scott-martin

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

the witness who goes crazy from seeing Darhudan's Death is Darhudan himself, still alive

I don't know. Confronting the fact of one's mortality in a mirror or "vision of horror" like what Flesh Man used to gibber can really mess someone up.

47 minutes ago, David Weihe said:

Just ask the God Learners taken by the Gift Carriers

Universal Descent from a single origin ("Grandfather Mortal") is my new variant GLS, exploited and punished like the others. The experiment would've been too tempting for their genealogically oriented "humanist" sorcerers not to attempt: run an ancestral reversion a la Liber Thisharb as far back as it goes (the "origin") and then get yourself adopted into a second nation, clan, family or other lineage. Run that reversion as far back as it goes. Do you encounter the same entities? At what point?

Of course everyone who might have succeeded in this is dead now, which is no real problem, and left no known descendants, which is.

11 minutes ago, David Scott said:

 all the Great Tribes were present

Thank you! And all followed the Covenant in some form we would recognize today, I take it.

45 minutes ago, David Scott said:

The Covenant was individually done for each tribe,

Was this all done at the same "time" or do some (undoubtedly obscure and fragmentary) accounts suggest that there might have been (for example) Seven or Four Great Tribes at one point in history, with the current canonical system only emerging at a particular moment? It's worth it for me at least contemplating a history where Sable and Moro were introduced to the Bull Tribes within Time, possibly displacing one or more others that were on the way out anyway.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

That would produce an awful lot of Horali-born Talars, though.

There's a lot in this post but this piece in particular might've just explained the Brithini Civil War. Besides if red fathers have yellow sons, one way or another it's natural to imagine blue fathers will balk at their heirs falling to the bottom of the system . . . or trying to enforce a "new interpretation" where blue breeds yellow.

On 7/23/2018 at 8:50 AM, Joerg said:

WIth the non-zzaburi Malkioni in RQG now using spirit magic (quite likely from Ancestor Worship) and rune magic (the Esvulari sort of associate spells from the Orlanth pantheon), they have lost much if not all that made them different from the Theyalans. I preferred the Midkemia-like approach of unsophisticated rote-learned spells, possibly requiring a written instruction, over this "pagan" version even for nobles and urban folk.

I think you still have this. The primary differentiator between the West and the barbarian belt was always the tissue of knights and sorcerers on top of warriors, peasants and cunning folk. Now there's more focus on the shared experience of the vast population that uses unsophisticated cottage magic below official scrutiny and caste taboo. They have the right to spells. The blue man lost a war and conceded that right to everyone with the ability, desire and opportunity to traffic with the right entities and learn the charms. Depending on circumstances, some will still consider this Midkemian "peasant magic" outside the zzabur system but still acceptable unto God. Others will have been taught that this is a reversion to paganism. (The teachers obviously have a vested interest in reinforcing their official monopoly and suppressing the obvious paradox of how faithful non-sorcerers do magic.)

The Menena are the natural swing case here since their earth mother lore is most rigorously suppressed in the texts we have and yet arguably ubiquitous in half the population. When women can't aspire to the priesthood witchcraft emerges. But even within the male castes the line blurs between apostasy and a birthright reclaimed. In my villages they still have something like literacy; it's just that the zzabur can't and won't see it for what it is. Maximum Fun For Your Glorantha.

Passion Spirit possession. Which becomes incredibly interesting in RQG.

58 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Seed of Genert

Eyeballing the eastern edge of the flood map reveals that every ancient exotic seed stockpiled in the Paps (grandmothers are crafty) is going to get a chance to germinate after all, whether that process takes it through a triolini digestive tract or otherwise. Good to refresh the serpents as long as the people stay out of box canyons -- otherwise new forests may echo with laughter but not the ancestral "wa ha!"

