Eff

Obvious, Disorder is what happens when you remove the middle string of Harmony, causing the other two to get tangled. 😛

I have several objections to this. I'll start with the mostly purely Gloranthan one. Firstly, it supposes that the Lunar Empire performs a massive top-down social transformation within its borders, one which touches every single facet of daily life, solely and specifically for replacing the existing infrastructure of trade from the top down. This is completely uncharacteristic for them, and it raises the question of why they don't do this for any other facet of the Lunar Way, especially ones that would seem much more core to it than the question of which god the village merchants pray to to ensure their rice harvest makes it to market and fetches a good price. That is, why aren't they engaging in social engineering to crush Dara Happan traditionalism (which has been a frequent problem for the Empire!) or to eliminate slavery, or something? This ends up handing the Lunars a level of power they never really demonstrate elsewhere, and thematically disrupts the sense that the Lunars are trying desperately to balance forces that could very easily overwhelm them if they aren't handled properly. Secondly, there's not really any sense that the Lunars want to replace any gods beyond possibly Orlanth (certainly they suppress Orlanth's worship, but their rhetoric is about healing and calming him, not about eliminating him). In other words, if the Lunars make no effort to replace Ernalda in Tarsh, as opposed to explaining how Ernalda is related to the Red Goddess, and if they have a ready-made explanation for a Lunar relationship for Issaries, by declaring Etyries is Issaries's daughter, (or taking advantage of a pre-existing belief related to that), then why would they not do with Issaries what they do with Ernalda? Thirdly, I feel that this is something of a backwards way to approach things. If we see a pattern in Lunar deities where they more or less have a kind of non-overlapping magisterium with regards to the existing gods of various cultures, such that Irippi Ontor coexists with Buserian and Lhankor Mhy, Yanafal Tarnils coexists with Shargash and Daxdarius and Urvairinius and Humakt and Polaris and Yelmalio, Deezola coexists with Oria and Ernalda and Chalana Arroy and Erissa, Teelo Norri doesn't displace other youth and childhood deities, Jakaleel's spirit practices haven't wiped out existing spiritism, etc. etc., then why would we presume that a particular deity breaks the pattern? In other words, why wouldn't we assume Etyries is like other Lunar deities in that she's a deity that's been adopted and used for the purposes of running a multicultural empire that explicitly sets its ruling class apart from all the cultures that it rules and adopts specific deities that can be set above existing ones without creating problems? And then once we have looked at her from this functionalist perspective, we can develop the ways in which she fits this pattern. Fourthly, it's just not really fun to tell Sartarite and Praxian players, "Okay, here's this god of traders and rhetoricians and diplomats, but his cult was effectively wiped out and forced underground until this very year, (or is currently forced underground if you're playing at any point between 1602 and 1625) and all the cool stuff you can read about in the background materials... just doesn't exist anymore. It will all have to be reconstructed." And then there is no other option- Etyries isn't playable as of yet, and won't be playable until GaGoG comes out. It's bad from a "making Glorantha playable" perspective because it's taking core setting elements (most people are going to be reading Lightbringer stuff where Issaries is prominent as their introductory/early material) and severely restricting them in the most developed parts of the setting to play in. Fifthly, I do think it kind of degrades a major conflict in the setting. If the conflict isn't "Sedenya versus Orlanth" but "The Moon versus the Storm Tribe", the question of collaboration becomes a lot less complicated because it's a genuinely existential conflict. Ernaldans can't say that there's always another way when the Red Goddess wants to eliminate them entirely, etc., whereas if it's something where it seems like 90% of Sartarite life can go on as usual, just with some slight modifications to make Destor and Barntar the names you use in the ceremonies, then the internal conflicts within Sartar become much more mutable. Obviously this is less of an issue if you start at the default RQG date of post-Dragonrise, but pre-Dragonrise Sartar should be gamable and the conflicts caused by the occupation should be, and this is of course all my opinion, very much ones that aren't clear-cut for players, even if characters find it very clear-cut that Uncle Vengaharl did something unforgivable by going to the Seven Mothers temple in Wilmskirk for food for the stead during the Great Winter. That being said, I am only laying out my reasons why I find this perspective unconvincing for myself and arguing for why I think my take on Etyries is more fruitful.

