Tatterdemalion Fox

I'm spinning this off from the thread about Mahayana Buddhism the degree to which it's possible to interact with deities after they die, because, y'all, the relationship that the gods have with Death is something that's been fascinating me. (Particularly given where I ended up as regards the Skinning of Thed, which is a fragment I've only shared on the blog in my sig thus far.) Thesis 1: the gods can die like mortals can. This seems fairly self-evident at first glance: Yelm very famously gets Inigo Montoya'd by Orlanth and does not pass GO, does not collect $200, but goes straight to HELL until he can roll doubles. Vadrus gets torn apart and now it's useless to try to contact him inside of Time. The Devil is dead with only his ruby slippers and one hand sticking out from underneath the Square Mountain that dropped on his head. Many gods succumbed to Death after listening to Rashoran/a speak, though the bearers of Life and Death themselves were instead enlightened. (Perhaps if Orlanth had not learned how to save the world, and all the others too, Humakt would have been the last one left: left there waiting to blow out the candles, fold the quilts, and set Death as a crossbeam for the doors.) Once a god is dead, that's it, game over. Antithesis 1: but hold on, what about all the times that the gods die and that doesn't stop them? Orlanth freezes to death and Yinkin brings him back with his good good mlems (and that's not even acknowledging Wakboth shattering him into forty-eight pieces). Babeester Gor exsanguinates herself in order to drink her own blood. Tien gets his head lopped off and proceeds to kill Hrothmir and steal his head. It seems clear that the gods are not simply just people; they are capable of doing impossible things with their magic, and having a much looser relationship with Death seems to be one of them. Thesis 2: okay, fine, let's concede that a god dying doesn't seem to stop them to the degree that it would stop you or me. That's just because of the Ritual of the Net, obviously. When the gods turned their hands to the weaving of the world into the net which is named Time, they did so down in the underworld, so every god who was dead could weave themselves back into the pattern: Yelm returns in glory with Time as his cloak, Ernalda finds breath filling her lungs at her husband's kiss, Storm Bull trots back out with blood on his hooves and a smug look on his face, Shargash creates a conterminous zone and calls it Alkoth, so on and so forth. The gods of Chaos barely managed to squeak in holding the tassels, which is why they are losers and unquiet ghosts and suchlike. Antithesis 2: but hold on, even the gods that didn't make it back in have a presence in HeroQuests! Vadrus is still dead as the proverbial doornail, but it's not like there's a Vadrus-shaped hole in every story that he made an appearance in! When Vinga goes off to exterminate the enemy gods so thoroughly that not even their names survive, there's still an enemy to fight and not just "well, I'm at the space where the battle was supposed to happen, guess I'll have lunch and then wander back eventually." Rashoran/a comes back in cycles, and the Lunar goddesses are mended, and the line between the living and the dead seems very permeable. If you can kick Vadrus's ass while wandering outside of Time, you should be able to kick Ragnaglar's ass - or that of his son. Thesis 3: maybe it's because people believe that the Devil is trapped beneath the Block, and that Vadrus was shattered and nobody cares to try to put that asshole back together again, but all the good gods and goddesses were beloved enough that they were welcomed back into the world? And those awful things of Chaos crept in, too, because we need some sort of explanation for why Broos exist, and scorpion men, and other such things. Antithesis 3: you are treading perilous ground concerning the power of belief and its effects on the Hero Plane. Synthesis: still uncertain. I will need to prepare the proper rites and secure a copy of the Second Arkat Journal before I properly descend in search of the answer.

Of course, reading the Devil as the urge to say that the world does not deserve to exist lines up neatly with Teelo Estara facing up against him, dried red paint on her throat, and a life of poverty and fear and rootlessness stretching smaller and smaller behind her, and finding that she does not have a justification for any of it, after all. And then down she tumbles until she is caught by a net/web/shawl/goose’s neck. To say nothing of the Lives of Sedenya account. I’m rather open about my obvious bias for the Theists (or I’d like to think I am); They Are All Us, you might say. Perhaps all the idols should be smashed and the proletariat liberated from recursive self-defeating thought, but I’ll miss all those little shrines from my walking tour of southern Sartar. Especially that moment of looking up at a bronze statue of Sedenya and thinking: oh, so this is what you meant.

