It depends on the nature of the catastrophe. Garangordos conquers Fonrit circa 500 ST (which is rather late IMO) so Fonrit has had about five centuries to recover from the Great Darkness and Fonrit is in Pamaltela where the devastation of the Gods War was less than Genertela.
If only the other hand, you meant that the Dawn Age civilization destroyed itself rather horribly as a result of the Sunstop Revelations, then I am intrigued. What sort of disaster do you think took place?
> Therefore Garangordos does not arrive as a prophet with a new religion
> and devoted desert warriors taking over an existing civilisation, but
> as an adventurer who lucks out with some enslavement magic and takes
> over, reinvigorating society (if not actually improving it).
I don't like the adventurer motivation (and enslavement magic is not what Ompalam is/should be about). Look at the other great cultural founding heroes: Arkat fought Gbaji, Alakoring fought the evil dragons. So the suggestion that Garangordos's motivation was to kill people and take their stuff does not sound right to me.
You may have simply meant exploring which sounds better to me but Garangordos still needs a better motivation than to just boldly go.
> Krarsht without Krarshtkids, at least that is the impression I get
> from Glorantha Bestiary. Still Krarsht, and perhaps still with the
> underground tunnels (of course! this is an RPG!), but without the
> kids. Perhaps Storm Bull didn't slice her up in Pamaltela so she's
> down there...complete.
I'm pretty much in agreement here. Krarsht is the Pamaltelan equivalent of Arachne Solara and the Krarshtkids are trying to incorporate the rest of Glorantha within her.
> The details of Ompalam, Tentacule, Darleester and even Jraktal confuse me.
I'm currently seeing Ompalam as a Pamalt equivalent - the same deity in two different religions (although the Doraddi would probably say that he was Bolongo looking like Pamalt). Thus when the Doraddi speak about Pamalt doing such and such, the Fonritan myth is about Ompalam. Where Pamalt emphasized kinship ties, Ompalam stressed duty. I think at the Dawn, Ompalam was worshipped in Fonrit and Laskal rather than being a new god revealed by Garangordos..
Tentacule and Darleester are more like religious practices to bring the worshipper closer to Ompalam rather than independent deities in their own right.
> I was using p42 of Revealed Mythologies:
That's my least favourite section of Revealed Mythologies and most in need of a rewrite, I feel. It makes Garangordos even worse than the God Learners (who did not tamper with such rituals) and even more effective than Arkat (who despite being the HeroQuester without equal still had to fight bloody battles left right and centre). Secondly Seventeen is too big and unwieldy number and I would have chosen Five.
> This looks to me like Garangordos, as Pamalt, doing experimental Heroquesting to release Ompalam rather than release Varama. He is twisting Pamaltelan/Doraddi mythology.
When I see the words experimental heroquesting, I reach for my gift
carrier...
Exactly how does Garangordos even know how to do this? Experimental Heroquesting is known only in Ralios by Arkat and his heirs whereas the God Learners didn't start heroquesting until they destroyed the Autarchy which is at least two centuries after Garangordos!
My advice is avoid the rules talk and avoid ascribing modern cynical motivations. Garangordos should be trying to recreate a great rite that hasn't been performed for centuries (just as the Princes of the Ten Tests were reviving the ancient Dara Happan Empire - they weren't perverting the existing knowledge). That gives him a motivation to travel all around Fonrit.
Why is he travelling to Fonrit? For example, Garangordos had a particular enemy in the Yellow Elves. He started off in Laskal. Yet instead wiping out the elves of his homeland of Laskal before moving onto Fonrit as most people would have done, he moves to Fonrit and wipes out the elves there. It seems to me that his folks were in exile.
--Peter Metcalfe
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