Iiinteresting... okay if I offer a couple of reactions?
>
> Greg Stafford thusly:
> >
> > The Great Darkness was the End of the World. Everything ended. All the
> > differentiaton that had occurred during Creation disappeared. Life and
> > Death were one. There was not even really Darkness, except in the sense
> > of Absence. Everything went away. Everything.
>
> "There was not even really Darkness..." So while we might have
thought "Hey,
> for trolls the Darkness wouldn't have been so bad", that's wrong. It
wasn't
> a friendly Wonderhome-style darkness. Sure, there wasn't a sun
around, but
> that didn't help much for trolls--telling going up to a troll in the
> Darkness and saying "Hey, look, no sun! Isn't that great?" is like
going to
> a terminal cancer patient and saying "Boy, you sure have done well
losing
> weight!"
The process was gradual, of course. At first the uz must have been thrilled to see all the forces of Hurtplace being sent to their Underworld abodes. But when Chaos came in, and changed even the element of Darkness, they would likely have been sensitive about their weight loss.
> Probably the trolls don't call it the Darkness. (Any sources tell us
what
> they do call it?)
Hell sounds petty right.
Note too that darkness creatures do have some special powers to combat Chaos. That is because they are so close to---the Darkness recall "rose out of chaos" at the Creation of the world. But even so, they succumbed to the End of the World.
> > Who is said to have survived---Orlanth, Urox, Elmal, Enalda.
>
> [...who in fact all died, as Greg explains...]
>
> But it's probably significant, at least in a role-playing sense, that
their
> worshippers don't think of them as having died. (Especially in the
case of
> Elmal and Urox.)
The Orlanthings also see their god as having something special, as do the Ernaldings, the issarings, the Odaylings, the Yelmings, Doburdanings, Lodrilings, etc., etc.
This is due to the nature of their personal experience. They will have, or could have, had the experience of the god to whom they are initiated of enduring the suffering of the End of the World and surviving. It is from that deity's perspective. The Yinkinings know what it feels like to have been skinned and nailed to a wall, etc. and this gives them the insight of their deity. They likely know that without Yinkin having thawed Orlanth that one time, the world would have ended. They are personally aware of the critical and unique part their deity played to save the world, as well as having the knowledge that it was one part of the Big Picture. But the experience they have is that, without their deity, it would never have happened.
And they may well credit other things to that deity as well.
> To a Yelm worshipper, it's a key part of the mythos that he died and
> triumphed over death. To an Elmal worshipper, it's a key part of the
mythos
> that he endured all through the Darkness and never succumbed no
matter how
> bad things got. (Even though a God-learner might look and say, "They
both
> got weaker and weaker, they both stopped helping their worshippers, they
> both ended up in Hell holding the Great Net, they both
returned--what's the
> diff?")
Yes, that's the idea.
> So, for example, if you stab a Yelmist through the heart and leave
him cold
> on the ground, he may have a last-ditch "return from death" magical
option.
> If you do that to an Elmalite, his magic will be something more like "in
> spite of everything I'm not really dead". Similar practical effects,
but the
> feel of the heroquest will be very different.
You're getting it here.
> > NO GODS SURVIVED.
>
> Which we (now) know is the case, but probably very few Gloranthans
see it
> that way. A Heortling will tell you, "Ernalda died, and Orlanth passed
> living through Hell to rescue her". A Praxian will say "The Great
Bull lived
> through the Darkness and endured until the Dawn." (A Dara Hapan, on the
> other hand, will say "Yes, Greg's quite right. Shargash destroyed the
rest
> of the world, and finally himself, to avenge Great Yelm's death.")
Yes. See above.
> So KoDP isn't mistaken. If you go to an Elmalite clan, they'll say, "We
> didn't have to awaken our god at the Dawn, because Elmal never died."
KoDP
> is accurately reflecting that clan's (somewhat mistaken) mythic view.
>
> Is that a fair reading?
Yes, fair reading.
NOTE that it is slightly different for mortal people. Heort survived through IFWW, without the gods. Afterwards he reinstituted worship of Orlanth and re-established the relationship. The DH have their human survival story, elves theirs, etc
--GS
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Powered by hypermail