scott-martin

Just now, Joerg said:

The Dwarf Mine refugees from the Dragonkill of 1120 have re-surfaced in Dragon Pass more than two centuries later (as enslaved personnel and cult of the cannons and the Alchemical Transformer) recognizably as human slaves and not in any way resembling the dwarves they serve. Neither do the Slon humans show any adaptation of Clay Mostali traits. The humans and their cave oxen are as low in rank in mostali society as are nilmergs, gremlins and jolanti.

Decamonist propaganda notwithstanding I'm increasingly convinced the evolution went the other direction. Once upon a time there were pure mostali in the complexes and humans. Now the humans are gone, but we have twisted and malnourished people who have been told for centuries that they're "clay mostali" (lowest true cogs in the Machine proper). Most of the mostali are gone too so the cycle of clay perpetuates itself as best it can, maintaining the other aspects of the stone ecosystem.

The Slon slave population may be newer and so less acclimated, more recognizably "human" . . . now I wonder where the rest of Brithos really went.

33 minutes ago, Leingod said:

I'm an adherent of that conspiracy theory that Argrath intentionally gets the gods killed by the Devil before he slays it so that men will be free of the control of gods in the Fourth Age.

I haven't had a chance to see the game yet but love this project and am especially fond of a world where a self-described "Glorantha neophyte" casually lets arcana like this drop. Good times!

3 minutes ago, Darius West said:

I ask again, how can they sleep when the broos are birthing?

Out of reactions already today but the time has come, a fact's a fact. It belongs to them. Let's get it back!

My gut is that the lingering caste stigma kept the brahmins from getting their hands dirty and the kshatriyas from reading the books. The talars got richer and the world got poorer. Each caste had their exemplars but it's just biography to us now, no giants striding across the lozenge.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

I don't think that dwarves have the capacity to be assholes, or anything but. The original Mostali were somewhat complete individuals, but the clay mostali have been designed for mass production. Creativity or sensitivity wasn't on the drawing board - the absence of Mostal was already notable with the creation of the iron mostali, and their participation didn't do much to improve the design of the clay mostali.

I guess they would make a good builder's game for the computer. A bit like robo-rallye - you set them resources and a task and then get to clean up after that plan has inevitably been derailed.

Love the Robo Rally reference. Such a dwarf game would probably end up with a lot of broken units, walling themselves into their bunks or pouring hot fluids on their feet all the time because nobody told them to build a drain.

I woke up this morning more convinced than ever that WE are the "clay mostali" or at least some human race lost to history, now stunted and stereotyped from generations growing up among the rune metals who can't reproduce on their own. Naturally I suspect this is where the key Lodrilites went, the humans who knew how to work metal. Probably some remnants of the lost tribes of Danmalastan down there in the underground cities too, but they're probably a lost cause now.

22 minutes ago, Darius West said:

In short, if you want access to your magic, you will need to remove your tune metal slave tag and replace it with a good facsimile that will fool the guards.  Time to develop those neglected stealth and craft skills, no?

Keep rubbing with intent, the Ompalam rune (or whatever) stamped on that tag will eventually become something else.

Just want to footnote the rune metals implications while we're here. I would not be surprised if a society structured around metallic castes is a big reason most dwarves are such assholes. The Machine is a system of mutual + perpetual enslavement more insidious than anything in a Roger Waters song, draining all the freedom out of everyone too exalted to be just Clay and too unlucky to ever uh shine on like crazy Diamond. 

Maybe they were people once.

 

12 hours ago, Darius West said:

According to Elder Secrets, all pure elemental metals have that effect, not just iron.

I was just reminded of how a pure elemental metal will really mess up a lycanthrope skinwalker hsunchen as well, so the forms of "slavery" and domestication run in parallel. Start with a totemic person free and balanced between beast and man natures. Add elemental metal. Sever the bond, releasing a secular human and an animal from the lycanthropic complex. From there, you can theoretically teach the human new and more urbane cults to replace the lost totem. Or not. Either way, they're better workers now that they obey a clock and will wear shoes.