I'm not sure that's the case. Apart from MGF as a principle, Lunar cults don't appear to generally displace pre-existing cults. Deezola doesn't replace Oria or Ernalda or Chalana Arroy or Erissa, Yanafal Tarnils doesn't displace local wargods, Irippi Ontor hasn't replaced Buserian. In general, Lunar cults seem to place themselves "atop" existing cults as a point of entry to the Lunar Way (and not incidentally form a kind of bureaucracy as a consequence). And we know that Issaries was the god of markets in Peloria before the Lunars, because Lokarnos is a god of wagons/tribute collection, rather than free trade, so unless we presume Etyries has completely replaced Issaries in the Empire, entirely unlike any other Lunar cult, I just don't see a Gloranthan reason why Issaries would be suppressed in Sartar. That being said, what does Etyries do that makes her cult a distinct one from Issaries? Perhaps Etyries focuses on the creation of large trading enterprises as opposed to the small individual traders of traditional Issaries life? (And of course the bookkeeping techniques associated with that.) So the markets will be sacralized to both under the occupation.

Some potential setpieces: - Large Pelorian cities probably take out the city gods from their temple and parade them around in a massive day-long celebration on their holy day. Our intrepid barbarian heroes have just managed to get away from the Unspoken Word, now they have to make their way through the party without being seduced by Lunar blandishments and still evading the pursuing secret police. And for some unfathomable reason, there's all these people carrying large panes of glass around... -The heroes, having run afoul of a secret order within the Lion Society, have been captured and put into the Basmol Ruins, to be hunted to keep the Lion Society's elite sharp. These ruins were made for lion-people, with lots of open courts atop buildings laid out perfectly for sunning yourself, lots of broad ramps, and so on. Will Rokar/Hrestol/Siglat/Arkat's guidance be enough to let them escape, or perhaps even triumph over their captors?

There are basically two options here, as I see it: 1) Dara Happan religion is like Hellenic and Roman religion and initiation is a province of mystery cults and not an everyday thing. This would require a great deal of elaboration to make work within Gloranthan metaphysics and with existing material which very much suggests Dara Happans use theistic emulation magic which RQ calls Rune Magic. 2) Dara Happans don't initiate like Orlanthi in that the overwhelming majority aren't initiated into adulthood into the same god's cult. Instead you initiate into the city-gods' cult at adulthood and then into particular cults associated with your social role and move between them as that shifts. Obviously, I prefer this approach, in that it retains a lot of the Mesopotamian and Classical Antiquity feel of Dara Happa and Peloria by making DH spiritually a collection of city-states bound by shared cultural norms and also works without having to stretch the metaphysics too much. And how this manifests is that the average Dara Happan has more specialized magic than the average Orlanthi does. So Dara Happans are generally better in their particular field than Orlanthi but not as flexible. (In a military analogy, the DH phalanx would be difficult to break with a frontal assault but the looser Orlanthi warbands would be more able to flow around it and attack from its sides and rear.) The broader question is that this would possibly push things into HQ1 territory with regards to profusion of cults, though ruleswise it seems simple to just have a citygod overarching cult and note a few specialized variants.

Other good euphemisms for Z-guy: Dronar's tick Horal's burden Talar's rash The Wicked Hydrophobe Of The West

And, to be honest, the elementalism breaks down completely if you're in an spiritism-dominated culture or Malkioni country. It's kind of a shame that theism has such a dominant presence in Gloranthan discussion online- there's at least three other answers to any given question about the setting, and while Lunar ones are usually unhelpful...

