Ian Cooper

Sure, but Greg was quite clear about his intent here, see my quote in the original article. Yelm emerged as a result of the cultural clash between three sun-worshipping cultures in the 1st Age: DH, Horse Nomads, Heortling. Now, it is possible that DH was far more than just Antirius i.e. different polities had their sun gods, but the recognition of Antirius at the dawn, and his absence from the Wall, suggests that he was the large figure on the wall later identified as Yelm, and therefore the main sun god. In the same way that KoS was a mystery created by Greg around the question: "Who was the Argrath?" I think that GRoY and FS were a mystery created by Greg around the question: "Who is the sun?" The Plentonic Debates over the God's Wall, the association of Yelm with the Sunstop and Sunburst etc. are all part of that. (BTW I suspect that Greg vacillated between Yelm appearing at the Sunstop, or just Nysalor). And it's important because it leads to how I think Greg saw the Hero Wars: a place where you could too could change the GodTime by 'proving' your beliefs on the Hero Plane. Next up I want to talk about the Emperor and the Lifebringer's Quest as further evidence for there being no Yelm, and the key conflict being between the Emperor and the Rebel, not the Sun and the Storm, and that this theme Emperor vs. Rebel is the key one for Glorantha, that keeps repeating. Not sure if I should create a new thread for that, or just continue on this one. Preferences?

I see that as Saird and there are hints in GRoY that the Bright Empire view pervades there. That would also fit with: the number of SDTs in Saird, and the possibility that the cult Monrogh returns with is the Sairdite cult of Yelmalio. The open question with that model is how does this fit with the history of Yelmalio given in CoP, so at to reconcile Sun County i.e. it's presence in Old Pavis. But fixing that by eliminating Elmal seems drastic, and not to really match with what was happening in the 2nd Age otherwise, given the underground nature of the cult of Yelm, and the Yelm/Elmal conflict being thus in abeyance at this point.

The problem with Elmal-Yelmalio is more two-fold. First Greg said explicitly that Elmal was the Sun, and was not Yelmalio: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/HeroQuest-RPG/conversations/messages/33037 My thread on this forum tries to delve into what was meant by Many Suns, so I don't want to repeat it all here, but the idea that both Yelm and Elmal could be the sun god is at the heart of Many Suns. Indeed. Elmal's mythology echoes Yelm in a way that a structuralist god learner would adore (emphasis mine): Orlanth fights the Sun, it goes badly for both of them, Orlanth saves the sun. And whilst this does not have the resonance of the Lightbringer's Quest, it clearly suggests an entity deriving from the same ur-mythology. What is perhaps more at question is what happens after? Does the Elmal cult get replaced by Yelm (Antirius is not an option). I cover that in the other thread here. The answer I think is that Yelm himself gets replaced by Sun Dragon and Idovanus, so it seems unlikely. By Yelmalio? We don't have any post KoS evidence for anything other than that being something outside Saird, especially given the association of Yelmalio with the Yelm revelation of the Bright Empire and the noted rejection of the Yelm cult by the common folk. The path would seem to be: Dawn: Antirius, Kargzant, Elmal, et al Sunstop: Yelm and Yelmalio Fall of Bright Empire: Antirius, Kargzant, Elmal, et al EWF: Sun Dragon Carmanian Empire: Idovanus Lunar Empire: Yelm and Yelmalio But a lot of this is in the other thread. However, I don't see Monrogh identifying Elmal as Yelmalio here (especially given Greg's comments). Elmal is the sun. Yelmalio is something else. Sure folks gravitate towards Yelmalio due to the pressure caused by a Yelm cult which resurges with the Red Moon, but I don't think Elmal and Yelmalio swap. That said, I don't think any of this is the line that RQG intends to take. So it's all become YGWV.

Actually, that pretty much goes back to KoS, when we got Yelmalio as part of Monrogh's search for an answer to the Yelm/Elmal issues. As this pre-dates GRoY it is possible that Greg later changed his mind, but I think that he would have been aware when later surfacing the idea of Yelm spiltting into Bijif etc. that this would make Yelmalio one of the gods created at that point. Anitirius would seem a fair stab at the correlation from what GRoY tells us.

Maybe. 😉 It all depends on what you are looking for...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytheism#Soft_polytheism_versus_hard_polytheism In essence: there is a sun but many sun gods. Elmal, Yelm, Antirius, Kargzant, the Blood Sun are all ways of interacting with it. Everyone is right. The sun is both Elmal and Yelm. In hard polytheism, not everyone is right. The sun is Elmal or Yelm. Die unbeliever!

