Leingod

2 hours ago, Jeremysbrain said:

I'm assuming the County of Salm should be that area north of Trier where the Salm river is and Bitburg, Schleidweiler and Daun are, but not sure.

Probably, since the modern village of Salm, Germany is located on that river.

4 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Didn't she? I wouldn't be surprised if she did, and that that is a whole nother story.

A story repeated every year, as the cult reenacts the myth of "Babeester Gor Shakes Down Eurmal For His Child Support Payment."

Well, Eurmal is the one often blamed for hangovers, so an aspect/child dedicated to it would make sense. Though I imagine the idea of a child of Eurmal and Babeester Gor, even if it's only a god of hangovers, would be sufficiently horrifying that Heortlings would prefer not to refer to this god by name for fear of drawing its attention.

3 hours ago, g33k said:

People often seem to compare/contrast Orlanth vs Sedenya, but I think Eurmal vs Sedenya is MUCH more illuminating...

 

Which is funny, because if we take the Seven Mothers to be based on or otherwise echoing and mirroring the Lightbringers, Danfive Xaron is basically what happens when you put Orlanth in Eurmal's place.

And of course while it's harder when the livestock aren't out to pasture, it definitely won't be unheard of for some hot-headed young men to get cabin fever and decide it's time for a cattle raid regardless. Or, if there's a feud going on, more likely they plan a violent attack on an isolated stead, or even an all-out stead-burning.

Subere's one of those deities that's so remote and primeval that even those who pay her worship likely have very few myths that are actually about her, rather than just myths in which she features. I don't think there are really any that have been written down in any official source. In-universe you'd maybe find something among the uz or perhaps at Black Well, the only temple to her that we know of (found in Bliss In Ignorance, north of Kralorela).

I'm in the "becoming a Trickster is basically a form of Illumination already" camp, and thus I would think Tricksters can't become Illuminated - though maybe they can convincingly pretend they are - because you can't become what you already kind of are.

To my mind, becoming a Trickster involves a glimpse into the Void, seeing - for just a moment - behind the masks and illusions that make up the world as we experience it. An individual's reaction to this varies, as does their comprehension of it, but in the end they are always changed forever, and their Trickster-like behavior afterwards is ultimately a reaction to this quick peek into the true fabric of reality.

A Nysalorean who learned this would probably see Tricksters as all being Occluded - the Trickster is someone who has glimpsed the truth with no preparation and went mad because they weren't ready to see what they saw and couldn't properly process it. A Trickster who knew enough about Illumination would laugh uproariously upon hearing that.

45 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Eurmal, Friend of Men, the Firebringer.

And according to one of the many contradictory backstories he's given in the Sartar Companion, also Yelm's son.

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Eurmal began as a bastard child of the Emperor, begotten on an unclean serving maiden whose presence in the Emperor’s Palace was illegal and shameful. When the child was born the Emperor cast him out, but the mother begged for some way that the child may be accepted by his father. The Emperor said, “If he saves my life, destroys my enemies and never reveals his origins, there is a chance.” And so Eurmal did those things.

Also there's a name (and power) mentioned that's suspiciously familiar:

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In these adventures he was often killed, such as when he was caught cuckolding Lightface, who angrily made him into the first living target for his spears.

Lightface throwing spears, huh?

10 hours ago, Joerg said:

Why is water so effective in searing away Chaos? Is it just a rival faction of destruction?

It might be that it's just because Water really only has that one way to destroy (rather than just kill) something. The effectiveness of that way against Chaos might just be due to its proximity to Chaos, being the second of the elements to differentiate itself.

The "head" on that Rune might actually be Skyfall Lake, with the "body" being the river itself. Sort of like how Oslira is also depicted as a serpent or even a dragon; deities of Water are the ones most often compared to/conflated with dragons, funny enough.

3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

One of the things that make my head spin is that not only are the letters very similar, the words that make them up start with the same letters and in the same order. It’s like if you had three words in one language, translated them into an unrelated language, and wound up with the same three-letter acronym as before. And that’s before realizing that in the other language, the equivalents of ”Wyrm” and ”Without” must start with the same letter in order for it to work.

(Utterances like ”Youf” for EWF and the Yelmalio ”Yo!” further seem to suggest that Glorantha has the same letters as English, at least in part.)

Or that the translators are playing very fast-and-loose with their translations for the sake of making sure the jokes/plays on words mean more or less the same thing they would be if they were made in English originally.