12 hours ago, Darius West said:

We must not confuse RW examples with how Glorantha would work.

Greg often seems eager to stack the deck in favor of slave revolt. There's something inherent in history and/or the soul that ensures that lost gods are rarely suppressed forever and when they come back it's with dramatically satisfying force. Roll the dice enough times and someone with enough POW is around at the right time to get the right initiation, overcome institutional barriers and put the oppressor on the defensive. Whether or not we believe this is true RW it's a nice dream.

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Man, I wish we had an elf or dwarf equivalent of the Troll Pak.

That's an opportunity. There was a pretty good elf pak in the works but it didn't really go in this direction. My multi-volume frazerian opus ("I Am Curious Arroin") will probably be revealed posthumously. And until someone breaks through the prejudice that all dwarves have always been assholes, the question of dwarf influences will stay hypothetical.

Belintar remembers a lot of crazy stuff, some of which may not translate well. A lot of people push similar levels of experience back to a universal "green age" when we all lived together in the forest, before the trees receded and left us out here and them in there. The parts we keep differ from region to region. Sometimes it's friendly magic plants that stayed with us as our birthright: grains, medicines, divine allies. Sometimes it's nightmares of what kept us awake in the dark. 

Even the plants that came with us carry their own covenants and grudges. Some crops need to take a sacrifice in order to rise again from the underworld. We die so they live. They die so we live. Others are more simply bound to a cycle of flourishing, death and resurrection. Genert the dying god. Flamal the growing god. Phamalt the god who never knows winter. Green elves, brown elves, yellow elves. In historical times green and brown elves fought to the point of genocide over whether Flamal was immortal or cyclical, whether the leaves needed to fall. 

When the forests receded the green sun blazed, no longer fugitive through the leaves. (Nature's first green is gold.) Little suns consolidated or remained apart. Some were dying gods who ruled in their season and then were slaughtered like horses, ebbing day by day as the world recapitulated the darkness after every harvest, bleeding out on their various hills of gold only to be reborn when the year sprouts fresh. That was how we interacted with the green world in those days, through figures like that. Their summer was the bright empire, when all the forests of the north came together and gave birth to a sacred king, a high king elf, a living and essential fourth corner of the earth, the male corner.

But the troll cousins couldn't bear it and the dwarf "friends" couldn't bear it and summer came crashing down like it always does, with an axe. The trees learned to be wary. We remember what they used to say but their law holds no power over us now. 
 

24 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

And whether elves simply choose to express their religious/spiritual beliefs in whatever terms their neighbors would understand the best.

Love the mixed post. Lately I tend to find it uh illuminating or at least uh fruitful to go the other direction with the elves in particular, looking at how the human cults we have now tend to reflect survivals of the great archaic vegetation cult that once covered the land like forest. But as you hint at here, the trolls come first in Kethaela at least, where Ezkankekko leads the Unity coalition to victory. The Dawn Council was a troll friend culture.

I'm still not convinced elves or elf friend cultures have "chaos" as distinct from death, winter and old night, which they either resist heroically through the bleakest phases of the cycle or negotiate renewal with the year. And there are at least hypothetically dwarf friend cultures, definitely triolini friend cultures.

1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

Vingkot and Orlanth seem like the mortal and immortal halves of a single legend

One time the lynx people (cousins of the puma people) woke up from a dream. Half of us had turned into people, half were lynxes and none of us remembered any more how to change back. I think it had something to do with the bad dogs.

28 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I must admit, I didn't really consider this event to be quite as literal as it's made out to be. There's a space between the literal and the allegorical that's quite wide and fruitful, imho.

For all we know there's a tantric component in with the alchemy. 😎A lot we still don't know about those Silver Age figures of archaic Kethaela.

5 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

I know I brought up RW tantric/shakti magical traditions, but they could also be understood as 'sorcerous'.

This is very dangerous to the intellectualized book-learning monopoly that has evolved around zzabur propaganda. It practically almost delivers the coup de grace to Four Worlds Theory. Naturally I like it a lot.
 