The Devil as an urge to flip over the board and wipe it clean. (Bear with me, even if you don’t have shades of Mordred in your Wakboth.) The urge of the Devil as entropic destruction and reveling in it, of reducing everything back down to nothing; if there has been good, let it be perverted and broken to show where it has never been justified, and if there is evil, let it be justification to speed up the dissolution. The great victory of Orlanth at the end of the world was in saying: the world is broken, but it is still worth saving. In rejecting the void-urge to give up, give in, and put away the chairs before turning off the lights. The Devil is everywhere in the whole broken manifested world, and still we live in it. And every year we tell the story of how the world and the gods were judged by the void, and how they bore up under that judgment and chose to live anyway, just like we do. And if Argrath isn’t stopped, eventually he’ll wipe the board clean, himself, or so one version of the story goes; he’ll declare that a world that contains the Red Moon and the gods that allowed his suffering are both unworthy in his eyes. And who will be left to say, again: the world is broken, but it is still worth saving? (And what is under the Block? Metal, like the corpse of any god, only this is metal that makes the world sick. Catch the more literate Storm Bulls putting up signs around the Marsh that say THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR! WHAT IS HERE IS DANGEROUS AND REPULSIVE TO US!) (I would have said petroleum, instead, but that’s claimed already.)

There was, there was not. 3.1: When I descended, I met there the Devil, named Wakboth. 3.2: He overthrew me, and then I overthrew him. 3.3: From his mouths rose the chant: MENE MENE TEKEL WAKBOTHSHIN. 3.4: And by MENE, he meant “I have numbered the days of your kingdoms and brought them to an end.” 3.5: And by TEKEL, he meant “You have been weighed and found wanting.” 3.6: And by WAKBOTHSHIN, he meant “Your kingdoms have been handed over to me to devour as I please.” 3.7: So to you, Death of Empires, I proclaim these words: MENE MENE TEKEL SEDENYASHIN. - Excerpt from the Castle Blue Sutra We have precedent: the way to the Spike and the Celestial Court is shut. No one can find their way back. (Now some, they find their way to the Court of the Emperor, and it certainly seems to be on some great mountain, but that cannot possibly be the Spike, now can it?) “Who cares for you?” said Teelo Estara, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

I love these two pitches, but I am obligated by the Curse to add in two more much less serious explanations for “herding alynxes.” 1. All sheep have ancestral memories of Voriof being defeated by Yinkin “Murdermittens” Kerofinson, and are thus wary of getting on the bad side of even Sleepy Timtom. 2. All alynxes have access to the hitherto-unexplored “Herd Sheep” spirit magic. A small burst of spiritual power and the sheep all fall into line.

That’s a mid-sized herding alynx, and what a beaut. Big for a housealynx, mind you, and nowhere near how big the wild ones get. My grandfather said he once saw one as big as a bull, up among Quivin’s cedars, silent as Xentha as he padded from shadow to shadow— but surely that was a tall tale.

Let us hypothesize, for a moment, the existence of the legendary Dogs-and-a-Half. How could any normal dog be expected to keep up with God's People? Perhaps they died out; perhaps they went feral, becoming another peril of the Praxian plains; perhaps only a mighty deed justifies the rite to create one. Or perhaps Argrath found the secret again, and returned them to Prax like the Auroch to Sartar. One might draw a line from that hypothesis to the Skinning of the Wolves, afterwards. Only the mightiest hounds fight against Telmori brothers as equals. (Shall we name one Huan, and awaken him?) Not that any proper Sartarite has any truck with them, given Yinkin's Race Up The Tree, but Argrath's hardly proper anywhere he goes.

