There is no fixed, authoritative, unchanging version of a myth. Not ever. There are as many variants as there are storytellers. The variants are what is most important. Some are more accurate (or at least, more 'useful') than others, but all that are used in cultic rites reflect one aspect of the truth, and can be used as a tool to tunnel deeper into the truth.
Myths are metaphors, truths and possibilities made concrete. The concrete is very real, very hard, fixed, and capable of splatting your brain open. Entire universes can be, and are, built of myth-stuff.
Any telling of a myth is incomplete. By definition. Any telling of a myth must be measured against the alternative perspectives of other myths that seem to reflect on the same events. Cults have different perspectives on the same event for different stages of life, different levels of gnosis, and different cults have alternative perspectives. All are useful. Cultic training blinds you as much as it helps you see. Experimental heroquesters use this fact to find back doors and secret links.
Myths are fragments of events that happened long ago, before time, and also in some sense fragments of events that are happening *NOW* and are still being resolved in the timelessness of the Godplane, with the outcome still uncertain. Myth and its associated ritual provide insights into reality and tools to face and mold that reality.
Myths are part of their own creation: contradictory myths can all explain the same event accurately. Your own understanding of a myth allows you to go certain "places", but also prevents you from seeing and experiencing many other such places.
Any telling of any Orlanthi myth in any Gloranthan publication is fragmentary and partially misleading, in that it presents one point of view as authorative and does not present the cultic training, ritual and questing used to illuminate, understand and concretise the myth. This is one reason why being a devotee is a full time occupation.
Ultimately, to understand a myth you have to live it, both in your devotion and on the godplane. Or subvert it, but on that path lies madness. :) (Or Hubris).
The Lightbringers Quest is about binding the entire cosmos together. For Heortlings, it explains the present universal order and how it came to be. Its the big bang, the origin of life, evolution, civilisation, Incarnation and Apocalypse all rolled into one. Even the Orlanthi telling incorporates sorcerist, animist and probably mystical events. Its doubtful that most Orlanthi devotees would ever comprehend completely even their own cult's teachings and truths about the Lightbringers Quest, and few heroes ever attempt it in its entirety. Let alone the expanded aspects told by other Lightbringers, the supporting though different perspectives told by Ernaldans, the non-parallel experiences of humakti, elmali, vingans! Least of all the seemingly contradictory tales told by other cults, let alone other pantheons.
Taking two fragmentary readings of the Quest and saying 'it has changed' or 'Orlanth has changed' or 'this means Orlanth is a moron' completely misrepresents and seemingly misunderstands the very fundamentals of myth.
John
What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.
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