scott-martin

53 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Tolat as his uncle

Not so disturbing in the Artmalite context because they have Anellha to mediate the relationship between Hell/Sky and Sea/Sky. Actually Shargash has a sister too now, when we think about it. I wonder if things would go differently if he had to fight a flood again. Either way, it's striking that Tolat (or at least the sword, which some sources identify as a gift to the family from otherwise fugitive "Promalti smiths" of the cardinal south) is associated with buoyancy and so resists Sshorg where his Pelorian analogue fails. 

(Trimming a whole lot of false leads to keep this iteration of the thread a little more robust.)

Looking back at the lore, I can't help but notice that as Melib looms larger Trowjang recedes. Tolat in Trowjang seems to be the obvious "love and war" Amazon cult and I'm sure they have a story of how they came to live without men. Tolat in Melib, on the other hand, is explicitly a Loper People survival -- brought with the sword by refugees from the disintegrating Artmalite civilization -- and that's also a place where they remember Blue Moon worship as bifurcated along gender lines. 

Maybe Trowjang is the place where the gendered mysteries (a) broke down (b) developed to support only Tolat without his twin, only female worshippers and no men. But this is probably one of the deepest enigmas of the southpath, waiting to get us into trouble.

But Tolat worship was definitely imported to Melib at least, so if the archaic Abzeredites knew the red god by that name before the floods and Loper People incursions, I'd be surprised. Maybe they recognized him as something like Shargash as part of that Avalon Hill era pan-solar cultural belt that has now receded. Or maybe they acknowledged him as the nebulous Unvoreth.

When the proto-Brithini went roving, they apparently met the red god first as Tolat[h]. You know, it's funny but with so many Blue Peoples to choose from I never thought of Artmalites marrying into the West, but there's a reference to Cathora as "the daughter of the king of the Fralari nation," which may well be some slight garble of Froalar and his line. It would definitely explain how people like Xeotam learned what little they know about this mythos and why Tolat[h] is acknowledged (as judge of the underworld) in that weird Hrestolite story. 

Jagekriand seems to be a native Orlanthite name for the planet, which is a god they don't like. I like the "Jaga" root pointing toward Saird, especially since Jajagappa loves dogs (bad dogs figure often in Heortling grudges) and rules a hell. Would not be terribly surprised if similar cults persist in Henjarl to this day.

42 minutes ago, Joerg said:

We get an underworld sky deity involved in the upper sky activities. (All planets on the Southpath have strong underworld connections. The Sunpath leads through the Underworld, too, when all is said and done, and all the current planets and suns rose from the Underworld, except Mastakos/Uleria/Emilla.)

"Hamstringing" and crippling imagery comes up a lot with Southpath entities -- Mastakos obviously, the broken family of Artmal, a fleeting First Age reference to "Orlanth's family" taking down Shargash [sic] by hamstringing him from behind -- so I want to look for an Elmal (I'd almost say "Emil" but that's another labyrinth) or other wounded little sun there also. 

On the other hand an extensive list of defeated enemies of Shargash studiously does not mention any time when he beat the bat or the blue moon. Maybe they're his sisters too.

Another strange thread running through a lot of these gods is their affinity for the cosmological scale of "giants." Isn't there a reference somewhere to Jagekriand as a rogue planet, or did I dream that?

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

his Yelmsson persona's defeat against Sshorg/Oslir/Nestentos 

This is the one I'm thinking about -- preserved here. A more obscure parallel version attributes the events to the reign of "Khorventos," so this may be at the very cusp of Alkoth's integration into the DH system as two archaic dynastic lists converge. 

That Xeotam reference to me is a smoking gun. Scattered Fronelan fragments agree that Tolat[h] had a sun for his father and hell for his mother. Do we know Shargash's mother?

Shargash appears in a few rarefied myths as a self-annihilating war god (you might see hell connections there) and as an enemy of rising waters. I'll pass over the references once I check the daunting western sources available to me.

