mfbrandi

But voices keep telling us — nurse, my pills! — that it is futile to distinguish between parent and child in Stormland: Vinga is Orlanth, and Vinga is Orlanth’s child, too. So maybe Orlanth is Umath, and Orlanth is Umath’s child, too. And Sky is both one and many and parent to Storm. So Orlanth killed his father, and he did bring “the right guy” back (on a cyclical, strictly entropic basis, of course).

And this fits in fine with Sedenya the Changer being one of the rebel gods who plots against Yelm (GRoY, p. 14). And sister/schmister — don’t let apparent differences of sex fool you into multiplying entities. Look at how the Thunder family keeps threatening to collapse back into Orlanth only. Smoke, mirrors, and the odd woad-dyed sock.

Well, I am always happy to contradict Tolstoy, so I’ll say “no”. Will Stan Lee send me a no-prize?

I agree that She-Hulk != Hulk, and that they are not sock puppets or masks of some unknowable Über-Hulk. I was merely navigating within the canon that Vinga is Orlanth — in some sense, and possibly in a quite straightforward sense. I am neither supporting nor attacking that bit of canon, but it is canon, right? The identity theory doesn’t need explanation, right? In the octopus–sock puppet theory, Shari Lewis is the unknowable Orlanth/octopus, Lamb Chop is Vinga, and Charlie Horse is Orlanth Rex.

Here are two ways to look at the thing: The octopus–sock puppet theory: The true Orlanth is unknowable by mortals, but on the end of each of their tentacles is a puppet; these puppets are Orlanth x, Orlanth y, …, Hedkoranth, Vanganth, and our old friend, Vinga; the Gloranthan mortals interact with the sock puppets — lucky them! The identity theory: You too can touch the face of god, who is fully present in every manifestation, and just as Hesperus/the evening star = Phosphorus/the morning star = the planet Venus, so Orlanth = Vinga, no ifs, no buts, no shell game, no find the lady, and no Shari Lewis. (I was going to call these the Transcendent Orlanth (1) and Immanent Orlanth (2) theories, but on reflection: poncy and unnecessary.) Bearing in mind that these are “theories” about a deity/deities, not about cults/subcults, according to the octopus–sock puppet take on things, Hedkoranth != Orlanth Adventurous != Vinga. Crucially, none of them is Orlanth, tout court, who remains unknowable. It seems to me that this could be handled so as to offend no one. However, if one picked one of the male or masculine sock puppets as the real Orlanth, but held all the others — including Vinga — still to be sock puppets, or hats, or disguises, my guess is that some people wouldn’t like that. In let’s-not-try-to-rewrite-canon mode, I like the identity theory. Worshipers don’t have to know all the identities (and can argue about them) — just as not everyone knew the morning star was the evening star — but no one’s god gets to be second-rate. It doesn’t matter whether you see Venus in the morning or the evening, you are seeing the same planet, the whole planet. There is no need on either theory to hold that the deity is essentially male or essentially masculine. How hard a group of Orlanthi lean into this will depend on their knowledge of the “mysteries” of their god/dess … as well as their mundane needs and insecurities. In play, you don’t have to embrace all or any of the canonical identities, and you certainly don’t have to heed anything I say. YGWV.