But this: -------------------------------------- https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/HeroQuest-RPG/conversations/messages/33037 John Machin> This is likely to stir the ashes a bit, but is Elmal the Sun Greg> Yes. John Mahin > (Yelm?) Greg> No. John Machin> or is he Yelmalio (who is someone like Yelm-Amongst-The-Hills). Greg> He's not Yelmalio. That's a different god. See http://www.glorantha.com/greg/q-and-a/yelmalio.html -------------------------------------- Elmal is the Sun, but he is not Yelm. That is the very paradox of the Many and the One

BTW, I think you have to accept soft polytheism in order to get God Learnerism. And everything that implies. Not soft poytheism, no monomyth

Sure and that is possible. But, it's just as viable that he didn't 'exist' but was 'found' during the Bright Empire as cultural contact raised the problem of the Many and the One (many gods, one entity). At the heart of this is soft vs. hard polytheism. Do the gods have absolute identities, or are they our projections onto abstractions. IMO Greg firmly embraced soft polytheism with KoS, GRoY, FS et al. The clue trail such as 'Where is Antirius?' on the God's Wall, the Sunstop and the Sunburst, lead me down that path. And the Lunar religion seems to imply soft polytheism as well, the Red Goddess is a soft polytheist concept as much as Yelm is, both amalgamate earlier deities within themselves. Why is it important? Because of what it implies for the Hero Wars. That we can make gods. What is the White Moon to come - heroquesters working to create a new moon goddess? What is the Blood Sun - heroquesters working to create a new sun god. These fortthecoming events depend, I think, on the plasticity of religion. But I think, before we can really talk about who Yelmalio is, we have to understand who Yelm and the Red Goddess are. Perhaps even who Ernalda (a Sairdite earth goddess) is, and who Imarja was... As a suggestion. Open your mind to the possibility that this is a secret that Greg put into his unfinished works. Now re-read with that principle, even if you are not yet a believer. See where the text takes you once you make that jump.

This may help some folks deliberations: http://glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/Yelm

The second part is easier. Antirius is really worshipped only as part of Yelm now, not separately as one of the twenty, or eighty (AFAIK), whereas as the Dawn he was an independent sun god. It is harder to tell what Antirius was like at the Dawn, because we don't have any contemporary Gloranthan documents, we kind of have to recreate Antirius from the bits and pieces we have. It is is possible to say that the following parts of Yelm are not likely to be elements of Antirius: the progression or Youth, Rider, etc. which seems likely to have come from Kargzant instead. It is likely that a major part of what we think of now as Yelm draws from the six portions: Antirius, Enverinus, Bijiif, Berneel Arashagern, Vrimak and Kazkurtum. The hint is there that Yelm was built from those gods. The identification with the Emperor seems to not be part of Antirius as well, certainly the emperor as object of worship comes later from Yelm, and may be brought in from the Orlanth cults conflict with the Emperor. It appears that any association with Ernalda is a Sairdite addition. As Antirius is the bringer of justice through the Antirius Precepts it's possible that was a strong part of his original role. That also implies a rulership role. Don't forget that these were city states, so the individual city gods would likely have dominated. It would make sense that the Elmal cult picked up the idea of Elmal as the bringer of justice (when Orlanth is already the source of justice) from contact with the cult of Antirius. Certainly Anatyr the Elmal subcult that chieftains use, would seem to be a borrowing from Antirius.

Right and that is my point. The conflict of the Many and the One, which lies at the heart of GRoY and the Many Suns revelation of Monrogh. The appreciation that Many deities can be the sun leads to an illuminated perspective -- all we see are the shadows on the wall of the cave. The celestial bodies by virtue of being individual, but experienced by many cultures are the flashpoint for mythological conflict in the First Age. Ilumination, the monomyth, all are reactions to this. Yelm and later the Red Moon are I believe in Greg's cosmogeny syncretic artefacts of attempts to reconcile the Many into One, as opposed to accepting the Many.

Too early to tell. But most likely it might be divided like that. It's likely that for that book we will need to figure out how to support HQG and RQG effectively.

I think the bits, as with the Red Goddess have to have existed, but their assembly as Yelm was new. Indeed Yelm would by Greg's suggestion be a composite of other figures: Antirius, Elmal, Kargzant, the Emperor etc. My point is not that is was created fresh, but the name Yelm is applied to a synthesis of these elements. When Harmast does the Lightbringer's Quest, I think that he literally creates the mythology of the Lightbringers from the fragments in Orlanthi culture and the synthesis of the Bright Empire. It is an unpublished source (boo!) but his Ten-Women Well Loved cleary has the Sacred Time rituals that Harmast participates in as the Lifebringer's Quest where Orlanth rescues Ernalda from the Undeworld. The implication of that, to me, is that the Lightbringer's Quest has not been 'discovered', in other words no one has assembled that mythology yet. After Harmast we have the story of how Orlanth goes to the Underworld to liberate Yelm, but it is not recognized before him. And I think this is important to understand, because Greg seems to be implying that mythology is not fixed but created by its most powerful worshippers. Of course there is an underlying abstract truth, but it is so abstract, and so removed, that Many intepretations can be placed on that One. The monomyth tries to find that One, but I think that it ultimately fails because it becomes a new mask over the abstract forces, just another shadow on the wall, rather than a catalogue of the abstraction.