Wasn’t Valley of Plenty pulled from sale and then republished specifically to change it from HQG to QuestWorlds? Isn’t the QuestWorlds SRD the only legally available version of the rules previously known as HQG for anyone who didn’t manage to snap a copy up before the HeroQuest trademark was sold off? I understand the concerns about folks trying to recreate Hero Wars material, but restricting use of QuestWorlds sure seems like it’s saying: if you want to make anything narrativist for the JC, you’d better already be In The Club. On the third hand, for all we know, this is stalling before the proper QW release, at which point various FAQs will be updated. And what’s absolutely certain is that this is well in the realm of speculation by this point. (Bleakly funny: the directive to just buy the older HQ books, as “most of them are available in print and/or PDF format from Chaosium,” in that FAQ.) EDIT: Orlanth on a bicycle, this forum hates trying to copy/paste things on mobile. I apologize for the sudden change in font size there at the end.

Yes, the line itself does come across as confusing: perhaps it's gesturing towards campaign structures like The Company of the Dragon or Valley of Plenty? Not scenarios for Glorantha, precisely, but intended for others to use in making their own campaigns. After all, the whole Six Seasons trilogy is explicitly playable across any of the three Gloranthan systems (even poor orphaned 13th Age), and Valley of Plenty is a campaign framework for QuestWorlds now. Or it's just as simple as "oh, if you want an answer to this question, go to a different document which will tell you the answer, which is no."

Observation: the story of Tien and Hrothmir suggests that it is sometimes more difficult to kill a god than one might think. At the very least, some troublesome deities found awful ways to preserve their existence. Observation: though Than found himself a replacement for his head, it had a tendency to rot off his shoulders, and so it was needful for him to have it replaced regularly. Observation: the Broos, who cannot make things grow, are skilled at making use of every part of their prey, especially the skins, and have a one-sided adoration of their Mother. Conclusion: no, the Witch does not have two hands at the wrist, one brown and one red. Do not look any closer. Further Consideration: where did Hon-Eel learn the secret of the Husking Bee?

I was wondering when you’d show up! Welcome! I’d invite you to feast, but it is a dishonorable thing to make a man break his geasa. Instead, since you have more resources and experience than I do, let me ask: where do you think the association with Thed and goats came from, from a Doylist standpoint? It’s nowhere in evidence in Nomad Gods, and BoHM saves all of its goat imagery for Ragnaglar and Eurmal, but it’s a very popular fandom association despite that.

There was, there was not. When First Son was born, the Mother tossed him out the door and shut it after. First Son was strong, so he did not die. But soon he knew what Hunger was, so he stood on his legs and beat on the door. Mother, I’m hungry. Mother, give me my food. Mother, give me my house. And the door opened, and her hand came out, all sharp nails, and it went down his throat. She tore the Square Thing out of him then. Then she made her horn sign against him and shut the door after. And all the weeds around him drooped and died, and the ground under him became wet and bad for stacking. It was all shit, was what it was. But soon First Son became hungry for herd, so he took his strong hands and beat on the door. Mother, I’m hungry. Mother, give me my brothers. Mother, give me my friends. And the door opened, and her hand came out, all sharp nails, and it went down his throat. She tore the Three Line Thing out of him then. Then she made her horn sign against him and shut the door after. And First Son looked around at the shit, and he realized that it was all shit, was what it was. So for lack of anything to do, he sat in the shit and beat himself until he ached. Then he realized how very hungry he was, so he rammed his head against the door. Mother, I’m hungry! Mother, I want my wife! Mother, I want to fuck! And the door opened, and her hand came out, all sharp nails, and it went down his throat. She tore the Two Triangle Thing out of him then. Then she made her horn sign against him and shut the door after. Then First Son knew he was fucked. So he pissed on her door, to mark his return, and went out into the world of shit to find everything he was hungry for. But it was all shit, was what it was. He felt what was missing like stones in his stomach. (But before he left, a window opened, and a little round white face appeared there, and smiled. She spat on him, and told him it was her best of gifts. And it was.) In the Dark Places, the winds swept down upon First Son, and there were riding people singing on them; and instead of running away, First Son roared and screamed and stamped. He tore one riding person down and broke its back; he tore another down and broke its skull; he tore a third down and spat on it until its insides all came out, shit and blood and all. And that was the first time First Son laughed. Then he heard laughter back, and the chief of the riding people came down off his wind, and lifted his helmet with the goat horns high. This wind king demanded an account from First Son, who could fight so well and had the best of gifts to kill with. My mother she gave me no food or house. My mother she gave me no brother or friend. My mother she gave me no wife to fuck. She took my Three Things from me, with her nails all sharp, and did the horn sign against me. Fight for me against my enemies, then. Your bitch mother thinks she’s taken everything from you, but she doesn’t know the Skinning Song, or the Goatherder Song, or the Law of Victory. And as payment for fighting in his wars, Father Of Us gave First Son a herd of goats, and First Son was hungry no more. But Father Of Us taught First Brother the Betrayal Song, too, for singing against his enemies. Why was he surprised when we met Hole In The World? He taught us the Betrayal Song, after all, and the Skinning Song, too— And we were so happy that Mother had given us a brother, after all.

