>I think we ought to clarify what we mean by Vadrudi.
>
>To me, the Yggites are a splinter group of Vadrudi origin who are
>different from the rest by adopting their island-based culture, IMO
>through the less violent union of Ygg and Nelarinna (compared to the
>origin of the merfolk) which should be seen as a parallel to the Pelaskos
>marriage (in Storm Tribe).
I don't like the idea of making the Yggites less violent. To me they should be just as violent and bloodthirsty as other Vadrudi. If you want kinder, gentler vadrudi then there's the Orlanthi. The Yggites are the people who sack holy places and draw disrespectful cartoons of the Invisible God. They were even eating children when Dormal contacted them (Missing Lands p44).
> > All of the Storm Gods worshipped by the Vadrudi
> > [are fearsome and terrifying]
>Vadrus' sons? Ok.
>The weak ones that followed Orlanth?
They are not weak if worshipped in the Vadrudi manner and they are only seen to follow Orlanth if worshipped in the spineless manner of the Orlanthi. Very much like how Gods have different personalities when worshipped by different pantheons.
> >>Demanding slavery? I just can't see that.
>
> > Even Orlanth has thralls.
>
>Orlanth was a Vadrudi, too, when he met Ernalda.
Ernalda? Who she?
> > But I didn't write anything about
> > demanding slavery, I simply said that their priests were
> > holy slaves.
>Your priests enter the relationship with their deities as slaves.
You make it sound like there's some conscious choice on their part. There isn't. The Gods chose whom they want as priests.
>To me
>this makes a problem as there are no rewards other than a neglectious
>protection from their deity's fellow deities, and maybe an occasional
>scrap of bread from their table. That takes a very twisted male Vadrudi.
Or, more likely, an unfortunate one.
> > IMO Vadrus has bequeathed a particular religious mindset to
> > his offspring and this more than anything else marks his
> > people as Vadrudi rather than Valindi. If the Vadrudi were
> > to worship their gods in the Heortling manner, most of them
> > would be a lot friendlier.
>Uroxi and Uraini are just as nasty, and they live in Heortling lands.
Uroxi are too thick to amount to anything.
>Valind, while one of the strongest and also most intelligent of the
>Vadrussons, also is the one son of Vadrus who made a treaty with Orlanth.
In Orlanthi myth. Do you really expect the Winter King will see things that way?
> > No, the magic is acquired by the Vadrudi and not the gods they
> > worship.
>By heroforming a successful Vadrudi god, and beating the enemy god on the
>heroplane, right?
No. By finding a godling or spirit and beating the crap out of it on the material world.
> > Insofar as the Vadrudi have priestesses, they are likely to
> > appear as mad crones and hellish witches.
>Slaves to the gods. I don't really see those brutalo machos
>approaching an ancestral giant as a slave.
Which is as it should be because Vadrudi Priests are not ordinary brutal macho Vadrudi but terrifying slaves to their gods.
> > They
> > simply will not give up their violent impulses even if it
> > means life will be more pleasant.
>And that's where IMG the Valindi, the Yggites, and those
>"below the ice" refugees parted from the Vadrudi.
Why should the Valindi and "below the ice" others part from the Vadrudi? Why is there this need to make them nicer. And if you take away all of them, who else is left as a Vadrudi?
> > If the "clan" decides to follow another god then the priests
> > start cursing left, right and centre.
>Somehow this doesn't strike me as typical for their deities.
Nor is deciding to follow another god typical for the Vadrudi. They are follow their deities out of fear. If they decide to break faith then their deities get old testamental on their arses.
> > They could consider the allfather aspect to be a god of slaves.
>Few of the Adventurous subcults known to the Heortlings would appeal to
>the Vadrudi.
What's wrong with Destor? If you portray him as a bandit rather than an adventurer, he appeals to the Vadrudi nicely.
> > Valind is clearly the more important god among the Vadrudi.
>Sure. Ygg is comparable to Vingkot. Valind is very powerful, but
>repeatedly showed weakness. He is too tame.
When and where did Valind show weakness? Don't tell me you believe those lying Skalds?
> > Ygg is notable because most of the
> > people encountered by outsiders worship him.
>Ygg is the cultural deity.
No, he's not. He's only thought to be the cultural deity because he is eponymous with those isles.
>A huge motherfracking glacier doesn't give you
>ideas how to survive. Ygg does.
I fail to see what Ygg gives as ideas to survive that Valind couldn't. Sailing and summoning freezing storms are hardly survival skills.
> >>There's not much to gain from the worshipping of Valind... more
> >>snow and ice ?
> > How to live in the coldest winter.
>Many, if not most Yggites prefer to live where that doesn't happen.
Nope. The strongest Yggs remain in the Isles. Those leaving are their weaker kin. As for preferring warmer places to live that's like telling the Praxian that the Wastelands are no place to live or the Agitorani that there are cooler places to love. Because they are Vadrudi, they see their current conditions as near heaven on earth, no matter what the Loskalmi softies might think.
> >>Valind's Winter Palace should represent paradise for the Yggites.
>Why?
Why not?
> >>Maybe they are buried into the Glacier, to lie forever within their god ?
>
> > It depends on the Vadrudi tribe IMO. The had the idea that some
> > Vadrudi clans might inhume their dead within icicles and pray
> > that they may become ice giants.
>Ygg's Isles are too tame for that.
Whence comes this tameness? Was it through hunting down the kids of other gangs and eating them during the Closing?
> > Well, I don't think the Yggites built ships until the Imperial Age.
> > Before then, they were mainly land dwellers in Bija or Winterwood.
>I disagree - if they didn't live on the islands, they wouldn't be yggites.
>If they live on the islands, they need boats.
No, they don't. They had steerable ice floes in the good old days.
>I see plenty of room for land-bound Vadrudi in northern Fronela, at least
>in earlier ages. But those wouldn't be Yggites (unless driven there at
>some time).
It seems to me that you are defining Yggs on the grounds that they must worship Ygg whereas a simple reading of Brond's serpent (Glorantha: Intro p34) indicates that the majority were forced onto the Islands by the Green Elves after the maltreatment of the sacred tree.
>After the Thaw, the Kingdom of War looks like a place where Vadrudi would
>thrive.
Too disciplined for the Vadrudi.
--Peter Metcalfe
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