scott-martin

This is a popular interpretation. The Khordavu narrative emphasizes an Antirius restoration and suggests that "preparing the way" for a god named Yelm originates with some religious imperative the Lightbringers brought with them. "-Elm" enters the dynastic lists shortly thereafter and ultimately Erzanelm lays the groundwork for the Sun Swap And Stop in 111,375. I've never asked how exactly Khordavu coopts the Monster Army but it is clearly a pivotal event that ultimately contributes to the Break in the Council. Yelmgatha figured it out and his revelations seed the modern Red Emperor complex. The only real question for us is which "Bright One" he equated her with. I'm thinking Osentalka, which would make her an incarnation of the Nysalor who ruled the universe in tandem with Khordavic Yelm Imperator, much as the two halves of my response here are mirrors.

Yeah, you have a green light all the way unless some lost trove gets discovered elsewhere. I can't wait to see where you end up! 🤣🤣🤣

We're all here to argue about it. Since the alternative would have been worse, I'll call it a qualified win, a compromise. Some of my favorite lines characterize his intent (and his role) a little differently: Orlanth found his mother dead, saw his father suffering and chained between the earth and sky, and took upon himself the task to right the wrongs which had brought such disaster about. He took what tools and weapons he could, called some friends and met others along the way, and thereby joined the Lightbringers who searched unknowable paths to rescue the world. IMG to undertake the quest with the Lightbringers is a matter of atonement. You need to feel sorry and you need to take responsibility for the way the world has evolved around you. The quest is an adventure in search of solutions. In the story we tell, the solution he found was forgiving his enemy and submitting to alien justice for the good of the world. A new sun rose. The world was not reset as though nothing had ever gone wrong. It was only repaired, good to go until the next time. Later a hippie becomes so distraught by the way he sees the world going that he tries something similar. Following in god's footsteps hands him a weapon from the west. We say he has raised the dead or restored the world, or something. The weapon he reached for changes the world and those changes require additional adjustment. Time is a process. Clever people figure out what's going on and weaponize the ritual trigonometry in order to get what they want. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they only get what they need. I really like this line also:

Beyond what everybody knows? There are two pieces to the answer: what we know we don't know and what we can find out. He is surprisingly peripheral to many of the key texts. The Second Quest is not a narrative concern in any of the Barefoot Sagas I've seen. Greg simply isn't interested enough in that phase of his career and the Heortling chroniclers don't really care. Likewise, at least one of the extant Arkat Sagas ("Pseudoarkat" or the Tale of Seralos Deguy) is completely silent on Arkat's "sons" and posterity as well as Fronela and other topics. IMG this reveals two truths, one exoteric and one not. Talor is not really a universal saint cult so much as a regional hero. He didn't save the world. He simply made a deep impact in this particular corner of the mythic landscape. And because the Fronelan documents are so scarce (lost in various archives if they exist at all) the gnostic truth is that this history has been more thoroughly suppressed than the main Arkat epic or even the life of Gerlant in the south. It's worth a little meditation on why this would be. But the syncretic Book of Gbaji preserves a few fragmentary accounts, including some dates (413 arrival, 415 fall of Nenanduft, 417 for the final Telmorite curse, 419 he takes Kartolin) and a few contradictions. Some say he landed with Ar[k]at from the beginning. Others have him setting out from Brithos in 412 as a kind of imitator or echo inspired by the crusade on the mainland. And of course the original Prosopaedia insists that he was from Fronela all along. There's also an apocryphal, perhaps allegorical account of how he finds a wife, a best friend and a home in Baustin and witnesses the death of Ar[k]at . . . but it's riddled with inconsistencies with what everybody knows today and ends on a cliffhanger that may never be resolved. An enigma, a mystery story locked for someone's privacy and the key has been lost. There might have been multiple Talors drifting in and out of historical focus to suit the requirements of Fate. What's left behind are what IMG are the endless Talor stories, basically Nasruddin gags that corrode epistemological certainties in pursuit of some deeper antilogic. You have to laugh.

