Eff

4 hours ago, Grievous said:

Yeah, there is that and that's why a recently Illuminated mind might benefit from a little guidance so it doesn't descend into nihilism/Occlusion. I think this might be a key difference between early Nysalorean Riddle-based Illumination and latter Sedenyan Sevened Illumination. You're not just gifted/cursed with the Illuminated mindset and left to your own devices, but you're actually schooled in it. Of course, the system of Examiners, ostensible set to ensure a non-Occluded development, can also certainly became (as alluded to earlier in this thread) an Orwellian tool of societal control, where only state-approved Illuminates are allowed to prosper. 

I think that to a certain extent this is backwards- other methods of Illumination generally involve an elaborate method of schooling to prepare you for the awakening. That's how EWF mysticism worked before the rise of the Short Cuts, that's how Kralori mysticism works minus the Path of Immanent Mastery, that's how Orlanth mysticism works too- you spend decades or hundreds of years practicing your breathing before you open your third eye- and that's probably how White Sun Illumination works. 

But you don't actually need any of that, it's all just safety nets to give you a grounding when you awaken to the nature of reality and realize just how much freedom you really have. Nysalorean riddles will stretch your mind enough to jog that third eye loose and open it wide. So the Lunar Way teaches that you can reach the low stage of enlightenment called Illumination in any way you please. You can become Illuminated by the Gerra rites, third eye bursting forth during the aftercare. You can become Illuminated by mixing drugs in exciting new ways. You can become Illuminated by getting tossed out of your body and looking at a Lune directly in the eyes. You can become Illuminated by indulging in pure excess, or by indulging in deep asceticism, or by both. 

And you can also do it the safe way, by studying Sedenyic writings and meditating and repeating mantras and making sure to do your mudras. If you're a nerd. 

So Examiners emerge because proceeding down the left-hand paths stands a high chance of turning you into a wreck of a human being, which they call "Occlusion", and if you proceed down the pathway to the higher enlightenment with that kind of development, you get Zho Lath Ey. (I think Examiners definitely became much more important post-Sheng.) The necessity of imposing some kind of order on enlightenment so that you don't get demon bodhisattvas running around creates the preconditions for a tight ideological grasp on Lunar higher ministries and recognition of officially Sevened individuals. 

Would it be better to perhaps restrict Illumination so that you don't have this problem in the first place? 

Perhaps, but 1) Sedenya's divine Lunacy necessarily animates everything we do and 2) restricting Illumination to monastic study takes it from out of the hands of the people unless you implement a significantly more controlling police state that can shuffle people around at random. 

Argrath was the destroyer of the world, but destruction is necessary for rebirth. 

1 hour ago, EricW said:

1. The Lunar crazies recreated the greater darkness, its difficult to imagine a greater abuse in Gloranthan terms. If recreating the greater darkness was a necessary step in the advancement of the Lunar Empire, that tells you all you need to know about the nature of the goddess, and whether defeating it was essential regardless of collateral damage, otherwise its evil magicians under the protection of the empire risking the destruction of the world for the empire's gain, magicians whose mythological abuses were encouraged by imperial authorities.

2. The devil manifests inside time, but I suggested recreating the greater darkness likely risked bringing him back with all his power, not some lesser but still very dangerous manifestation like Ralzakark. Note an absence of titanic towering monstrosity corrupting and warping the world with every hoof print. If the new temple of the reaching moon had embraced the block with its power, would the block have survived?

3. Orlanth is Dead states very explicitly the Lunars recreated the Greater Darkness, Broyan said it, the messengers said - the cold, the absence of gods. "This is the great darkness, prepare for the fight". Obviously this manifestation was incomplete, the sun still shone - but a mythological recreation of the Greater Darkness which affected a large area, which trapped Orlanth in the underworld and prevented him from completing the Great Compromise and returning to his people, this can't have been a good thing for the stability and safety of the world, and in my view has to qualify as a dangerous chaotic abuse which was perpetrated by the Lunars well before Argrath assumed leadership of the rebellion.

Well now, I haven't said anything about "necessary", because that imputes a level of organization and communication with the divine that nobody in the setting possesses, and even if we assume that the relatively frequent contact with the Red Moon and the handful of operating demigods in the Lunar Empire means that they have a higher level of communication with the divine, this is surely negated, if not outweighed, by the fact that the Red Goddess is significantly less coherent in Her communication with Her worshipers. 

I think arguing that the Windstop is a recreation of the Greater Darkness is rather fraught from a mythological perspective- it seems that way to Sartarites for whom Orlanth and Ernalda are central to the cosmos, but there's no shredding of reality. There's no Shadow's Good Shadow popping up, or sections of ground suddenly and without fanfare turning to gorp. It's a deadly unending winter where only Molanni reigns and the ground is infertile, which is bad enough, but it very obviously isn't the end of the world. The Fimbulwinter is the predecessor to Ragnarok, not Ragnarok itself. 