The identification of the stars does seem to be the object of some debate in the sources we have. Interestingly, the stars, like the sun, suffer from the problem of the Many and the One. A given star may have many gods associated with it. it's interesting to note that Orlanth only becomes associated with the constellation in the sky, the Disruptor, during the Bright Empire, according to GRoY. I think that Glorantha's cosmology is a lot more 'mutable' than we think. The insights of illumination, coupled with heroquesting seem capable of re-interpreting the world. I believe that this is important to understand the Hero Wars and its consequences. Heroes can literally change the world IMO, as they have done before. My gut is that if you look at where Greg was heading, it was to draw strong parallels between the Lunar and Solar cults, both 'created' in time from illuminated heroquesters fashioning new beliefs out of the fragments they could find on the hero plane.

So let's talk about Yelm and whence he comes from. This conversation is about Greg's King of Sartar and Stafford Library material, so its deep in textual argument and probably pulls from sources that are no longer of ‘clear’ authority. So be it. It is a brain dump and probably riddled with errors, but let’s talk about it. It's not, for now, mostly, about Yelmalio. He can come later. First we need to talk about Yelm. I'll give you the proposition first, then talk about where it comes from: Yelm is not the god of the sun at the Dawn for Dara Happa, or anywhere else. The major cultures central Genertela all have their own god of the sun at the Dawn. Yelm is a synthesis whose consequence is Nysalorian illumination and the Sunstop. Although he predates the God Learners, you can think of Yelm as a monomyth creation (although it's really Nysalorian illumination at the root of all this, including God Learnerism). Anyway, at the dawn, in central Genertela, the sun is Elmal, and Antirius, and Kargzant, (and others, all cultures have a sun god, even Ehilim in the west). Orlanth kills the Emperor, not Yelm. Rebellus Terminus is the enemy of the Dara Happan gods, not Orlanth. Orlanth goes on the Lifebringer's Quest to bring back Ernalda, not the Lightbriner's Quest to bring back the sun. The Red Goddess was not the first divinity to be created inside Time in Peloria. That crown goes to Yelm. In many ways the birth of the Red Goddess is an echo of the birth of Yelm. So how do I get to this conclusion? First off, when Greg wrote King of Sartar (KoS), he looked in detail at Orlanthi culture. One aspect of that was to look at their religion. Up to this point we had tended to think about their being a single Gloranthan religion oriented around the monomyth. More than that, the cultures all worshipped an elemental pantheon. The Sartarites worshiped the Storm Gods, the Dara Happans the Sky Gods etc. This changed with King of Sartar. Greg started to think about the Orlanthi as worshiping a pantheon of deities instead. The cultures of the Dawn were isolated and complete. The Heortlings knew of the sun, they could see it in the sky, but they called it Elmal, not Yelm. To be a complete pantheon, there had to be a native god of the sun, among others, that had previously been only represented as foreign gods. But no foreign gods were known at the Dawn. Thus Greg's introduction of Elmal, a sun god for the Orlanthi. "This time I looked at things anew, as always. Importantly, while wandering throughout the Stormtime and Nowtime, I looked up and wondered, for the first time, “Who is the Orlanthi sun god?” I realized that the place of the Sun in Orlanthi myth, as revealed so far, was that of the enemy and foe, the Emperor. Nonetheless, there was the Sun of Life which anyone can see and feel when they go out on a sunny day. Without that then the Dark Tribe would rule again. The Orlanthi knew it and surely acknowledged the Friendly Sun. I knew that, but even as Storyteller I did not know where this might be." - The Birth of Elmal, Greg Stafford. KoS acknowledged that the religion of the Heortlings at the Dawn included sun gods, darkness gods, water gods etc. Any real reasoning about this had already needed to break the elemental correspondence anyway, the Heortlings had an earth goddess already in Ernalda, so they were never pure storm. Elmal was the name of the Orlanthi sun god. It was new to KoS, many of the names there were new to us. And it caused controversy because it changed how we thought about Glorantha, from one world pantheon, to multiple pantheons, originating in a different Dawn Age culture. Inspired by this revelation, Greg went on to write Glorious Reascent of Yelm (GRoY) to examine Dara Happan religion, the Entekosiad to look at Pelandan religion etc. Gone was the vision of 'one Gloranthan religion' with different regions favoring different elements that had graced the Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha articles in Wyrm's Footnotes. Now we had many religions that met, and tried to reconcile their different perspectives of the Godtime, sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently. "Third, my new status has freed me to explore other aspects of Glorantha which had previously been prohibited by the rules and laws of the RuneQuest tribe. As a result I have been delving deeply into the Solar Way (thanks to the entryway provided by the Many Lesser Suns) and, as a natural consequence, the Lunar Way." The Birth of Elmal, Greg Stafford For Greg the touch point of this conflict was the identity of the sun. He refers to this in both KoS, GRoY, and Fortunate Succession (FS) as the conflict of the Many and the One. Consider, that