I'm far better at throwing out ideas than making them actually work, but I'll try to answer.
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> 1) In your version, Caselein is successful because he taps into the region's forgotten Godtime, reminding it and its people of a great journey to the East. If that's the case, you seem to be suggesting that this myth is animist or divine. The initial Trader Prince population Safelestran in origin, and it doesn't sound like the Church of Slontos was particularly relevant to anything after the Closing. Is this true?
There could very well have been venerative/sorcerous type groups in Wenelia before/during the darkness....they just didn't survive, or at least didn't survive in a state to really pass on their culture. The tower of the False Sun in Fay Jee strikes me as more likely to have come from a sorcerous culture than a theistic or animistic one (to the degree that any of those had meaning before the dawn). But even if such a culture didn't survive, it may have left impressions on others....and other cultures may even have still been giving it minor amounts of collateral worship.
Somewhere there is the story/rite about the one good stranger, for example, who helped and went on his way (told now as contrast to all the other stories of bad strangers). Or people still came to this rock to make silent exchange with the elves, and they always brought one white pebble and one black pebble and piled them there when they did so, even if they didn't remember why or who taught them to do so. Etc.
In other words, even in the Godtime the area probably had a mix of cultures....just not as mashed together.
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> 2) If that's true, then who is Caselein a cultural hero for? He's not for the Wenelians, who seem to be a puree of Orlanthi, Hsuechen, Helering, and very localized animist worship. It would certainly explain why the Wenelian tribes, almost inexplicably, trust the Trader Princes as fair arbiters though. And he could be a cultural hero for the Trader Prince population, but being foreign transplants, I doubt they'd be as effected by the land remembering a forgotten myth.
I'm not saying that he is a cultural hero per se....more that if he had done his journey in the silver age or the like he may have become one, showing all the various peoples how they could work together. But doing his journey when he did, the message didn't really take as well, and all he managed to do was create a very niche 'culture' in the trader princes and their hangers-on. To put it another way, he scored a marginal success :)
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> The little Godlearner in my head wants to try a full on project detailing more of the history (post- and pre-dawn) of the region with an eye to identify the distinct groups and how they were blended together. But there's been enough Godlearner meddling in the area ;-)
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Yes there has! Plus, I think half the fun is that you never know exactly what lies in the next valley for sure :)
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