Re: Giants and the River

From: jorganos <joe_at_K3yCYrIy9DfPPtuzzy0ezMaoY9xTF7yOZjqqsLVdLp9fCFQyL1hiDoBMCkA_UToWbrR1dE5v>
Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 07:26:36 -0000


Chris Lemens <chrislemens_at_...> wrote:

> An interesting question is where giants came from -- which
> otherworld? The same question is interesting for Dragons, too.
> Or are they native to the mundane world?

Very little is published on the Elder Giants. The Annilla cult in Troll Gods has a paragraph, and the Monomyth snippets in Gods of Glorantha mention a war - that the giants lost, according to the Annilla myth.

One answer is that there was no "other" world when giants and dragons had their strife. All there was was raw creation. IMG Elder Giants are made from this (as are true dragons) - they are the matter which forms the mountains, but that also is their muscles, bones etc., they simply choose how to represent themselves to the world. In doing so, they accept the limitations of the world while also gaining the powers inherent in that form.

We don't know when or why the giants became humanoid in their representation. The Blue Moon of Annilla doesn't appear very humanlike but as a ball of matter. (And was used as such by the younger deities...)

Giants feature as defunct Elder Deities (of no specified otherworld) in what was Genert's Garden.

Perhaps we could determine the proper otherworld if we knew how Genert's Garden became spirit territory (not implying that it was anything else at any time) in what is supposed to be theist north.

The Larnste myth has that Celestial Court (nowadays Gloranthan Court) great deity as a giant. One sowing the Rockwood Mountains, the eastern half of which is known to consist of many giant peaks.

> For a long while, this was my own personal preference: Giants
> are divine entities.

In the range of their powers: absolutely yes.

> Some are now known as gods. Others are not.

Annilla appears to be divine. IMO she's _not_ a form of Sedenya, although the two of them share manifestations (to wit: the blue moon that gets shot down near where Umath went down, too). She may well be a defiant entity, or have an otherworld of her own.

> Dragons were the original inhabitants of the mystic otherworld.
> They lost the war with the giants, who claimed their otherworld
> as the spoils.

Did the dragons lose? The Annilla cult puts her on the losing side. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the dragons won.

> The mundane world is what is left of the mystic otherworld, which
> is why they have no place to go. That remnant otherworld is also
> the source of common magic.

IMG each dragon is its own Otherworld. Not sure how the EWF revelations for Mongoos RQ or "Between the Dragon and the Sea" will turn out, but I always read the EWF faction info in KoS that some human groups like the "Here and Now Dragons" managed to transform their portions of the EWF into a collective draconic entity that participated in the Dragonkill as dragons. These dragons could be heroquested _in_.

> I really doubt, though, that this has anything to do with
> official Glorantha. As you point out, Orlanth has a draconic
> self, which he could not have under my theory.

Why not? The dragons could enter (or, in their own myths, dream up) the mundane world of Glorantha. Why shouldn't they be able to enter other worlds?

> So, my actual working hypthesis about giants is that "giant" is
>actually an amalgam for different entities, which term carried over
>long after the differences became apparent. I think "giant" is akin
>to a form rune. Gods, spirits, and such could take the giant form.

Primeval ones, at least. Like Larnste, Genert.

>So, just like you can meet people with a soul or a spirit, you can
>meet theist or animist giants. Some of them are effectively
>demi-gods; others are effectively grand spirits; I suppose others
>might be saints-like.

Somehow I see a hypothetical sorcery-world giant more like the Mostali "Vibrant Stone", i.e. manipulating matter, than Malkioni manipulation of energy and thought. Giants are a physical lot, not intellectuals.

>More speculatively, the parallel to dragons
>would be that dragons also are a form rune.

Or maybe a multiform rune? Dragons are mountain chains and huge firebreathing winged lizards. Elder Giants are big mountain peaks and huge humanoids. They don't "change" from being one state to the other.

>The war between the
>giantd and dragons thus becomes something of a struggle between
>form runes way back when the more primal runes were attempting to
>express themselves. (Of course, that's the monomyth version of the
>story.) If you like that thought, then the further one is that the
>man rune descends from the giant rune, just like the beast rune
>descends from the dragon rune.

>Pushing it even further, there
>could be a great tree - plant analog. Even further: Mostali -
>mineral.

I'd rather put this into the Grower/Maker territory. Both dragons and elder giants defy that duality. IMO they are even more unformed creation than those two (and Taker, for the trolls and other underworld denizens, as third member of it).              

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