But that's not really relevant here. Even pointing out that the decision to put so much effort into the siege of Whitewall, which I believe is what caused Orlanth's death when Whitewall fell (in that by literalizing Whitewall as the "last rebel city" it became identified with Rebellus Terminus/Orlanatus/Orlanth) is not especially relevant here, nor pointing out that there was substantial difference of opinion on whether to focus on Whitewall and the Volsaxi or on Esrolia between Tatius and Fazzur, and we know that Fazzur is hardly some provincial rube when it comes to the Lunar Way, and thus any assertion that the death of Orlanth and the Windstop was an inevitable consequence of the Way or of the Empire requires making assumptions about what the real will of Sedenya is that are just not really justifiable on the existing material, all of that is also not especially relevant. 

The real discussion here is basically, "The Lunars and their goddess are intrinsically opposed to continued life on Glorantha" versus "No, they're not". Which is not an especially interesting discussion, because it amounts to "the Lunars have a dissident take on what Chaos is, therefore they want, or are OK with, or would necessarily cause, Wakboth II: Electric Boogaloo." Which is fairly well false. The Lunars still position the Devil as the source of ultimate moral evil in the universe, and identify their Blaskarth-Devil with Wakboth, Kajabor, Sekever, etc. They have a fairly outre take on just what the Devil actually is, but they still position the great triumph of Sedenya and the recovery of her divinity as being through overcoming the Devil. 

Furthermore, the Lunars aren't intrinsically opposed to the Storm Bull cult, since they don't ban it like they ban Orlanth's, and don't even try to restrict the Storm Bull cultists that surround the Block. There's no particular reason to think that the Reaching Moon Temple would short out the Block, then, because there's no grand mythical opposition present which would counter the cosmogonic act of laying down the Law on Wakboth. You can point to Lunars being somewhat more intolerant of Storm Bully antics than Praxians or Sartarites, perhaps. You can suggest that conflict is inevitable because Storm Bullies will locate Centurion Incontinentia Secunda and that tiny, little, minuscule Chaos taint she picked up from a Chaos Gift spell a decade ago and start a fight, but that's not a grand mythic opposition. But the idea that Lunar victory in Sartar and Prax means a big gribbly monster bursting from beneath the Block and going "Muahahaha" and devouring life and existence as an inevitable and natural consequence of their rule over a fairly small corner of the world just isn't justifiable. Hell, even the idea that Lunars would necessarily act to protect random broos or walktapi that Storm Bullies went after is frankly inconceivable.

So when the stakes are set at that level, it's really not a very interesting discussion because of course the Lunars aren't inimical to life by essence, unless you're stuck on viewing them in the Warhammer mode. There are more interesting discussions to be had about how justifiable the Lunar Way is and whether it can be described as true or not, but they're just not happening if the opening is "The completion of the Reaching Moon Temple would have killed Storm Bull and recreated the Devil." 

9 minutes ago, EricW said:

The dangerous abuses by the empire were occurring long before Argrath appeared on the scene as a major threat. In Orlanth is Dead, Lunars explicitly managed to recreate the conditions of the Greater Darkness by trapping Orlanth in the underworld. Who knows how close they came to liberating Wakboth, releasing the devil inside time would likely have caused the end of the world.

No doubt desperation drove Lunars to commit greater chaotic atrocities. But I suggest an empire which had no qualms about dangerous magical experiments which risked the destruction of the world, just to defeat a bunch of rebels in a distant province, was already well on the way to becoming a seething chaotic cesspit, however well disguised.

1) The point of the death of Orlanth and unintentional Windstop wasn't "just to defeat a bunch of rebels in a distant province". Ernalda didn't keel over in Esrolia when the Red Earth ruled, Waha is still alive in Prax while the Lunars are ruling it. The point was to bring about a cosmological shift in order to try and resolve the conflict in the Middle Air between Orlanth and Sedenya. EDIT: It might be going a bit too far to suggest that the Temples of the Reaching Storm exist as a consequence of the resolution of  this conflict, but that's a real possibility- that the cosmological conflict is resolved between 1621 and 1625 and after that it's all driven by mortals and demigods.

2) The Devil has already been running around inside Time according to Argrath himself. "Every six hundred years you have come..." and all that. 

3) That seems very debatable. Are the Kralori chaotic, because of their efforts to raise the Suam Chow? Was the EWF chaotic? Are Mostali and Aldyrami chaotic? How about the Uzhim and Triolini who are planning to block Magasta's pool? Magical megaprojects certainly don't appear to be inherently chaotic on their own, even ones that cause massive death and destruction as they are carried out. 

