hipsterinspace

There are several Orlanthi groups who have been separate from the Heortlings since before time, before Heort, when they were all Vingkotling tribes. They’ve had contact, I’m sure there are even pilgrimages, but they haven’t been the same group or had the same cultural practices for thousands of years. They’ve been shaped by the contingent factors of their society and its location. Do you have a source for this claim that they went to the Heortlings to be re-educated on how to be “Proper Orlanthi”? Plenty of Orlanthi clans have Seven Mothers initiates among them, even in Sartar prior to the Dragonrise. It’s far from out of the ordinary in the Provinces and Tarsh. Whether or not you want to enforce a strong taboo against Yelmalio among your Orlanthi, it’s vastly more mythically problematic to have Seven Mothers around, but they’re still there in significant numbers. Again, if you’d like to vary your Glorantha that way, you’re free to, but it has been made clear that this is not the case any longer. In the case of a Sairdite Orlanthi Yelmalion, they would know him as Yelmalio, explicitly the Little Yelm. This is what I mean. Many of them would be recognizable as clan-dwelling Dog Orlanthi, though since 1582 many have gone to the Sun Domes. There are places that recognize him as such but still follow the cultural lifeways of the broader Orlanthi.

Book of Heortling Mythology is an in-universe document of myths among the Heortlings from the First Age (note, specifically the Heortlings, not all Orlanthi). It’s an intentionally limited aperture that carries their particular biases, it isn’t representative of the cults and cultures as we know them in the Third Age. In contravention to Book of Heortling Mythology, some Orlanthi groups keep dogs (fittingly called Dog Orlanthi), some Orlanthi groups adhere to the Western caste system and worship the Invisible God in addition to the Lightbringer gods (prominently in Jonatela), and some Orlanthi have a significant minority of Yelmalio (as Yelmalio, not Elmal) worshippers within their clans. It’s also been said that in the First Age it was possible to worship Humakt through Orlanth, for example, but that stopped being the case at some point, and I’m not going to argue that it should be the case in the Third Age over a thousand years later.

You’re free to vary your Glorantha as you please on this matter and any others, but that’s clearly what this is. You demand textual sources, are presented with them, and then totally disregard what they say. There’s been ample textual evidence presented, but you are committed to sticking with your own absolutist view of both cults and culture, one that does not line up with what has been presented in the guide or in the numerous articles about the subjects on Well of Daliath.

As a people descended from fire and still very directly connected to it, I would think Oakfed will get some pretty significant veneration from such a tradition, as both one of the most important Fire spirits of Prax and as a son of Lodril and brother to their people. As the primary god/spirit followed by their people, Foundchild probably gets veneration from shamans for teaching them how to hunt to survive, and if the old material is anything to go by, probably offers Sureshot as a spirit cult. I don’t know that the Men-and-a-Half use dogs, but Brother Dog is spiritually and mythically important to Foundchild’s cult and practices, and offers the rune spell Conquer Beast. Perhaps a particularly powerful ancestor shaman might be able to connect with one of the great spirits/gods from their old home in Pamaltela to get access to Soulspear from Vangono or Fleetfoot from Jmijie, something like that, but that would probably be difficult to mythically reconcile in Prax where many of their analogues were destroyed by chaos.