I mean, I think the issue here is that the elements used have fairly strong connotations. The idea of a calm storm defies the basic metaphors we use to understand the world. It's downright paradoxical. Obviously, there's calm air, so perhaps the Storm element should "really" be the Air element or whatever. But a lot of Gloranthan definitions are built around these basic metaphors. The Fire rune is technically the Sky rune. The Sky is the heavens. The heavens are above us. They're perfect and unchanging, reliable. So the Sky is better than we are and by implication demands we submit to it. So the idea of a rebellious Sun requires quite a bit of work to fit in (unless it's as a cosmogonic rebellion against the Dark or the Earth or whatever). So I don't like the "elemental civilization" motif because I like Glorantha because of how anthropological it is. That is, elemental civilizations in fantasy fiction are generally similarly metaphorical and so they become a kind of extension of a psychological state, especially for the protagonist. To pick on Avatar: the Last Airbender for a moment, it's not surprising that it's Water and Air fighting Fire's attempt to dominate the world and having to try and persuade Earth to assist with difficulty. There's also nothing wrong with that. But when Glorantha is running on all cylinders (and it certainly doesn't always do so), then it takes these externalized psychological/metaphorical conflicts and reintegrates them back into people's heads without sacrificing the externality. That is to say, it is easy to imagine the internal conflict between self-aggrandizement and self-sacrifice within a person, but in the Gloranthan mode that I use, it can also be shown via Harrek fighting Jar-Eel. So Glorantha is in a way a playground where we can explore sacredness.

Feel free to steal it! This becomes even easier after Argenteus dies- clearly, Moonson has turned his back on the Empire in its occlusion! (And if they make it all the way to the 1640s, they eagerly flock to Phargentes the Younger when he marches south.)

This is going to get deep into the mythological weeds very quickly. After all, does Sedenya's "struggle for control of the Middle Air" mean that after she wins people will all breathe moonbeams instead of air? Or is she trying to replace Orlanth in his metaphysical "King of the Gods" role, sort of walking up to Ernalda and telling her, "Babe, you could do so much better than this himbo" and lowering her sunglasses meaningfully? I have my own answer, but it's fairly deep myth and not really relevant to the lay Lunar unless they're of a mystical bent. Well, moreso than usual. You're using the default post-Dragonrise date for this game, right? 1625 or thereabouts? If you are, bear in mind that a number of tribes and clans embraced the Lunar Way. So a full-on purge of Lunars is not practical and probably doesn't happen. So if your character is just following a Lunar cult, Seven Mothers or whatever, you could be one of those, furtively worshipping in secluded services among the "collaborator" clans. Or if you're a Tarshite, the Fazzurite faction there is loosely aligned with Sartar while being strongly Lunar, which would probably force some official tolerance. If you're a full Heartlander (or at least from further north in the Provinces), perhaps you are a Lunar dissident. You've concluded (maybe after seeing the Dragonrise or Harrek's rampage or some similar Lunar disaster) that the Empire has it wrong, is misunderstanding Sedenya's will. Perhaps Moonson has been deluded by his wicked Carmanian/Spolite/Dara Happan/Pelandan/Orayan/Provincial counselors. Perhaps the current Moonson is a fake! You're probably not a pacifistic White Moon cultist, though. You may also have simply gone a little native and started identifying with the Sartarites. You might well be able to get away with it if you praise Orlanth loudly and publicly enough. (Perhaps you've determined that Orlanth has been healed, what with his Ring having all 11 lights in it again).

It's my firm belief/firmly part of my Glorantha that the traditionalist Ernalda priestess attitude towards the Lunar Way can be summed up as: "If Sedenya thinks she's so important she can marry Ernalda too."

A more subtle aspect of Sedenya is that her cycle is not a circle, but rather what Douglas Hofstadter calls a "strange loop"- a circle-like object that nevertheless changes slightly every time it completes a loop. (Imagine a Lunar missionary drawing the Moon Rune, and then, in a flash of crimson light, pulling it up from the ground to reveal that it's a 2-dimensional representation of a 3-dimensional barred helix.) The basic way to illustrate this is through what Rashorana tells Gerra- "to live is to suffer, but suffering is not life". Life = Suffering, Suffering ≠ Life. For the everyday Lunar follower (apart from providing an aphorism you can quote whenever things go poorly or you want to annoy people), what does this mean? I would suggest that the most exalted way to perform Lunar magic is to complete a circuit but do so in a way that produces something new. Which means that if you can do that for your everyday activities as much as possible, then you'll surely have luck and the Goddess's blessing! In addition, the Goddess moves in an unexpected direction (the barred helix interpretation of the Moon Rune would be spiraling towards or away from the viewer). Misdirection is a holy art for Lunars to practice. Easier than meditation to work into the adventuring life, too.