36 minutes ago, EricW said:

Sheng Seleris helped kill the Red Emperor, which critically weakened the empire. The empire was protecting chaotic horrors beneath a glamour of serenity, all Agrath did was weaken the glamour, to ultimately reveal the true monster empire beneath the lie, the monster empire was there all along.

When Sheng later turned to evil, Argrath helped kill him. Everybody makes mistakes.

The annual lunar quest to reinforce Kalikos' battle against the ice demons was described in KoS as "unnatural". Probably bad and wrong in some deeply metaphysical sense.

As for the Utuma, I doubt the goddess was the same being after having her physical form torn apart by dragons, being ripped apart by dragons is probably a life changing experience. Certainly her interaction with the world was very different after this event.

There's a pretty strong tension between "weakened the empire" and "revealed the true monster empire that was there all along". If the Empire was at its apex under Phargentes the Younger, and the Empire has always been a means to tear down the fabric of reality etc., why does killing the Red Emperor accelerate the Empire's plan rather than delay it? There's always the possibility, of course, that Emperor Ralzakark or Ragnaglar or whoever actually is sitting in Glamour in the last days of the Empire is a product of sheer desperation- but then we must place some share of the responsibility for that desperation and its consequences for reality on Prince Argrath. 

Let's talk military logistics in the premodern world. Or. to be more precise, military logistics as they stood right up until the second half of the 19th century. 

During the American Civil War, at the tail end of this time period, the United States managed to, in the period before the Battle of Chancellorsville, develop an army that could lunge off of its supply lines and most of its baggage train for eight days. The meat ration for three of those days would be carried as dried, salted, and cured meat by the soldiers, the other five days of meat would be carried "on the hoof" alongside the army. 

And where do you get these rations? During the ACW, there were trains that shipped goods around, after all. Before trains, armies were reliant on forage- or, rather, requisitioning and stealing what they needed from the local residents. 

Pralorela poses a formidable military problem. There are no farms, no barns and silos, no easy way to take food and goods from the locals. There are no navigable rivers that cross through it- the shortest portage is 30-35 miles long, assuming quite generously that the unnamed Surbasi and Syrron tributaries involved are navigable all the way to their headwaters. If we assume they lose navigability right where they cross into the uplands of what we might call the "Pralori Gap", we have a 45-50 mile portage. 

Armies move slowly. An infantry force will move about 8-12 miles per day under normal conditions, which means that crossing Pralorela at its narrowest point will require 3-5 days of marching under generous assumptions and 4-7 days of marching under more realistic assumptions. Except that a typical infantry force would be reliant on foraging which it can't realistically do in Pralorela, which would slow it down significantly as it needed to mass wagon trains for any kind of expedition that would be expected to strain what people could reasonably carry. 

Pralorela is roughly 100 miles deep from the New Fens to Safelstran territory. This would take a foraging army 8-13 days to cross, but one that was heavily laden with a supply train (which it would need, since this is the part without major rivers) might take as many as 20 days to cross it. A rough estimate of the overall size of Pralorela is that it's 13,000 square miles or so. The Pralori themselves don't have the kind of fixed settlements to defend that agrarian people do.

All of this is to say that the Pralori are, while not military invulnerable, safe from large-scale punitive expeditions or overall subjugation without the kind of state that has a high enough state capacity to mass and feed its armies as they dive deep into Pralorela again and again. This kind of state doesn't exist in Maniria or Safelster, and it probably doesn't exist in Seshnela yet (the Seshnegi state is still very much in a period of expansion from merely being the Duchy of Tanisor). Places that could, hypothetically, subjugate the Pralori if they were right next to them? Loskalm, Kralorela, the Lunars, maybe Kethaela under Belintar. Historically, the Middle Sea Empire could have done it, but probably didn't bother too much with ruling them too tightly?

That being said, of course, the Seshnegi could mass sorcerous power to deal with the Pralori, and the Reforestation offers a threat to convert portions of Pralorela away from the Pralori's ability to use...

1 hour ago, Nevermet said:

Another question about the Pralori: What are their interactions with the southern Safelster city states? There's of course trade,with the Pralori taking their toll to allow caravans into Maniria.  I could imagine the Ancient Beast Society being interested in a strong Hsunchen society like the Pralori, but I don't know enough about the Ancient Beast Society to know how that would go.  I suppose some city states would want elk-riding mercenaries, but that is made a little more complicated by the fact that their closest neighbours are mostly Galanini, who are arguably the least interested in mercenary cavalry, given their own tradition of horse-riding.  But at Seshnela marches into Safelster, I could imagine the Pralori being a group that could be convined to help oppose Tanisor.