Plenty of Neutral cults coexist within societies, even Orlanthi society. Yelmalio isn’t hostile to Orlanth, he has the same level of relationship that Waha has to Orlanth, neutral, and the two of them get along just fine inside of very insular Praxian tribes. Yelmalio and Orlanth both coexist inside of Praxian tribes without trouble. They share the same level of relationship that is shared between plenty of cults that coexist without trouble inside of Orlanthi society, they just don’t typically share rites, that’s what Neutral means. Maybe more important than Yelmalio’s relationship with Orlanth, which again is Neutral, not Hostile, is his Associate relationship with Ernalda, who is also Yelmalio’s wife. The cults can easily be given that basis to coexist in the same social order through the centrality of the Earth religion in the places that the now-Tarshites departed from. The Bell Temple in Filichet is one of the biggest Earth temples around, and as the article shows, there’s plenty of important Earth worship to tie Orlanth and Yelmalio together there. You’re free to disagree with what has been written, but it’s made clear that Elmal is a Heortling take on Yelmalio rather than Yelmalio being a Solar corruption of Elmal. People who immigrated from north of Dragon Pass into Tarsh brought with them their own native Yelmalio tradition. Yelmalio is perhaps more their god than anyone else’s. The Lunars didn’t convert them to Yelmalio, they had worshipped Yelmalio from before the Dawn, and for some that was probably a big reason why they left when the Lunars conquered their homeland, after all, the Red Goddess and Yelmalio are Hostile. As for your description of Yelmalio as a god of phalangites, that’s disputed here: One mistaken assumption is that Yelmalio is the god of pike warfare. He’s not, although the Spear and the Arrow are his weapons. His temples developed a means of fighting in an organised and disciplined manner for their own mundane survival, but that is a historical development, and not something from Yelmalio’s deeds. Elsewhere, Yelmalio is a god of herders, farmers, and cavalry. If you want a specific god of phalanxes, that’s probably a title that best belongs to Polaris more than Yelmalio.

Yeah, I think every superhero seems to be defined by being almost inseparable from the divine persona they’re identified with. Jar-eel is the Red Goddess. Harrek is the White Bear. Androgeus seems like a special case because they actually used to be a god way back when. Arkat, as maybe the most powerful heroquester of all time, seems to defy this on some level, but some of that might be wrapped up in the being Brithini, in being the avatar of two other gods, or in being born as the shadow of Nysalor. Harder to say with the Seven Mothers, they fully apotheosized after reassembling the moon, but certainly most of them were also prolific heroquesters given their accomplishments. I would agree that many heroes and all superheroes are illuminated: heroquest to enough strange places and things probably start to move in that direction, especially with the dangerous, experimental kind that Jar-eel and Harrek are both said to be very adept at. I don’t know whether that would be the source of their immunity to most magic, I’d think it’s more that they exist so fully on the other side that most magic doesn’t really touch them, but it certainly helps with navigating otherwise fraught mythic relationships to find new powers. Harrek is also mentioned as being a self-initiated shaman, which is terrifying, doubly so when his fetch is probably his god who he slew and bound (Argrath did something similar with the White Bull). Jar-eel, on the other hand, has her own Glowspot, something shared with the Silver Shadow of the Red Goddess and the Crimson Bat, making her both a powerful magician in her own right and greatly increasing the power of all Lunar magic in her presence. I wouldn’t think either one of them are sorcerers, though Arkat was, and if anyone had mastered all forms of magic it was probably him in his final form, if not as an illuminated mistress race troll (who are said to have sorcerer-shaman-priestesses among their number).

I get the sense that they wouldn’t find “Elmal’s myths” useful because Monrogh’s main contention is that Elmal’s myths are Yelmalio’s myths, but that his cult’s disconnection from Yelm and mythic and temporal subordination to Orlanth hamstrung them. Whether that’s true or not is another question, but in effect, Monrogh knew everything they knew and then said he knew some more, which he then spread as his revelation.

The big point there in what Jeff posted seems to be that, in contrast to the Pelorian tradition, Elmal is a mythically constrained version of Yelmalio. Sure, they are effectively the same god, but only the Elmal group gets associate status with Orlanth, who grants Shield, something that’s contingent on his befriending and ultimately becoming a hanger-on to Orlanth. I don’t think they refer to him as a Thunder Brother in any of the canon material, but that would make him even more directly subservient to Orlanth. In contrast, Pelorian Yelmalio cult gets Shield from Yelm, alongside one-use Sunspear for rune levels, a gift from father to son. Mythically they are independent, not subservient to Orlanth in any capacity, but also not subservient to Yelm. For Hendriki and Heortlanders, cut off from the broader Solar mythic complex, it makes a lot of sense to tie him to what is nearby and accessible, there were probably a bunch of heroquesters who made friends with or swore loyalty to Orlanth at the Hill of Gold (Elmal’s trading shields myth), but for the others it’s unnecessary to make that kind of compromise, and I’m sure they would see it as a compromise.

