M Helsdon
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Posts posted by M Helsdon
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12 hours ago, Joerg said:
There used to be a discussion whether the Cheruskans spoke a Germanic or a Celtic language, so Germania may very well have been part of the Celtic world before the migrations began. The Suebes that Caesar encountered in Gallia and in his expedition east of the Rhine were recent immigrants from the Baltic (and possibly part of the decision of the Helvetii to start their migration).
The boundaries between neighboring groups are always fuzzy, but the further away from the borderlands you get, the wider the distinctions become and when you start approaching other cultural borders it starts to be difficult to define what, exactly, are the core attributes of identity.
12 hours ago, Joerg said:I think it might be more productive to look at the Germans prior to the 19th century to get an idea what "Orlanthi" do have in common and what they don't. The unified German language started with the Luther bible (but retained the high German/low German split until the 19th century), the German national identity was mainly found when there was a huge outside threat (Napoleon really made it stick after over a decade of occupation) although the general idea was around already when Otto the Saxon established the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, religious unity was created with Christianisation since the 8th century, lost with the Reformation in the 16th century and not regained, territorial identity was extremely difficult, and the presence of minorities (or in the baltic settlement area, majorities of other comparatively recent immigrants) made the definition of the German nation difficult.
Most modern nation states and national identities are far younger than we usually assume. In Europe most borders and nations have been in near constant flux right up to the present; even some of the nations that look to be old aren't as old as most people assume. Consider the identity English, which didn't have any reality until long after Wessex united most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (which themselves weren't entirely Anglo-Saxon in nature). One of the mildly disappointing (but inevitable) things about the recent BBC The Last Kingdom series were anachronisms such as characters referring to England... For that matter, the meaning of England as a geographic term was relatively late. And The Last Kingdom was a bold try, and it seems to have deservedly won a second series.
At its widest (and perhaps most accurate) meaning Orlanthi means a people who venerate an entity that might be identified as Orlanth, or an important member of his pantheon. As some of the deities in the pantheon weren't members until the Lightbringers' Quest, the identity becomes even more nebulous?
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2 hours ago, soltakss said:
As Germania was the heartland of the Celtic people, it makes sense for the Romans to treat Celts as a kind of germanic people. To me, this means that tacitus recognises some sort of language similarity between the people of south east Britain and the people of Germania. Having them both as speakers of Celtic languages seems OK to me
Ah, but Germania wasn't a heartland of the Celtic People at the time. And there never was any such thing as the Celtic People; it's a relatively modern construction. The term has very different connotations for different people: for linguists it refers to speakers of particular Indo-European language families; for archaeologists it relates to a distinctive material culture. For geneticists it is even more fraught, as populations you would assume to be homogenous aren't (and some you would expect to be very different are similar). In both former cases the definition is imprecise with the division between Q Celtic and P Celtic languages, and the wide variety of artifacts over a very wide area and a wide spread of time. And people can change their language and their material culture, but they can't change their genes.
2 hours ago, soltakss said:I am not sure how much the Romans analysed languages and whether they split them into our family trees of Celtic and germanic.
For the Romans there were clear (but fuzzy) differences between the Gauls and the Germans, but then they didn't recognize the Britons and Irish as identical to the Gauls either. For the linguist there are sharp distinctions and there were sharp differences in material culture - but they often weren't quite so sharp on the ground. Caesar certainly recognized and used the differences, using German auxiliaries against their traditional enemies in his conquest of Gaul. However, in some Roman accounts some Germans had Gallic names...
The language difference between Gauls and Germans was pronounced, as was the material culture, and they were rivals for lands in northern and central Europe for centuries.
And this illustrates that whilst it is easy to make broad brush generalizations, they rarely give an accurate account of reality. This is certainly true in Glorantha which makes it one of the rare fantasy worlds where its reality is intentionally messy.
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12 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:
Back in the ancient days of RQ3 the culture was described as the 'Barbarian Belt' IIRC, and I think that is a very useful term. If one looks at RW history, the various Roman authors' struggle to differentiate between the 'Gauls' and the 'Germans' is almost comical.
Even more intriguing from a modern point of view is that the Classical authors rarely if ever referred to the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland as 'kelts', but there's a widespread modern assumption that they were. Then there's the fact that Tacticus infers that a Germanic language was spoken in the south east/east of Britain in the 1st Century AD, long before the Saxon invasion (which left little genetic footprint on the population compared with, say, the later Danes).
Barbarian Belt is probably more meaningful, those for ease of usage, Orlanthi as a template is here to stay.
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I wonder if the belief that the Orlanthi are all very similar is derived more from our liking of labels that provide an easy handle on something, than the reality presented in the canon source material?
