scott-martin

Just sort of bobbing along on this thread (great observations throughout but no time) . . . this one is worth teasing out in a little more detail because the House of Damol with its pagan divine lineage is really interesting. If I could have just one document right now it would be an even quasi-canonical list of the colonies extant at the Dawn. We could conspire to build one. Ironically we know more about the pagan landscape now than we do about the enclaves, especially in the northwest.

You are making a Deep Wastes campaign extremely compelling. The endless sky, the rhythm of camp and the knotted "song lines," the web of random spirit encounters. If I didn't know better I'd think someone (probably Bruce Chatwin) slipped me a hyena . . . but doing the math, even if only 75% of the clans are beyond Zola Fel at any given time, there must be close to 7,000 Issaries Trackers out there living Biturian's dream. I wonder how fast a message can promulgate across "all" of them. We have the map down to the hex now. We can statistically find out. And beyond, the ancient East.

That is indeed a super interesting question. It strikes me I know nothing about what Trade was before it was Trade.

Yeah, the best Belintar-era texts I have from this part of the world glorify sweet little Choralinthor as the favorite child of Esrola and so Engizi's sacrificial rush is what starts repairing the world. AA and his son aren't mentioned. All the people of the Bay love the sea and find their mirror in it. It unifies the realm as an OOO alternative. But I don't know Choralinthor's high holy day offhand or triolini IFWW so can't say. Anyhow I suspect Belintar favored this side of the local mythic landscape for the obvious reasons you point out.

To piggyback @jajagappa some of the deep mysteries of this "tide-wracked" realm revolve around the primal marriage of Faralinthor. Argan Argar needs to interrupt that particular happy bond in order to father OOO. It's not hard to construct a central rite that starts with a night of obstacles and thwarted desire (water ascendent) and then at the pivot we encounter the earth, spending much of the second night establishing the new rule, negotiating Husband Protector relationships and all that good stuff. Ideally there's a birth or a revelation to symbolize OOO, even if it's just a black bean in the fish cakes or whatever. Of course this isn't extremely relevant to all the peoples of the Mirrorsea but it might tell us something about the ancient priority of the husbands and how OOO achieves harmony with the water half of the realm as you note. One interesting thing that drops out of this is that the person who kills Faralinthor is usually "Umath" so once again we see an ambivalent doubling, Surface Dark and Primal Storm. Or Umath kills Faralinthor on the first sad night and Argan Argar emerges to console the desolate widow. But all this is probably not the kind of thing the Belintar complex liked to leave around in its original state.

That is my understanding of their deal with the goddess. But shifting the blood algebra of the sacrifice will probably be tried at some point in the Tarsh Civil War if it hasn't opened up in the past. When you need shaker magic some people think of the kids.

One of my favorite lines in the canon these days, by the way, is that at the end of all things "Argrath called for the help of the stars. The Pole Star, who ruled all of the sky now, sent his favorite lover to help. This was the Starbrow." So even Kallyr is not off the table for esoteric games (see your most recent reply) if someone finds her interesting enough. Arguably something happens within the cultic landscape to raise the profile of her favorite mysteries to rulership of the argrathite sky. Players can participate.

Yeah. Tol/at is mentioned in both Snodalsaga and Jonatsaga as the underworld war god of the northwest. The fact that he becomes integrated into both bakanist and rathorist ancestral narratives points me toward a shared separate source . . . maybe the bull people, why not. People tell me they had room to roam from the proto-Kralorelan border so why not carry a moon all the way up from the islands? I love the note on his sister. Sometimes people try to estrange them but bringing them back together may do great things. If I were doing a cold reading now I'd wonder if she was more actively antagonistic to the Empire so her sites were more carefully wiped. He lingered better around the fringes as cults like Vorthan. One way or another, it's interesting that he would have to be present inside KOW where all badasses are invited. Unlikely to bring him in with the riddlers because the bull peoples seem to have successfully purged all nysalorite influences. Unless of course that's just what we're told. A red [moon] carried back to Carmania would be interesting as a 7M precursor. Do we know any Carmanian wargods who might apply?