15 minutes ago, Darius West said:

 One logical prospect would be establishing an overland trade with Kralorela and Teshnos with Praxian help.  Such a thing is not impossible under the reign of Argrath, merely unlikely. 

Welcome to the Issaries Desert Trackers. Your franchise agreement, handsomely calligraphed on rich faux hyena hide, accompanies this card. We suggest you sign it.

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

performs stories that both entertain and hint at higher/deeper meaning.

I think that's one of the hinges of Gloranthan secular consciousness right there. While every aspect of the lozenge can be interpreted as the expression of mythic reality, in practice most of our Gloranthas are built out of a lot of busted gear and farting around, with the occasional interruption from somewhere sublime. Your cult identity mediates how your heroquests go. One thing that makes illusion dangerous is how a performance strips observers from that communal framework and addresses them one-to-one as "individuals" with the authority to interpret the experience on their own, sacred or profane. You get to choose which world you inhabit. Like any non-strictly-supervised initiation, this has produced plenty of historical freakouts as the audience grabs unexpected bits of "narrative" that would otherwise be impossible to even think in the normal ritual context. Perfectly good princesses break role to join the circus, etc.

Illusion, in other words, is where a sense of "self" emerges from the community. We see things differently: when I see the rain-dirty valley and you see Brigadoon, two truths prevail in the world. As our experiences diverge, we become distinct individuals and the archaic Gloranthan ritual consciousness evolves into something else like everything falling apart at the end of a golden age. This is one thing that makes the rune so useful to the lunars, who in various phases are interested in self-building as a path to personal liberation and incidentally weakening the bonds that hold creation together. As our interiority deepens, something like illumination looms.

Now you can also use illusion to achieve harmony, which is how cult-sponsored Donandar performances work. You reenact a myth that everybody knows, bonding the audience in a relatively cheap shared experience of other lives and exemplary lessons. When you roll high enough, you open doors that for all practical purposes are as good as magic. When you don't, hopefully at least you put on a good show. 

As far as I can tell, most independent illusion cults in central Genertela have concentrated in or around Glamour and the lunar complex. It's where the money is. I hope it makes the Dara Happans nervous. Because I love Rinliddi I wouldn't be surprised if the forms invented in the empire have a delirious strain of bird symbolism, running through them: Aristophanes, Attar, Peter Brook, Peter Greenaway. Masques and mummery: the play of the newborn goddess and the beasts, the play of the young elementals. It also plays well in the sticks.

Speaking of money, another rune that works along similar lines to build secular consciousness is what we call Communication. Money is what we exchange for goods and services. It has no memory outside the psychopompous Issaries Mysteries. The most traditional cultures dislike working with it for very good reasons. Within the bounds of the neutral Marketplace taboos loosen, spirits of reprisal go silent and cult secrets come together in otherwise unimaginable configurations. "Spells" are traded, small talk is made and we come out changed and mutually enriched. Once you start making a little cash, the actors show up. Clearly the Jrustelites (who, as we recall, were cursed as well with the discovery of "fiction") were the gift that kept on giving.
 

The flip response is that any sufficiently advanced form of Puppetry is indistinguishable from acting so there's a practical point at which initiates of one illusion performance cult can get reciprocal support from people who follow other forms. As such comedy generally rolls into local Trickster, with even "scripted" comic dramas usually just an open collection of routines that work. Many of these routines are actually Trickster "spells." 

Deeper down I think the difference between putting on a show or telling a story, on the one hand, and exploring the mythic realm really boils down to the depth of your intent and the quality of your performance. Sometimes a ritual fizzles and we're just going through the motions; Santa Claus doesn't come down the chimney. And I think in a lot of people's Glorantha "small talk" is just secular chatter, with no "magic points" (or whatever) expended and no supernatural link implied just because we tell the story. Of course magical stories are generally ringed with taboos anyway, but relatively sophisticated individuals in the Third Age probably have a reasonable repertoire of profane or at worst para-religious stories to tell. (A lot of this body of knowledge probably relates back to vestigial animistic traditions and other "dead gods," but that's esoteric.)

