scott-martin

Some have seen this before but it's one of my favorites and belongs here. Showed up five years ago tucked into a WBRM left in a Texas storage unit. Its mysteries will probably always be its own unless someone remembers playing in that game. In that case, speak up! (They're clickable.)

That is pretty good though. Dumb theory: person rune is to horned serpent rune (shaman) as horse is to unicorn. Pretty ponies of Ralios who initiated into the spirit path came out the other side different. The practice spread throughout surviving pony communities until a violent first contact situation with the griffon tradition forced ponies to pick sides: develop your shamanic pony "organ" into your wings or your horn but only rarely both.

I would hate to antagonize long-suffering fans of the suffering sun but . . . in this model, the young god that came down to Dara Happa might have been called something like Orlan or Uma but in his aspect he combined what we now think of as sky and storm traits. This is how Orlan (Uma) participates in the 109 war in heaven united with Antirius because at that time it was possible to consider them the same person. Over the decades that follow the Council of Friends encounters sufficiently advanced magical resistance that its pantheon changes. Previously gentle deities discover harder, more martial aspects. Under pressure, Orlan dissociates into at least two brothers and possibly others we don't know much about today. One is always rebellious, disorderly, friendly to trolls, trouble when he walks in. His birthright becomes modern Orlanth with a side of Humakt. The other brother is more conciliatory, obeys orders, open to accepting a subsidiary role in the herd or city. "Brighter." Ironically in places where Orlanth becomes urbane this side of the birthright takes over and "storm" rises to consolidate solar virtues. In the fullness of the Dawn Age some communities went one way and some went the other. This was useful magic to exploit in the rivalry between Council and Empire as prophets on both sides wielded identification like a scalpel before the condominium emerges under solar control. We don't know a lot about how the early dynasties shaped the local hero plane on the way to establishing their (Y)ELM. I think the crucial phoneme to track is the "L" that separates HYEMA from EYHMA. You can derive a YELMAL from HYUMA as long as you can find an "L," and once you have YELMAL you've already differentiated away from HYUMA toward YELM. Another way to put this is that unless HYUMA finds an L, he can't become a sun. If YELMAL loses his L, he can't become a sun. And of course HYORMAL the "trickster" is the transitional stage. I think this is the god the lightbringers really carried. The god who stayed home retained more of his HYUMA traits but also won an L, becoming modern HYORLA or "HYORLAT". Orlan cultures that collaborated with Nysalor ("high" storm) vanish from polite history in the bright empire collapse. Those that rejected the high way were exiled like trolls and dragons and (re)discover latent connections to those elder systems. On the "Antirius" side, low expressions die out except as atavistic throwbacks within the storm periphery, sky clans embedded in storm tribes. Parallel evolution survives in places like the Two Brothers religion of Yngortu where the split took places lower down the elemental scale. Zorak Zoran is another of the pieces that falls out when the young god crashes. Maybe all the Hill of Gold participants are really masks of the esoteric Four Magic Weapons cults from an archaic era now almost forgotten. The HYUL/OR thing is extremely interesting because there are hints (from before the computer game) here and there that this was the original culture that migrated into Kethaela, possibly from the west along routes now lost. These might have been more of the Ralian pony people (possibly with unicorns and other fantastic breeds) but the important factor here is that the Horse Lords by definition had expertise in breaking horses. The humiliation of Hippogriff must have horrified and twisted the Council. SUMMARY: All Orlanth clans are theoretically "horse clans." The original lightbringer deity was the trickster, relegated to a secondary role when Harmast in his desperation rectified the Quest and handed out parts.

Love it. My instinctual dumb response is that the god the missionaries carried north was something like a sun god and they were bringing actual light. When they met a rival king of heaven the identification contests failed, creating a sky battle that resolved as the southern god splintering into parts . . . the biggest of which fall to the point where "storm" characteristics become central. The historical site for this might have been [a] Hill of Gold in which "Orlanth" lost and the sky brother won. Someone in the Ignifer elite probably preserved knowledge of this story but I don't know if they survive into the Argenteus era.