when two cultures meet, we can rationalize most differences between our pantheons by creating regional earth, river, city or storm deities. "Esrola is your land goddess down there, and Pela is our land goddess up here," folks say. "Orlanth is the great storm that blows down in Dragon Pass, but Entekos is the calm air of our region." The two cultures can share stories and agree that their gods are the gods of their region. Sometimes they share stories and tales, and people wonder: "Is your goddess also our goddess?" And when people meet in peace, as they did in the Unity council, this can create a synthesis that is greater than the sum of the parts. But there is only one sun. So how can we reconcile competing sun gods? Now, if you hear Greg speak at cons it is clear that Glorantha is a platonic universe. The 'All' of the 'Green Age' is unknowable except to the mystic and likely to drive anyone who experiences it mad without preparation. Most religions see the 'shadows on the wall of the cave' of that reality, a projection of their culture over the fundamental truths of the runes to create something approachable for worship. It is a 'soft' polytheism not a 'hard' one. "In the Beginning, before there were people, before there was a sky, an earth or an ocean, before there were gods, before there was a Before, was Vezkarvez. Vezkarvez is not something which can be thought about, remembered, felt, or even imagined. Do not bother to try, for to try to do so is only to fall into the trap of the Other. Vezkarvez, pure and undivided, can be touched only by the highest gods who know secrets which you can never know." GRoY, p.6 Now someone might object to soft polytheism: "But in Glorantha you can heroquest and check the details!" But it is clear that heroquesting is still a projection of the mortal mind onto the cosmic "all", you can heroquest to cement your version of the truth and if enough people agree to it, then that is a truth for them. Harmast learns this and does this. But so does the Red Goddess, and (spoilers) so does Yelmgatha. So, as we stated earlier, there is just one sun in the sky, so rationalizing that becomes a little trickier. Here is the problem of the Many and the One. We can't pull the region trick. How can the sun be your sun god, and my sun god? We have some options, which mostly boil down to: they are both names for the same god or you are wrong. Synthesis or conflict. The sun becomes the touch point for the conflict of the Many vs. the One. Either we accept that we don't have truth, just a "shadow on the walls of the cave" or we declare you a heretic. IMO Greg was pretty clear what the scenario was at the Dawn in KoS and GRoY. The Heortlings have a sun god called Elmal, the Dara Happans have one called Antirius and the Horse Nomads have one called Kargzant. "Elmal is the Orlanthi god of the Sun, a trusted thane of the Chief God who is charged with defending the homestead when Orlanth and his companions depart upon the Lightbringers’ Quest. His priests participate in the great festivals and important Sacred Time annual rituals, and have parts in many of the most widely known stories. ... The deity gave its initiates blessings upon the earth, good barley crops, healthy horses, and winter protection" King of Sartar, p.188 Now, as KoS instructs us, the horse nomads were driven off, and so the Heortlings and Pentans never exchanged their mythologies in a peaceful fashion. But the Dara Happans and the Heortlings did. And they wrestled with the problem? How can your sun god and our sun god both be the sun. Either we are hard or soft polytheists. "During the Dawn Age there was a clash of cultures as the Elmal magic impacted with the fierce Sun God who was worshipped by the nomads of Peloria. The beliefs of the two cultures in their own Sun Gods [Elmal and Kargzant] were challenged for the first time. Each held true, but the fierce nomads were weaker and unable to withstand the shock. The war ended with their defeat, and they retreated to places where no people had ever lived before. The withdrawal of the nomads revealed a greater threat: the native Dara Happan Solar religion which covered all the regions previously occupied by the nomads. The impact upon the Theyalans is recorded, but the crushing splendor of the great golden towers of the Dara Happan Sun God was especially strong upon the Elmali. The Theyalans recognized that Yelm, the Dara Happan Great God, was the manifestation of their own Emperor, an enemy of Orlanth. The Orlanthi also realized that Yelm was also the Sun God." King of Sartar, p.188 and then later in GRoY "Eventually these two cultures fused into a single entity called the Golden Empire of Nysalor, but that did not begin until the reign of Emperor Khorzanelm (c. 111,368 to 111,405), a century and a half after the era covered in this book. During the friendly century of this era occurred a fusion of the two mythologies of Dara Happan Yelm and Theyalan Orlanth. For instance, the part of Rebellus Terminus was taken by Orlanth, and he was associated with the Disruptor constellation by other peoples. Likewise, it was an easy step for the Orlanthi Emperor to become the god Yelm. The harmonious duality of Nature was thereby shown, especially in a myth of their competition for the hand of Ernalda, a Sairdite manifestation of the earth goddess. " From GRoY, 'Where is Orlanth' p.73 Fortunate Succession tells us more about this merging, which GRoY refers to as 'after this book' which occurs at the Sunstop: "Khorzanelm was the emperor who supported, blessed, sanctioned, and oversaw the incorporation of the World Council of Friends within Dara Happa. With