 

One fun possibility is that the Reforestation completely dislodges the Pralori.  Maniria, save for the most staunch of cities, will get blanketed with a thick, primeval forest.  The Pralori don't like that, try to fight the Aldryami.  The Aldryami, recognizing the Pralori are a major threat, actively turn to crush them, and succeed.  The Pralori then flee en masse into Ralios and the Safelster city states.  ...That seems like a gloriously messy scenario

Some thoughts/notes on trade: shipping is primarily done by boat or by ship, so the easiest ways for Safelstran goods to get to market is for them to go down either the Tanier river or the Noshain watershed. Seshnela controls most of the Tanier, so it's no surprise that goods from Safelster are described as flowing down the Noshain watershed from Drom in Helby, passing through Highwater to Handra nowadays and Yolanda in the past. And then from Handra, the Quinpolic League's ships and Esrolian ones dock for trading. 

The Pralori sit right atop the portage between the Lake Helby watershed and the Noshain watershed. They also sit right atop the more difficult portage across the Tarin Mountains to Caratan from the Jtimb river. So it's not surprising they control trade, but it also suggests that they have strong ties with Handra/the people of the New Fens. (I believe in some older material the New Fens were home to otter hsunchen and the descendants of the three hsunchen groups made up the majority of the population of the Fens, which might imply a kind of solidarity...) 

Safelstran armies are described in the Guide as being consistently mediocre, so for Pralori versus Galanini, I think it's basically a choice between different flavors of barbarian (at least the elkriders won't want land...) 

I have a terrible Nick Brooke-inspired tendency to import modern things into Glorantha, so my immediate thought about connections between the Ancient Beasts and the Pralori is Pralori taking Safelstrans on Real TM Authentic (c) Experiences of Hsunchen Life (R) well away from anything important going on. Lots of "Oh yeah, the possum's eyeball is a delicacy, it'll make you really popular with your bedmates, ifyaknowwhatimean," etc. to mediate between the tourist trade meaning liberating lots of money from overly rich Safelstrans and the desire to teach them something more meaningful, allow them to more directly understand the Spirit World. 

Something that's underrated here is that most dead people may not want to be resurrected. The majority of afterlives we know about are generally very pleasant places for the people who end up there. Hells are not, and we know that Heroes have a certain willingness to crawl their way out of the Underworld by any means necessary, but to be quite honest, most Heroes are people who would, on arriving before Daka Fal, receive a little card with "GO DIRECTLY TO HELL. DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT 200 LUNARS" on it. 

So Argrath's companions may well have resisted any attempt to resurrect them, and the gods presumably defend the boundaries of their particular afterlives against unwanted resurrection in most cases. 

4 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Why? That sounds like the sort of rear vision theorising that comes long after the fact.

Well, they had a good enough understanding of the myths on a symbolic level to Heroquest them, so it doesn't seem like a huge leap from "Orlanth goes to seek the Grand Order because the world is growing dark and discovers that recovering it means making peace with the Emperor and bringing the light of the sun back into the world" to "The world is growing overly light, recovering the Grand Order means bringing darkness back into the world." 

Obviously, we don't have enough information on how the people involved would have viewed the universe, so they might well have not made that connection between the lack of the Grand Order, the disruption of the world by excess or lack, and the need to make good the excess or lack to restore the Grand Order. 

Really, Harmast and company, dealing with the Empire of Light, should have been able to figure out that restoring the Grand Order meant bringing Darkness back into the world...

Another immediate inspiration for a "Heartlanders-in-the-Provinces" campaign- Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China. You have no idea what the hell you walked into, but your third eyes are firmly open their eyelids are wiggling very strongly indeed, and that's all you need, right? 

1 hour ago, DrGoth said:

Does that mean the Red Emperor is part of the cosmic order? So when he goes missing something is out of whack?

Or to look at it another way, if both are gone, neither is needed any more?

Or, to put it yet a third way, the Emperor and his Shadow need to be reconciled, and since Moonson has shown a real reluctance to embrace Sheng and Sheng likewise (I envision Argrath going "Now kiss" at Molarisor), then you need to use alternate means to reunite the two. Like cannibalism. 

Well, this is certainly inspirational for finishing the other half of the "What my father said/what the priest told me" duo! The first half of which is here: https://eightarmsandthemask.blogspot.com/2020/01/a-personal-view-of-pralori-life-what-my.html

Some immediate thoughts/previews:

I take "Serpent Beast sorcerers" literally and assume that they represent a form of sorcery among the Hsunchen people of western Genertela, largely because that's an interesting thought to work out- how does a form of magic so closely associated with the written word exist among a pastoral people?