Consider, for example, the label Keltic. Whilst there were very general similarities from north to south, to east to west, the cultures we call Keltic displayed a very wide variation in time and in space. However, if you could go back to the second century BC and could talk with a Kelt, and called them Keltic, they'd look at you blankly, unless they happened to belong to the Keltoi tribe near Massilia or the Celtici in Iberia. The name seems to have had a wider usage, but possibly because of the use of the term by the Greeks.
The Guide gives an overview of the Orlanthi, as a major culture, and in a few pages cannot be expected to detail the actual diversity among them. However, the Distribution and Subtypes section suggests a very much larger diversity than the overview might indicate. Snippets elsewhere throughout the Guide highlight some of the distinctions, but I suspect it would need an entire Book of the Orlanthi to present their cultural and religious diversity.
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8 hours ago, Ainda said:
Thank you! Very interesting. Another thing on material culture: how common is armor? It seems just about every Orlanthi the Guide and other recent material depicts is wearing some kind of armor, but then most depicted are rulers or warriors. How common is armor? Would your average carl have any kind of armor, or would they rely only on their shields and spears for protection? Would they own a sword, typically? I'm a weirdo who plays almost exclusively outcasts and the lower classes, so this stuff is important to me :p.
The illustrations in the forthcoming The Coming Storm offer a wider representation of Sartarites in terms of social class, occupation, armor and weapons. Good weapons and good armor are expensive, and available only to the wealthy and/or fighting specialists.
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On 12/21/2015 at 8:35 AM, Mankcam said:
If similar ethnic groups are separated by geographical location I would also expect some variations and interpretations of their cultural and religious practices. Also I think you'll find culture-bleed influences everywhere throughout Glorantha, just like it was in the historic ancient world.
Based on the material available on the Sacred Peaks of the Orlanthi, and their impact (see especially the Guide pages 296/297) it is likely that the Orlanthi vary far more than is immediately apparent. The detailed cult descriptions are centered on Sartar/Prax, but even then cannot be expected to convey the variations (and I'm sure there are many) in that 'small' area. Suspect we tend to see the basic template of Orlanthi society and culture, and not the rich regional variations.
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On 11/6/2015 8:14:38, aumshantih said:
I'm intrigued by this story you mention of Brithini waking up animal people. Where can one find it?
Aha! Found it!
Tales of the Reaching Moon#9 - The Origin of Humanity - excerpts from conversations with Monastavrolakhos, once of the Brick House in Kam Ramal:
"According to our oldest records, the Brithini once claimed to be the descendants of the only "true" humans on Glorantha. According to K'rzalis this is partially true, but certain other races, including the dreaded Ogres, are also descended from the First Men and are thus distant cousins of the Brithini. In any case, it is well known among Western scholars that the Brithini refer to almost all non-Western races as "animal-men", or, more precisely, "animals with human form." Most people think of this as an insult or metaphor based on our shorter lives and or our lack of "proper" (i.e. Brithini) human behavior. In fact, during the Golden Age, when they were much more open, the Brithini claimed that as they had travelled around the world they "awakened" various animals and taught them to assume human form. This was apparently their explanation for the origin of the Hsunchen, and no-one knows if it is true. Some of these animal-men then proceeded to lose touch with their beast-selves and attempted to imitate human ways and even civilization, especially the ape-men and monkey-people. So if this ancient Brithini claim is true, then they are correct in their reference to us as "animal-men"; if they hold this belief, it explains much of their behavior towards us, including their horror of mating with normal humans."
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On 12/1/2015 4:54:31, David Scott said:
Having seen wild giraffes drinking water from a lake, I think high llamas will have little trouble eating from the ground.
Whilst relating to giraffes, the following may be of interest in regard of high llama grazing habits in Prax, which surely corresponds to a nutrient-poor environment.
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31 minutes ago, jajagappa said:
Very different story in Genertela though regarding the Sky Dome's rocking. There it was Umath crashing into and breaking the North Pillar which set the dome rocking north, and then it got shoved back to the south.
There's rarely a single mythic explanation, unless the God Learner Monomyth is the source.
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16 minutes ago, metcalph said:
Xamalk was explicitly mentioned in an early draft of the Guide as destroying the land of Rombotongo (which in the published version is now Herespur).
An early version had one of Xamalk's storm giants do this in the Nightmare; obviously utilizing a corrupt God Learner source.
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17 minutes ago, jajagappa said:
Xamalk is mentioned in Book of Drastic Resolutions: Vol. Chaos, however in that case it was the Lord of Terror that attempted to invade Luathela and was defeated by the Luathelans. Given it's a non-canonical source, I'd ignore it.
Xamalk was defeated in Luathela (Guide to Glorantha, page 702), but according to Sandy, after attempting to destroy the East Isles.
