> In my opinion, [Garangordos] slowly discovers the rulership by slavery encountering local spirits that remember Oabil, and lets that influence his concept of rulership, discovering a different aspect of Om-Pamalt or whatever the people he came from called their ruling spirit/deity.
Given that the Doraddi have slaves (Missing Lands p106) and the Artmali of Kungatu would have also kept slaves, I'm not sure that the Oabil-slavery connection is necessary. There's also a marked difference between Garangordos's conception of servitude under "Pamalt" as the supreme good and the Vadeli chattel slavery.
>
> One difference being that Ompalam appears to be a (mostly?) theist and not an animist entity.
>
Ompalam is a god and not a spirit. I'm shunning the use of misapplied worship and prefer to view him in a fashion similar to the Sun being worshipped as both a god (Elmal, Yelm) and a spirit (Kargzant, Varama). So while the Fonritans worship him one way and the Doraddi another, I feel the Aldryami have a third - although this is obscured within their religion - and that Hoolar hints at it. To round things off, I feel the Jelmre and Slarges/Pelmre/Lascerdans have their own knowledge of the land god. IMO the Artmali would have just worked with local deities through their mysterious tidal powers and so the southern Artmali would have followed Pamalt and the northern Artmali Ompalam.
Keith:
> So Ompalam/Umpamalt is, from a normal Doraddi POV, something like misapplied theistic worship of Pamalt, or a misconceived Bad Mountain copy of Pamalt.
"Ompalam is Bolongo thinking he is Pamalt"
--Peter Metcalfe
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