You came back super sassy. I love it. Alkoth has to be brought into the Tripolis. Enough said. There are hints that he was allied with Kargzant first within Time. As for Vorthan some texts have the pre-Jonatelan rathorings acknowledging a red [moon] god "Tol," but not much is said of him. The red god is ancient in the northwest, usually directly associated with the Naka/la. On the other hand, they also recognized various white goddesses so the Western Reaches are prime breeding ground for apocalyptic revivals. Tolat-of-Trowjang may well have been recognized across the southern coast and then introduced to the northwest, creating complications and recognitions like this Vorthan fellow.

They have a plan. Perhaps separately,

Wisconsin. Probably a reference to Genert's realm as once covered with plane trees. The "plains" inference is a backward folk etymology.

I love it but aren't they already us? To quote the last of the dinosaurs in Italo Calvino, "I traveled through valleys and plains. I came to a station, caught the first tram and was lost in the crowd."

This is some badass stuff. Looking at the Halfbird again it looks more like a proto-gloranthan document roughly as old as Snodalsaga . . . I do not know how the dwarves fit in but they are all over this.

Yellow Bear is a pretty big deal in the unpublished "Damiliolad" that revolves around the House Of Damol / Damil. Child of the Androgyne, lives in a place called "Pent," embedded in Blue Moon lore if I recall correctly. Active early Dawn Age. Might be a different Yellow Bear from the one who interacts with Jonat later.

I think you're both right. The lecture was 2015 but the book came out last year. And like the Land of Doom itself, there may be weird time loops and currents that look like paradoxes.

Tempting to imagine one of those budding Egypto-Gloranthologists growing up in Adari with sacred architecture on his mind and the magical resources to build. Map the right parts of Dara Happa on that river without a city, the city appears. This actually rehabilitates a lot of the fan "Egyptian Freemasonry" that has accumulated around his cult.

A lot of outpost-size settlements only show up in the side maps in the HeroQuest Dragon Pass: Land Of Thunder gazetteer and Greg's masters but are never described in print. I could be wrong but am thinking Apple Lane scale, a cluster of cottages. The name of course is a gag reference to the way everything else around here is ducky: Duck Point, Duck Ferry, Mallard Town, Man Vill [sic] where the freakish humans congregate. Maybe they adopt durulz clothes and other ways so are embarrassing to everyone. Now that you mention it, maybe some clever person will come up with a Jonstown scenario that plumbs the place's secrets.

The talar response is kind of funny without contradicting anything in this thread. Of course first you have to find an authentic talar.

