>We all know how everything started with the spike.
>
>At some point Orlanth left the spike and went exploring in the
>unmarked wilderness to its north. Later he led many people down it,
>and they passed through the wilderness, and settled it in places.
>>From what I've read in the main sources, they seemed to be the first
>settlers there (1).
>
>Some time later, Orlanth comes into conflict with the Bad Emperor,
>who had his empire farther to the north. At that time it was a well
>established and prosperous empire, well set in its ways.
>
>Soooo....I got to wondering things like:
>1) Was the empire already there when Orlanth came down off the Spike?
> 1a) If it was, did Orlanth know of it even then (and was he really
>just exploring?)
> 1b) If it was not, how did they get around the storm lands?
>2) Why did the emperor leave the spike? From the orlanthi POV it
>seems like the court on the spike and the old emperor were equally
>hide bound, but did he too rebel against the gods on the spike?
>3) Are such questions of time and geography meaningless, because
>neither time nor geography were the same pre-compromise.
The compromise created the concept of time so questions about the
order in which things happened before the compromise are pretty
meaningless. We are also viewing things though the myths of various
groups of people - Orlanthi, Dara Happens, Uz etc. and their myths
often don't agree.
>I was wondering if any of this sort of question is
>explained/answered/hinted at in one of the non-main-line source
>books? If so, could someone point me the right direction?
This sort of thing has been discussed in the past on the Glorantha
digest although I don't have a particular reference to point you
at. I suggest a search on the archives at
http://glorantha.tempelli.org/search.php using things like "Archane
Solara", "Gods War" and "Compromise". I doubt if you'll get more
than hints of the answer though.
--
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/