Allow me to clarify my own position on what is and is not in BoDR: Chaos. The last time that I heard the myth of Thed attempting to rape Orlanth, several months ago, I did what research I could to try to find its provenance. The end of the rabbit hole that I came to back then, somewhere in this forum, pointed towards BoDR as the source, and I had to content myself with that, seeing as that BoDR is effectively a dead link for me, inaccessible. I apologize for being indignant concerning that specifically, although my point as to the accessibility of the myth may yet still stand. We'll see. When I say that this is characteristic of the way you talk about Glorantha, please understand it as a compliment. This attempt to map out a theory of the Broo is, by turns, methodical and cynical, and I mean that as a compliment as well. A grounded cause-and-effect rooted in a magical biology that cannot be sustained when the world changes, misunderstood by the Heortlings who only go so far back as the accusation in the throne room to understand why their world is haunted by ravenous monsters looking to preserve, through atavistic instinct, their almost-forgotten golden age. These are good thoughts, worth rumination. And I thank you for the compliment. This I can see as a very controversial play performed in Boldhome after the Storm Bull cult has been all but exterminated in Sartar. Is it a resurfacing truth long suppressed by Uroxian orthodoxy and the threat of retaliation? Or is it an attempt to convince the rebellious Sartarites that the Storm Bullies were, in fact, worshiping a liar and a brute, and therefore should not be inconveniently mourned? So too, it leaves the motives of the Unholy Trio ambiguous, perfect for post-performance discussion. Are there circumstances in which the invocation of Chaos might morally be justified, o Heortlings? And if you will cry over Ragnaglar, who you have so often hated and spat upon, who else might you be willing to reconsider? They say the Seven Mothers' is open all night long, if you want to continue the conversation...

If that is not the case, I would be very interested in seeing this myth sourced.

I do not appreciate nitpicking about a myth which is from the out-of-print zine The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Chaos (1995), itself a supplement to the out-of-print book Lords of Terror (1994), particularly when that nitpicking is used as a dodge. Do you have anything to say about the quoted paragraph and what it means? One thing which endeared me to Greg Stafford and convinced me that we had similar appreciation of mythology was his insistence that mythology is better understood through the oral storytelling tradition than through the literary tradition. It sharply highlights the ways in which passing on mythology (as, say, in an Orlanthi youth’s initiation) is an artistic expression in and of itself. The stories that a given storyteller chooses to recount, the details they include, and the parallels that they make are all part of this artistic expression. Mythology, as with many things that are concerned with conveying meaning about the numinous and the universal, is serious business, and we must pay attention to these meanings. When you tell me this story, are you listening to what you are saying? Today, in modern times, we experience a vast diversity of peoples and cultures who have gathered here, drawn by the wealth, peace, and well-being of our land. Each brings their own stories and tales of the ancient days. Many are lies, however. Many are inappropriate for most of us. So, we must choose carefully if we wish to progress spiritually and obtain our eternal bliss among the gods and ancestors. I was not speaking about Orlanth. The way you keep reorienting to him, by reflex, is telling— as is my own and opposite reflex. What does it tell us, do you think? This is Ragnaglari hermeneutics. I make the sign of the Horns against it.