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

Firstly, Air is invisible, hence while we see the effects of air, the air itself is invisible, and hence is an immanent force. 

Flipping the argument here reminds me that Malkion is half storm god and so all his children who participate in that nature -- all the "wareran" peoples -- are already air people. That's usually the runic and cultural base that the exile faith had to work with when it first arrived on Genertan shores.

This makes a certain type of regression (almost typed regregssion) more prevalent as either latent storm traits are fitted back into the complex or the strict monotheistic overlay erodes. Also unlike many of the other ancestral gods of the colonized nations, some form of "Orlanth" is often alive and available nearby to inspire those who need a more robust response to the religious status quo.

Would not be surprised to discover that "Mostal" is actually an ancient form of "Invisible Lodril" that occasionally throws off heresies. Otherwise history makes things complicated, as for example "Invisible Sun" is "Moon" and is probably venerated as such in places like the Arrolian belt.

"Invisible Earth" -- the transcendent quality immanent in matter -- in the modern West is suppressed to the point that we just say "Earth." Invisible Lodril has a somewhat easier time of it, especially IMG up north.

4 minutes ago, Joerg said:

which of the ancient charioteer culture used donkeys rather than horses

Great question! We know now there was forest in archaic Pent to provide materials. They might appear as an early wave of "jenarong" that wasn't quite so militarily ambitious (or capable) and so was absorbed into the Lodrilite landscape instead of conquering the cities. They might well have been forced out of Pent ahead of the horse jenarong, the troll irruption that encountered Basko or both . . . since we're here, the extinction of the onager people probably hints at what happened to the tribes who stubbornly stood their ground. The trolls went east. The people we know about went west and when the forest was gone only riders were left behind. 

Some of the people might have gone east and their ancestors would preserve a donkey figure of their own.

Trying to leave this thread relatively on topic so am holding most of the rest of your notes for digestion elsewhere. (I misread you on stars being "orange" by default . . . obviously that only really applies in the Ring, but there is still a lot of orange up there.) So quick placeholders for the future . . . or for threadbreakers.

* What does the world look like if archaic "Ernalda" achieves her ubiquity as a rice goddess?

* Were there mules before horse became a taboo animal in Prax and created an economic opportunity ("greater bonus")? I think there were but this is one of the secrets of the cult.

* Do the planetary entities come with Dendara from the east? If so, does this point to an Artmalite influence? 

* As seducer of Soul Arranger it strikes me that Cragspider now has a nebulous role in the genealogy of Orlanth, being one of grandpa's old girlfriends. And Larnste is first of the mountain gods, friend of "Lodril" and others.

* On the other side of the family there's that esoteric story of infant Issaries orchestrating the conception of "Umath." Issaries is son of the Arranger and Harmony (Harp, Star 86). People are very careful to include Harana Ilor in lists of mountain makers although hers is inverted and now flooded. 
 

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

The donkey probably has less elaborate myths of origin and less ostentatious races and breeds than the horse, but just because one pantheon associates an animal with one deity doesn't mean that all other pantheons are likewise bound.

No argument here! However, this is the culture that created the Perfect Sky and so their associations with Donkey are the first line of investigation. Donkey is an immigrant to Peloria either way ("Equus Pentica" and 89 is one of the Later Stars). What I'm nudging against here is whether the mule cult might've come to the Perfect Sky culture under the auspices of the Lodrilite complex . . . we see Lodril introduce other strange gods and the presence of Harp among all these eastern-sounding entities (rice, flowers, Jenarong) indicates a "celestial court" influence. (I'm open to the Later Stars coming from the Pelandan side as well, but in the case of Donkey, Pent points east.) 

Either way, the mule god is now happily identified with Timekeeper the Wagon Planet, loaded with mysteries. Why is "normal" starlight orange like modern storm, I wonder. The star tribes were strong among the early storm people.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

the Black Dragon of Blackorm Mountain

Cragspider often slips my mind as the other troll figure who conquers fire. Hers is of course of the descending ("sky fall") variety, maybe coincidentally similar to Tanian or the sun spear mastered by Avivath (named after star 88), priest of Antirius. Her mountain overlooking the Hard Earth site remains unshorn. I don't know if it's volcanically active. Given her description as an ancient "nymph" I wonder if she incorporated components of early XU that were abandoned in the First Age conflicts . . . maybe including sky insights now lost to the exoteric XU cult.