I went with a fairly conventional answer (tongue firmly in cheek as I say this) and took inspiration from the semi-writing systems of North America- the wiigwaasabak bark scrolls of the Midewiwin magical society, Sioux winter counts- and concluded that the grimoires and sacred writings associated with sorcery would be in this form, with a significantly more personalized and visual approach. And thus, the Serpent Beasts only survive among the Pralori because the line of succession from sorcerer to sorcerer is fragile and dependent on retaining the individual knowledge of the meaning of the scrolls. 

As such, Serpent Beasts teach a cosmological understanding that syncretizes Malkioni beliefs about the cosmos with the Earthmaker traditions common to hsunchen. 

Shamans, meanwhile, are known as "Antlered Ones" and generally wear a pair of shed elk antlers or symbolic representations of such, and they are ritually required to be combative. 

The primary religious activity is worship of Pralor/a. Pralori understand their mythological history as coming in stages (there's that Malkioni syncretism again!) and Pralor/a appears among them in many guises in order to guide them back onto the right way as the world changes and the right way becomes unclear. As such, Pralori myths, especially their legends and folktales, tend to recapitulate elk migrations, moving back and forth between incorrect and correct behavior almost cyclically. 

Pralori refer to the Otherside as the "Overworld" and see it as a higher reflection of this world (yet more Malkioni syncretism). 

Additional cultural notes:

Elk/wapiti rely on open meadows and grasses for food, as they are primarily grazers and secondarily browsers, unlike their relatives deer and moose. So I think any Pralori relationship with Aldyrami would be at arms-length and quickly go downhill once the Reforestation begins. 

Pralori punch well above their weight class because they fight as heavy cavalry, which is rare in Maniria and expensive to develop anywhere else. Pralori will gladly tell you that they explained how to fight as heavy cavalry to the Seshnelans before the Dawn. 

Historically, it seems difficult to explain how the Pralori, who had previously been oppressors of the Manirian peoples and then again joined with the Bright Empire and its oppression, would have done well under the Autarchy, let alone surviving under the Middle Sea Empire. My thoughts on this are twofold- 

Firstly, the Pralori during this period adopted a kind of "deliberate statelessness" or "barbarism by design" (which still continues today, but less overtly so) as elucidated by James C. Scott in The Art of Not Being Governed, his history of the Southeast Asian Massif and its many peoples. That is, they consciously made themselves a marginal entity on the edge of "civilization" and effectively disappear from history until they come roaring back after Slontos rolls over in her sleep. 

Secondly, as part of this, they become a substantially smaller people. The current numbers they possess are much greater than they had during the Imperial Age, because they welcomed people fleeing the devastation of Maniria and their particular mode of living was able to sustain itself better in the face of the Goddess Switch and the overall resistance of the Earth in Maniria to farming. 

The Pralori are not strict hunter-gatherers, beyond the fact that they're pastoralists (though they have a prohibition against eating elk meat). They have a prohibition against tilling or plowing the soil, but they can dig holes, and so they practice limited horticulture, along with standard arboriculture practices like selectively clearing timber via girdling to select for useful trees near to living spaces. These are not generally recognizable as standard farms or gardens, and look like dense stands of plants that just happen to almost all be useful ones. 

The elements are not actually elements, but mental states. 

One moves from Predark (total ignorance) to Darkness (undifferentiated yearning) to Sea (division of the universe into types) to Earth (recognition of other existences) to Fire (logical reasoning) to Storm (integration of emotions and reasoning) to Moon (acceptance of ignorance and limits to knowledge).

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

If we follow Jeff's comments that the LBQ is about restoring Cosmic Order, then the return of Sheng is the return of the "rightful" Solar Emperor, who had been slain and imprisoned by the Lunars.  The defeat and cannibalization of the Red Emperor is part of that return, reclaiming for the Sun what was previously taken by the Moon Emperor.

Similarly the "holding back of Winter", which the Kalikos expedition was about, was clearly a violation of the Cosmic Order and a suppression of Valind's/winter's rightful place within it.  That "Darkness" and "Death" come with winter is certainly part of the original Great Compromise.

So none of this necessarily makes Argrath dishonorable, just returning balance and order to the world.

I wouldn't say that these things are necessarily dishonorable (and it's worth noting that the Court of Silence can't retrieve Sheng Seleris- this is attributed to Sheng being in an inaccessible Hell, but the Court was able to pull Arkat out from wherever he'd been stuck, so perhaps it's because Argrath is monstrously warping the LBQ in order to get Sheng rather than some other Solar figure) but rather that they show a lack of character in his methods of rebalancing the world. 

Which is of course nicely ambiguous and liminal- our boy Prince Argrath is clearly doing things that are a bit shady, but equally clearly there's no firm basis for denouncing those things beyond abstract ethical principles most Orlanthi don't buy into. 

3 minutes ago, Eagle Talon said:

I'v read KoS and the end seems promising, at least from an Orlanthi point of view. Argrath and dragons destroy the physical body of the Red Moon goddess and everything is supposed to be different from that point on. Can you give more information about the death of gods, disappearance of magic and Argrath's lack of character? I probably missed one the books explaining this part. 