So it works a lot like the difference between having what we moderns would consider a "dream" (no oracular content, no divine connection, no divination points expended) and a Gloranthan receiving a vision. There's always a chance that casual talk will cross over, which is probably where a lot of the taboos come in. On the other hand many illusion cults naturally fuzz that line anyway, which is why a lot of people don't trust or like the circus when it comes to town. 

Arguably the line in itself is how the whole complex of illusion / "short worlds" / dream magic / impermanence / glamour operates within high Gloranthan magic, but the puppeteers decline to elaborate further. Some are, some aren't.

Much was lost when Slontos went down.

Nice. I'd even suspect that modern Ehilm is a synthetic restoration of Fire to a Sky that lacked heat once Lodi below and DaYzatar above became estranged -- what happens when one particular Elmal somehow succeeds in regaining his birthright.

Bats in the Vineyard! Greg's fiction hasn't shied away from institutional sexual violence, especially in periods of social upheaval, so we know the lozenge isn't exactly a theme park. But on the other hand a lot of the cults are aspirational, portals to experience that people thought over the years would be neat to explore or we can't get here on earth. Uleria definitely qualifies as the goddess of "sex positivity" with gag Crowley-reference spell ready to roll.

The way I fudge it is that particularly miserable people are rarely in actual cults because society shuts them out of opportunities and this is a self-perpetuating cycle. It also explains Chaos converts because if the normal social framework offers you nothing, you're going to be open to more radical alternatives. ("Nothing to lose.") A sex slave network structured around the slavery with a wing of sex would probably look a lot like Ompalam, a pyramid draining psychic resources like labor and magic points from wretches at the bottom. The "workers" enrich the pimp and are replaced as they wear out. It's a sad life but in Glorantha if they can somehow pray right they may find liberation. But it's so hard to pray right if your cult is taken away from you or you were born without any chance to find initiation at all.

Lunar pimps might bend the rules by coercing people into Seseine and charging for participation. Your coders might wrestle with that one. Either way, the people we know in Balazar are far from representative of the best the Lunar Way can offer, so it's going to feel good to get some fresh air in there, so to speak. 

Great but tough topic. For narrative purposes I might heighten the contrast between independent Uleria (a utopian and feminist tantric lifestyle) and people whose sex is exploited by pimps of one form or another. The pimps have a vested interest in alienating their people from any really effective religious framework because they want the "workers" (slaves) kept weak, dependent and easy to control. Uleria, on the other hand, is the center of all these wonderful rumors of cities of free women, sex as liberation, the power of love and so on. She's bad for business. And because this is Glorantha, if those oppressed sex slaves get a whiff of hope and a good enough opening, they're going to find their freedom. Maybe they go looking for Zoria. Maybe they build a new one right where they are. 

In the meantime I suspect that abuse is going to call various disease spirits, succubi and other demonic entities looking for an easy meal, so even if Cyriel isn't consciously flirting with Chaos his luck is going to get harder in the long run.

While the Empire turned a blind eye to slavery last time I checked, sexual slavery is probably a flashpoint in segments of "lunar" culture that emphasize women's liberation in particular. Hard to imagine the canon NPCs feeling strongly about it but depending on your narrative needs, a new 7M presence in Balazar could make life rough for pimps . . . maybe Coders sent to clean up the frontier in the light of developments in the south.

2 hours ago, g33k said:

(I'd LOVE to see someone work up a Gloranthan-calendar-based financial year ).

Not quite the same thing but where I come from seasonal accounts need to settle at the close Fire/Truth to give people time to catch up from the previous Market Day and start prepping for the next one. Some people also forgive or at least roll over outstanding invoices going into Secret Way but there's no compliance requirement there -- it's just best practice as the roads to the underworld open.  