54 minutes ago, boztakang said:

the genealogy is pretty far separated

Thank you. This is the part that suddenly intrigues me . . . the idea of multiple irruptions from the Underworld, some of which are obviously trollish in retrospect, others that take time to resolve into a troll-centric narrative. I don't know if the Western outposts encountered the "troll" side of the family in their formative years, for example, or had to extrapolate from early experiences with the children of Dehore when they eventually met Darkness that walks like Man.

Krjalki, dehori, uz, digijelm, hollri, blue moonies, the shades who emerged in Ignorance, cave trolls, sea trolls, hot trolls, midget slashers, tusk riders  . . . at the Dawn, these were all just a few of the predators that lurked in the night. History has brought some into the "family" to varying degrees, others not so much. The Dark may well have had messengers and missionaries too, identifying the kinship of the good darks and denying others as tainted with something called chaos.

So if we can say conclusively that here is a moment when an outsider realized that the dark tribes occupying the verges of the central "barbarian belt" worship the darks who besieged Brithos in the earliest days, it's really helpful. Or even if some tribes brought some gods up with them (XU, ZZ, AA, GKK, Qualyorni/Moorgaki, the Blue Moon and the others) and others needed to be introduced. There might've even been, uh, multiple KL cults once upon a time. Maybe that person is related to OOO or maybe we had to wait for Dark Arkat's final revelations. 

Or maybe everyone's always known why trolls and hot trolls vary.

1 hour ago, Steve said:

It would look more like a cube above the Flood though, right?

Please you guys reassure me that truestone is really dense and that thing isn't going to float away from its sacred world-preserving duty like a big fizzing lode of lithium.

3 hours ago, boztakang said:

A typical priestess of Kyger Litor will tell you that Kyger Litor is the sum of Living Uz and their various Ancestor Spirits. Dehori are the elemental fragments of shattered Dehore

Mighty Boz, was there ever a time or tribe in your hearing when the trolls had not yet been introduced to or had "forgotten" the dehori?

19 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Is this from the Ice Age survival narrative of Brithos?

It is! Which gets me thinking about the "weird" distinction in the West between "darkness" and "ice." By the time the God Learners start making maps we know the monomyth but in this archaic material the lines between, for example, Dehore and Himile get blurry. And what we might call the "Chaos Age" looks a lot like a darker darkness. 

59 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

The description in the prosopaedia makes it sound like Mallia.

Great catch. I got my sacrificial verses confused: 

Finally Hoalar rose and said . . . “You have come for a king. I am here. I will go with you if you leave the rest of my people alone.”  The darkness spirits muttered amongst themselves saying, “Surely Dehora will accept a live king better than a dead one and his people. Let us strike this bargain with them.”  So it was done, and Hoalar went from his people.  In the Underworld he was rewarded by Dehora for his bravery, and was made Protector from Demons over his people.  This was the same trick used by Xemela, wife of Froalar, during the Great Night in Seshnela.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

There might be chaotic dehori, to come back to the original subject. If uz could be tainted and subverted, why not dehori?

If the Dawn Age Seshnegi had a word for "chaos" they might well have agreed that there's a fine line between dehori and the monstrosities that break the world. As far as I know the dehori war that triggered Xemela's sacrifice is the only substantial early interaction between the Malkionites and the kind of Darkness familiar to troll friends . . . and it did not leave a good impression. It might take an Arkat centuries later to plumb the depths of troll cosmology in a sorcerous context, by which point the prejudices had been set.

The origins of the cave trolls are unclear to me at least . . . our uz friends don't like to talk about it for good reason and I am not eager to get punched pressing the point. They could come from the far east. Probably some theoretician even argues that many of the weirder founding members of the Chaos Array are indistinguishable from especially virulent dehori. 

On 7/19/2018 at 2:15 AM, Animal Nomad said:

Do we as a community have the names and/or titles of all the 22 (?) known Dehori? I think Ikadz and Lord Lurker in Shadows are known Dehori, but are there others? Is Himile, for example, a Dehori? And is Lord Lurker a title or a name? And are all the Dehori as mighty as Ikadz and perhaps Himile? Is the mother of all the Dehori known? Perhaps it is Hegeda Dehora? Or are Mother of Space and Father of Demons the known parents?  Complex questions no doubt from a simple Animal Nomad! 

