King of Sartar? Or is this some other work I'm not familiar with?
> --I don't think #1 *is*
> "kill the sun". Elmal, the Sun, is one of the very
> few gods to live all the way through the Darkness.
The last light in the darkness... yes, good point.
If all else fails, check the myths.... KoS doesn't, in
so far as I can find tonight, state explicitly why
Ernalda went away. She's just noticed not to be there
any more. So let's check TR. "Hunger, death, and
darkness took away all that made life worthwhile,
until even Ernalda entered the Great Sleep." That's
P17. Orlanth killing Yelm (or someone a lot like him)
is much earlier "He defeated the Emperor, an
oppressive foreign god who stole breath from the air,
life force from the earth, and fluidity from the
water, and who banished all darkness to the
Underworld" and his marriage to Ernalda is mentioned
after that. So here, the sequence is:
Orlanth kills the Emperor: in the summary at the
bottom, "slays the Solar Emperor".
Orlanth forms the Storm Tribe
Orlanth marries Ernalda: "His Storm Tribe married into
her Earth Tribe" - interesting way round to put it!
Enemy gods ruin everything: Ernalda sleeps
Chaos invades, Orlanth cannot win.
Orlanth leaves, does LBQ, liberating our ancestors,
Ernalda, and the Sun. "After they had left, Wakboth
destroyed the Spike." After - interesting!
There's a snippet on p117 about the "Together Day" celebrations: "By dusk the women are gone, just as Ernalda left Orlanth during the Darkness.." and the married couples spend the next week and a half apart in commemoration of this.
P139: the descriptions of Orlanth's Hall in various ages. "Early Chaos Age:... Ernalda and many others are gone, and this saps the pleasure out of everyone, including Orlanth."
P143: "Orlanth used death in the last Contest, and killed Emperor Yelm. He then freed Ernalda and her family from the Court" - yes, Yelm, though this is beginning to seem irrelevant to the current discussion.
P146: "One time all of his brothers conspired, and helped by a thief and a trickster they caused Orlanth to be outlawed. This is the time of Ernalda�s �other guardians.� She got many strong gods to defend the Vingkotling peoples, and forged alliances with small gods to join them to the tribe. Here is a partial list of her temporary husbands: Elmal the Bright, Heler the Shaggy,...."
Orlanth is outlawed rather than "dead", but he's certainly "gone", not contactable. No harm to Ernalda. Once he's back, this goes on to describe attacks by Mostali, the Ice tribe, and so on, ending with "One day Ernalda sat down and counted her dead kinfolk. Everyone alive joined her in weeping, but could do nothing. Ernalda retired to her bed and slipped into deep and permanent sleep."
So yes. Ernalda goes to sleep, and the sleep is caused by the general destruction, which is *not* a direct result of the death of the Emperor, whatever his name was. You're quite right.
So that's what was being re-created, around a 200-mile radius of Whitewall. General destruction, famine, and death, ending in Erndala's magic stopping: and afterwards, once he'd noticed, Orlanth deciding to do something about it and going away as a result (or possibly, being defeated in battle and deciding to do something about *that*, which fits the description better). That may only be a few seconds later in mundane time, but it's later: cause and effect. It's perhaps worth remembering that Whitewall falls in Dark Season, when Ernalda is mythically asleep anyway, so her magic would be expected to be weak. (pp180-181 and p185 - too long to quote). She could have been defeated by the Lunars several days earlier, and most people wouldn't have noticed.
(Phew! Searching for every mention of Ernalda in TR takes time.... but thank the gods and Rick for PDFs!)
> ...all of
> which would weaken and pain Ernalda until she
> finally died.
Yes: "enemy gods ruin everything". Nice and vague: well, nice from the point of view of an enemy trying to replicate it! But at this point in the myth, Orlanth is very much alive.
> So perhaps the Lunar goal was to simply increase the
> intra-Orlanthi hatred
> and rivalry, in order to bring on the Darkness?
Makes good sense. And to increase general death, starvation, and so on. It fits.
I can't see anything specific to tie to a direct attack on Ernalda in the KoS account of the fall of Whitewall, but then I wouldn't expect to.
Didn't someone once manage to tie some of the Ernalda-related scenarios in BA to this idea, or something like it? Sorry, my memory here is very vague, but I have an idea it's been worked on before.
Failing that, this is probably a case of "nothing much known, invent to suit the purposes of your game." And that invention will be a separate discussion, which we could certainly carry out if the OP wants us to, given some hints as to requirements. But unless his players have very definite links to Ernaldan magic, preferably at WW, sweeping the whole thing under the carpet as "your characters have no means of knowing that" may well work. General death and destruction caused by the Lunars is not news :)
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