I think my answer is that, IMO, "Ernalda" is the name the most familiar Orlanthi use for the Great Earth Goddess and it's convenience that causes us to use that name for the sake of communication. That said, if everything is made of everything and the pure beings are all gone, it's not incorrect to say that all the gods are manifestations of a particular primal power in varying degrees. It's just that it's only the Lunars who have hit upon this exciting conversational gambit so far.

Well, I don't think Ernalda is an "earth" goddess while being an Earth goddess. That is, if you take a look at general Orlanthi mythology, you have two Earth triples, both following a maiden-mother-crone motif (and although that motif is largely illusion in the real world, Glorantha does make use of it), Voria -> Esrola -> Asrelia and Babeester Gor -> Maran Gor -> Ty Kora Tek. So where does Ernalda fit in to this scheme? Where's the younger Ernalda, where's the older Ernalda? If we look at the story of Orlanth's fight with the Evil Emperor, I think it might be best to interpret what we see as a magical duel. Orlanth pits his Motion, his Change, his power of Becoming, against the Emperor's Stasis, his power of Being. But since the two power runes involved are opposites, there's a stalemate. Orlanth can't win, the Emperor can't hand him a lasting defeat. It's only when Orlanth brings in another power, Death, that Orlanth is able to win. I would argue that this is Orlanth demonstrating Mastery, that he is showing that he can control forces outside of himself. (The myth of Orlanth and Ernalda's romance also has elements of this, but I'd have to do a closer reading to tease them out.) So what is Ernalda, in this? Ernalda appears to represent sovereignty here. Yelm holds Ernalda prisoner, and she can only be freed by his defeat, that is by Orlanth taking away Yelm's rulership of the universe. Ernalda is then freed, and Orlanth is in a position to become King of the Gods. But Ernalda can't actually belong to any one person. Yelm was a tyrant for thinking that, and Orlanth, too, fails to defend the universe from Predark/Chaos. It is only with the Ritual of the Net, embracing a plurality of sovereignty, that the universe can be defended successfully. One of the few Ernalda-centric myths we have is the one where she teaches humans the Flax Dance, Goose Dance, and how to sacrifice. This would, of course, posit her as a wielder of Death too, but this time back in the Green Age, as she separates humans and gods and tells them who sacrifices and who is sacrificed to. It's thus not really surprising that Ginna Jar is understood as either Ernalda's ghost or Glorantha's ghost or Arachne Solara. I think that to a very large extent Ernalda is like Sedenya (and the Esrolian Imarja is the equivalent of Sedenya's Taraltara) in that she's both a relatively minor goddess originally (Sedenya the Turner who helped slay Murharzarm, Ernalda the earth goddess of Saird? Wenelia?) and the sovereign power of the universe. If we were being Lunar about it, we would say that Esrola and Ty Kora Tek and all them are just her Masks that she uses to communicate different aspects of the Earth to others. So to that extent, perhaps "Heortling" is best translated as "person who sticks forks into electrical sockets to see what happens". Imagine offering sacrifice to this truly arcane and supreme goddess for your little hide of land, and expecting her to answer! And yet answer she does. EDIT: A charming yet unfortunately confusing possibility is to have "ernalda" be a generic title for Orlanthi goddesses- they're all the ernaldas. So Mahome is the Fire ernalda, Heler is the water Ernalda, etc. etc. In this case I'm drawing upon the genericization of "Asherah" from a goddess to a title in western Fertile Crescent mythology.