Thread Drift is the way of our tribe but I'll try to keep these thoughts aligned with the larger topic of how the Jrustelite religious framework evolved in all its terminal complexity and splendor. I was recently reminded of the way the Aeolians argue that the Expulsion terminated in modern Kethaela, which shifts the usual map of the colonial diaspora a lot farther to the east than the conventional Neliomi-centric narrative suggests. There's a lot of coastline on that shifted map and much of it is gone now, lost in multiple disasters. But an unusual number of isolated enclaves and other sites survive here. Their interaction with the Empire is mysterious and complex. The imperial chauvinists would have embraced what they found there that reminded them of themselves and exploited everything else as "pagan ways" no matter where it came from. Now the Ingareens participated in the OOO coalition and as Entrulites and other lifebringer missions started opening up the coast they would have brought aeolianism with them to seed in receptive survivor communities. Most of these undoubtedly found their way into the empire and were more or less destroyed. A few, barely recognizable, linger as the regressive Ramalians and others. And then you have the "Erenplose" culture, which disappeared before the Gbaji Wars and had a secret pact with the sea gods. I suspect that these were the people the Waertagi ferried to Jrustela, but it could as easily have been any other now-lost Slontos people or combination of cultures. Until today I assumed they were a pagan pig people but now you guys highlighting that 500c. reference makes me wonder if they were something like Ingareens, an "aeolian" people more like "Seshnelans" than land goddess barbarians. They definitely know their way around boats! Either way, once the Neliomi cities established contact with this part of the world magic could circulate. We know a bit about how various Seshnegite centers embraced or experimented with various "aeolian" forms, identifying with various sea gods or darkness entities or whatever, with the legendary fighting children of Damol taking it seriously enough to marry into the Kolat order. Aeol = wind. This is always fundamentally a storm syncretism. Invisible Orlanth = storm Malkion. And as we know, Malkion Aerlit is only a sea god on his mother's side. All of this is part of the Western religious vocabulary, often suppressed but sometimes open for expression. These are the Hero Wars. People who inhabit truly "various" Gloranthas can take it from here. For me, for example, I am still not convinced that Old Trade is the historical "Brithos" that Hrestol's people left and he visited. That corner of the map is too static and too quiet to obey normal Gloranthan historical currents. Old Trade may originally have been something else while the historical "Brithos" may have been elsewhere. A lot depends on where the original Srvualela really was . . . some sources suggest the Homeward Ocean, others primeval Jrustela (as Magnetic Mountain south of Brithos), others Genert's Land and still others Gbaji's realm. That's a complicated proposition but it gets me thinking of how Es-ruvula (s-ruvula) was allied with the waertagi by 150 ST and how (Old) Narilor in lost Wenelia was special to the waertagi, "the only place they would land" or perhaps do any land-based spawning they needed to do. All worth exploring as we hunt the original god of our fathers and maybe the mothers too.

Yeah, the real history behind the elementary textbooks is somewhere between profoundly ironic and sad. But maybe it has a happy ending if we can just resist the known conversational land mines long enough to have an authentic encounter with the god of the west, invisible or otherwise. The whole SW Genertelan coast is blooming with radical archaeological discoveries . . . tying into your other work.

They built at least four of the original Thirteen Colonies and others now lost to the record so while imperial historians would scoff at mud huts and thatch I prefer to entertain the notion that they preserved the lost urban civilization of Slontos wiped out in the Dawn Age floods. Of course a few centuries of aggressive colonial hegemony will force the remnants off island, up into the highlands or into assimilation as you note. The alternative is a Seshnegite presence on the island over a century before the Nralarites, which is definitely a possible convolution but renders a lot of "Beautiful Jrustela" overly opaque. Or we just abandon the 500 date entirely.

IMG "pure" monotheism is the historical exception rather than the rule and there was enough ruin & complexity in the empire that every one of these reconstructions is valid in its context. Consider it a version of the "Orlanthi All." And there's so much unexploded mythic ordnance left in the surviving records that any mention gets noisy. Trivia: any ur-proto-GodLearning on the island before the Nralarites arrive in the early 600s would have been in the Olodo cities for what that's worth. I don't think they had the kind of zzaburites we would recognize through the rokarist lens. That's interesting. And then there's that funny line that while a wave of brithini "tried" to settle the island a generation later, most were "recognized as being incorrigible" and were sent further down to Pamaltela.

My current hypothesis is that both answers are right. Original Ernaldela was probably the territory southwest of modern Caladra that sunk in the dawn age. Scattered revivalist movements retained the memory of that civilization and occasionally got it together enough to reclaim the original name across the primeval Vingkot zone. Then when their cousins came back from Jrustela things got a little weirder. I like the notion of Wa(r)chaza and Wa(r)cha being a controversial identification or an imperfect foreigner's understanding of the same entity in two aspects . . . this is where hard work on the mer religions starts.

This is really great stuff.

Not a purely rhetorical question: can any member of the Shadzor / Alkor (Tolat) complex exist simultaneously with a unified Umath?