Jeff

Probably about the same as if you got a Roman, an Athenian, a Thracian, and a Syrian together. They'd likely all agree that Jupiter, Zeus, Zibelthiurdos, and Baal are names for the same entity (the old interpretatio graeco) and be impressed with whoever had the most secrets about the god.

Different Earth goddess in Sartar? There's Ernalda, Esrola, Kero Fin, sometimes Pelora, Maran Gor (who is the twin of Ernalda and sometimes conflated). Go a little further and you start getting Dendara, Pelora-Oria, and not to mention Deezola and Hon-eel. Try to tell me where Ernalda ends and Esrola or Pelora begins. Or where Ernalda is Dendara, and where she is not. The most consolidated cult is probably Orlanth, and even he has Humakt and Storm Bull circling around, not to mention Ygg if you go far enough out. And that you can probably blame on Harmast, Arkat, and Alakoring.

More to the point, the Book of Heortling Mythology was the collection of every Orlanthi myth Greg and I could find and put together as a reference document SO WE COULD SIFT THROUGH IT. Like all of the Unfinished Works, it is not intended to canon or definitive - it is a work in progress, a notebook. It was certainly not intended to be a straightjacket for us and to be honest, I don't even recommend writers use it as a resource (as better resources now exist). Greg was always deeply ambivalent about publishing these unfinished works. I thought it was a good idea to give people access to these notebooks, as I figured they'd use them as a well of ideas, some of which may well get contradicted by finished publications.

Yelmalio appears in Orlanth's myths. And Yelmalio also has his own myth cycle - which actually has more interaction with Orlanth and Ernalda. And I don't think Elmal is the oldest of the Lightfore cults. That honor probably goes to Antirius and Kargzant. Or maybe even Yamsur. Jeff

Come on guys, this is what the Guide actually says: On page 37 Elmal is listed among "Minor Gods" as "Elmal the Sun God." On page 152, Elmal is listed in the Storm Pantheon as Elmal the Sun God with the runes of Fire and Truth. That's a typo - should be Light and Truth. There's a few other errors in that chapter about the Runes for specific gods, all of which are corrected in the Cults Book. Page 160, Elmal is described as "a horse carrying the Sun on his back." Note that the Sun is not Elmal. Page 188, Runegate is described as having a temple to Elmal the Sun God and Hyalor Horsebreaker. That's true. Page 236, illustration has Elmal the Sun Stallion pulling Orlanth and Ernalda's chariot. That's an in-Gloranthan piece of art, possibly dating to the First Age. Before you all argue with me about this, I wrote all of this. None of that contradicts what all I have been saying (except the typo on page 152). Gloranthans themselves do not make these sorts of Talmudic distinction. Elmal may well remain an artistic feature (the Sun Stallion) - even though his actual cult now identifies him as Yelmalio. The Orlanthi call the Sun Disk "Yelm" but recognise numerous minor sun gods (Elmal, Yelmalio, Yamsur, Sun Hawk, etc.). Elmal's cult is now largely subsumed into Yelmalio's AND that has been the case since Greg wrote his "Making Gods" essay (which I advise reading carefully).

I am pretty sure that is not in the Guide to the Glorantha. Or the Sourcebook. May I ask what you are referring to?

What we know of Godtime is what we or others have experienced - those moments the separate worlds unite together. I saw the Battle of Stormfall, and watched Vingkot take a terrible wound. But in another quest, I saw Vingkot immolate himself atop his fiery pyre, surrounded by gods who died at that battle. I am mortal, I do not exist in the Godtime. I piece it together as well as I can but even that is subject to mortal limitations. I know it is there - I've seen it, experienced it, tasted it - and I know it is endless and eternal, always there, always recurring. But it is divine, not mortal.

I am serious as well. Esrola's main husband is Argan Argar. Yelmalio and Heler are also both sometimes husbands of the local Grain Goddess. The rivalry between Elmal/Yelmalio and Heler over Esrola appears as one sentence in Sartar Companion, and when I revisited Heler for the Cults Book, I dropped it entirely.