For Argrath's lack of character: 

1) Returning Sheng Seleris to the world of the living.
2) Aiding Sheng Seleris in defeating and cannibalizing the Red Emperor
3) Causing the Kalikos Icebreaker Expedition to fail, triggering a catastrophic winter.
4) Sending his Uz allies to kill and eat Pentan noncombatants during said winter.

5) "Will no one rid me of this turbulent Mularik?"

These are all textually attributed to Argrath. 

In the "Argrath and the Devil" text, the gods are devoured by Wakboth in a way that suggests Argrath deliberately brought this about by sabotaging the Ritual of the Net. This is probably metaphorical. 

It is also very slightly intimated that Argrath may have been personally involved in the deaths of Kallyr Starbrow and Gunda the Guilty. 

The real cause of the Hero Wars, and indeed of all major crises of Glorantha (Gods War, Arkat Wars, whatever we call the assorted imperial collapses) is the increasing density of chain restaurants (Lokamayadon's Lokomokodonald's locations, spreading all over the Barbarian Belt, the Here and Now Dragons Faction proposing to emplace a Four Eyes Burgers and Fries across Dragon Pass, Prax, and Peloria to pin down the shape of the World Dragon, and let's not talk about the food crimes the Middle Sea Empire got up to...). The Geo's Inns were pushing it. The Moon Rock Cafe franchises tipped things over the edge. There is, associated with this, a Praxian legend called "Waha the Locavore"...

2 minutes ago, Leingod said:

One of the strictures of a Wind Lord of Orlanth is literally that they must fight Chaos (and chant a challenge even if the Chaos monster can't understand human language) wherever they find it, with the only outs being stuff like "If you can't handle it on your own, you're allowed to leave to go find help."

So on a pretty fundamental level a major and widely-worshiped aspect of Orlanth (i.e. Orlanth Adventurous) is bound up in fighting Chaos. Just because he isn't as obsessive and single-minded about it as his brother isn't the same thing as "there's room for coexistence," unless you're willing to count cases where the Orlanthi just aren't strong enough to wipe out whatever well-established nest of Chaos is around. Which I don't, because that's like calling the Sartarites who were just waiting with clenched teeth for the first opportunity to start chopping off Lunar heads as "coexisting" with the Lunars.

Wherever they find it, though. Under most circumstances, that's a defensive posture, because you're finding Chaos because Chaos is sticking its nose in your business or that of your community. There are no communities of Wind Lords forming sanitary cordons around Larnste's Print or Snakepipe Hollow or the Devil's Marsh, it's Storm Bulls who form those special communities. Because it's not about crusading against Chaos, it's about maintaining the integrity of the world where Chaos actively intrudes into the world. 

Which opens up room for philosophical debate about whether the Red Goddess's approach to Chaos is one of actively welcoming further intrusions or one of maintaining the integrity of the world by binding Chaos up further and tighter within it. Obviously, this latter is going to be a bit disingenuous in that the Lunar Way sees Chaos as a vital essence of the universe, but there's still that room to hash things out, rather than an absolute conflict. 

2 hours ago, John Biles said:

If an equal marriage is the necessity to be a King and not an Emperor, then the Queens of Esrolia are actually Empresses.

The highest level of gods are dead or basically gone and don't matter.  No one worships them and they're basically out of the story.

So while a few Lunars might cry foul, basically Orlanth and his various sub-cults are as complicated as Sedenya and there's not really a problem in that regard.

Except he wants to gut her like a trout and she wants to strangle him.

And the whole Chaos thing.

 

I mean, Lunar cooperation is pretty much essential for something like this. Not just in a pragmatic sense, but in a mythical sense, a forced marriage would be invalid and would catastrophically backfire on anyone attempting it. 

But never mind that, the biggest problem is that if we acknowledge that Sedenya and Orlanth are essentially similar, then we would be faced with a bigamous marriage of equals, something Heortlings don't really accept. Where polygamous marriage occurs, it's between one superior partner and several inferior partners (eg Vingkot's wives don't have names). So to this extent, the Heortlings would require somebody to be demoted to a side piece. Which, in the most direct formulation, where Sedenya and Orlanth are scrapping over sovereignty right now, just means that one or the other must triumph and become the Monarch of the Gods. (We can presume Sedenya would demand to be addressed as "Queen of the Gods") 

Granted, in Esrolia Orlanth is a subordinate partner to Ernalda, and the Esrolians developed a much more powerful pro-Lunar contingent, in part because Sedenya wasn't inherently a cosmological threat. 