Shows how much time I spend with those guys . . . I was remembering the ban as just a set of hardcore geasa but point taken. How's the rest of it hold up though? You died in the rite, he sends you back in the body (a loophole in the usual death cycle), after that you're on your own.

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Clearly there is a  MASSIVE QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCE between the state of the Lightbringers in the underworld to that of Yelm and his court in the same place.  If they are all equally "dead" how can that be accounted for?  Are we back to some sort of Princess Bride business where they are only "mostly dead" or some equally comical notion ? 

Love this thread even though it can get hot. I wonder if it makes sense to look at the SPECIFIC MASSIVE QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCES we see in various states of death and ritual underworld journeys. Some gods have secret trapdoors in and out of hell. They may or may not be the same doors but we won't know until we look.

To me what makes the Lightbringers special is their ritual journey through the gates of dusk and in Orlanth's unique (?) case, the baths of Nelat. With that in mind, I'd look at the water mysteries of death, life and transmigration for clues on how Orlanth in particular gets to the other side without suffering the same agonies that afflict the wormy emperor down there. Purification is important. Maybe even a kind of atonement. While Magasta is the central figure worldwide, in this part of the Barbarian Belt the key myths I'd look at are the unclosing wound of Sky River Titan and the bizarre magical properties of the Creek•River•Stream. Also the rehabilitation of Mastakos, the adoption of Heler, etc. I'm not sure Issaries knows these particular pathways all that well, but then again, Issaries isn't the star of the lightbringer rite.

Other people can emulate their gods in and out of hell. Falamal is a dying god, Blue Moon adepts grow from the dirt like potatoes, etc. Not sure Yelmalio knows how to die well, but that's a digression. I think when Magasta claims you, you're dead.

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

If you are "dead" when you enter the underworld, then Humakti who heroquest in the underworld can never return, because that would be returning from death which is utterly against cult precepts.  Oh, but perhaps the Humakti don't consider merely going into the underworld is being "dead".  If not, it's off to the Einherjar with you, you one shot meat-sack.  Now I am pretty sure that Humakti have some pretty important hero quests to perform in the underworld... RECONCILE THAT.

I ain't gonna be the one to tell the Humakt crowd that Bridge of Swords is just another entheogenic puppet show, much less claim such a thing in front of all you serious characters. What I always thought it did was give the Death God ownership of your soul -- you are dead -- and then send you back in order to deliver his grim gospel here in the land of the living, i.e., kick ass. Once that happens, it's not really up to you whether you breathe another day up here or go back down to hell whenever the master says your time is up. You don't decide. And you definitely don't challenge his will by seeking outside resurrection. If you feel strongly enough when you run out of hit points, take it up with the master and roll the DI dice.

Great catch. So if, as he says there, this is a vestige of Veskerele or some other transplant cult with a different kind of "underworld connections," the modern belief that this is the religion of outlaw Heortlings becomes a little more complex. MGF here to contemplate a patchwork of suppressed Sairdite cults -- maybe including one or two from, yeah, around Vanch -- forced south during any of the upheavals we've seen Since Time. Some undoubtedly die out or are subsumed into more mainstream cults. Some at least briefly set up realms of their own like what becomes Tarsh. Others, perhaps like the Lanbrilites, persist somewhere in the middle, never quite losing but never quite establishing a status quo either. Specialist cults. "Guild" cults.

On 12/15/2016 at 2:02 PM, soltakss said:

Daka Fal separated the living from the Dead, within God Time. I believe he also separated those who had died from those who had never lived, so arranging the Halls of the Dead. I thought those happened before the Dawn.

I love this line because it reminds me how primeval Larnste got the title "Soul Arranger" and so undoubtedly hints at deep relationships among the various psychopomps we know. Would not be surprised if it touched on the problem of what Kargan Tor did before Death as well.