As an aside, it is worth thinking about what role the Lightbringers Quest plays into this - particularly Harmast's Lightbringers Quest.

Obviously neither offer much, since Esrola favours Argan Argar.

That big thing that helps the crops grow is Yelm. Ernalda acknowledges him as a husband-deity, and he is often invoked in her worship (even if he is something of a prick). But he's not seen as particularly friendly by the Orlanthi (neutral at best), but Ernalda knows how to use his heat. And she is more useful to worship anyways. This conflict between Sun and Storm is something that has been hard-wired into Greg's myths since Ehilm and Humak first appeared in the stories of Jonat Bigbear in the 1960s. Some cultures worship both Orlanth and Yelm - traditionally that is how it has been handled in Saird (prior to the Sixth Wane), Fronela, or Safelster. But in Dragon Pass, Orlanth is the tribal patron and in many cases the ancestor - they are Orlanth-partisans. Same thing in Dara Happa - Yelm is the tribal patron, and in many cases the ancestor deity.

Yelmalio gets Shield as an associate cult of Yelm. Elmal gets Shield as an associate cult of Orlanth.

That god is Yelm. The god of the fiery hot sun that first rose with the Dawn. Even the Orlanthi call it that. Killing Yelm and then undertaking the Lightbringers Quest (the name provides a hint) to resurrect Yelm are two of the defining myths of the Orlanthi religion.

When we rerelease HQ Voices, we will use the original language written by Greg, as opposed to the revisions made by others. Greg's text read: Yelm ruled a world that was stale and changeless. Orlanth, his enemy, released freedom for all. Yelm met Death, he fled down the dark path, Only Orlanth and Lightbringers walk that path alive. Orlanth, the liberator, freed his foe Yelm, Brought him to life into a slave's station. Yelm follows his path, unable to break it, But Orlanth is free to follow the winds.

As Yelmalions say, "Humakt makes warriors, Yelmalio makes soldiers." They stand and fight, not because they wield the power of the god (who was stripped of his powers by his foes), but because they will themselves as fragile mortals to do so. Yelmalio is worshiped not because of his incredible power (in the end, he is just the Light in the Darkness or the cold Mountain Sun) but because he did not give up in the Greater Darkness. He kept fighting for us mortals even though he had been robbed, wounded, and weakened. When you fight in the line, you too must keep in place and formation - not because you are a god, but because you are a mortal and now fight for Yelmalio as he did for your ancestors.

These cults don't exist or survive because they are useful for fights in published scenarios. That's not how Greg or I ever approached them. They are part of the setting - why Yelmalio exists. It is up to individual players to decide whether that is a cult they want to explore in play. For some, the answer is hell yes. For others, the answer is that cult sucks. And that's fine.

Yelmalio's Rune spells are very useful if you are trying to fight against the Darkness. Lightning and Thunderbolt are great, but if you can't see your foes, they suck a lot.

Elmal appears only twice in the entire Guide. Yelmalio appears 33 times. That should give an idea of comparative importance.