Xamalk_ = "Beater", the savage Nightmare Wind of Chaos -- a chaotic god. The Three Blows of Xamalk figure big in East Isles mythology. The First Blow was the murder of the Sun. The Second Blow was the murder of the Golden Emperor (who ruled Vithela). The Third Blow shattered Vithela itself. There was an abortive Fourth Blow, but it failed. Later Xamalk went to Luathela, where he was beaten badly.
http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd3/1996.08/0987.htmlI don't know if the Petersen text is canonical.
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Xamalk may be the same entity as the East Isles antigod Bodastu in Revealed Mythologies, whose followers were named the Slavering Horde who drooled and spat acid. In Sandy's version of East Isles mythology:
In the confusion, Xamalk and Uralog, Beater and Eater, came to ruin the universe. Xamalk's First Blow had been the death of the Sun. Xamalk's Second Blow despatched the Golden Emperor, who joined his father in Hell.
Xamalk's Third blow shattered Vithela into ten thousand realities, and the Golden Empire was no more. The ten thousand realities became the Islands of Dawn, and those which found some inward strength, some principle of identity, managed to stay above thd waves. Then came Uralog, Mouth of the Deep, and he began to swallow down the fragments of Vithela one by one. No island could resist him.
Theya built the Gates of Dawn, and stationed herself at the east of the world as beacon, to summon back a Sun. She was tempted many times to abandon her post -- if she had, the Sun could never have returned. But though she was necessary to preserve Hope and to enable the Dawn, she was not sufficient in herself. Staying at her place, she wove a net from the threads of fate and the lingering strands of Vithela's voice. This net, given wings by the keets, who abandoned their power of flight in service to Vithela and the dead
Emperor, spread throughout the ten thousand realities, and wove them together into a whole.
Uralog found that he could not devour the isles any more -- as a unified whole, they were too great for his heretofore insatiable maw. Xamalk came and delivered his final blow, but he could not shatter the Isles of Dawn again -- for they were already shattered. So Xamalk and Uralog were thwarted.[Source: http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd2/1996.06/4150.html]
This is a very different tradition to that given in Revealed Mythologies, and doesn't give any detail of what Xamalk and the Xamalki looked like, but given that Xamalk is known as the Beater, the huge hands described in WF#15 and the possible connection with the acid dripping followers of Bodastu, a certain appearance comes to mind...
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1 hour ago, Oracle said:
Never catched, what that means, but now I understand. Is this in the Guide to Glorantha? Or is there a different source?
The two hinged supports at the gates of Theya and Rausa remain unbroken, and the Sky Dome tilts north and south seasonally, going a little further south than north. According to the Doraddi, Pamalt had the Old Gods tilt the sky to pour down fire on the Artmali when they had been corrupted by Chaos during the Gods War. When this was achieved, Pamalt pushed the sky back into place but it continued rocking to and fro. The Firefall created the Nargan Desert. This is described in the Guide.
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On 11/20/2015 1:56:00, jajagappa said:
I would guess that Gerendetho of Kostaddi is one of his sons, though I don't think there is anything that states Gerendetho's parentage.
Gerendetho may be a local name for Genert?
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22 hours ago, Jeff said:
Certainly everyone on this list has.
It's interesting to note that with their origin as 'materialist' Malkioni the mythologies of the rest of Glorantha were, in-world, almost as alien to the God Learners as they are to us. Our filter is different, of course, derived from terrestrial mythologies, but we are also trying to solve the puzzles of Glorantha, and perceiving patterns that may or may not be valid in-world.
Our view isn't that different from, for example, the Romans who eagerly sought out similarities between their pantheon and the pantheons of almost every other culture they came into contact with, and ravenously pursued a process of syncretism, in which local gods were merged and to a degree submerged by their Roman equivalents. Even the parallels we take for granted, such as the association of Jupiter and Zeus aren't entirely accurate, despite them both having an origin as Indo-European sky gods. The correlation with Mars and Ares, apparent even in their names, isn't an entirely comfortable fit, as the Roman view of the war god differed from that of the Classical Greeks. In the Gallic War, Caesar declares with assurance that the Gauls predominantly worship Mercury - he was referring to the god Teutates... And the Romans had real problems with cultures, such as the Jews and Persians, where no sort of syncretism was possible.
As the Romans did for other cultures, we are trying to assimilate the Gloranthan deities into understandable entities - and most of us are probably unconsciously using the Mediterranean Indo-European or the Mesopotamian gods as a reference point. It's inevitable that our discussions are going to be God Learnerish in nature, and that some of our assumptions are going to sometimes be correct, and sometimes entirely wrong.
Glorantha is a puzzle box, cunningly constructed into a conundrum for which there are often no correct ultimate answers. If its pantheons were laid out neatly and without contradictions and confusions like too many cardboard fantasy pantheons then it wouldn't be so fascinating, or so real, because often real religions only look neat and tidy from a distance, and when you start looking deeper you find similar contradictions and confusions. It's a function of world building as an art.