Some things that are immediately relevant to you as a regular Lunar, IMO- The Lunar Way is built around a broad cycle that is reflected in everyday people's lives and the world around you. The phases of the Red Moon are meant to teach the world of this and remind the followers of the basic cycle. There is an even broader cycle, that of Sedenya's Masks. The current Mask is agreed to be Natha, the Balancing Moon. To that extent, the ruling principle of the Lunar Way in this current period is Balance. As an ordinary person, you need to seek Balance within yourself and within your life, you need to help perpetuate the Balance that Moonson and Great Sister and their servants are creating for the Empire (I assume you're not playing a dissident Lunar), etc. Lunar Balance is not pacifistic in outlook. Natha is the most martial aspect of the Red Moon, so it's fully accepted that violence and disruption and seeming destruction of existing Balance is necessary to create true Balance. Lunar ideology focuses on the notion of reconciliation of seeming opposites. Thus, even if you're faced with apparently invincible obstacles or obstinacy, don't worry. Sedenya will guide you to Balance there as well.

I think Biselenslib is an earth goddess if she's firmly elemental, yeah. But she might be a water goddess because she's a wetland bird. That's a possible mythical interpretation, but (out of Glorantha) I think it's a metaphor for water being fluid and changeable. There are Staffordian statements about the gods being actually genderfluid or similar, although I couldn't cite them directly. So perhaps the tendency for Water deities to be fluid, hermaphroditic, etc. is a consequence of them being so alienated from the lives of land people that they're experienced more directly without the comforting filters of myth? But then of course we have Heler, who is certainly textually fluid while being firmly ensconced within land people's myths.

Well, not exactly. My opinion is that the Queen and King positions are inherently unequal and the Queen is superior to the King. The Queen is the avatar of the land, the King is just some dork who thinks he has what it takes to be anointed and blessed by her. The problem (and it's a perennial problem within existing Gloranthan material, alas) is that there's an implicit passive/active distinction which is heavily gendered. It's not as bad for the FHQs, because most of them are historical actors and they appear to hold the real balance of executive power in Grazer society. To be honest, though, I think the Queen has been the superior partner for most Kings of Dragon Pass. The Beast People live in a way that the Lady of the Wild would appreciate, and Ironhoof was King of Dragon Pass when she was the sovereign power. Tarsh tolerates human sacrifice to a degree most Orlanthi and Pelorians find disquieting (look at how eagerly they've adopted the Hon-Eel maize fertilization rites) and Arim the Pauper was King of Dragon Pass when he codified early Tarshite society. The main exceptions seem to be Sartar and Argrath (now that I think about it, Tarkalor vanishing after Grizzly Peak may have been him sacrificing his body to Dragon Pass) and Sartar seems to merely prove an equality between Heortling life and Grazer life? And then they split their kids between them. I mean, I don't really have a problem with the King having a massive disadvantage. It's like the fight with the Bad Man in the Runequest Glorantha rules for becoming a shaman- the odds are stacked so high against you that only the very lucky or the naturally powerful are able to awaken their fetch without having taboos imposed on them. If you want power over the world, you have to accept the world pushing back.

Hmm. I have a theory that the Six Portions are representations of the elements, especially since Vrimak has an obvious association with Fire, Kazkurtum with Darkness (the reign of Kazkurtum is the period when no stars are visible in the sky anymore/the true stellar knowledge of Buserian is extinguished- Sheng's "Celestial" Empire presumably did the latter and thus earned him the sobriquet Kazkurtum after he was defeated), BernEel Arashagern a weaker one with Water, Bijiif possibly Earth? As Yelm's Shape? But Enverinus is also very obviously Fire and not Air... I developed this from thinking about why there are, in Lunar cosmology, six elements and seven souls, and then I realized that the Seventh Soul isn't revealed until after the First Battle of Chaos, so far as we're aware. So my thought became that the Sedenya Portion of the Lunar soul is your Chaos portion (or something like that), and then I realized that Antirius, as Yelm's Justice, would be a balancing force and the Moon rune is also called the Balance rune... So Antirius would be Yelm's Moon portion. Obviously, since Yelm is lord of the Sky, all of his portions are celestial in nature. This is definitely a very rough theory, I will admit! Well, as for the procession of Yelms, two thoughts: During the Storm Age and part of the Darkness, the overlord of the Sky appears to be Orlanth, having demonstrated mastery over at least two of the Cold Suns/Little Suns and being the god who destroys Tyram the Sky Tyrant where the surviving celestial gods are largely helpless. But this may be a relic of Orlanth having developed mastery over the Universe by that point. Does it have to be a big yellow ball? Should we classify the previous White Sun of the Green Age, prior to the rise of Brightface, as a previous Yelm?

