> IMO they have had to generate their own myths because their own
> got so messed up by the God Learners. In particular, I believe they
> had a Harmast-like person who performed a full Lightbringers Quest
> which helped restore the proper order (by getting rid of the God
> Learners).
The biggest flaw is that doing HeroQuests to remove God Learners is only adding fuel to a bonfire. HeroQuesting is what God Learners do and good gloranthans do not. There's a reason why in the following age that "A general religious conservatism resulted in a stunted understanding of the personal experiences offered by each deity" (Arcane Lore p7).
In particular since the Knowledge Assassins were after anybody with the ability to change the HeroPlanes (the Forbidden Secret) which means they assassinated anybody remotely capable of HeroQuesting regardless of whether they were for or against the God Learners.
On a tangential note, questing to get rid of foe X is poor shorthand. Harmast quested to find aid against Nysalor. He came up with Arkat and the result was another quarter-century of war in which victory was never certain. The Seven Mother quested to destroy the Carmanian Empire. The result was a decade or two of war during which most of them were killed. The Red Emperor quested against Sheng Seleris. The resulting goddess only slowed Sheng Seleris down a little bit. In short, HeroQuests do not provide magic bullets that make the foe disappear. In addition the God Learners and the EWF were not destroyed by hostile HeroQuesters but through their own unforced errors.
This is how I would see the religious development in Umathela.
The most potent threat against the God Learners was the Knowledge Assassins. They are described in Missing Lands as being elvish but I guess that many people in Umathela survived because someone in their family or tribe had joined the Knowledge Assassins and having conducted a purge (a little more than kin a little less than kind) took steps to ensure the rest were safe during the Doom of the God Learners. How else could the Malkioni have survived? Afterwards everybody owed obedience ultimately to the Old Man of the Woods or the Aldryami in general.
So afterwards religion in Umathela was broken and fragmented. There was a widespread fear of worshipping deities associated with the Monomyth because that led to HeroQuesting and HeroQuesting led to an untimely and gruesome demise at the hands of the Knowledge Assassins. Only gods that had distinguished themselves in the False Gods Revolt were exempt and even they were incomplete for in sundering themselves from the Monomyth, they had been forced to leave mythical parts behind (like say Worlath might have no myths associated with the Great Darkness).
That left a void in the religious lives of the Umathelans - not just the Orlanthi but also the Malki. They repaired this deficit by calling on long forgotten bits of lore handed down from the days before they were transported. Like say for calling Rain, one clan might summon winds from Veldru while another might invoke Keraun and a third a snowstorm from Valind. If anything was missing from within their own collected lore, they looked around for another clan who might have the rituals to do what they lacked. What they could not do was delve further into the mysteries of these deities to get the complete story because that was a road that led to unwanted visits from the Knowledge Assassins. The Fonritan deities were complete but because they hated elves, their worship was unacceptable.
So in the century or two after the Doom of the God Learners, you had the large faiths with a polygot nature of rituals and ceremonies that differed from clan to clan. However the power of the Knowledge Assassins was waning because the taboo against heroquesting had been so well kept. This wouldn't have mattered but the Knowledge Assassins felt their loss keenly and worried they were doing something wrong and looked for ways to regain their strength. And that was when the Wordless Prophet expanded the injunction against interaction with the heroplanes to a injunction against communication in general.
That worked but it wasn't long before Elassi the Stiffler took the logical conclusion that Communication in general was therefore evil and so should be wiped out. This led to the War Against Silence which everybody thought was against the Cult of Silence but in truth was against the Knowledge Assassins.
The immediate vocal opponents to the Cult of Silence were the Clamourers who repudiated the prohibitions against Communication in particularly the one against HeroQuesting. They could not do whatever the God Learners did because that lore was now lost. What they could do now was go on to the otherside and hear the truth from their deities. And it is this moment, you get a religious revival in Umathela ranging from the Sedalpists, the various tribes and IMO the Aldryami.
The effect of the revival was the wider faiths of Worlath and Ehilm became challenged by these new deities and cast down. Instead of a broad syncretic faith formed from isolated rituals of, the clans now worshipped organic deities united in some weak pantheon (some clans are homogeneous but they are in a minority).
On the particular point of the Lightbringer's Quest, I do not believe that the Umathelans have nine lightbringers because somebody performed a LBQ. Rather they have several lists of Deities, the most widely accepted list having nine deities who claim to have saved the world. Nobody has gone on the full Quest to prove it and it would a) be beyond the abilities of the Umathelans at present and b) probably re-awaken the Knowledge Assassins.
--Peter Metcalfe
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