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Received my copy today. Many interesting snippets of information.
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21 minutes ago, Jeff said:
The Mythical Synthesis Movement proved incredibly influential even outside of the God Learners - so much so that even the Old Way Traditionalists largely adopted its conclusions.
Interesting.
From the mentions of the Mythical Synthesis Movement in the Guide, I'd gathered a very negative impression of its use and effects as the basis of the God Learner manipulations and experiments which ultimately contributed to their destruction.
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On 11/24/2015 6:32:48, hkokko said:
Seshna Likita and the Green Lady of Ralios sound good interpretations and they make the life interesting for myth tellers and world travellers - little bit of something that is same in the background but still different.
The various Earth deities may or may not be similar, but what is dissimilar is the cultural lens they are viewed through. The different regions of Glorantha vary enormously in history, outlook and political organization, and this will have a major influence.
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17 hours ago, Runeblogger said:
So would you say people in the Third Age condemning Godlearnerism just do not realise how much accepted God Learnerish things are still present in they daily lifes?
That's both crazy and interesting.The God Learners messed with almost every culture on or near a coastline, and many of their manipulations are still present if not widely recognized in many cultures and cults - probably to a degree members of those cultures and cults would find distressing and disturbing. The end of the Second Age marked a significant change in Glorantha. The only regions they didn't meddle in would probably be Peloria in Genertela and the south of Pamaltela.
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13 hours ago, Joerg said:
In private discussion Sandy Petersen claimed at Kraken that the dragonewts still around since Godtime are the failures and dropouts on their way of draconic ascension, going through endless cycles of rebirth without any meaningful progress.
The Dragonkill indicates that, whether failures or dropouts, the remaining dragonewts are still important to dragons, because every one has the potential to ascend to becoming a dragon. The presence of the Inhuman King indicates some still have this capability. Thus Dragon Pass remains important to dragons whilst there are still dragonewts attempting to evolve. This seems unlikely to change until the dragonewts go extinct by evolution or their eggs being destroyed.
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7 hours ago, Joerg said:
Tricky, that, given the presence of mortals (even if that distinction was introduced only later) in the Green Age.
True, but their cultures are very much younger, and many mortals in and out of Time seem to have changed 'culture' to greater or lesser degrees. There are very few human cultures that haven't changed (the Brithini come to mind). Even the deities in some divine tribes changed tribe in God Time: the Storm Tribe adopted several before and during the Lightbringers' Quest, for example.
As a result the relationships between gods and mortal cultures is going to be ever so tangled: I suspect that very few of the extant divine tribes are entirely 'pure'.
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6 hours ago, Jeff said:
You could have added the draft and unpublished Prosopaedia (or the Sourcebook), which says:
I'd have been accused of God Learnerism...
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9 hours ago, Joerg said:
Find me a cookie cutter example free of God Learner simplification, please. Then I will accept that as a single case for this quoted statement.
My sources were: Glorantha.com, AH Gods of Glorantha, Esrolia: The Land of Ten Thousand Goddesses.
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23 hours ago, Joerg said:
I don't think that Esrola qualifies as land goddess for Slontos, Wenelia or Maniria. Grain goddess, maybe, but those regions each have their own sovereignty goddess different from Esrola.
The Grain Goddesses are the Queens of the Land, the land goddesses. The Esrolians consider Esrola the Mother of the Grain Goddesses.
Adding more variation among Orlanthi?
in Glorantha
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Being clan-based permits very wide mutability into new tribes, confederations, nations, kingdoms and even at times in history, empires. For example, Sartar created a kingdom primarily from Orlanthi tribes (and had a hand in the formation of some of those tribes from clans) but also integrated into it to a greater or lesser extent, ducks and hsunchen. I would argue that whilst we are very focused on the stability of certain Orlanthi social constructs they are far more mobile than immediately apparent. This is why the Red Moon is a threat: not just as a competitor for the Middle Air, but also because it has started to assimilate many Orlanthi societies by their own nature. Whether it is thus acting as a seductive face of Chaos can be debated, but it is also utilizing the inherent change.
All true, but also indicating the extreme mutability (mobility?) of Orlanthi social constructs up to and including their pantheon.
Heler the foreigner replaced Varnaval the Shepherd King; Elmal, himself a foreigner once had his own charioteer, Saren, who has been eclipsed by Mastakos; Issaries and the various artistan gods such as Gustbran and Orstan replaced Oonil the Skilful; Lhankor Mhy seems to be a Western Foreigner and Chalana Arroy perhaps a northerner. If pantheons can radically change then so can the societies that venerate them.