Elmal Invictus

From: Andrew Solovay <asolovay_at_...>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 12:19:29 -0700


Greg_at_... wrote:
>
> Andrew S. wrote:
>
>> How about Elmal? In "Elmal guards the stead", he is killed by one
>> chaos god after another, but always rises again.
>
> I do not have my reference materials in front of me to check the
> precise wording, but if it says he was killed then the text is wrong.
> He was struck down, wounded, diminished, etc. but not killed.
> If he had been killed, he would have disappeared.

Interesting!

That makes me wonder--In Yelmist understanding, the sun died and returned, and this mythic event is replayed every night (with the sun dying and going to Hell at sunset, and rising from the dead at dawn).

If Elmal never really died, does that mean that the Heortlings don't see night the same way? That is, to Heortlings, the night isn't a time when the sun is *dead*--just resting, or perhaps "elsewhere". This might have magical consequences. For example, Yelm could be expected to have "self-resurrection" magic or quests. Elmal would not, since he never died--though he might well have "recover from grievous wounds" or even "turn out not to be dead when everyone thought you would be becuase your head got chopped off" magic or quests. But if an Elmali actually *dies*, Elmal has no magic to help him, because Elmal has never gone to the underworld.

Or am I completely off-base here?

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