure how many of the Thunder Brothers are from mortal stock. The
> likes of Vinga and Barntar have Orlanth and Ernalda as parents. I suppose
> Heort was half mortal and maybe Vingkot.
Heort was 7/8 mortal or so (dunno about Ivarne, but Heort is several generations removed from Vingkot). His demigod/god status was earned rather than an accident of birth. Janerra Alone appears to be a heroic mortal woman of the On Jorri hunting folk.
>> Also, what happened to the Thunder Sisters? Or was Orlanth guaranteed to >> father sons on mortal women?
> Well, Vinga is one of the Thunder Brothers, so I would guess that Brothers
> is a generic term to include the odd ones who don't follow Ernalda.
Hang on, the daughters don't have necessarily anything to do with Ernalda. Even while Orlanth received much of an initiation by his encounter with Ernalda, the adventures of Tat and Tol predate this.
I'm specifically not talking about daughters of Ernalda (by whichever father).
Andrew Solovay
> As I understand it, the female equivalents of the Thunder Brothers are the
> various sub-cults of daughters of Ernalda--most of whom, presumably, are
> daughters of Orlanth.
I really really doubt that. Many of Ernalda's daughters/handmaidens are present in the Golden Age myth, when there was no Orlanth or even Umath. Several are married to (mostly Allfather subcult) Storm Brothers, like Overdruva.
> Since we don't *really* know that *any* of the TBs had mortal parents,
Other than Vingkot, who receives a special Nomi Art foreground though - the mountain. Does this represent Grizley Peak?
> I don't think we need to say that Orlanth "only had sons by mortal
> women". In fact, given the Orlanthi hatred of adultery, I'm inclined
> to doubt that he had any children by other women after he married
> Ernalda (except, perhaps, while Ernalda was dead). But if he did,
> well, maybe he had daughters that weren't worshipped, or maybe some
> of the random miscellaneous goddesses
> actually began as mortal daughters of Orlanth.
I'm referring to Niskis the Lover, aka Dashing Veradash (who re-enters Storm Realm during Orlanth's exile).
Orlanth's exile, when Vingkot reigned and Orlanth was elsewhere, could well be a good time to have extra-marital children for Orlanth as well as for Ernalda. It could have been treated like a temporary divorce (some sort of opposite of a year marriage).
How does exile affect marriages, after all?
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End of Glorantha Digest
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