imperial support, the project was prepared with the best of everything. It was located in the south, because everyone wished to heal that direction first because it harmed everyone the most and was itself the most damaged. In 111,375 Khorzanelm assembled all the best people of the Empire, and they spoke the Prayer to Yelm, and this time were answered by the appearance of the One God Himself. It was not just Antirius, the ever-reliable bright Disk, but instead this time was truly Yelm Overlord who rose. Yelm wished to honor and praise the mighty Emperor who had tamed the world and provided the security for him to rise. Thus Yelm stood motionless in the sky and the Heavenly Choir rained praise upon all the faithful whose lives were enriched until their deaths as wise elders. Such a unique opportunity was possible only because Nysalor had been born, the incarnation of the Many, born among mortals to bring the divine light to us." Fortunate Succession, p.32, emphasis mine FS later moves events so that Yelm appears prior to the Sunstop, the result of debates about who the sun is, but gives birth to Nysalorian illumination because recognition that both Elmal and Antirius are the sun requires such insight. "The time spent for Yelm to re-manifest the world was from 110,666 until 111,111 when he became manifest as the Real Sun. Yelm's insight into the secrets of the cosmos was originally the province of only himself and, perhaps, a few of the other immortals. But in 111,375 Illumination was delivered to mortals as well. This occurred when Nysalor was born. The burden of bearing the Impossible was beyond the power of even the One. Yelm paused in the sky, and he separated the Illumination from himself, and placed One among us mortals to keep our awareness of the First Being alive. Thereafter it was possible for the Many to be the One as well. A further benefit was that Yelm was purified. The Sun had purged itself completely from the Many when he gave this great gift to humankind. Thereafter, too, Yelm was less of a god and more of a Sun." Fortunate Succession, p. 74 Nysalor is the 'incarnation of the Many' and also 'seperated the Illumination from himself, and placed One among us." What does that mean? IMO it means that Nysalor is 'soft polytheism' the idea that many gods could be associated with a phenomena because they are all 'shadows on the wall of the cave' not the all. If the sun is not Elmal, or Antirius, but something essential which we project these ideas onto, a Fire Rune perhaps, then we can create a new projection, synthesized from existing ideas: Yelm. Greg reiterated this a number of times. From the WoG list: "The unification of the Orlanthi and the Solar religions, under the council that created Nysalor, was a fusion of two different religions under a mystically oriented demigod. A truly unique event for the times. And one that did not last under its own internal pressure." https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WorldofGlorantha/conversations/messages/2130 and discussing the emergence of illumination in the First Age: “In Dorastor, the Amalgam Deities were imported and incorporated. It is probably the origin of the Monomyth, in which Yelm and Orlanth play such significant parts in each others' myths. After this period the Dara Happan role of Rebellus Terminus is permanently grafted to Orlanth, while the Orlanthi role of Emperor is immutably assigned to Yelm.” Fortunate Succession, p.72 Wait, you may say, GRoY has Yelm in its mythic history. Of course, because it is a document that post-dates this syncretic deity. But Greg left a lot of hints as to the ‘puzzle’ he was creating for us. GRoY itself reveals the contemporary debates about Yelm. The most significant is the absence of Antirius on the God’s Wall. Why is Antirius absent? “The Plentonic Debates began within a century after the author first circulated copies of his document. Debate started with worshippers of Doburdun, the Darsenite Thunderer, who pointed out that figure I-18 was precisely their deity, icono-graphically. They did not know Antirius, who was not associated with Doburdun at all. Attributes, powers, and myths were all different. Apparently many learned people had also been quietly wondering what I-18 had to do with Antirius. The priests’ questions thus began debates about the nature of the Plentonic Truth which, in turn, led to debates about the nature of Truth.” The ‘problem’ of Antirius is only a problem if he is not the figure on the wall now identified as Yelm. Replace Yelm with Antirius on the wall, and recognise Yelm as a deity created in time, and he can take his rightful place on the wall again, as can Doburdun the Darsenite thunder god. The ‘Plentonic Debates’ on ‘Truth’ are ultimately a debate about the identity of the sun and the revelation of Yelm inside time — Antirius is only absent because we must have one sun that takes aspects of Antirius, Elmal, Kargzant, the Emperor etc. That is why the sun becomes ‘the one’ split of from the many for the Nysalorians. Because we feel the need for their to be ‘one sun’ we divorce the ‘sun’ from the many deities that can represent him It seems that the early Yelm cult, like the modern lunar cult, is a state religion whose purpose is worship of the Emperor and the organisation of the Empire. It seems little worshipped outside of this role: “Emperor Khordavu, as well as his household and certain office holders, were considered to be divinities. They were a part in the natural hierarchy of life, along with spirits, demigods, and other deities.” Fortunate Succession, p.65 Parallels with the lunar cult of the Red Emperor seem reasonable, at this