Now, I am sure that some of you have said to yourselves: “Tatters, you ignorant elura, grain goddesses are intimately connected to the geography of Genertela! You can’t just make up one that’s been lost without ripple effect changes all across Genertela! Send that Thed right back to herding goats where she belongs.” And firstly? That’s fluffy tail discrimination, and Ura willing you will all be punished for your crimes. But secondly, I don’t have an answer for that. I’ve got three. Answer 1: Thedela is underneath the Rozgali Sea. This is the painless slots-right-into-the-canon option, and it's got a sense of narrative to it, too. Events that Thed herself helped instigate mean that everything that used to be hers is tir-far-thóinn, land under wave. I can envision Broo idly picking through pottery shards and stones washed up on the shores of Prax, perhaps keeping them as charms or incorporating them into fetishes. Answer 2: there is a perfectly good wasteland right next to Dragon Pass, isn’t there? Thed’s first appearance in the canon was in Nomad Gods, wasn’t it? Maybe when Tada went out to fight Ragnaglar, there was something personal on the line, having watched the purple-headed grain die out all along the Zola Fel, or worse, become a thick tangle of briars and swampland. We can only speculate on what creatures died out without their preferred food being available. This is a spicy enough option, but we can go deeper. Answer 3: The Battle of Earthfall was very personal for Wakboth. Coming home always is.

And the name of that demigod? Armin Tamzarian. But when Orlanth sought to destroy it, Wakboth parried, and with a single stab he cut Orlanth into forty-eight pieces. Any lesser god would have gone into all forty-nine. But as it was, Orlanth was barely able to blow out of there. Even so, if this Orlanth was involved in the Lifebringer’s Quest, we can respect the classic “imposter lives up to their lie” narrative.

And you improve on this immeasurably with one sentence. Stolen, eaten, incorporated as a mytheme.

Sometimes you will find the Nameless Brother during an initiation, or something that has his face, at any rate. Down in the Pit, or in Orlanth’s hall, there he will find you, and he will offer you instruction. He is handsome, and he is well-shaped, and his eyes and hair are wonderfully dark. He wears woad and honors won in battle. Like men you might know, he is funny and easy to like; like men you might know, it is impossible to ignore that he would hurt you without blinking, if you gave him any reason to. He knows how to say things that sound familiar, but that is a trick, too; if you listen to him, he will teach you the Storm-Opens-Earth charm, or the Goatherder Song, or the Law of Victory, or the I Hungered I Ate secret. These are things you cannot forget once you know them, and which only the best men can overcome. Trick him if you can, get your back to a wall and your arms over your face if you cannot. Do you think Heort never knew pain? But pain fades. (And if you were to ask him about Thed, he might shrug, and smile, and say: turns out she wasn’t too good for me, after all.) Sometimes you find him on the road to the Devil, instead. There is no safe way past that we know. Some of you will do as he asks, like Storm Bull did, out of disgust or fury or pity, and your hands will be stained. Others of you will remember Orlanth’s Laws, and tell him that Kinstrife is no small thing. But he will goad you cruelly, he will call Chaos down on your head, he will beg for the world to drown under the weight of nothing, and his voice will break as he screams for you to come back. You will remember what was done to him, afterwards, when you try to sleep. Then the Star Heart will flicker within you, and you will remember why we all fight the Predark. […] There was, there was not. When the woman we are speaking about came to the camp called Gagarth, she was wearing the necklace named Seseine. Her breast was smeared with saffron, and her hair was garlanded with flowers from her father’s house. Copper anklets were on her feet and fine gems were her bracelets. As I said, she wore the necklace named Seseine. So she was, and she threw herself at the feet of the Nameless Brother. From her came forth a torrent of words: that ever since he had shown her his Storm-Opens-Earth charm, she had been overcome with yearning both day and night— that she had been tricked by false friends into testifying against him before the Law Staff— that she had sent them away, and kept only Little Poison Tongue as her thrall— that she was his thrall by way of enchantment, and that she would be his prize both day and night, if only he would have her. And she brought with her gifts, too: the feast that Little Poison Tongue had prepared, and fine furs stitched into mantles, and a dragon which danced in the winds to be his herald, and the doll named Rush Urn, and five copper boxes, each with their keys. So the Nameless Brother gorged himself upon that feast, and the best of the meat he kept for himself. As he did this, she danced in the center of the camp, and she sang praise to the King of Gagarth, and her feet were bare on the earth. The light that glittered off the necklace named Seseine could be seen in all directions then, and he could see nothing else. So he withdrew into his tent to show her his magic again, to do what they could do with each other. Only, they began as before, with him on top, but when he grew weary, she climbed on top of him. The flowers fell from her hair, which was the curtain of their bed in the camp called Gagarth, and she spoke this spell over him: Before heaven, Before earth, Before the waters, Before the dark, Nothing moved on nothing, Nothing entered into nothing. Before the gods, Before the runes, Before me, Before you, Nothing moved on nothing, Nothing entered into nothing. Look into my hand. What, do you not know that Death is in Life? And he saw that Death was hidden inside of Life, then. And he would have killed her, then, only that the food he had eaten turned into a trick inside him. And he rolled over and voided himself, then. This is called Earth-Smothers-Storm. Then the woman we are speaking about emerged from the tent, and Little Poison Tongue was squatting over the coals. They departed together to the little square house that had been prepared. The Nameless Brother followed after them with a howling gale, only, Great Bubar barred the way and would not let him pass. And in her father’s country, the woman we are speaking about rubbed ocher onto her belly and spoke this spell over it: Before heaven, Before earth, Before the waters, Before the dark, Nothing moved on nothing, Nothing entered into nothing. Before the gods, Before the runes, Before me, Before you, Nothing moved on nothing, Nothing entered into nothing. Look into my hand. What, do you not know that Death is in Life?

