> Subject: Helamakt for Orlanthi?
> I'm > trying to figure out who Helamakt is and what he has done
> in Orlanthi myths, using _Storm Tribe_ and _Thunder Rebels_.
> I'd like to get any comments you have.
I got intrested in Helamakt subcult immideately when i first got
Storm Tribe in my hands. And asked the same question! I had no
player charactersthough with calling towards the warrior rain.
So I had to take a less personal take.
This is how I dealt with him IMG.
"There was a bloody battle coming, warned worse than anything the clans had known since the Runegate - twenty years ago - and the Grizzly Peak - twenty years before that. Many were worried that this would be the "third score of years" with a disaster deathtoll on Humakt's path. The Rowing Sword's clan had gathered.
On the eve of the battle, while the gods of war were receiving the sacrifices, a new myth that everybody knew was revealed. They called upon Helamakt - not as Orlanth or Heler - but as an aspect of Humakt. The premiere war god: The Killer Rain Gale. And with spirits like that of the Renewing God, they made themselves warriors of warstorm. Such was the power of the ritual, that for the coming season all men (orlanthi) could call Death's power through Helamakt.
They fell on the enemy in freezing rain, like blinding shadows, searing the enemy with their bolts, they became the Killer Gale of the Falling Wind. I believe, unconsiously they invoked the Humakt's sacrifice of the Stormfall. The Enemy was scattered, dismembered and driven into dark corners of Upland spiritworld. In the morning air a great cloud like Ohorlanth rose over Kero Fin. But the terrible victory, had bitter taste. The Great Day came. Winds Stopped. All Magic Failed. And spring never came."
I made Helamakt's Humakt-subcult with following transcription:
Virtues: brave, true (..steadfast, unyielding, resolve..)
Affinities: death, honor
feats
Combat: entangling parry, shielding sword
Death: cold blood, killer rain gale
Secret: Fighting Storm, that acts as an affinity as per TR, ST but that can be used to augment Combat, Honor, Death affinities.
> My preliminary conclusions: For Orlanthi, Helamakt is
> Heler in the role of the loyal shieldthane of Orlanth.
That is my conclusion as well - with the exception that while Heler, indeed, is the namesake for Shield Thane of Orlanth, held in high esteem - he is not the only shieldthane of Orlanth, or the single Great Defender. (For example Kolat might have been against Karjakan)
IMG.
Helamakt is about being the Shieldthane of Stormking.
There has been many. I suppose that Orlanth himself served Umath some time. I believe if one searches layers upon layers on myths - one finds that the position of a shieldthane is ancient as four winds.
Therefore a lot of mythic potential and no fixed position to which storm god Helamakt is adhered to. The naming four War Winds may give some clue who were the original four thanes of the fighting storm.
I think every thane receiving position of shieldthane manifests Helamakt, even if shieldthaning for fury jarl.
> Heler took this role sometime early in the Storm Tribe
> era, after Orlanth freed him from Aroka. He fought for
> Orlanth against Worcha and at Thrinbarri.
Plausible.
> Heler fought on the side of the water gods as the
> Blue Ram until he allied himself with Orlanth sometime
> near the Storm Tribe era. He took the name Helamakt when
> he followed the exiled Orlanth in the Vingkotling era.
Also very plausible.
(And the contradiction a good argument in the peacetalks. :)
> "Uroth the Blue Ram is the primary form taken by Heler. He has shaggy
> blue wool, brass thunder hooves, and powerful horns. In this form, he
> leapt from mountaintop to mountaintop across all of Genertela.
> After each leap, he married a goddess and fathered sheep, clouds,
> or other creatures."
The thing with Heler is that he is able to change shape. He is impossible to define in rigid manner - even though sometimes Heler is solid. For understanding we need fluid concepts. Uroth may be fiercely monogamous on a certain cloudy mountain and openly infidelious on the next.
Heortlings always depict Heler a blueskinned guy without weapons, yet he is one of the most powerful war gods in the Storm Tribe. And staunchest Hara around.
"There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in mind." - Marcel Proust, Rememberance of Things Past -
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