Maybe? But I don't think so, given that Arraz has associations with martiality as "leader of the star captains" and Dara Happa in Time has a military record of, well... They won a lot of moral victories, at least! Of course, I have no idea who's Yelm currently. Two silly suggestions: It's Antirius, the shattering of Yelm is a metaphor to describe the procession of Yelms, Plentonius even says that the Sun which rises at the Dawn is Antirius, it's been Antirius all the way through, or at least since the Sunstop when the Sun became weaker. Alternately, it's Elmal, the Guardian Sun of Six Ages, who really did become Yelm by defeating Valind's effort to usurp the Sunpath, and foisted his mortal people off on Kargzant and Yelmalio.

For a somewhat more tongue-in-cheek possibility, the inconsistencies around Arraz's geneaology are explicable if we assume he's a brother of Dayzatar and Lodril by marriage rather than by birth... I think this distinction in Dara Happa probably dates to the Ten Tests. Murharzarm declares that the punishment for polygyny is to have multiple wives, which to me suggests a custom that is disfavored now but must be accounted for. And he says this to Lodril, a god of the previous generation or previous generation but one. Of course, it may have originally been a passing joke exalted as a bit of wisdom in the aftermath of the Flood...

BiselEnslib is the city goddess of Alkoth, and also the goddess of rice in Dara Happa generally. She was the first wife of Shargash. She is known as the "long-legged goddess" and is identified with the figure at III-10 on the Gods Wall, who is a figure with a heron's head and bird legs wearing a short, plain sarong belted with a belt with Earth runes on it. SurEnslib is the patron goddess of the region of Darjiin and is held by the Darjiini to be the creator of the universe from the sun and planets down to their ancestors. Her rites include ritual sexual activity which is sometimes dangerous for her partners- the mask Venerabilis of the Red Emperor was devoured by her during said rites. She is detested, like the Darjiini in general are, by the Dara Happans of the cities and is called a "lewd goddess". She is called a Heron Goddess outright and is associated with the figure at III-24 on the Gods Wall, who is a figure with a heron's head and bird legs wearing a long sarong decorated with waves on the bottom, belted with a belt with Earth Runes on it, standing noticeably taller than III-10. It is tempting to identify SurEnslib as mother of BiselEnslib, but I don't think that's ever been explicitly said. Of course, our sources are mostly people like Plentonius who would reject that association or Lunars who would phrase it as obscurely as possible. There may be other such goddesses, or "Enslib" may mean something which would make other goddesses have an appropriate epithet using it.

