Help me out with Imarja

From: valkoharja <rintasaa_at_eI45fsynSsqQxletCcCJPx-XPWTTkiE878bj28QH1eD_N9zrXpLlP3Il8ehrH1q6mZ5>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 21:07:44 -0000

I must say the material we have for Glorantha is quite spoiling me rotten. The new Sartar books are exactly the sort of stuff we should have had for a few decades now. Bold, large scale stuff, clans kings and heroes clasing, and painting the cultures involved in vivid strokes. :)

As a nice bonus I have gotten my grubby paws on Esrolia, land of 10 000 goddesses. As one of my groups characters is a young Issaries goldentongue from Nochet, this is just the thing for me.

But... here's my problem. The mythology and culture of Esrolia comes back to Imarja again and again, and Imarja's mythology doesn't seem to fit the rest of the heortling stuff... or anything else really. She is described as a creator of life, and all in all like a great goddess and progenitor worthy of taking the place of Makan... but at the same time she's actually clearly a local goddess, not a pan-gloranthan power.

How do I reconsile this? The player is pretty well versed in Heortlings, and wanted to try Esrolia for a different take on a familiar culture... I think he'll go nuts if I try to turn it all into a sideshow where the real alpha and omega is a local goddess of geese. Additionally Imarja seems mostly to be a goddess for women.

All I can think of at the moment is that Imarja seems to be something like Kero Fin, with the authority over the land of Esrolia (as Kero Fin has in Dragon Pass), or that she's somehow a mask of Ernalda.

Uh... help?

  -Adept