stage the Yelm cult is essentially worship of the divine emperor over the sun. So that is how we can say: “ Thereafter it was possible for the Many to be the One as well. A further benefit was that Yelm was purified. The Sun had purged itself completely from the Many when he gave this great gift to humankind. Thereafter, too, Yelm was less of a god and more of a Sun” Yelm is the sun, separate from the cults of the sun, Antirius, Elmal, Kargzant et al. but also from the cult of the divine emperor that bears his name. But what happens after the break up of the Bright Empire? "When the Nysalorite Empire broke apart and the barbarians invaded, the unified belief continued, although unified religion was broken. Differences were encouraged by politics taking a turn for the worse, and the natural differences between deities being emphasized. Working harmony was gone again, leaving only the Ideal." From GRoY, 'Where is Orlanth' p.73 In other words though the belief in Yem vs Orlanth continued, the imperial cult was no longer the sun cult worshipped by both Heortlings and Dara Happans after that event. But of course this creates a difficult moment. Who is the sun for Heortlings now? Yelm or Elmal? I suspect that the answer is 'both' but that this is problematic, because it contains within it traces of Nysalorian thinking, the acceptance of the One and the Many. Yelm is the sun god, Elmal is the sun cult. Our only real evidence about what folks may believe in this age is compounded by the dominance in subsequent ages of the EWF in Orlanthi areas. However, it is clear that in Dara Happa, at least, the cult of Yelm runs into trouble post-Nysalor. "After Nysalor, the commoners' backlash resulted in extensive anti-Yelm feeling and activity. The anti-Yelmic passions were increased when the occupiers offered their own seasonal rituals to their storm gods, and many commoners joined. This, of course, is the way of the Many." Fortunate Succession, p.66 I believe by ’storm gods’ we should imply ‘Elmal’. Re-read this as: “After Nysalor, the commoners' backlash resulted in extensive anti-Yelm feeling and activity. The anti-Yelmic passions were increased when the occupiers offered their own seasonal rituals to [Elmal], and many commoners joined. This, of course, is the way of the Many." Of course this is likely the cult of the divine emperors, who intercede with the sun, over the sun himself. The implication is that identification does not collapse. It seems likely then that whilst the unified mythology was known to the Heortlings, worship of Elmal predominated among the Heortlings after the collapse of the Bright Empire, due to the association of the cult of Yelm with Nysalor and the divine emperors of Dara Happa. Yelm might be the sun, certainly, but Elmal was their sun cult. Indeed, it’s unclear if Yelm’s cult really spread to the Orlanthi much outside Dorastor and Saird: “Incorporation of Yelmic Rites into Dorastan Rites: avidly welcomed, and incorporated. Nysaloran Rites (especially in Saird) combine multiple cultures. These combined ceremonies are well-attended in Dorastor and Saird, but much less elsewhere, and poorly through most of Dara Happa. The popularity in Saird and Darani must be modified by remembering that both were thinly populated.” Fortunate Succession, p.71 So it is in Saird that the most-significant ‘mixing’ occurred. but it seems not to have spread. Saird lacked the population to spread its support for the Bright Empire's celestial beliefs. There is no implication of spread or persistence of these ideas in Ralios or the Shadowlands. So if Orlanthi were worshipping Yelm, it seems to have been in Saird. But what were they worshipping, if Yelm was a cult of the divine emperor? Under the Ordanestyan Reforms in Dara Happa there was an attempt to re-assert the Imperial cult and thus the divine emperors, but shorn of Nysalorian mystery. Worship instead seems to have focused on the twenty celestial deities. At this point, Anitirus is no longer one of the twenty (or wider eighty) but a part of the cult of Yelm Imperator, that is he is not distinguished from the sun. The ‘mystery’ of the Many and the One cannot withstand the lack of Nysalorian insight, it must be reconciled by eliminating Antirius. So it is possible the Sairdites were worshipping deities from amongst the twenty (or eighty), which makes more sense than the cult of the divine emperor. So it is the spread of solar cults, over the cult of the divine emperor I suspect. But even this cult waxes and wanes and seems unlikely to have impacted areas outside Saird. Why? Well, look at what happens next. The cult of Yelm disappears under the pressure of first to the Golden Dragon and later to the Carmanians. Fortunate Succession is clear on this, there really is no Yelm cult during these periods. The cult, because it is really the cult of the divine emperor of Dara Happa is underground when foreigners rule Dara Happa. An ‘underground' Imperial cult is an unlikely point of gravitation for second of third age Elmali. Why gravitate to an imperial cult in hiding? In fact, it seems likely that the Yelm known to the Orlanthi, is unrelated to the Dara Happen cult, existing mostly as ‘the Emperor’ the enemy god, over a genuine understanding of the Imperial cult of earlier ages. If the Yelm cult itself was constantly shifting, being driven underground, how could the Heortlings look to it for their solar identity? Indeed, the alternative for the Heortlings is draconic mysticism or Carmanian dualism. So at this point the Heortlings have two, almost irreconcilable notions of the sun: Yelm whom they have projected the characteristics of the Emperor on