1) In my opinion only- there's a primal power which represents sovereignty over Dragon Pass, which manifests itself in various forms. Becoming King of Dragon Pass involves a mystical contest that has several parts to it- first, you have to prove that you're even worthy to contend with that power, which is the wooing contest itself. But once you're married, then you face a challenge where the primal power attempts to demand parts of you in exchange for access to the sovereignty she grants. So Ironhoof weds the Lady of the Wild, though this is described in a much rougher fashion in King of Sartar, and then struggles with her and ends up losing his ability to produce male children, at a minimum (this of course may also be a shorthand or an inadequate description of a more profound transformation). Arim the Pauper weds Sorana Tor, and she demands from him the acceptance of human sacrifice in Tarsh, it seems. Or something related to that- certainly the firm belief that Tarshite rulers had a fixed term before being sacrificed has to come from somewhere in King of Sartar. At this point, the Feathered Horse Queens become mortal incarnations of Dragon Pass's sovereignty. Sartar then marries the first one and contends with her and manages to win all the contests, and so he loses nothing to Dragon Pass and remains wholly himself. He is probably the only one to do so. Tarkalor and Moirades also become KoDP but I don't care to speculate on what they lost to Dragon Pass (it is curious that Jar-Eel challenges the FHQ that married Moirades and apparently either killed her or "liberated" her in the same fashion she does Moirades...) Argrath also becomes King of Dragon Pass at some point, but the sources there are confused and I prefer it that way. 2) This is also only my opinion, but we know that Waha can both act directly and be changed by things in the mortal world- he wrestles with Pavis, and then swears to leave Pavis's city alone when he loses, leading to the resurrection of Jaldon Goldentooth as a Praxian hero who can work against Pavis. And Waha is certainly worshiped as a god. So at least some divinities can act in the material world without violating the Compromise (without getting into my theories about the Red Goddess and Castle Blue) and we know, for example, that Orlanth loses three stars from his ring over the course of history and then has them restored during the Dragonrise. You could interpret these things as various forms of magic interfering with people's ability to access transcendent, eternal forces, sure. But that's also not a position that most Gloranthans would have, so I don't look at it as a fruitful one to adopt. My interpretation of the Compromise and Gods War is informed by the frequent note that the stations of a Heroquest may be passed through in any order. Since that is the case, my working theory is that the strange behavior of time and space on the Other Side is due to limited perceptions- a mortal cannot see the totality of anything there, beyond perhaps the most trivial things like (some) blades of grass, so they can only move on a path where they see a limited slice of that thing, which doesn't have to match their previous understanding of that thing, either. Which is how gods at different points of their own existence can interact, and why if you try to reenact the story of Orlanth and Aroka sometimes you have to fight Aroka before you see any hint of Daga. Of course, ritual community Heroquests don't usually have this happen, so perhaps having more perspectives attempting to make sense of the Gods War forces it into an intermediate ground between them?

I would be inclined to think that because Shargash seems unfitting for rice and more fitting for swidden, if not for the issue that Shargash is tied to the Rice Goddess Biselenslib and Lodril is not, and Shargash is also seen as wedded to the Oslira and Lodril isn't. Lodril is also associated with plows and plowing. Which is confounding, but stranger things have happened in the real world, of course. But (and I really should finish my Shargash exegesis one of these days), I think that perhaps Biselenslib is/was the deity of rice harvesting and the process of constructing a paddy or ricefield, and Shargash is a more passive producer of fertility. Alternately, his firey agriculture is actually slash-and-char like was practiced in pre-Columbian Amazonia, though the last time I thought about slash-and-char in a Gloranthan context, I placed it in Wenelia as a means of "awakening a slumbering Earth" to tie it to its RW effect of soil enhancement and improvement. Shargash as he exists in current Pelorian culture is fundamentally a god like Thor, what Georges Dumezil would have called a "power god", a deity that uses the weapons of the natural world to destroy the enemies of order. But he's also a god representing something horrible, an intrusion of the polluted world of death into the living world, letting demons loose to mingle with living people, whose followers smear themselves with ashes, dirt, filth, etc. And then there's Tolat, the other prominent red planet god, who's more like Ishtar or Ugaritic Anat- a god associated with sex and violence. I think Shargash is similar. Or rather, Shargash is a god that represents the shadowy parts of people, the urge to commit violence, have sex, step in mud with your bare feet, engage in life outside the constrains of order. And to an extent in the GRoY, you can see Shargash as someone that's bound and released, held in place by the social strictures of Yelm or Antirius or Murharzarm's Justice, only freed when an enemy god shows up and disrupts that order. (And so when Antirius fails completely, Shargash is totally unrestrained, but then he's free to destroy the world to bring it into his Enclosure for later repair. Death brings Life!) So I think that Shargash and Shargashi generally are "contraries", in the sense that that term is used to describe people in North American societies who ritually do things against the grain in some fashion. Shargash is a fire, a Bird Soul, that doesn't think and engages in nearly mindless violence. (There's also something to be said about the differences between a spear as a phallus, so common in Glorantha, and a mace or club as one, but that's a bit deep in the weeds.) Shargash is the Sun of Hell, light that exists in a place of pure darkness. Shargash is associated with the realm of the digijelm but is also the greatest fighter against them in Pelorian beliefs. Shargash is a god of mindless violence and yet Alkoth's libraries are the best in Peloria. As such, Shargash is intolerable but invaluable, able to adapt to any situation possible without forcing worthier gods to act in an unJust fashion. It's thus no surprise that Alkoth is one of the early supporters of Yelmgatha and the Red Goddess, but also no surprise that Shargash's worship isn't trusted by the Lunars, either- it's not like Shargash will stop being contrary just because Sedenya says so. (I would suspect Shargashi can be found eagerly supporting Fiscal Anarchists and other such White Moon notions.) I think this helps give Shargash a definable position that allows him to have specific myths of his own, make him disreputable in Peloria without being likable by anyone else, and also syncs fairly well with Tolat as one of the "moving gods" of Teshnos and immediate environs, while stil being definably different and distinct.