The settlers at Far Point speak Tarshite. Tarshites are the Orlanthi of what is now the Lunar Provinces and lowland Peloria. They have had long and often productive contact with Solar cultures, in contrast to the Southern Theyalan groups who were cut off for hundreds of years after the Dragonkill War and lived under the dominion of Darkness, Ezkankekko, paying tribute to his trolls prior to the rise of Belintar. While there are a bunch of Sun Domes in lowland Peloria, especially in Saird (plus two in Tarsh), Yelmalio certainly has minor temples, and there are undoubtedly clan and tribal temples that exist along the exact same lines as those of Orlanth in Sartarite tribes. The Sun Domes were important once, in the early Second Age, but by the start of the Third Age their importance had declined and most Yelmalio worshipers were farmers from regular clans. From the article I linked to further up-thread, conveniently linked again here: For almost 200 years [after 956, the defeat of the EWF in Saird], Saird was a melting point of Yelmalion, Orlanthi, Dara Happan, and Carmanian cultures. Chaos and dragons were identified with Ganesatarus the Devil, the Lodril cult was imported but Dendara did not take, every man was the Last Light against the dragons, and Yelm and Orlanth were viewed as the Rival Brothers – who would naturally quarrel unless held together for a greater purpose (usually by Yelmalio). …. But you can see from this, Yelmalio has been around in Peloria since the beginning. The only weird thing was the Hendriki Tribe that worshiped a limited and constrained version of Yelmalio… When you tell the story from this perspective, the Praxian Sun Dome Temple is just a weird footnote (“did you know that Yelmalio made it all the way to Prax in the Second Age, and there is a weird little colony of them still there! Wow!”), and the whole Elmal-Yelmalio thing becomes another footnote (“did you know that the rebellious Hendriking tribe had a weird little Yelmalio variant that was tolerated by the trolls and the Only Old One, but it died out in the 1550s when they embraced the larger Yelmalio cult?”). In short, they don’t have Elmal. When they migrated south after their homelands were conquered by Hwarin Dalthippa and the Lunars, they almost certainly brought those traditions with them.

I think we’re talking past each other. My point is that the people in Far Point are Tarshites who are from Saird. The Northern Theyalan-speaking groups originate from the Barbarian Belt and crossed into Dragon Pass from the North, Elmal is the foreign tradition from the south. They come from a place with native Yelmalio tradition that has persisted largely uninterrupted (though in several different forms) throughout time. They were able to travel to the Hill of Gold when the Heortlings were cut off by the crossline and inhuman occupation. That means that they have no need to convert to being something they already are. They would still know him as Yelmalio even if they aren’t phalangites. Yelmalio in whatever form is also pretty well known for fighting trolls, certainly moreso than the Heortling Elmal cult, who for centuries were seemingly content to live in a place ruled over by darkness, paying tribute to Ezkankekko and his Kitori. They’ve definitely retconned several things from WF15, even changing some things in a way that that doesn’t seem to make sense, like getting rid of the Ergeshi helots that the Sun Domers ruled over (being a professional warrior means it’s a lot harder to farm). Either way, the thing that they have emphasized strongly is that Elmal is a Heortling/Hendriki thing, and the people of Far Place are of Tarshite/Sairdite origins, the place Yelmalio comes from, they wouldn’t need the Lunar magicians to lead them astray. I like Elmal, I think that conflict is interesting, I just don’t think it’s going to play out among people who had continued contact with Solar cultures.

I usually hear this style referred to as OSR, Old School Roleplaying. It’s generally used for people who want to run everything like a hex/dungeon crawl, for which there are much better systems than RQ. I’m of the same mind as many here, I’d never give a player character a chaos taint based on the capriciousness of the dice. I wouldn’t want to rob my players of their agency like that.

Crucially, Sever Spirit is integrated into the Oath spell: if you break your oath you get hit with a Sever Spirit with an effective POW of the magic points stacked into it.

Given that he has Hastatus the spear god as a subservient cult, I have to imagine the Polaris cult in the upcoming Solar cults book is probably going to look a lot like what some people wish the canonical Elmal or Yelmalio was in terms of magic.