And presumably there is nothing mysterious or sense-stretching about this: when we are talking gods (rather than cults), Orlanth Thunderous = Orlanth Adventurous = Orlanth Rex = Orlanth tout court. Not many gods, but one god. Identity, pure and simple. Right? So the various cults or subcults may celebrate different aspects or achievements of the god, but their POW in worship all goes to the same entity. The worshipers don’t have to grasp this — though many will, one imagines — but we “IRL people” know what is going on, and we don’t need proofs or demonstrations: Chaosium can just stipulate identities, and that is fine. Now, gods are slippery characters, and doubtless they can change sex, gender, and appearance, and be in two places at once, so in Glorantha/from the characters’ point of view, “that can’t be Orlanth on the green, Orlanth is passed out in the pub” won’t get you anywhere. Characters need to engage in religion — dissection of scripture, religious experience, “magical proof”, whatever — to settle such matters. Clearly, if we as players did that, we would be crackers. It seems clear that Orlanth = Vinga is canon. (And I am not here to dispute canon: YGMV, so what would be the point?) This doesn’t have to be dressed up any more than Thunderous = Rex — it is a simple statement of identity, not an “ooh, how can that be?” moment for the players. If that is the case, I have to agree with @Eff that this should be handled sensitively, and if possible playfully — with non-masculine/non-male attributes and pronouns adhering to Orlanth outside of the cult of Vinga, and Vinga not seeming like a drag act (as I know I will get dumped on from a great height if I suggest that the Orlanthi are a bunch of barbarian conservatives who know no better). I am not going to make any claims about current representation of Vinga — I am not qualified — but certainly, this hasn’t always been the case: Hero Wars’ “girls can play, but they have to dye their hair and wear a skirt” (i.e. women dragged up as women, no?) was perhaps no one’s finest moment, especially as it seemed that Adventurous was open to women, anyway. (There was a statement that some Orlanth subcults were men-only, but either I didn’t look hard enough or none of those specified were. Maybe Rex if there was an assumption that no woman would get to be clan leader or king.) IMHO — and it is just my opinion, not holy writ, and not a call to arms — if Orlanth were to be deemed “all man” and Vinga just a dress he puts on to con “the ladies” into worshiping him, that would be kinda tasteless. Presumably, that is not @Jeff’s intention. If Orlanth is officially sex-changing and gender-fluid, what does everyone think of their representation? I am supposed to be shutting up, after all!

Sure, absolutely, and this is not an attempt to remake canon. Just having a bit of fun with: monomythic reductive tendencies; people who think that identity is a directional relationship. I would never try to subordinate Sedenya to Orlanth. Orlanth, Schmorlanth: I wouldn’t know him from Adam! (This is a callback to Saul Kripke.)

Well, anyone can pick it up and blurt with it, but I think people deserve a rest from my wittering.

I think we can mark this one officially kicked to death and abandoned in a rat-infested alley. This morning, I stumbled across Ron “Sorcerer” Edwards’ Why Glorantha, and brutally condensed and distorted, it’ll make a fine full stop:

I like this: whoever I am, I am certainly not me. It had to be a counting song:

But the distinction between day and night, life and death is an illusion, for if Yelm is the day, the source of all life (“allfather” — a title once claimed by a certain storm king too), he is also: And if Yelm = Death (“Notbeing …an absence, not a presence” (GRoY, p. 14)) — so the void, the end of all things — then not only is he the cause of his own disintegration — not another utuma! — but also (as Wakboth/Kajabor — also famously cyclic) the father of the moon and time and so the agent of his own rebirth into cyclic magnificence. (And if Arachne Solara has always seemed to have something of the dark about her, clearly she is also the sun spider.) Note also on Moon–Storm equivalence: Sedenya is famously not Entekos (if I understand correctly), but maybe she is Wrong Air. Is it worth trying to slide a cigarette paper between Umath the first rebel, Sedenya the Changer, and Lanatum the Thunderer? Clearly, we have been given toys we can play with in different ways: So with my mystic’s hat on, I say, “There is one myth — suicide, rinse and repeat — open your third eye and touch the divine — the one is many, all is one.” If I had a polytheist’s hat, I’d say, “These apparent identities are traps set by the Deceiver. Burn the heretic!” Godlearners: “Hat schmat! Identity schmidentity! Let’s freak out the rubes and blow something up.”

I thought “a big piece of his posterity” was a euphemism and that he’d gotten started on the utuma early, storing the severed bits in his pouch. (In my head: Julian and Sandy from Round the Horne.)