On pain of becoming a "centre of pestilence," as a post-Hrestol civilization they were historically acquainted with JOY and caste mobility. He's in the Book as the culmination of the last line of the secret keepers. Where they went with that is a little more complicated . . . there's that great line in MSE where I think you are, "the neat organization was often subverted by individual ambition, by families infiltrating departments and instituting their families and allies into favored positions rather than relying upon the hrestolic ideals of meritocracy." IMG the MGF comes from watching the revolution of caste as the empire lurched across history. The Seshneg-Jrustelan condominium rehearses the talar-zzabur dynamic in various phases while the independent military enterprise tends to consolidate around the ancient horalite titles like "dux" that linger from the Dawn Age. The engrion (MOA) status that dominated Brithos after the dawn is either extinct or ubiquitous, open to all in an age when hereditary succession is not always assured. In such a magically sophisticated society I would expect the foundational minutia to be treated casually, as more or less instructive, diverting or useful mythology with stronger resonance in some places (Hrestol in Seshnela and in a different interpretation Frontem; other founders elsewhere) much as a well educated Macedonian might smile at the notion of a historical Zeus, but YGWV and some prefer to focus on the intervening fundamentalist reforms. There's room for all of it. The weaponization of JOY among the Stygians and others is poorly documented, which is just as well. By the time it gets to the God Learners it's a long way from its origin. Maybe some felt this and worked to reincrudate the concept.

Hi. We appreciate your deliberate omission of "snake" green. As we all know, Erlanda never participated in the dragon mysteries and the green of Orlanth's ring is just coincidence. Keep up the good work, citizen!

For me it raises the question of whether a cult that considers the written word holy (LM, truth rune) would reject counter-factual text as blasphemy. If not, elite cells of Knowledge Assassins who do nothing but doctor books as bait for the enemy. It's a dangerous and ultimately destructive career ("lies murder some part of the World") but the tactical benefits in the Information War are just too tempting for pragmatic big beards to resist. On the other side I suspect much of the real pleasure of eating a book comes from knowing that you're taking those lore points out of circulation forever. But Atyar is still a truth god so knows the difference. We know he maintains "libraries." He doesn't eat everything.

Shhh. Separately I really like how the historical map snapshots associate the Road with specific political developments on the western end, collapse of Jorstland etc.

Love it. Probably needs its own thread to avoid clouding this one but "dragon orlanth" would lean into utuma math in ways I don't think Kallyr was set up to handle. Ultimately a left-handed argrath steps up who can.

This might be the heart of it, as it were. The "best friend" tantra always seems to break down sooner or later. But people keep trying to connect the pieces and start again. Probably a question of whether "fully" means complete or just good enough for government work. They had a lot of the recombinant elements (this is deep lore indistinguishable from YGWV) but seem to have lacked the right fundamental perspective and, as others have said, the motive to make anything more than the surface math happen. I wouldn't be surprised if Umathela in particular functioned as a kind of storm lab hoping to reverse engineer what the LBQ does. A kind of manhattan project. This would explain Sandy's rumors of variant lightbringer rings down there historically when we know they use the same seven as everyone else now. I don't know if I could do a full-fledged LBQ with all the trimmings myself at this stage for what that's worth. It's a huge commitment. One stinger there might be how EWF (as what amounts to the home team) developed the system or whether they threw it away for something completely different. EDIT I will also stick up for the Laughing Man, who may never have measured up to his "dad" but we have to trust he was the right guy for that time and place.

Love it. Whether they want to admit it or not, it's their hero wars too and all their old historical tensions are in play. But hey! This is smart stuff. Where the dumb theories at? What do I have in the files that hasn't been beaten into the ground already and won't get me beaten into the ground by the storm fundamentalists . . . one (shamanic) strand of archaic Issaries came from the lost long-ear donkey people and now the breeding of mules is a cult secret? Teshnos was an active participant in the Bright Empire and that's when Alkor was replaced / illuminated? When Snodal went north he also traveled backward in time? I used to have so many truly dumb thoughts.

Getting the feeling this is when many of us get serious about the real work of the next world, leaving the old one to him and the other recidivists when they get back.

I try! But it is difficult to go against the texts we have that suggest a strong line of descent, this one reproduced over here. https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/glorantha-2/heler-the-great-rain/ Perhaps this is a translation error when the compiler took what we would now know as a Tolat story (possibly bringing in separate elements of Dara Happan origin) and failed to reconcile the names to what we now know.

