Re: Orlanth Initiation

From: Jonas Schiött <jonas.schiott_at_...>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 01:14:16 +0100


(I seem to be having trouble with my ISP. So if this cuts off in mid-sentence you know the reason why...)

>> Im just about to take my players through an initiation ceremony and
>>it has got me thinking about the ceremony itself.What is the
>>comparable myth for Orlanth?
>
>Ok, off the top of my head (I don't have the sources to hand) the
>important myth, that of Orlanth's initiation appears in KoS, and
>involves Orlanth and his brothers being throwninto various pits, in
>which they meet and overcome enemies (Humankt gets thrwn into the
>fighting pit, but I cannot remember the others).

Orlanth lands with a bunch of Strange Gods, and after some initial bickering convinces them to work together so they can escape. There's a version of this in Growing Pains.

Now that I think about it, this myth is obviously a foreshadowing of the Making of the Storm Tribe...

>> I'd recommend taking a look at "Growing Pains" in Tradetalk 4(?) -
>> It's a tribal rather than cult initiation, but is definitely mythic.

Everybody in the tournament version was to join Orlanth, so it's both a clan and cult initiation. (Not so much tribal, we tended to see East Wilds tribes as weaker than Sartarite ones.) Partly this keeps it simple, but partly I think we did have some vague notion of everyone joining Orlanth first and specializing later on, if at all. And we definitely wanted to make a strong connection between religion and history, each clan having their own cultic idiosyncracies.

>It's available online, from Jonas Schiött's homepage (I don't have the
>URL, but it's available on the link collection on http://www.glorantha.com

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