This is one of the great things that happen when dumb theories circulate in high enough density. I love it. There were probably at least four "approximate Spikes" scattered around what becomes the Pool: Teleos, Jrustela, a hypothetical Choralinthor eruption (shades of Atlantis), the Neliomi ladaralite civilization destroyed by zzabur, maybe lost Loral. All volcanically active and interpreting the Magic Mountain myth along the seams between the worlds. Much belintarology has been wasted on drawing diagrams showing the relationships in order to deduce how the theoretical center point moves. Speaking of which, I'm really here right now to note that our Third Age knowledge of a few elemental economies is vague and general because the God Learners succeeded with them and as yet nobody's reconstruction movement has gotten much traction. Looking at Sea, Fire, most expressions of Earth ("Stone" and "Plant") and a surprising amount of Moon across the lozenge. All this stuff is either ubiquitous (embedded in the syntax of Trade) or extinct today. Beyond what everybody knows, nobody knows it. This might change in the Hero Wars. Only in the old Central Genertelan "theistic" zone did local mythologies persist in anything like their native complexity: Pelorian Sky/Sun, Pelandan Earth, Kerofinelan Storm, Esrolia and their associates. Even these relatively pure survivals are really only traditionalist efforts to roll back EWF overlay to the system the Autarchs left behind. Dark, always stubborn and sheltering, led this resistance out of the Plateau and one or more northern centers we don't talk about as much.

Love it. "I thought I drowned my sorrows but [my sorrows] learned to swim." We might be close to figuring out the celestial-but-not-"solar" ideology that competes with the Assiday orthodoxy in the post-1625 heartlands. I wonder about the greenness of Hon-Eel's dragon as well.

This may be my favorite thing as the month winds down. Every bit of it. Especially the "-eel" and the dragon motif (the paired runes are familiar in terrestrial astrology) and the notion that a yelm that can be built up out of obscure portions as well as distintegrated. Also I think Engizi will one day be revealed as a very, very strange river.

"Not deer. Elk horn." Pralorelan shamanism with its serpent dancers and horned (wo)man just got really interesting. I wonder if they had this kind of complicated glyph and spoke an acronymatic form of English. Any less dumb and it might be time to think about taking this stuff out to the normal serious threads. Let's see, something dumb. White Mountain on Teleos had a really good claim to be "the historical Spike" and source of a few now ubiquitous cults before early cataclysms started it drifting off the geographical center. This did not make the God Learners happy so they downplayed the evidence whenever they got the chance.

Talar is unusual because there is an empirical proof of charismatic authority: when they can't help but follow you, you're Right. The other ones are more elusive, with the sorcerers working overtime to weasel the language of the Law, the jocks simply pushing to get what they want (note that Right and Might are opposed in the Arthurian literature) and everyone who doesn't distinguish themselves in these ways being lumped into the peasant category. They don't really get magic powers in the current drafts. They're just a little better at what they do, which is a circular argument.

Now that you put it like that, I wonder if Alakoring drew on local henotheism in Ralios that we just don't hear about today because it became indistinguishable from modern Heortling Rex. In this model, Rex wouldn't have offered the Orlanth Talar people anything they didn't already have, so it never caught on. IMG the perquisites of aristocracy are so compelling that plenty of people within Time have claimed "talar" status without the necessary background or interest in Rightness. This allows them to break caste even though it creates category confusion for us at home. Since many of these titles are achieved and held through force, these "talars" do tend to favor martial talent like Joerg says. When anyone is in a position to complain, you can always tilt your beefy neck at the wall hanging of Sidi Hrestol you put there to celebrate caste freedom. Case closed. Fight on, bro. This creates challenges as well as opportunities for local sorcerers to adjust the rites. Sometimes it works pretty well. Sometimes it fails. And from time to time, sorcerers in the know will rescind the "adjusted" coverage, turning the putative "noble" back into a lowly horalite or even peasant. I don't think they like to do this often but it's always an option if the jocks make themselves completely obnoxious. These adjustments can then become "local rightness" templates rewarding on-message caste behavior in that particular land. The Rokarians are obviously very good at this. Someone in these lands who pursues authentic talar performance can still exercise Talar's Gifts but we haven't heard very much about these movements yet. I don't know if they even follow the "authentic" rules on the island today and welcome surprises either way.

This Dragon Pass thing is only a sideshow for the evolution going on inside the Issaries diaspora. Trader Princes. Desert Trackers. The Chain Gang. Red Haired Tribes. Etyries. Wolf Pirates. Drastic resolutions. The fate of the Gadaringers and the rise of the Great Talar. Heretics Country. Nochet, Dormal, the Navigationalist Heresy and other Spell Networks. Gini. Geo. Silver Ancestors. Silver Feet. [Są’áh Naagháí] Bik'eh Hózhóó, Haschélti, Gonn Orta, Genert. "Night time fell at the opening In the final act of the beginning of time." Dorastor. Apple Lane, there is a fireman with a [harshax]. A Deal With God. Get him to swap our places. It's why you don't hear from us as much when it really gets going. But the Dragon Pass thing is exciting too.