I think we are talking in different registers and I at least am seeing constraints that aren't there, which is the waters' prerogative and delight. The "NO" of water is an interesting thing as you know. Elves being hydraulic systems see what they see. What's funny is looking again at the more explicitly Heleric strata of this particular document reveals a deep pun I'd never gotten before, S(s)horga = Shorga(s), the blue dragon and the red planet, antagonistic parents of the brisk and leaping god. Ditto Vorio(f) in his way, his sister being who she is.

Just quoting what I'm told. Wet gods only know each other from the office?

This is great. I'm told that the Voriof mysteries are relatively well attested in this part of the world so this would be the place to see the surviving blueface sheep breeds. I'm also told these are the kind of elves who know Arroin as a wet god so maybe there's some deep kinship there with your brisk and leaping god waiting in the cool green.

How much like it? Was it the same cat? EDIT: It is so good to see great HANATAKA here. That was what I wanted to say originally.

I like it. They suffer from the "between the maps" problem (always on someone's periphery, rarely the center of anyone's world) so it's nice to see them in themselves. Likewise, there's a substantial gap between the Dawn Age documentation and the terminal third age. They could have risen and fallen multiple times in between . . . just like anyone else. For example, the Second Age Slontos text preserves the memory of a Pralorite urban culture (pre-800c) that vanishes by the period described in Middle Sea Geography over in Middle Sea Empire (probably Old Dukes, New Lands period, 900-920c), at which point they are once again "wandering deer people" of the "untamable wilds" and probably associated with the Arstola pagan preserve ("many semi-civilized tribes"). They might have even played a living museum role for the dangerously sophisticated archducal court. After 1050, of course, the region returns to barbarism (this time post-apocalyptic) that only starts receding again in the mid-to-late 12th century. By then, Castelain encounters Serpent Dancers. At the early end of the second age, this part of the world was known in the West for its "dragon influences," interesting in light of "serpent" beasts and "serpent" dancers. After all, Ryzel has had its own Inhuman King for ages. Since Pralorite "sorcerers" (somewhat tragic word in light of Western chauvinism as well as the game lexicon, I would just say "magicians" or even "warlocks") are the only surviving Serpent Beasts and some Pralorites allied with the Loper People, there might be dragon / blue moon interactions here waiting for the Hero Wars to unleash. The ultimate provenance of Ryzel may actually be a Ralian SCENE MISSING/FILE NOT FOUND city of Hermat, forbidden to humans, is described in some archaic sources as an ancient "Pralori" center and Gualal no longer survives even as a tidal ruin (despite BOG . . . maybe it was deliberately sunk recently?). Surviving Arkat propaganda probably depicts the Beasts in an extremely unfavorable light but SCENE MISSING/FILE NOT FOUND Pralorite mysticism within the Ancient Beasts Societies. Of course the "civilized" elk people lived closer to civilization and were wiped out in the shudders, leaving only the most unassimilable badass families in the depths of the forest to rebuild. I like the elf stuff a lot. Two images come to mind: TLDR horned man is horny

There's apparently a weird document in the archives that purports to describe "A Western View Of The Lightbringers Quest." Many of the key figures are the same but the figure they summon is identified with (a) "zzabur." Again, this might be a lost hrestolite teaching . . . the point is that something like this might have come in through Carmania as the mystery of mysteries and then the desperate geniuses in Torang put it to work. So again, a regrettably non-dumb theory after all. Please try to do harder! 😀 So as many know and kindly ignore, I am obsessed with the notion that trollkin (average SIZ 9-10) are not the feral tots we often see in the art but are in fact can stand as tall as 5'8" (SIZ 12) if they were ever to walk tall and proud. On average they're as strong, as robust and more agile than an adult human, and can theoretically become as intelligent as the average human when given the right opportunities. To a dark troll, humans undoubtedly smell funny but at first glance look like unusually valuable enlo. Every time they encounter us, we remind them of the awful broken babies they bear so often and probably get abandoned or exposed as infants fairly often. (I know about food and value, but I also keep hearing about feral trollkin hordes.) We are their curse that went on to organize and came back to wreak time's revenge. This is our world. The Womb Biter gave the mothers a profound gift by turning their babies into creatures like us who can thrive on the surface. The mothers just didn't see it that way. Of course we look at a trollkin and see a pitiful blinking wretch of a person, ugly, twisted and craven. Nobody but XU ever gives them any love or teaches them anything beyond rote vocational skills. But I wonder what free trollkin can become after a few generations to get used to the sun. Maybe they lose their darksense because they don't need it any more. Their diet improves. Maybe their hearts and souls grow. Where once were broken trolls eventually walk people of a darkness heritage: maybe a little ugly, a little furtive, a little small, but people more like us than uz. Maybe the trolls remember this, the nations that died out and left something like humans behind. The trollkin inherit the world. And for all I know an especially big and brutal human can resemble a particularly fragile troll who can't feel in the dark. Those people are eligible for adoption. Now what's really dumb is how some efforts to model the Brithini ensure that they're roughly trollkin size. When the mothers, grieving and traumatized with bitten wombs, saw the little people of the west they must have been horrified. But there are records of darkness people ("tamali") marrying into the Seshnelan populations in the dawn age. Maybe the wombs of the west already contained the poison and Nysalor simply activated it. Hrestol himself may have been half "troll," fathered on a princess of the local people who one day came to take her back.