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

the Middle World is the place us mortals live

Awesome! Zero interest in rushing a new interpretation of Gloranthan shamanism but I always loved the animist approach for bending many of the conventional relationships between non-corporeal entities ("spirits") and bodies, life and horrible dead stuff. The shaman can, after all, operate independently on both levels at once, resuscitate the body if its ability to support life is interrupted, share the body with ancestors & other eager spirits, discorporate and travel invisibly like wind, etc. For ordinary Gloranthans, these ordeals would probably skirt the line of Death, but for the "nagual" (like the Humakti beyond the bridge of swords) the terms get slippery. 

 

Is all of this an objective and universal mythic "fact" or do, for example, pure animistic cultures (if any) interact with Death differently? 

Love that. Anyone else or does "guild" really denote "Issaries-like cult structure" in modern Glorantha?

Lanbril in Pavis explicitly blurs the line between family organization and professional criminal gang -- the Pavis players were probably dreaming of Lankhmar but Greg would have thought of the benevolent Tongs -- so all of this is probably right. Follow-up question there is which (if any) gods in our modern understanding of Glorantha sponsor "guild" structures. 

By definition, the Lanbril cult covers its traces and defies divination so a skeptical reading of the texts may be the surest approach to its inner mysteries and role in the larger cosmos. Officially, he's the thief god of the Heortlings -- the personification of a specific violation of the norms of Orlanthite society -- and his network largely extends across the southern barbarian belt, congregating in the towns and occasional city.

Where do these people come from? How do they fall into this criminal way of life? In moments of social upheaval, the answers are obvious: pragmatism and the logic of survival push individuals to break the rules. Those who survive the spirits of reprisal become the seed of a persistent criminal counterculture, raising their children in the family business and initiating ambitious outsiders -- don't push, they'll get in touch with you -- within the framework of mainstream religious culture. When the upheaval ends, some thief cults may find their devotees in privileged positions in the new social order. Others remain in the shadows or die out.

Obviously in Lunar Pavis the crime cults are in play. Official Orlanth degenerates under the occupation while Adventurous takes over, and then when all aspects of Orlanth die adherents are forced to convert or go underground, finding day-to-day support in the closest cognates they can find. Gods of Glorantha finesses the complications here: sure, Lanbril is the dominant crime cult in settled Orlanthite times but in times of stress we remember that "many accepted gods have thieving abilities. Orlanthi thieves follow the tradition of their god." In other words, when Orlanth is outlawed only outlaws will remain Orlanthites.

Lanbril almost certainly forms part of the framework around Argrath's religious mosaic. It may even be an archaic native school of Heortling heroquest technique -- after all, anyone whose esoteric myth revolves around stealing the gods' practical magic (foreign and domestic gods, it seems to make no difference) knows a little something about getting around the wards, defeating reprisal and taking a little something secret back at the end of the caper. Theft is a marker of many successful "heroquest gods" -- marriage and trade are others -- and the RQ2 cult write-up is adorned with traits that probably originally belonged to other cults. Divination Block turns out to actually be the signature spell of the antinomian Selarnists of Afadjann. The controversies around Lanbrilite alchemy can be resolved by noting that mastery of this body of knowledge doesn't assist cult promotion: alchemy travels within the Lanbril complex but remains something a little separate. Lanbrilite alchemy, in other words, came from somewhere at a specific point within time. Religious authorities would say "it was stolen." Practitioners may say something else. They may even lie under interrogation.

That said, esoteric Lanbril revolves around the pursuit of personal immortality and the ambition to compete with the gods. It's one of the few explicitly euhemerist cults we have outside the Lunar orbit. He was just a man, born before the onset of Death and resentful of his doom. Feign Death is actually recognized as a skill deserving of cult promotion, so there's a yogic, maybe even a tantric component to the cult's mysteries. It's probably no coincidence that Black Fang had access to Lanbril secrets before he became a very minor god within time. Argrath's relationship to Death is a little more obscure, but we know for a fact he becomes a god too. Maybe these secrets are stolen. If so, they're stolen from somebody.