If you want Sartar Kingdom of Heroes Elmal I’d change the list to: Rune Magic: All common, plus Clear Sight, Cloud Clear, Sunbright, Sureshot, True Spear. Subservient cults - Beren provides Command Horse - Redalda (shared with Ernalda) provides Speak to Horse and training in the skill Understand Horse (Magic, 00%) - Urzani provide Dismiss and Summon Fire Elemental (small) Associate cults - Chalana Arroy provides Restore Vision - Ernalda provides Heal Body - Esrola provides Bless Crops - Orlanth provides Shield

I don’t think they’d think about it in those terms. They would have a shrine if they had enough initiates around, that’s probably the problem much of the time. In cities there is pressure to convert for the preferential trade, tax breaks, social advantages, and sometimes genuine religious experience. In the countryside there’s probably more pressure to do as your clan and kin do. Some might embrace the advantages of the empire, but I’d imagine people would be more suspicious.

I’d imagine you can, the RQ3 write up has shrines to the Seven Mothers that provide Madness. They seem to worship the Seven Mothers as a collective entity, a composite cult that reflects their deed of putting together the Red Goddess. It’s possible to worship just one of the individual mothers, it’s even possible to transfer initiations from the Seven Mothers cult into to one of the individual cults, but we won’t have rules for that until next year. Etyries isn’t one of the Seven Mothers, but she is a fellow Lunar cult. She is said to be a daughter of Issaries and is an associate of both. According to Well of Daliath a lot of her cult are dual initiated into Issaries.

I’d argue that Vasana is more likely to be placed into the role of Larnste than anything else, especially given that her god Orlanth, in his guise as Larnsti, has mastered the magic of change. That’s likely to be something that requires illumination or some other kind of mystical consciousness to really take advantage of, but it opens a door for that primordial mythic link without having to experimentally create something new from whole cloth. On some level every venture into the Green Age is going to be an experimental heroquest, there aren’t a lot of myths that people know of that time, but you probably want to minimize potential problems when the risks are so high. If you’re looking at the pregens, the one with the much bigger problem is probably going to be Vishi, where the conditions of his god’s mythology have not happened and should absolutely be avoided, killing Genert in the Green Age would be very bad.

The Coming Storm and Eleven Lights material is pre-Dragonrise, starting in 1618, so there hasn’t been the big exodus of Lunar cultists that happens after the Empire are ousted in 1625. I’d imagine it looks a lot different demographically when there’s a Lunar garrison in Jonstown of (at least on paper) multiple thousands. The Emerald Sword, the clan used to represent the hated Dinacoli in The Coming Storm, are at the level where they have more Lunar cultists than Orlanth worshippers, with the biggest cults being Ernalda, Barntar (in place of Orlanth), and the Seven Mothers. They’re all part of the same clan, which probably papers over religious differences with the bonds of kin, but the chief and his household are majority Lunar cultists despite having a “Lightbringer ring”. Ironically, the only Orlanth cultist on their ring is the representative of Eurmal.

In the material for the Red Cow clan from The Coming Storm and Eleven Lights, the 7 Mothers converts in the clan (and likely whole Cinsina tribe) share temples with the Lunar garrisons at the tribal center of Red Cow and intertribal city of Jonstown (a minor and major temple respectively). The Lunar Way is said to be more represented in the cities than in the rural clans, with temples of their own. In places where conversion was more widespread, I’d imagine it might be like parts of Tarsh, where the 7 Mothers rites are effectively syncretized and laid over their original Orlanthi cultural customs.

The Green Age is prior to the Sun’s domination, that was Yelm’s Golden Age. The gods and people of the Green Age were benevolently provided for by the goddess Ga(ta) and her children, the deities of life and the earth. It was a period of experimentation, novelty, creation, and bounty rather than the fixed order of Yelm’s rigid cosmic paradigm. It’s said to be extremely dangerous to visit, so wonderful and idyllic that it is difficult to leave once there. Any who don’t—or can’t—leave are likely lost forever. The powers of life, creation, generation, and the earth are going to be the main reasons someone heroquests to the Green Age. There will probably be a lot of strange flora and fauna, some of which might be able to be learned of or carried back into time as a boon. Dipping that far back into creation probably requires the quester to be illuminated.