5 hours ago, Leingod said:

A bunch of tattooed raiders riding in on horse-sized rams

Yikes! This sounds like the kind of thing they're getting up to in Lankst with their lightning and their chariots.

Not to revive any sleeping chariot wars but is there a charioteer on the Wall? Archaic Peloria called the blue planet something other than Mastakos. What do modern Dara Happans worship when they bring out their ancestral chariots, if not the Jenarong Rites?

8 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

although there are a few similarities between Orlanth and Pamalt what with the ring/necklace as well

I wouldn't be surprised if "Phamaltela" is the land where the earth giant fought and we won . . . assembling the Necklace to tie the world back together as their version of the LBQ. Of course he had weather on his side.

Talking about Baroshi fighting grubs makes me wonder if the Ginijji Culture experienced the Greater Darkness primarily as crop failure. Possibly even with a rogue psychotropic component . . . of all the major elder races, elves have the strongest historical sympathy with "chaos." Which reopens the question of what's going on with those plant disease spirits Daughter of Ralzakark is collecting.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Star 88 (no color given, hence orange)  Donkey Holder. Given Issaries' mule affinity, a possible identification.

This might predate Issaries or conceal deeper connections. Anaxial's Roster does claim that Donkey is a Lodrilite animal. 

27 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

PS. Baroshi's head is a barley-seed. He may have something in common with Flamal, Genert and other gods of male Earth.

Born to die in a deciduous climate?

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

On average 45 initiations per year, and as many adult deaths, in a clan of 960 people. Even less than 10% of the adults.

Even split by gender that feels like a hard ceiling on the number of initiates the 1% godi can actively monitor through the process, especially for the boys who all come in together in a single annual clump.

Perversely the baby booms are more dangerous because with attention divided across more tweens you get more chances to flub a worship or spirit sense roll and end up inadvertently making a flawed human or botching the entire batch.

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

The storm boys get their tutelage whenever they walk out of the door.

Nice. Yeah, the hard part is keeping good sky boys in line but peer review goes a long way there too. "Dual initiation" might happen when your friend in the other element lets you in on a few of the mysteries (everyone always blabs, at least a little, but it's OK) and so you can access enough of their perspective to Convince The Examiners if anyone asks. I really like the complexity of the relationships you have here.

The Initiation of Orlanth story is hard with these guys because the lessons Orlanth learns revolve around how to be a successful little brother in a culture of thugs, which brings him closer to the core Elmal values. I don't think these people have the full Hill of Gold but their rite might emphasize toughness and self sacrifice in ways we don't see in the storm version. Organized teamwork and discipline may be important in ways that don't really matter in the more independent Orlanth version. (I wouldn't be surprised if they initiate as many boys as they can at once for efficiency's sake and also to maintain bonds across widely separated steads.) 

Maybe they play a form of Shield Push and learn something about winning, losing and their cousins. Maybe the game is fixed.

For all I know they invented Star Heart. They should have IFWW so that's a great call.
 

Where do the storm boys get their tutelage? Is there always a friendly neighbor willing to foster sons who just don't have the right rune set to follow the way of their father? (And vice versa, sending, for example, sky sons down to the spear steads for a year or two so they can figure out who they really are.)

1 hour ago, Ian Cooper said:

But yes, there is bad Glorantha play, where someone says "I am going to behave like a dick, because Orlanth was". To be fair of course the same applies to being a Viking, playing in Westeros etc. Don't play with those people.

All out of reacts. This is also sound advice among our non-Vikings: when you meet that guy who uses myth as justification for treating his wife this way, steer clear. If he keeps going in this direction, he isn't going to be worshipping god much longer, and you don't want him to be around if that trajectory goes all the way to chaos.