Lanbril also incorporates engineering processes that a casual observer would associate with the dwarves or, a little more hypothetically, the East. The dwarves are infamous immortals. If I were a cult dabbling in the defiance of Death I would want to pilfer as many of their secrets as I can, so maybe the fruits of that pilfering go into the criminal gizmos of Pavis. After all, the Rubble is full of abandoned dwarf gear ripe for the reverse engineering. The alchemy may also come from there or from misunderstood contacts with the esoteric alchemy of the mysterious East: if it wasn't immediately practical, Lanbril despised it as no use. 

The cult itself may have originated in the barbarian belt and evolved over the centuries. (Remember, "the gods don't change" but it's transparently obvious that cults within time DO.) Lanbril acquired spells and skills from foreign contacts or innovated internally, which within Glorantha is generally a similar dynamic. The Pavis circles in particular may retain archaic knowledge practically extinct elsewhere: perhaps a Sartarite alchemy (itself arising out of its own mosaic of dwarf and other foreign contacts), perhaps older things rediscovered in the Rubble or traveling in secret from even more exotic eras. Some deprecated sources hint that Lanbril was useful to the Middle Sea Empire, so there may yet be hidden "God Learner interactions" in play. In any case, that stuff, to use the vernacular, is tricky to fence. And so it accumulates, largely unused, dormant but not quite dead. At this point, Lanbril is whatever each criminal magician wants it to be. It's a moveable feast.

What we know is that Lanbril is not quite Adventurous and not quite Eurmal. They either evolved separately and came together or diverged at various points within History. Cult dogma hints at a moment in the God Time when Lanbril "permeated the world," so this may simply be a vestige of an entire civilization that lost before time got started. This Lanbril moment may be in the background when Orlanth and Eurmal met. If so, he may be another of the buried gods of Slontos or the beast empire, but who knows. The farther west you go, the harder time they have keeping all these entities straight.

Everything depends on the roots of Thieves' Argot. Either it's a lost theyalan dialect (perhaps a sister of what becomes Tradetalk), something that modern Teshnans would almost recognize or something else. 
 

Lanbril is also interesting because the cult perpetuates advanced (al)chemical knowledge that's tricky to reconcile with what we consider mainstream EWF. I'd look for his origins on the other side of the Wastes and in another thread.

Many core Gloranthan cultures acknowledge that not all dreams are authentic otherworld contacts so by analogy secular "fiction" is theoretically possible. Impossible Landscapes (from Middle Sea Empire, 8th century or earlier) is the central grimoire there. Author: unknown. Historical impact: immeasurable.
 

It's a great achievement.

p. 17 I might check sources to see if we're talking about a "Red Class Tower" or a Red "Glass" Tower since while this story was previously unknown to me, the distinction has ramifications for deep lunar magic.

That forceful generational nostalgia is hot stuff.

1 hour ago, Iskallor said:

Why would you worship Aldryami if a Praxian nomad?

Different healing magic, access to legendary "power plants," stubborn karmic attraction to the mysteries of Grower. She's recognized in the Paps complex so mom at least won't mind. Dad might have trouble unless we're a Light clan anyway, in which case I might represent a form of upward spiritual mobility.

If you did a fanzine I'd read it. Yeah, that's a dare.

Looking for an authentic pre-colonial Kralorela at this point is a mandate for saints and revolutionaries -- in the earliest surviving documents they worshipped "Yelm" over there.

Maybe that's just where "Yelm" comes from, dragging his set of "runes" along with him across the sky from the morning exposure of empire. As generations of travelers come and go, they put two clacks into the prayer machine for a look at the sun just like everyone else. Eventually the cult gets to Raibanth and that's where the Malkioni with their universalizing categories encounter him. They reintroduce their expectations when they go to the Eest. Some of it sticks, most of it doesn't, but it's all available for enunciation as "la langue."