Done: Storm and Moon (featuring Vinga)

[Spun off from Vinga in Pavis ’cos this is nothing to do with Pavis] @mfbrandi said (because, you know, broken record: our worst fights are with ourselves): @Nick Brooke said (in Godtime — it is an eternal recurrence): And this is all part of my sneaky — well, OK, moronic and obvious — plan to bring the discussion back to subversive non-canon theories about Vinga. We know that there are Seven Lightbringers and Seven Mothers because the latter are supposed to echo the former. We know that Moon is the power of balance through cycles, but Orlanth’s great achievement (I am sure he’d claim the credit) was to kill the Sun and have it come back half the time — balancing Light and Darkness in a cycle. But the Sun is Light is Life, and Darkness is the Hungry Void and so is Chaos. So the balance Orlanth/Storm achieved looks a lot like the balance Sedenya achieved between Life/Fertility and Anti-Life/Chaos. And what are free will and change — surely dear to Storm — without time? The murder wasn’t a mistake, it was a necessity. As for the Moon and free will: Natha was “one of the earliest deities who acted on her own volition in the Gods Age” (Hero Wars, p. 82). Rufelza, we read, “is the Red Moon: red blood, red earth, and red rage. She was created when Wakboth the Destroyer impregnated the great goddess Glorantha.” (Hero Wars, p. 85). The cosmology in Cults of Terror speculates that although Arachne Solara’s “origins are mysterious and subject to speculation … there are strong indications that she is the ghost of Glorantha, the Mother of the Universe.” So the origin of Time in the ritual of the net echoes the birth of the Red Moon. Now Vinga is the Red Woman “the last defense for women. When a woman screams for help and it arrives, that is Vinga’s power. A woman who has taken the Red Vows is called a Red Woman. Ernalda subcult” Hmm … red earth, red rage, red woman — that reminds me of someone. So if anyone is upset that Vinga = Orlanth means that Vinga is “really a man”, they shouldn’t worry because Orlanth = the Red Goddess, so you could just as well say Orlanth is “really a woman”. And if when you squint and in a poor light, Sedenya = Inanna, well Inanna could make a man a woman and a woman a man. Humans’ failure to see that all is one, and all is change, and all is held balanced and spinning causes laughter in the middle air. At least, that’s what one whispers to cultists in crisis, and then one scarpers before the lynch mob arrives.

Hmm … I thought Storm hated Moon because they both claimed “the middle air” — that it was just another turf war, and that the “oh, no: chaos!” thing was just propaganda — but I invariably get these things wrong. In their way, the Storm lot are as much about balancing opposites as the Lunars: “no one can make you do anything” vs. “behave like everyone else”. And can illuminates discern any real difference between themselves and others? “We are all us” … even them.

Trouble is that crusaders may end up being a bigger local problem than a mere gang of rowdy alcoholics.

But as in the discussion of Vinga, there is surely always room for another take on those gods’ worship alongside the traditional one.

Sure, absolutely.

Just for the record, I am not saying that because there seem to be societies with gender rôles in Glorantha, we should all play sexist arseholes in Glorantha (not your wording, I know) and revel in it. No — yuck! I am saying that just as there is colonialism in Glorantha and some people like throwing off its yoke in play, some people might like to play to throw off the yoke of the patriarchy in the PCs’ own society. That is OK, isn’t it? To allow something into the fiction is not necessarily to endorse that thing. And to be able to overcome in the fiction what one cannot overcome IRL may be fun and even therapeutic, no?

[Emphasis above mine.] I did a double-take. I mean the Orlanthi do seem pretty hung-up. So I am in two minds about this. If the alternatives are [a] women will get back in the kitchen and like it, or [b] we wave a magic wand and despite all the Sky Fathers, Earth Mothers, and adolescent Stormboys acting out, down on the ground sexism was never there — if those are all we have to pick between — then I choose Team Brooke. But what about the anarcho-vegetarian, cat-loving sisterhood kicking against the patriarchal pricks of Waha’s miserable band of butchers? How about the women from Suzy McKee Charnas’s Holdfast books turning up on horseback in Prax and causing some trouble? You are “stealing” my enemies by de-fanging the traditionalists. IRL the links between myth, religion, and the facts on the ground are complex and maybe pretty loose, but aren’t we asked in Glorantha to buy into a much tighter as above, so below (albeit with a mechanism for tinkering with the above from below)? And, yeah, the creators — I have no inside scoop, I am just guessing — were probably way too into what we might think of as the problematic aspects of their creation, but rather than subjecting it to an audit from the Ministry of Truth — Waha for men only: down the memory hole — I kinda want to blow it up and watch the pieces rain down on the plains, annoying the already fractious rhinos. Of course, there could be mischief to be had in explaining to the youth of Prax, Sartar, or wherever that despite what the gods did and what the priests say, we don’t do it like that, we never have done, and we never will. I just don’t know.