I see being oblique has gotten the both of us nowhere; apologies. You say I am repeating something I have said before. I shall say it again. Shall I say it again? Your foundational text for how we are to handle the problem of Thed in Glorantha is 1995's The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Chaos. This zine was comprised of material that did not make it into Avalon Hill's Lords of Terror, as edited and published by Stephen Martin, who was in charge of developing and designing LoT. The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Chaos has not been reprinted, is not available digitally, and the myth you have quoted from it does not appear in 2009's Book of Heortling Mythology or either the first or second edition of King of Sartar, which are still available for purchase and are among the most extensive sources we possess for the corpus of Heortling mythology. In fact, it appears nowhere but The Book of Drastic Resolutions itself, and though it is material that was intended for LoT, that book (which friends tell me is one of the likely origin points for a more monstrous depiction of Thed) is in turn no longer considered canon, either. Now, I happily thumb my nose at the Official RuneQuest Canon, myself, but your origin point for the myth of Thed-Rapes-Orlanth is a zine that is out of print, for a book that is out of print, neither of which can be of any use at all to those who do not have them as they construct their own Gloranthas. (One of the benefits of falling in love with a constructed mythology is that it is easier to source the origin of certain motifs and interpretations.) To incorporate them is a deliberate choice: one of nostalgia, or because you feel that it adds to your Glorantha, or because of the rush of gnosis. But it is still a deliberate choice! Everything that we are doing here is, after all. Because this place called Glorantha always provides room for choice to everyone. We all share several major incidents that create the basis of the world. And you can fill in the gaps with your own pieces of stories. It’s that kind of game. (Again, here, I italicize as literary invocation; I am not yelling at you quite yet.) To prioritize this myth, Thed-Rapes-Orlanth, over what is written elsewhere is a deliberate choice. I am not interested in the reasons for the choice, and shall not openly speculate. But I am interested in the consequences. The myth of Thed is very troubling material, one of the thorny knots sitting at the heart of Glorantha. Our hero-god, our man-god, the thunderer he, our ancestor he, Orlanth he, finds himself trapped between his laws as king and the needs of his people, and his attempt at a solution fails, and the victim becomes a victimizer; a seed of evil grows from that failure, in more ways than one. This myth tells us about how the Heortlings see the world, and allow us to extrapolate into cultural taboos, cultural interpretations, and to wrestle with what is right and what is wrong, and whether the gods themselves can be wrong in their judgment. You know: mythology. Thed-Rapes-Orlanth flattens this into a binary. As you yourself say: Thed is not a victim. She is an evil bitch, a scheming whore, and for attempting to rape someone, her punishment was to be raped in turn. Then she dared to demand recompense for her punishment, and so brought that evil into the world! (Presumably, before this, it was something that could only be done by evil women or heroic bulls.) And that, I think, is perversely comforting; a balm to an inflamed conscience. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth. Bad things happen to bad people! Orlanth did not fail because he was inadequate; he was the victim of a crisis actor, a professional narcissist, a lying slut. I suspect that whoever authored this myth while writing LoT did not think through the implications. Nevertheless, I wish it had never been written, or had at least been left on the cutting floor as part of the editing process. When I said it was unworthy of us, I meant that it is unworthy of us. As members of the tribe, as storytellers taking our turns before the fire. So I reject it. As a fragment from something that I cannot read and which is not considered part of either Chaosium’s canon or my own, I reject it. As a fact that we must patiently work our way around and through while discussing one of the more complex parts of Heortling myth, I reject it. As the turgid cudgel of Storm Bull, I reject it. Let us find new ways to talk about Ernalda’s daughter, or Eiritha’s daughter, or Genert’s child; Ragnaglar’s victim, Ragnaglar’s abuser; spirit or goddess or ancestor; -2 +3 *; student of Rashorana, murderer of Rashorana, mother of the Devil; submissive to rape, or so we are told, everywhere but where she is allowed to speak to us directly.