His wife, on the other hand, is always worth helping out. Odds are good she's got a plan.

That said, the persistence of these stories always creates a role model (heroquest path) for guys susceptible in that dickish direction. In another thread I suspect that Harmast . . . high priest of gigolos, he knows how girls think and what they want . . . reviewed the initiation and the marriage speeches to soften the abuser model considerably by the time it reaches modern Orlanthite society. But he didn't see the need to eliminate it entirely. "There will always be jerks," Ernalda says. "My boys are idiots," replied Allfather.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Lodriiites aren't slaves. Or are they?

That bit of our understanding is probably a work in progress. I think their urban lot is not great but as long as they're considered Sons of the Low Brother they retain ancient rights. 

The Orians, on the other hand, may not. For years I thought the Gerrans built their own complex but now I see a history where it was built for them.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

At last, a return to the "slaves of the bird-headed tyrants": Imarja, Esrolian archetype of ruthless authoritarian rule, fearing Kodig. A goose bill may appear less brutal than a raptor bird's, but the bite while not cutting is every bit as powerful and may rip out flesh without cutting it off first.

Not quite the right thread to explore this but I always got the feeling "hen pecking" was the mildest of the punishments for Esrolian men in the era when the grandmothers cooperated with Dorastor to ban Orlanth initiation. Granted, the gender reversal doesn't really balance what happens to women elsewhere in the lozenge despite their defensive magic from Greg, but it's worth noting in the abuser context.

Harmast is depicted in the novel as that rarest and luckiest of dawn age Orlanth mutations, a man who learned how to "love women" as free individuals and not objects. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the first person who rectified a lot of the wooing myths and cleaned up god's character.

As far as the bird kings go, that's a real Chariots Or The Ducks scenario for prehistoric Rinliddi, my friend,  I like it a lot.

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

little evidence for that in Lunar/Dara Happan enslavement.

The redemptive ordeals of Danfive Xaron undoubtedly conceal a tradition that few writers have cared to explore. 

1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

Since Vinga can basically be spontaneously initiated to by an (Orlanthi) Earth cultist who suffers a severe enough trauma, this may make things dicey for the Lunars. Apparently she's not very common as a cult or mystery in Peloria, so they may be caught by surprise...

They have their own red-headed liberator of women and other suffering creatures. Who may or may not enjoy reciprocal initiation with Vinga but I'm not aware of anyone who's tried to test the hypothesis. Probably in the hero wars someone will . . . maybe in the other direction.

For urban Peloria I tend to favor the language of the classical mystery religions: servitude is nearly universal (echoes of the other chaos nest halfway around the world) and the longing for manumission -- at least an esoteric or posthumous salvation -- is fierce. This is one of the consolations the goddess provides that the gods of the city do not.

There are what we can call "raw" or rough moments lurking in a lot of the myths, keeping in mind that the forms that come down to us have almost certainly been smoothed in the telling to suit the sentiments of the people who pass them on. Sometimes this process may even extend to incidents being reassigned from revered characters to someone else in the narrative, or even whole characters appropriated or invented in order to avoid confusing the audience. (Especially volatile Storm Bull types.)

For what it's worth Greg has written about his own internal conflicts around these issues in places like his friend John Matthews' Choirs of the God: Revisioning Masculinity. I think the rough edges around Orlanth in particular reflect an admirable effort to resolve them, which is one of the things mythology gives us. (Not being defensive here but simply circumventing that particular debate before it starts.) Archaic Orlanth does a lot of dumb things, sometimes to women. Orlanth saves the world not by running from those things but by acknowledging them and trying to repair the damage. For better or worse, that's apparently why Ernalda loves him. Sometimes when she stops, it's because he's changed or she has. It's hard but it happens.

8 minutes ago, Joerg said:

guardian of the clan wyter

Great thread, guys. This last bit starts to look a lot like "Orlanthite ancestor worship" to this casual observer. In that particular clan, the genetic bond itself is the collective representation from which authority derives. For other clans at other times, it depends on the circumstances and your talent pool.