The Animal Nomad returns to bedevil!

Himile is not a dehori because the standard genealogy has Himile and Dehore (and also Subere) as children of Father of Demons and Mother of Space. Thus Cold differentiates from Darkness at this early stage. (This may be an uh "blind" or deliberate mystery to non-initiates.)

In the same texts Ikadz is a burtae and so not necessarily a true dehori . . . most likely a death god in the underworld but not necessarily of the Dark. He may be adopted into various lists of course. 

Given your interest in the tamali you might be willing to trade your lore of Hegeda Dehora for a story of how the dehori fathered the tamali. As for the mother of dehori, I would not be surprised if it was formally Subere although in some archaic sources "Xentha daughter of darkness" is their queen, which is interesting.

If I were listing dehori I'd start with a list of my 22 (or whatever number) favorite battle magic spells and wrap a shadow around each one. This suggests to me that the number of greater darks is equivalent to the number of spells a particular shaman can source from that particular elemental court.

3 minutes ago, David Scott said:

I'd suggest it's a crypto dialect of Tradetalk.

I ran out of reacts for the day before we got to Joerg's "Cabaret" reference but just wanted to say this stuff is really cooking up fine. 

And wherever Donandar comes from in historical times (dull professional guild, syncretic placeholder, generic bard cult, whatever), the Hero Wars can flip the script. Tylenea never died, she just went backstage awhile.

The unasked question here is where the language equivalencies on Puppeteer Cant bend. Is it completely alien to local exoteric languages, aligned closer to some than to others, universally familiar like a form of Trade, a virus from outer space . . . ?

EDIT oh of course the Theyalan was hidden in plain site in the original post. There you have it!

19 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

Kyger Litor, Chalana Arroy, and Orlanth all have direct (and positive) connections to Donandar according to the description in CC. Maran Gor uses dancing in her worship, so that was a bit more of a stretch.

Suggest keeping Issaries, who has few divine relatives this close and whose people are friendly with puppeteers. Maybe make the associated boon more cultural in most cases . . . a minor obligation to Create Market when asked to sanctify the performance ring, etc.  

I like it a lot.

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

But, ALL Sages have beard. You wouldn't be a Sage without a beard. 

 

On further reflection "sage" is one of those non-binary Orlanthite genders like "nandan" or "vinga," all beards are equally notional in the library. 

23 hours ago, Joerg said:

RQG p.298 claims that Lhankor Mhy cultists may only marry inside the cult.

Great thread. I was surprised myself recently to see that the roots of this go all the way back to Cults of Prax:

1 hour ago, Shimozakura said:

there exists no single truth to attain.

We know that attainment uncovers different and often contradictory insights because in Glorantha illuminates can and frequently do come into violent conflict. Fewer gentle monks, more Castanedan warriors gesturing at one another across history.

On 6/8/2018 at 10:11 AM, David Scott said:

Major Deities: issaries

Yikes! And in that moment I and a lot of my colleagues were, uh, "illuminated." We can display the Etyries shingle or make the sign of Holy Ashar and go about our business like always but you can't trade back the experience. ("Praxian bargain.") God/dess help the hapless beards though.

25 minutes ago, Shimozakura said:

Yes, the Riddles are definately going in, but what is this "great doubt"? Do you mean occlusion?

Love it. Not "occlusion" in a conventional Gloranthan sense but  疑, “Great Doubt, Great Awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening.” 

The illuminate apprehends that the "great trusts" that hold the everyday cosmos together are in some way arbitrary and negotiable. Anyway, very excited to hear that you will be talking about these things for the good people of Ropecon.

22 hours ago, Joerg said:

Yes and no.

Nice. Shimozakurasama, I might be sure to discuss Nysalor Riddles in the context of the koan as agent of the "great doubt." 

They have Storm Apples there. Any negotiated access would be a tremendous feather in her commercial career.