Love it. When King of Sartar hit the first time there was some speculation that "Shadow’s Good Shadow" was a kind of mask for what Androgeus may be evolving toward. Hey, it was the '90s, we were all smaller then and lore was scarce at the time. But if there's any connection there, Moon Rune has a lot of refinement ahead before shaking free from empire forever. This part probably starts in Furthest where the hunt for dank memes may even be what calls Androgeus back in the first place . . . I don't see much interest in my friend the yellow bear there even in theory but the Halfbird may have other hedhead secrets ready for fancy boy to misunderstand. A real pentheus type, IMG he meets a poetic and gruesome end. This reminds me Androgeus' affiliation with Old Tarsh is complicated unless there's something we just don't know. While the Shakers undoubtedly preserve phallic female mysteries the Exiles hate the moon and presumably reject the Hon-Eel formulae. Maybe the Rising triggers when the superhero comes bearing renewed understanding and then the moon isn't so hateful to old earth any more. And looking at her original origin, I wouldn't be surprised if he's the real moon the mothers were seeking but didn't get quite right. Either way, no marriage is required because she is already his own wife and vice versa. People looking here tend to come back to the Skanth/Skath hermaphrodite entity of Dorastor, which has yet to produce a satisfactory baby but keeps trying. A lunar aspect sheds new light on why important people in the empire collect the failures.

There's a lot in that one. I never got the sense the trad red earths were thinking along these lines (probably preferring to work through the red emperor as intermediary instead, the so-called "Cherry Vanilla" work) but MGF dictates that somewhere between Tatius freezing the grant funding and the post-Hendira purges a few desperate women able and motivated to think around the box got the hell out of dodge. I wonder where they end up. Some future Tarsh splinter sect could easily form around one or two key revelations opposed to all currently known factions. It would be nice if a few end up heading west to hook some reviving Menena into the mix. Cragspider would also be interested if Arachne can at least watch. And Great Sister may finally have had enough. But the weird thing is that the farther out you go, the less important the ernalda marriage really is. Even at her biggest, the earth queen is really just a mask of Glorantha herself. Things might get complicated enough that Chalana and/or Uleria get put forward as cosmic mothers, in which case only they are really worth Sedenya's time. What I would do is start with a lost diary of Deezola and let it loose. Intricate notes on how to summon or awaken her own personal "ginna jar," a kind of external soul. That would probably overcome a lot of obstacles.

Can't recall if the digest brains lingered on how Ethilrist (to return to the thread start) appears to be consciously trying to engineer a Best Friend bond with Keener Than or whether they're an example of a potential superhero dyad that failed. I always liked the evocative line about how "Androgeus' best friend is the Twins," which suggests that someone truly old and transactional can game the dynamic and just pick someone who fits reasonably well. But back to the matter at hand, the longer I look at them, the more Gunda starts getting in the way but we still don't know a lot about what went down on the cradle. Beat Pot either gets sidelined or simply left in the dust (I can see a final break out of jealousy, which might hurt Harmony more than Death). Toward the end of all things I wonder if Argrath figures out how to game the Best Friend system in other ways.

Yeah, a lot of these are just commonsense interpretations of available data! Are there no dumb fans?