If you read the article linked in the text you quoted, a bunch of clan-dwelling (i.e. Orlanthi barbarian not Sun Domer) Yelmalio worshippers from the place where Yelmalio’s cult began, Saird, migrated south into Dragon Pass centuries before, when their homeland was conquered by the Lunars under Hwarin Dalthippa. There are several Sun Domes in Saird, Mirin’s Cross was the center of the Yelmalio cult in the Second Age, but before 1582 they weren’t organized into Monrogh’s familiar temple phalanxes, nobody was (at least outside of Sartar and Prax). They still worshipped a god they call Yelmalio, they know of his Hill of Gold and could always travel there, they have his gifts and geases. Just because they’re not phalangites doesn’t mean they’re Elmal worshippers, they clearly aren’t, they’re not from the places where his cult existed in Heortland and Hendrikiland.

Kargzant is explicitly Lightfore/Yelmalio. The Grazelanders are the Hyalorings. They do not have a Little Sun; they are Pure Horse and have Yelm instead, there is no need for a Little Sun cult as long as they have the Vendref around to herd lesser beasts and farm for them. The Solar Pentans, on the other hand, are not Pure Horse and lack both the unbroken ancestal link and a group like the Vendref that would enable them to be Pure Horse, so instead they have both Yu-Kargzant and Kargzant, with the former being the god of nobles and their priestly caste, it strikes me as a similar arrangement to that of Yelm and Lodril in Dara Happa. Jardan is Yelm the Archer (and the Golden Bow), Jasad is Yelm the Elder, Henird is the Sun Lord, Dastal is Yelm the Youth; their descriptions match the Yu-Kargzant subcults in the core book. There's a Yelmalio cult to the north of Dragon Pass that remained in contact with the Pelorian Solar traditions for the centuries where the Heortlings to the south were cut off from them by the crossline and inhuman occupation. They wouldn't need to have Elmal because they already had Yelmalio. For them it was Yelmalio the entire time, even if they weren't organized along Sun Dome lines. Why would they need to have a revelation to convert them to a god they already worship and know the inner secrets of? There's also this, which goes into how Harvar took over The Far Place: It makes it clear that they don't have Elmal to worry about, at this point nobody really has Elmal to worry about, at least if you're not from the Enhyli or Narri clans of the Colymar.

From here: They're said to get along with one another to a degree, but they aren't part of the Sun Domes or settled Yelmalio cult, they remain part of their tribe and follow Praxian nomadic ways (see the Yelmalio section from Cults of Prax). They fought when the original Sun Domers appeared in the Second Age (again, Cults of Prax). The Impalas were some of the most enthusiastic followers of the White Bull in the Third Age, alongside the Bison Tribe, so I'd imagine some of them fought the Sun Domers when they acted as Lunar Mercenaries, and again as part of Argrath's host when he attempted a conquest of Sun County. There's also this, from here:

They appear to replace Pike with their relevant Ride skill, something of far greater use to their way of life than a pike phalanx. As for the removal of priests, they are a warrior society within a tribe of pastoral nomads with a strong shamanic cultural bent, not a rigid social order based entirely around a temple and its hierarchy. The way the cult fits into their way of life doesn’t seem to call for a dedicated priesthood, and if they do find they have a need for someone in that role, it seems like that’s what shamans of the Sky Gazers society are for.

One of the biggest Yelmalio cults among any playable group in the currently available material is in Prax among Impala Tribe, pygmy nomads. They are not hoplites by any stretch, given their stature they would probably struggle if placed in that role, but they clearly worship Yelmalio all the same. In the Lunar Provinces there are said to be Yelmalio clans in Aggar, Imther, Holay, and Vanch from a tradition significantly influenced by their horse-riding ancestors. In the various Sun Domes they might all be hoplites who fight in a pike phalanx, but that is clearly not the only way to worship their god.