I think that personal animosity between the gods is pretty overstated. Followers of Orlanth aren't commanded by their god to automatically go murder any Lunar priestesses, after all. There's clearly some extent to which coexistence is possible. 

And the Chaos thing is, well, Orlanth doesn't actually command that you go out and fight Chaos. That's Storm Bull, and Storm Bullies are not exactly the model of ideal behavior for Orlanthi. Orlanth commands that you hold to the laws in order to defend against the threat of Chaos. So there's still room for coexistence even before we get into the complex attitude towards Chaos that the Lunar Way has. 

Not quite a dumb theory, again, but probably close:

Sh'hakarzeel is Draconic Orlanth, just like Aroka is Draconic Heler, and the First Dragonslaying was Orlanth killing the Inner Dragon and settling firmly into the shape of a god. 

3 hours ago, Leingod said:

I always saw it as something she was pressured into doing because the Sartarites did not like the idea of leaving the guy who could potentially bring on another Dragonkill (in their minds) around, friend or not. Most likely, Kallyr had to exile him because the alternative was going to be attempts to assassinate him.

I mean, another factor is that the Dragonrise killed off most of the collaborationist leadership... who were still Orlanthi with kin, and not outlaws. And without any way to argue that they could have surrendered themselves for ransom. Even if Kallyr hadn't awakened a dragon to do it, there would still be a need to displace the need for justice, or retribution in lieu of justice, onto someone to prevent a blood feud. 

Granted, if Kallyr had a firm position as Prince, this would have been less of an issue, but under the circumstances, exiling Orlaront is a way to avoid vendettas. (And of course, this manner of doing so weakens Kallyr's political position substantially, since anyone who supports her too much is going to be seen as endorsing the deaths of all those kin...)

1 minute ago, scott-martin said:

There's a lot in that one. I never got the sense the trad red earths were thinking along these lines (probably preferring to work through the red emperor as intermediary instead, the so-called "Cherry Vanilla" work) but MGF dictates that somewhere between Tatius freezing the grant funding and the post-Hendira purges a few desperate women able and motivated to think around the box got the hell out of dodge. I wonder where they end up. Some future Tarsh splinter sect could easily form around one or two key revelations opposed to all currently known factions. It would be nice if a few end up heading west to hook some reviving Menena into the mix. Cragspider would also be interested if Arachne can at least watch. And Great Sister may finally have had enough. But the weird thing is that the farther out you go, the less important the ernalda marriage really is. Even at her biggest, the earth queen is really just a mask of Glorantha herself. Things might get complicated enough that Chalana and/or Uleria get put forward as cosmic mothers, in which case only they are really worth Sedenya's time. 

What I would do is start with a lost diary of Deezola and let it loose. Intricate notes on how to summon or awaken her own personal "ginna jar," a kind of external soul. That would probably overcome a lot of obstacles.

I've started wondering if Androgeus, with his reconciliation of opposites by way of constant alternation between different faces of whatever she does, is really a "superhero" for the Moon Rune, and thus we might see a convergence of certain dissident trends right in the Old Tarsh/Grazelander/Beast Valley belt, where the histories indicate Androgeus found themself defeated in zher attempt to support a Tarshite rebellion... But that's not a comforting thought, since they're ending up right at ground zero without many, if any of the revived foolishnesses of the ancients to defend them. 

 

This is not a dumb theory, but it is a fairly galaxy-brain theory:

Argrath orchestrated the death of Gunda for the same reason that a character in a shonen anime will "release their power limiters" or take off concealed weights on their ankles or whatever. Similarly, Great Sister orchestrated either the death of Beat-Pot Aelwrin or a breakup between him and Jar-eel to fully unleash Jar-eel's abilities. 

What do I mean by this? Well, older material (Digest answers) suggests that the "superhero" chits in Dragon Pass are individuals who have achieved a level of connection with a Rune more profound than a standard Hero does. Regular Heroes (indeed, even regular people) can straight-up heroform deities, including ones who are understood to represent pure incarnations ("owners of") a particular Rune, like Humakt or Orlanth or Ernalda. Harrek is associated with Death, and Jar-eel with Harmony. 

So what makes them more profound than temporarily being their god? They present a hidden face of the Rune to the world. 

Harrek is Death as separation in the sense of total selfishness and self-absorption. Harrek kills without thinking, tosses away vast treasures without a care, moves entirely on his whims because Harrek's universe consists of himself and the White Bear, who are the same person (after all, they have the same skin!) and that's it. Everything else is of dubious reality. 

Jar-eel is Harmony as total selflessness. Jar-eel has, from the moment of her infancy, done everything for the Lunar Way and the Empire and the Red Goddess. Her selflessness is to the point that in the only definitely canonical material that gives her dialogue, Prince of Sartar, Sedenya spends more time talking  through her than she spends talking. 