to, as befitting an imperial cult, and Elmal the loyal thane. But the implications of the Yelm cult's association with divine emperors leads me to suspect that Yelm remains the Emperor for most Heortlings at this point, his identity as the sun a 'mystery'. Now this mystery is difficult, for it implies the Many and the One. And it must be a source of questions for the priests of the cult, much as the textual legacies of the Caananite religion provide interesting questions in the Christian bible. But I suspect they continue to worship Elmal as the sun cult, with Yelm both celestial Emperor and sun. After all, the cult they have encountered up to now is an imperial cult, whose purpose is to empower the divine emperors. Not one they would gravitate to. In fact, the cult of Yelm does not really resurface in Dara Happa until Yelmgatha, who uses the return of Nysalorian thinking and heroquesting to bring back a ‘fogotten' Yelm cult, centred around Dara Happen sovereignty following centuries of EWF and Carmanian rule: “The suppression and destruction of the ancient Yelmic religion drove worship underground… Yelmgatha was a minor nobleman with a short temper who drove the Carmanians out of his land. When they sent armies to destroy him, the leader went to the Red Goddess nearby to ask for help. Thus Yelmgatha became one of the first Dara Happan Heroquesters. Heroquesting differed from previous forms of worship in being experimental and conscious. In fact, it was a return to Nysalorism in many ways, and openly acknowledged as such. Yelmgatha went several times into the Other Side, and emerged with the tools and powers1 he needed to complete the Ten Tests to make himself Emperor, which he did in 112,235. Then he cast out the Carmanians, and Yelmgatha became the new Emperor of Dara Happa. The event was called the Sunburst... During this whole time he was friends with the Red Goddess, who was performing similar quests. Their tasks were often intertwined, and strengthened each thereby. Sun and Moon became a pair of travelers in the Hero Plane.” In other words, the cult of Yelm returns with the spiritual liberation of the Red Goddess. And the parallels between the two ‘created’ gods, synthesised from older religions via ‘Nysalorian illumination’ is drawn clearly here. These gods are made! I believe Greg was trying to draw direct parallels between the First Age emergence of Yelm, synthesised from existing sun cults and the Sunstop, and the emergence of the Red Moon, synthesised from existing lunar deities and the Sunburst. We associate Yelm with older religion in Dara Happa, but it seems that it co-exists in modern form with the Empire. Remember, it is the cult of the divine emperor! Now that emperor is the Red Emperor. In many ways the cult of Yelm and the cult of the Red Emperor are one and the same. The association of Yelm with the Red Goddess of course makes it any influence of the cult on modern part of the missionary work of the Lunar Empire. The promotion of “Yelm” as the sun and the elimination of Elmal, as Antirius was once eliminated, is in essence a Lunar project, driven by heroquesters. So, when we learn that in Saronil’s reign "Once the Eyetooth Clan brought in the antesmia statue. They did it because they were rebelling against their king, and they wanted to be able to bring a Sunspear down from their god, and were willing to pay eternal worship and tribute to a foreign deity in order to succeed.”, King of Sartar, p. 169 it is the missionary work of the Lunar Empire, that is also a renewed Bright Empire that is at the heart of this struggle IMO. This is worship of the imperial cult, and by implication worship of the Red Emperor, not just ‘Yelm’ the sun as opposed to Elmal. But this sweeping change must be dated to the emergence of the Lunar Empire, not earlier, because the Yelm cult was underground before that. The implication of this is that Elmal is the sun during the reign of Tarkalor for the Sartarites, not Yelm, otherwise this act of rebellion means nothing. We have to see this in the context of Lunar celestial theology overwhelming the Heortlings in a way that could not have happened under the EWF or Carmania. There was no dominant solar cult to export post Nysalor and prior to Yelmgatha. But what is true for the Sartarites would seem to be true of everyone, for until the Lunar Empire, after the Bright Empire, there is no Yelm cult to gravitate to, and the sun cult remains Elmal (or Kargzant). Now, we risk getting into Yelmalio territory — remember his temples are in Saird and they seem to revitalise alongside the Empire, but let’s park where that leads us for now. But Monro’s vision is surely one of illumination. His talk of the Many Suns echoes talk of the Many and the One. What Monro sees is one sun, many sun cults. His vision is not an objection to Elmal, but a reinforcement of the Bright Empire doctrine that there is one sun, and many sun cults (and we may well call that sun Yelm, because the cult worships the Emperor). But no sun cult is more ‘true’ than the others. But of course the implication is that Yelmalio is the sun too. Another sun cult. One amidst the Many. But it is a dangerous vision, for it is a vision of the Nysalorians and their Bright Empire. All those priests in their retirement towers contemplating the sun. Sure sounds like a journey into illumination. But it is clear that there is no cult of Yelm at the Dawn. Yelm is the name given to sun in the Nysalorian insight that there is one sun and many sun cults. It is also the name of the source of power for the cult of divine emperors that ruled during the Bright Empire, and now rule again in the Lunar Empire.

