>From my personal God Learner perspective, I found the "Orlanth is
Dead" theme overdone, too.
For one (objective) criticism, the Dead Zone is a localized magical reality - very much like the Glowline is, but apparently in place even before the temple nearby is begun.
If you are a Heortling currently doing business say in Dosakayo, your magic from Orlanth or Ernalda should still work as if nothing had happened, right? (As a good Heortling, you can renew it only via your clan wyter, but that isn't nearby, so there is no telling that something doesn't quite work back home.)
So what is different is that the connection between the clan (and tribal?) wyters to Orlanth and Ernalda is broken. Failing to reach Orlanth, they appear to fail Ernalda as well. All the worship energy fails to reach Orlanth or Ernalda, and likewise the magic from them does not reach the mundane world.
If the same ("prepaid") magic works away from the Dead Zone but not within, we seem to have a connection problem in the area.
The fact that the independent cults still have functional magic is baffling, too.
The other Lightbringer cults have functional magic. In their case, they don't rely on the clan wyters but have conduits of their own.
Elmal magic is up (but fails to feed the Elmali clans as Ernalda is missing). Now this is irritating, because Elmali clans use the same type of wyter as Orlanthi clans.
To complicate things, Ernalda magics appear to work within the Glowline. (Which begs the question whether Orlanth magic works there... after all, the Glowline encircles a different magical reality, and prior to Fimbulwinter Orlanth magic worked within the Glowline.)
Looking at all this and asking myself "who is to blame", I tend to look at Broyan and Kallyr. The entire episode could be explained by them making the first great wager of the Hero Wars, and losing (or forfeiting) all Orlanth and Ernalda magic until Iceland.
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