Pela would also be earth (and plant, maybe?), she's the wheat goddess. Peloria is probably a conjunction, "Pela Oria"- wheat Oria, the land of wheat, contrasted with the riceland of the river bottoms and the barley/millet land of the true uplands. (This in turn leads me to suspect Shargash was the original agricultural god of the Dara Happans and Lodril was adopted from the wheat folk because he was more docile, more willing to segregate destructiveness into Monster Man). Ernalda being a "women's goddess" is probably an artifact of the Orlanthi being very detailed and having such a fluid class structure that the prospect of a goddess for all (85% of) women is plausible, just like Orlanth is a men's god. Dara Happans and Pelandans and miscellaneous Lodrilli are more stratified, so they have at a minimum a division between peasant woman goddess Oria/Biselenslib and citizen woman goddess Dendara/Ourania, plus Gorgorma as an anti-ideal. In re Shargash and Six Ages: It's Elmal taunting him about lacking heat and so being unable to replace Yelm, but I think you could more easily interpret that as the "warmth portion" of the soul (and so Shargash is dead and can't keep people alive) or Riders taking some solace in the fact that their Sun is superior even if Alkothi can beat them up with ease. Shargash does have some interesting associations, especially with the Red Goddess (Verithurusa and Shargash are red planets deeply affected by Umath's passage) and Orlanth (Orlanth stole lightning from him, but he stole thunder from Orlanth, unless it was Umath, or perhaps it was a mutual exchange...). He also has a very interesting color scheme.

Some minor points, all IMO: I think Dendara is Air-associated, and Orlanthi understand her as Molanni or possibly Brastalos. My primary reasons, within a Gloranthan scope: Earth and Water are both sources of spiritual pollution in Dara Happan mythology and culture, but Earth is more respectable than Water (Lodril wrestles Nendestos, even though he fails, etc.) and Ernalda's Earth was kept chained by the Emperor. This is agreed upon by Orlanthi and Hyalorong sources. So it would be strange for Yelm to then wed a Water deity. But we know that Entekos and Right Air are more refined than Earth and Water, and that Entekos and Dendara are closely related somehow. So Dendara brings rain because her Virtue is strong enough to control Water without pollution. Out of Gloranthan scope, this helps confound the gender-essentialist implications by making a Stormy personality a sign of refined femininity in Peloria and thus instead of Fire men and Earth women it's Fire men and Air/Storm women as the cultural ideals. It would be even better to develop cultures with Earthy masculinity, Firey femininity, etc., but this starts from common ground and has some reasonable support. A Fire personality type will be somewhat arbitrary given that the primary models we have are deities as diverse in behavior as Yelm, Dayzatar, Shargash, Lodril, Yelmalio, Elmal etc., only some of which can be explained by splitting Fire, Sky, Light, Heat, etc. (Six Ages slightly implies Shargash is a Light deity, after all.) I think the implication overall is that Fire is about being rationalist in the sense of reason as opposed to Earth's empiricism or Moon's irrationalism/dreaminess. But that may be difficult to sustain, since it also appears to imply hierarchicality. I have thoughts about the seeming ubiquity of Ernalda, but they're not quite developed yet.