Yeah, the idea is very similar to one you use in oral storytelling performances. You divide up the story into steps that should happen in order to complete the quest. The steps provide a plot augment on success to the completion of the final step. When you get magical support from your community it has to be pre-applied to a step. The problem with steps is that because you know them before you set out, the story is solely pushed forward by 'conflict' (what stops you passing the step) and not revelation (what is going to happen). Attempts were made to fix that, with steps varying in form when you do the quest, but structurally fulfill the same role, and the idea that you could mis-identify the step. and use your magic early, but whilst it was a great GM tool its bleeding out into character knowledge was a problem. I would still work with the idea, as a GM, of pairing down the myth the players have into key points, and then rebuilding the adventure around those, perhaps in ways that differ from the 'myth' that the players have, to create drama through revelation.

Thank you. And we are working on that. I even had a conversation with @Jeff about some material for the Sky Ship before that in the pub before Dragonmeet. I have photos of the notes we made in his book 🙂

Yes, any omission was not deliberate. Although we were not really sure who the puppeteers were at that point.

One thing to note is that HQG works best if you recognize that as players define their own abilities, be open as to how obstacles can be overcome in prep. 'Skill challenges' from other systems don't really work, because you can't know what skills players have, and forcing them to split improvement across them is not really a thing. One good rule is: can I think of three different ways to solve this obstacle: physical, social, and magical. if so, you are probably on the right track. As others have said, ignore specific ability (we are dropping in the next version) and only use a stretch if you feel that the player is just using 'one ability to do everything' or you really can't see how that ability helps. Most of the time, let the players make plausible arguments for how an ability solves the problem. A stretch penalty is like a penalty in a sports game, almost.

I would treat unopposed roles as an auto-success 😄

How did it go?

So I would like to be clear that I am not necessarily talking about 'new rules' which seems to be the default assumption by some here. If anything I am very happy to simplify. But, much as a keyword implies what is credible, the Extraordinary Powers Framework in HeroQuest (see genre packs in ISS2001) implies that it is useful to document how magic works, to the extent that it is possible to narrate effects. If you don't know RQG, what is your starting point? BTW, in playing with Greg, it was clear that he didn't use a RQ model when thinking about Glorathan magic. I remember how when in one scenario we were being questioned by Esrolian grandmothers he described their truth detecting magic as feeling like a hand was squeezing your balls, and pressing tighter and tighter if you tried to lie. To Greg, that kind of description of magic was instinctive, but for the rest of us, I think some guidance is needed.

I hear you on how, but the issue here is more from the player's point of view. As 'newbies' their insight is useful, and whilst after enough sessions they would probably internalize the same rules as me, the problem was that they were not clear on what they could do, and found it a struggle to decide how to use their magic. And sure there is a notional fix, just tell them to describe whatever they want to do, and you will tell them how hard that is, but the reality is that it is off-putting when you are trying to work out your options to not understand what is easy/hard etc. The advantage of the more complete understanding of ritual in HeroQuest 1e is that the 'setting' has this in its context for magic, and as such it forms part of what RL calls the Extraordinary Powers Framework. I think that proper examination of ritual magic is a hole that we need to plug somehow.

I am wondering if this is worth a blog post. I have recently been running the Eleven Lights for a new group at RP Haven Archway. Some knew Glorantha, none new HeroQuest. But they picked up the system fast, and enjoyed it. One question that came up a couple of times though was "what are the limits of magic?" Now, post the first session, when everyone defines their characters, I tend to give all my players a handout. it has the keyword descriptions from S:KoH and the Rune Magic examples from the cults there. So they get some hints as to what they can do. But the question is "I know my Heler character can make it rain, but on a sunny day with no clouds, and how much rain, and over how wide an area?" Now the reality is I know the answer to this is that larger effects require rituals and the rituals require more participants to make it work. Interestingly we did not provide anything like the depth on rituals in HeroQuest Glorantha that appeared in prior editions and that may be an issue. For example, standing in a cloudless day and making it rain 'now' is probably normal resistance for a Helering, but it would just be a light summer drizzle and probably cover an area the size of a room. Getting some clouds to bring some real rain would require a ritual to call them (dancing, or orgiastic rites) and the more participants the bigger the storm. My rule of thumb, which once appeared when discussing rune magic for runequest is that you can affect an area "about the size of an elemental" or in simpler HeroQuest terms, about the size of a room. And you range is anything within sight. Anything larger or further tends to require a ritual. But I was wondering if others had thoughts on this?