Beginning around 1992, Greg's focus was really on the First Age, not the Third Age. So he was interested in the Orlanthi under the First and Second Councils, the early Dara Happans and Pelorians, etc. He also played around with how many polytheistic religions give a separate name for each local cult of the god, hence the explosion of subcults. Interesting stuff, but it ultimately masked more than it revealed and also resulted in us missing the forest for the trees. Also Greg wasn't gaming much in Glorantha, which was a big problem (Glorantha for Greg was fundamentally a setting for games and not for academic discussion of mythology). I think we realised it hit rock bottom with the Lunar cults book and started to pull back from that with Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes. But we quickly realised we should have pulled back more - and thus HQG really moved away from that. We both concluded RQ2 - Cults of Prax - had struck a magical balance between how religions operate for practitioners and how to use mythology and cult in a gaming setting. Elmal was a big flashpoint on this, although Greg was always quick to point out that he never wrote up an Elmal cult and he assumed in the Hero Wars it was Yelmalio, not Elmal who was engaged. Elmal was discovered in order to understand who the Orlanthi understood as the main solar deity BEFORE they encountered the solar worshipers of Peloria. By the late First Age, Elmal the Sun had already given way to Yelm the Sun, and Elmal was left with his Lightfore horse. The Orlanthi Elmal syncretised with the Elf Yelmalio cult, Kargzant and Antirius - plus the revelations of the Broken Council to form what later became Yelmalio. By the end of the First Age, that had already pretty much played out. But in order to get to the Broken Council, Greg first needed to understand what was there before. How these cultures looked at their deities early after the Dawn, before the great communication between Dara Happa and the Orlanthi, before the Orlanthi picked up bits from the trolls, the elves, the dwarfs, and the dragonewts. RQG is not set in the First Age. It is set more than 1200 years later. These cults changed with Time even if the gods did not. Harmast changed how people understood the Lightbringers, Alakoring changed how Orlanth was viewed among the gods, just as he changed how kings are viewed among priests. The God Learners revealed commonalities previously unknown and all educated people adopted the interpretatio god learner to some extent. And RQG reflects how things are in 1625, not in 1350, and definitely not in 350. It presents information so you and your players can game in the Gloranthan setting with vibrant cults.

Something I am not sure people are quite getting - but if you worship "the Sun that was present in the Darkness," you are worshiping Lightfore, which was the "Little Sun" present in the Lesser Darkness and reappeared in the Grey Age. The fiery sun died at the end of the Golden Age - according to everyone - and did not return to the heavens until the Dawn. Many cultures hold that to be just an impersonal Sun Disk, but thanks to the Broken Council, most folk in Central Genertela know it as "Yelm". They are two distinct entities, although many consider Lightfore far more accessible (and thus more useful) than the distant Sun Disk.

That would be quite a hero quest, and a magical feat comparable to the Sun Stop. Anything is possible, but given the small size and relative unimportance of the Elmal Cult even among the Orlanthi, I have difficulty imagining why that would happen. But hey, it would be interesting to see a hero quest that united Orlanth, the Red Goddess, and Zoran Zoran!

None of the Little Suns likely have this, as the Darkness stripped Lightfore of its heat (but not its light). Look at Lightfore each night - it gives light (although not as much as the Sun) but no heat. Some say that is because Zorak Zoran stole his fire, others because Storm Bull tore off his wings, others because Orlanth killed those powers, and still others say because Lightfore gave them up so that Orlanth could wield Lightning. I've heard Chaos destroyed them, Trickster ate them, and Maran Gor tore them away and cast them away.

Elmal lost his fire magic being repeatedly defeated, cut-up, robbed, etc., defending "the Stead" (AKA the Hill of Gold). He has no more Fire Magic than Elmal. And actually maybe less - I keep going around and around whether Sandy was right when he removed Summon Small and Medium Fire Elemental from Yelmalio (although probably should come from Yelm). Greg always said that Yelmalio is a comparatively weak war god, but in the Grey Age he had the great advantage of Not Being Dead. So his cult was important at the Dawn and found an important purpose in the Broken Council with his comparative advantage in fighting trolls (Catseye and Sunbright are fantastic at fighting trolls). Their gifts mean the cult has a disproportionate number of initiates with a 90% weapon skill, a disproportionate number of remarkable horsemen, etc. Now Yelmalio isn't that good at fighting Orlanth (although Cloud Clear certainly can get rid of some of Orlanth's heavy artillery), but he doesn't need to be. He just needs to be tough enough to maintain his own autonomy. Orlanth and Yelmalio are rivals, but not bitter ones. And the cults work together as often as against each other,

Vivamort has the runes of Chaos, Darkness, and Undead. Gark has the runes of Chaos, Stasis, and Undead. There are lots of ways to animate the dead. Vivamort's and Gark's are chaotic, ZZ is not. There are also lots of ways to kill people - the Crimson Bat's methods are chaotic, Humakt and Zoran Zoran's are not.

And? The number of king's lists we have are pretty minimal. At this point you seem to be looking for something to critique rather than discussing the Smoking Ruin.