Sadly I don't think the cult writeup made it in there under that name but his footprints are visible in various places. This should present enthusiasts with an opportunity to put the pieces together. (Advanced heroquesters will avoid looking at the picture on the box and be "rewarded" with a surprise!)

It's a great point. YGWV (see above, whatever gets your players motivated) but I usually structure Orlanth debt servitude as a kind of advance on the ransom account that then gets "foreclosed" under certain conditions. This sounds a little complicated on the surface but it boils down to your ransom banker of record (the temple or in some cases your "pawnbroker") extending you coinage that you will ideally spend in the market so the money is only temporarily in circulation. You needed a favor and they helped you out. Hopefully it's all you needed to get back on your feet and pay back into the account to make your ransom whole again. There's probably an embedded fee involved (rounding the charge on the ransom account up or rounding the money the borrower receives down, altered Bargain augments will apply either way) but I don't see a lot of support for lending at interest in the Gloranthan literature. Maybe Issaries' daughter has been working with it as part of her complicated experiments with Time but I leave that to people who deal with imperial accounts to explore for now. What we seem to have among the Orlanth people is a sense of debt that works more like a passion. You owe someone a favor. You make a promise. You take on an obligation or an entanglement because you got into trouble and this is what it took to motivate someone to help you out . . . or you've internalized that sense of obligation and your honor simply won't let you rest until you clear the account. If they owe you a favor, you can forgive it and convert it into a different kind of passion. Make a friend, earn some loyalty. Double down and go for the greater bonus . . . this is how their quest economy works. Ransom plays into that. Ultimately the temple is the lender of last resort on ransom anyway. The community has a sense of what they've invested in you and what they can afford to sacrifice to keep you alive. When you run out of that community credit, you need to go into exile or stay home and work yourself back to a positive balance. Issaries is omnipresent throughout this cycle. IMG there are forgiveness periods that greedy lenders will try to weasel around but ultimately manumission is a sacred thing. Orlanth is never content in the sight of perpetual slavery. Neither is his good friend Issaries. All IMG of course.

Because you're tough, tested and infinitely smarter than they are. Even in the unlikely event this particular pig people squad is hopped up enough to disrespect your ransom this would be a good way to die. The townies are depending on you and it is right action. God smiles. Scandal!! But whatever form the call to adventure takes ultimately leads to MGF.

Wild Hunter sounding more and more like atavistic Bad Man trapped inside modern Orlanth now that priests and routine initiation ceremonies have mostly replaced the old shamanic system. Sometimes kids just break down in the adulthood rite . . . next year we try harder to give them the moral preparation they need to be good tribal citizens. The horse sounds familiar and I like the wolves. Wonder how prevalent he's going to get in the northern hero wars as realms like Jonatela break down.

I love this part back. There's probably a moment where you look at your people and either scoff "we're cool. what did that pansy Orlanth ever do for us?" or wince "yikes, we need tough love because this Adventure has gone a little too far." Probably a whole tradition of culture heroes in places we don't know about yet (Aggar?) who go around forcefully wrestling recidivists down. For all I know this is how we get things like Storm Bull in the first place!

IMG most Gagarth groups don't choose the lifestyle so much as get left behind when Orlanth goes away. Sometimes local expressions of a cult simply degenerate either under external pressure or because internal resources that once maintained "normal" community are no longer available. Gagarth is a thing that we see when local Orlanth breaks down. Some people say it was what Orlanth looked like in the raw state before a process of refinement and "civilizing" but I don't know about that. So when Orlanth is banned, people who don't find something to replace him (i.e., they don't convert to the Invisible God or the Moon or whatever) tend to preserve a cruder form of what they had. The nuances get lost as initiates with specialty knowledge are lost and not replaced. Because these people tend to get pushed out to the social fringes, social graces like honor atrophy. People make tougher choices and by definition the ones we meet selected for survival. This is where bandits come from. Make enough wrong choices and this is where the line separating disorder from chaos blurs. Orlanth is an interesting cult because we see it pushed beyond that moral pale again and again within time and so far they've always found a way to come back. They start reaching again for the more rarefied passions, building institutions. The ones who don't are lost unless they can be convinced to respect authority. And of course there are always born assholes.