An excellent post in total — thank you for the video link, particularly — but this is what sparked the most thought on this end. There is an interesting tension in Gloranthan writing between the idea that it is a world that works as the world of our Bronze Age was believed to work, and the traces laid underneath that suggest otherwise. The tantalizing hints that the Great Darkness was actually a mythologized form of our own Year Without A Summer writ large; that Yelm himself is a composite figure made at the Sunstop in order to further Dara Happa’s imperial ambitions, later stitched into Theyalan mythology; that perhaps the Lightbringer’s Quest did not exist until Harmast laid out the way, quest by quest; that Orlanth himself is nothing more than the stories around Vingkot writ large enough to stretch across the sky, binding lesser gods and traditions to himself as plunder; that everything we have received about the Hero Wars is built upon centuries of mythic accretion, and that we can see that process in real time as the Red Goddess builds herself a pantheon. But I cannot take the final step. I am in love with the numinous; I want to believe that if we try to treat the gods as nothing more than the echoes of human belief, that we shall discover to our dismay that the powers and principalities of the world are not so easily dismissed. It is a mistake to too easily humanize them, but perhaps it is also a mistake to think of them as nothing more than what we have made of them— at least, for as long as we are telling the story. Setting aside, of course, that none of this is real, and that all are mired within māyā— gods, men, spirits, Broo and players alike. I think that the invocation of Hant, Heort and Hara is the best way to open a session of storytelling in this tradition, but we could just as easily use there was, there was not. So, to return to the topic at hand, here we have Thed in all of her masks! Lift the first, and behind it is the question: what was her first myth, the reason that she is remembered by the Heortlings? Lift that, and behind it: is Thed simply a just-so story for the existence of the Broo, one that has had meaning attached to it by other storytellers, given awful life inside the Hero Plane by cultural inertia and expectation, or did the myths emerge from a real root of action? Lift another, and the question emerges: does a genealogical chart tell us anything about the gods outside of what it tells us about the beliefs of the genealogist? And underneath that mask: what did Greg mean when he wrote about Thed, and what figures was he invoking? And underneath that mask: what do we mean when we talk about Thed in the stories that we are telling together, without him to advise us except through what he has left us, and what figures are we invoking? And underneath that mask is watching a friend break down into tears over a professor’s off-color jokes about the Sabine women, unable to stop seeing herself among them. For my own part, at least. (Perhaps I should resurrect the thread I made about Thed a few months back; it appears I still feel very strongly about her.) Guilty as charged. And again, guilty as charged.