But both of them have key anchors that prevent them from a bizarre apotheosis- Harrek has his only real friend, Gunda, someone whose relationship with him is completely selfless and devoid of transactionality, and Jar-eel has her lover, Beat-Pot, and their relationship is entirely about their selves and their personal, intimate connection. 

And then Gunda dies, Beat-Pot seems to outright disappear (unless we're to presume that he makes an appearance at Dwernapple and Annstad merely used his Fertility magic to send Jar-eel back to ride Beat-pot into the ground or something) and we have the Battle of Heroes, where Jar-eel dies and Harrek... stops being Harrek. He leaves the battle, returns to the kingdom he carved out of Fonrit, and never does anything more until possibly participating in the Moonfall. 

So how did the Battle of Heroes go down? My suspicion is that it was like Alakoring Dragonbreaker fighting a dragon- Jar-eel and Harrek were performing (in game terms) immense Identity Challenges of each other, tempting each other with actions that would go against their mythic resonance and break the magic that came from being themselves as hard and totally as they possibly could. So Harrek offered Jar-eel a chance to retreat with her life at the cost of losing the battle, to indulge in selfishness, and Jar-eel refused. Because she instead tempted Harrek into engaging with the world and behaving selflessly by killing her, and so he carved her heart out... but she maimed him with unhealing injuries and sliced the Berserk out of Harrek the Berserk, leaving behind a ragged edge. 

Whether or not Jar-eel comes back after that (before she arrives to defend the last days of the Monster Empire), she managed a clear and total victory over poor Harrek. 

EDIT: I think this speculation is somewhat independent of when we date the Battle of Heroes to, but there may be some holes in it. 

Broadly, the problem with making peace with Sedenya is that she's too large and too small of a concept. 

That is, most religious understandings delineate several "levels" of divinity. You have the greater gods like Orlanth and Ernalda, who oversee the medial gods of their household and children, and in turn these are served by the little gods, including ascended heroes. And then above the greater gods you have the vast gods, like Umath and Gata, who encompass the totality of the thing they represent. (The Malkioni call these Eransachula, and the greater gods on down are Srvuali and Burtae). 

Sedenya is, according to the Lunars, the Ultimate Knowable Moon, the Eransachula of the Moon Rune, and thus an equivalent of Umath or Gata. Thus, a wedding of Orlanth and Sedenya (or more appropriately in the cosmological worldview, a wedding of Sedenya and Ernalda) would necessarily position Sedenya as the superior partner because She's the greater entity. Except that Sedenya is also a greater god, an entity that went around performing concrete cosmogonic acts in the mythic past, and also a medial god through Her Masks, and also a lesser god in the form of the ascended Teelos, which are all definitely Her. So a Sedenya-anyone marriage is quite impossible, because you're attempting to define a relationship that is really four different simultaneous relationships at once. 

That is, if you completed a wedding between Sedenya and Ernalda, Sedenya would be, simultaneously, 1) symbolically ruling over Ernalda (not an extant relationship anyone has with Ernalda), 2) co-ruling with Ernalda in an exchange of sovereignty for power like Orlanth does, 3) submitting to Ernalda as a Husband-Protector or Wife-Protectress who offers herself up as a servant to Ernalda like Yelmalio-Kargzant-Metsyla, Argan Argar, etc. do*, 4) expressing her devotion to Ernalda as her divine patron by symbolically marrying her in the way a particularly arcane heroquester might. 

Now if you can get anything coherent or sensible out of that tangle, let me know, but in the interim, any effort that doesn't focus on a symbolically lesser, more defined deity seems like it's going to not just fail, but explode catastrophically partway through. But in turn, the lesser deities would be insulting to use as wedding pawns except with equally lesser deities in the barbarian cosmos. Which would satisfy no one involved currently. Perhaps a post-Hero Wars cosmos would have more room to incorporate the cosmologies together. At the very least, we know moonstones continue to exist, which suggests that whatever happens to Sedenya, her power still remains active in a way that wasn't true before 1227 ST. 

*Minor note: when Esrolians say that Orlanth is the most favored of the Husband-Protectors, they're compromising between an understanding of Orlanth as subordinate to Ernalda and an understanding of Orlanth as coequal to Ernalda, but these twin understandings are also present in existing Heortling mythology, which does point to a potential way to reconcile Sedenya to the Storm Tribe...

- The Red Emperor gave birth to Yara Aranis, Hon-Eel, and Jar-Eel in a literal sense. 

- At least one prominent figure in the Hero Wars is really three durulz in a big coat. 

- The lesson the Loskalmi should be taking from the Kingdom of War is "It's not always about you."

- There are "metals" for each important Rune, besides the elemental ones, law-adamant, stasis-stone, and death-iron. Only Mostali know about them, and only Mostali would care.