What a consistently great thread. It probably depends on the tone people want to take in their games. "The New Empire" in FS is really interesting in this light because it's explicitly a White text that aligns the Ignifer era program of Orlanatus suppression with the apocalyptic flavor of the Moon To Come. We know Assiday leadership is sympathetic to the first part at least. Biographers can argue over how much of the second part Tatius really believed or just found useful. Realpolitik-heavy games can emphasize the details that suggest that "whitening the moon" is simply a cynical gambit he deployed to advance his agenda in the Argenteus era. People with more of a flair for the mystic can give the old man a real ongoing spiritual crisis in communication with deep sky factions. Today I lean toward it starting out cynical and getting beyond their control as it evolved. A lot depends on how Argenteus was revealed in the first place and who decided Ignifer had gotten ahead of himself. The White Moon panegyric gets thickest in the Argenteus section, which indicates an inward turn while the apparatus of state runs itself. There's an abyss widening between the public world and the aspirations of the spiritually inclined. At a certain stage the spiritually inclined wash their hands of the public world and White Moon becomes a Movement divorced from the imperial work of keeping the moon reaching. You get millenarian (last wane) outbreaks where the kids are. It becomes a problem. Interestingly because Reaching Sartar was advertised as the way to whiten the moon I think these people are natural scapegoats for the imperial collapse. The top Assidays are dead and Orlanth is alive, so there's nothing we can do about that part. But the Moonies are on the hook and the weird need to turn pro fast. People probably just need to LARP out the machinations behind the recent masks . . . or run Pelorian Pendragon, how fun would that be!

"Trees there will be Apples, fruits maybe" I like rooting Tatius' Mistake onto the return of his own rejected bicameral mind. The thing for me about all these really Hero Wars class magicians is how they resolve one another's errors . . . dynamic tension must be hard work. Thinking now that the catechisms distributed through 7M in the terminal 7W would either reflect Assiday prejudices or actively resist them. It all depends on the kind of manager Tatius is IYG. For me, right now, I like him as a kind of obsessively detail-driven Jonathan Pryce character so the College has been controlling entry-level religious publishing for at least a generation, thanks to the cooperation of our friends within IO and of course the stargazers etc. Meanwhile the Assidays jointly (at least officially, Euglyptus' level of incompetence is probably YGWV MGF) controlled the southern military presence early on and despite the Fazzurite interruption were back in charge until recently. Add it up and the information about the lunar way and its relationship to the solar pantheon Sartarites receive in the occupation era will probably be colored by what the Assidays want them to learn. And the Glorantha publishing has reflected that bias because in Sartar these were the facts on the ground. This is important because Tatius seems to have had a distinct theological sickle to swing around the proper relationship of storm and sun to moon in the new world he was building . . . but the empire at large undoubtedly had other ideas. I love the thought of his heirs having to sell off the towers to rival astronomers who now have an opening to disseminate different lore and an elevated platform on which to do it.

The Bright dropped that bomb on us himself at convocation one year. All the best minds in the empire in one room plus myself and he goes off script raving about the Shadow Within. Absolutely terrifying. Made a huge impression. We straightened up and flew right for an appreciable period thereafter.

I would not rule out a miraculous and horrifying escape / return once his rivals get a chance to establish themselves! He might be a little weirder for wear of course.

This is all Great Gloranthan Fun. If I were advocating solar revival movements I'd probably start with a deep look at what Tatius believed and the religious orthodoxy he tried to promote at the College and within the broader imperial elites. A magician on that level always has an agenda and a trajectory . . . it's worth seeing how he helped create what we consider "the lunar way" going into the terminal Seventh Wane as well as the ways he diverged from the mainstream around him. And now of course he's gone (died screaming) and the Assiday are not well equipped to carry on in his sudden unplanned absence. Time for other suns to grab for the spear standard if any sun wants to step up at all. Good times!

I've been hunting an entry point into the Arrolian Way that fled and then resisted the Celestial Empire separate from Sylila or Glamour and think this is it. Thank you. Naturally Carmanian Sorcery would have access to a repertoire of horse-killing and sun-killing techniques as well. I wonder if any of this was incorporated into Yara Aranis.