Or as much as Heler is a sheep themselves, or Ernalda a sow (or a serpent), or Odayla a bear. And we cannot forget that Orlanth himself has a cat-shadow. What a shameless menagerie! Perhaps what has happened is that these primitive hill barbarians first deified the animals that gave shape to their incurious lives, and only later managed to connect these powers to the Erasanchula. Or perhaps they are atavistic memories of ancient heroes, and it was said of them, “this man, he was like a ram— this woman, she was like a serpent.” But we must not allow that any of these pagan deities have an animal nature in any degree without descent from the appropriate figure, or else the underpinnings of our great genealogy will be undone, and then what of our project and ultimate aim? Then come, let us crown him with horns! Let us commit the beautiful sin of giving him signs and signifiers! I have here a plurality of bodies to pass on to Cwim, too, should we please. Yes, I agree that makes for the most compelling narrative, and would be the way I tell the story. Yet it is not stated definitively, and I cannot state in confidence that no one has ever told it otherwise. It is in the gaps that interpretation blooms. When I spoke with a Helering, they indicated that the gods embraced in giddy joy at being alive, and there is a wonderful secret in that, too. Though what precisely the secret was seems to have slipped my memory; they offered to teach me River-shapes-the-Bed afterwards, and that— well. I would give at least one arm to be able to tell this sort of story. The very thought is like lightning! Alternatively: try asking the Axe Daughter what she believes, and explore from there! The gods are the gods, which as a statement is a shining golden ring. It is a shame that we must approach Glorantha through the medium of text, which implies fixity. If we were more familiar with oral storytelling, and its patterns, perhaps it would be simpler to understand the inconsistencies and ambiguities as intentional, and to appreciate the artistry implicit in how we each tell this set of stories in turn, sharing motifs and names and shapes, each turning it to our own purposes— But I have been reading about the Haida storytellers recently, which colors my thoughts on this myth cycle we share together. Ron Edwards, I believe. A very helpful read when I started exploring my own Thedogony. Not all stories are good; not everything that has been written about Glorantha is worth keeping when we tell it again, tonight and tomorrow and the day after that. This, for example. Oh, it certainly has value as a story that is told about Thed, but it is one that tells us much more about the person who falls over himself to say that Thed deserved everything she got for being an evil scheming whore. To willingly trap yourself inside this story, just because once it was written down in a place that is lost to us now, is unworthy of us. So, no. We do not all know this.

But that’s the thing, right? (Apologies for the tangent in advance.) As far as I can tell in my own studies, the linking of Thed to goats is tautological: the Broo are often caprine, Thed is the Mother of the Broo, Thed is linked to goats. But children have two parents, and Rag’s the one who’s repeatedly called a goat in the Book of Heortling Mythology. (As well as Eurmal, but that’s another digression entirely.) Certainly, she gives birth to the Black Goat, but Wakboth had two parents, too (insofar as something like him can have anything). Similarly, in the same source it is at one point said that Ragnaglar “raped one of Ernalda’s daughters,” then came back to claim Thed; the language is ambiguous as to whether this was Thed, so let us take it or leave it as it lies. This leaves Thed herself as a lacuna: born of a game about spirits, incorporated into the death of the world to be reborn, and a struggling single mother these days, to boot. For if she is not the goat goddess, what else are we to do with her, standing accusatory before Orlanth’s throne? Crimes against the sacrosanct, perhaps. To circle back around to the serious: wherever she has come from, and wherever she is going, it cannot be denied that a familial tie to Ernalda, in some degree, accentuates the familial drama of the Storm Age, and casts Ragnaglar and Thed as the shadows of Orlanth and Ernalda, showing us what our Great Gods are not. For Orlanth knows that real men take no for an answer, and Ernalda loves her children, and they held each other’s hands, not in the formal manner by the wrists, but instead holding in what we call the two grip, that’s used in flirting.

It makes thematic sense for her to be a relative of Ernalda; Ragnaglar and Thed show us what the marriage of Orlanth and Ernalda is not. But take what I say with a grain of salt; I speak the gospel of “Thed was a grain goddess once, and Raggy’s the one with all the goat associations.”