AFAICT, a woman may join Orlanth Adventurous. In the RQ2 write-up, “Orlanth welcomes almost all beings who breathe air. This includes the Elder Races (yes, Trolls too).” Way back when, your only other choices were Kyger Litor and Black Fang — or to be a shaman. It would have been pretty harsh to retcon out of existence all those early female PCs: “When we said almost everyone, even trolls, of course we didn’t mean women!”

Sure, but let us not allow the forces of conservatism — Orlanthi or IRL — to play women and trans people off against each other. There is room for both. There is even room for the conservatives. I won’t be drawing a Venn diagram.

So keep it, using any of the justifications discussed here, your own, your nieces’, … or none at all, as really none is needed. On occasions like this, I always think of the cover of Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing: She’s a warrior woman BUT … So maybe — just maybe — don’t let Vinga be a clone of Orlanth (let her be that “warrior goddess who does her own thing”) and don’t let (every version of) the cult be a way of defusing rebels/revolutionaries/square pegs by making them honorary members of the boys’ club. But for a one-shot, I am doubtless overthinking it.

I suppose the might-makes-right stuff feels OK in this context — trying to convince knuckle-headed barbarians about one of their fighty gods — but I will just put in a plea for religious tolerance for those with funny ideas but no mighty thews or flashy magic. Maybe there are schismatic White Ladies (some of them gentlemen) who think that sometimes you just have to let the patient go. Perhaps they couldn’t resurrect someone, even if they could bear to contemplate it. They won’t be using special FX to make their point, but ask them and they, too, will have their “proofs”. Looking down on Glorantha from our “meta” level, let’s not say that religious truth lies with the biggest bullies — “God is on the side of the big battalions” — and let’s not have everyone in Glorantha think that it does.

Well, just think about IRL religion. [1] The Christianity we know and presumably loa tolerate: Orthodox, Catholic, a zillion kinds of Protestant (right down to the wee frees), Coptic, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and whoever else. They disagree on loads of stuff, including the nature of their god — just ask the Unitarians and the Quakers, some of whom are atheists, as far as I can tell. Co-religionists argue, claim fresh revelations, nail their theses to available architecture, and sometimes die — if not happily, then voluntarily — for arguments over the undecidable/imponderable. If Gloranthan religion is to live, it needs religious disputes. The Lunars have them, surely. The Orlanthi might have trouble writing their theses down, but I bet they can shout. [2] Cults get taken over, and the winners rewrite the losers’ myths. Running a religion is an Orwellian enterprise. But the old traditions may linger on in secret or in backwaters. (OK, maybe this last bit is not so IRL — or at least the image it conjures is a bit Christopher Lee meets Edward Woodward.) [3] Think about religious experience: you have a vision of a god; does it contain evidence that the entity you are seeing is a god, or is it just part of the content of the experience that you are confronted with the divine? (And there’s that atheist on acid who has almost the same experience but catches not a whiff of a god.) What does an identity between gods look, smell, sound, or feel like? It is a pretty abstract thing to prove. Proof is hard in religion and religious conversion is not about logic or evidence, though of course the convert thinks that their new belief has been demonstrated and that their old belief cannot be right. The world just shifts, and it is not a rational thing. So you’ve been told that Vinga = Orlanth, but what could prove it to be true if you don’t feel it anymore? And then your auntie Bob — a woman who has never carried a spoon, a sewing kit, or any of the rest, but who has impressive scars, a very sharp sword, and who has never been refused a vote — tells you a story about the true meaning of Vinga. I don’t want to push any particular conception of Vinga (or whatever other god you have in mind), but if you want it to, Glorantha can surely accommodate religious dissidents. Whether your Orlanthi confronted with such want to lean into their love of freedom or double down on their crazy conservatism is up to you, but there must be stories in it either way. Just — pretty please, for me — don’t re-invent the Spanish Inquisition, shunning is more than bad enough — maybe a small religious non-conformity tithe and a few badly disguised whispers.