3 hours ago, AlHazred said:

I thought that was canonical?

That the EWF Rune is literally just the letters "EWF" smushed together is canon; that this is because New Wyrmish is literally just Modern English is not.

22 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Following up on this, perhaps it could be argued that Illumination is the "shortcut" version of Draconic Mysticism. Similar goals, but much more immediate temporal rewards for much less effort.

Something to think about.

That's a bit like how I imagine other mystics might see the stereotypical cult-jumping Illuminate. To them, the Illuminate is someone who took the first step and declared he'd reached the peak; a willful, ignorantly cruel child without parents to discipline him (the "parents" here would be one's cult and other societal bonds, whose hold the Illuminate is newly-released from) who found a dangerous new toy and is abusing it with wanton abandon, perhaps using it to torture insects or even small animals.

The easy comparison that could be made to Eurmal discovering Death are telling. Perhaps Nysalor was in many ways a child-god, enlightened at birth and woefully unprepared to handle it responsibly or maturely and innocently cruel in the way only a child can be.

EDIT: Meanwhile Arkat was almost worse, because he was an educated adult who should have known better.

A conspiracy theory entered my head after reading a post by @Nick Brooke arguing that the Seven Mothers (who are "willing to form illegal criminal conspiracies, defying unrighteous imperial authority, and make alliances with strange new forces in order to tear down an Evil Empire and replace it with something better") are "Argrath's natural allies," but many people refuse to see that.

See, that's the point. That's the reason the Seven Mothers cult was made the missionary branch sent into the provinces and future-provinces of the Lunar Empire, staffed by zealous believers in the Empire as the right and true end-result of the Lunar Way. Because by doing that, not just in the minds of the rebels, but even in the minds of the converts, the cult of the Seven Mothers is the cult of those who have abandoned their native identity for that of the Lunar Empire. In this way, what could have become a hotbed of resistance to the Empire's expansion and excesses in the provinces has instead been made a safety valve for the natives to vent their hatred of the Empire onto a cult of quislings, turncoats, and sellouts, at least until (as in Tarsh) a tipping point is reached where they become the accepted majority and can push the traditionalists to the fringe.

So if the Sartarites waste time after the Dragonrise chasing out or rounding up and slaughtering all the red-turners in their midst? So much the better, as it gives the Empire time to regroup and a nice propaganda piece to paint them as vicious beasts in the Heartlands and drive up recruitment.

The Stormwalkers of Old Wind Temple and the Larnstings are both different aspects of Orlanth approached through a mystical lens: The Stormwalkers represent a mystical version of Orlanth Thunderous, the Larnstings are the mystical path of Orlanth Adventurous. Or, to be a God Learner about it, Orlanth-as-Air-Rune and Orlanth-as-Motion-Rune.

Argrath, despite being born and raised as an Orlanthi and steeped in various forms of mysticism, never becomes a part of either tradition or has any strong connection to them. The reasons for this are likely many, but ultimately most of them come down to him not being in the right state of mind for either; he's too much of an Illuminate in the mold of Arkat or Nysalor, too enamored with what he can do and get away with thanks to his mystical powers and not thinking enough about whether he should (both the Stormwalkers and the Larnstings share more in common with the Draconic Path than that of Illumination, in that they would rather commit No Action at all than risk performing the Wrong Action).

It isn't until he comes back from his years-long disappearance (you know, that interregnum where Harrek ended up in charge), finally humbled by his failures and the consequences of his rash actions, that Argrath gets his act together and succeeds where Arkat had failed by overcoming (rather than becoming and then mutually destroying) Gbaji. In doing so, he perhaps finds his own mystical take on some other aspect of Orlanth entirely, likely Orlanth Lightbringer, who after all is essentially Orlanth-Who-Fixes-What-He-Broke.

And to double up on insane theories, this touches on the most critical distinction between Draconic and Illuminate mysticism: The latter is often used as a way to duck the consequences of one's actions and to avoid having to fulfill obligations, the former actually doubles down on the importance of them (see: Dragonewts having to fulfill any obligation they incur, even if it holds up their spiritual development and affects their ability to perform their sacred duties for decades on end). This is also why Illumination is generally more appealing and widespread than other forms of mysticism (outside of Kralorela, of course, which is a special case).

3 minutes ago, coffeemancer said:

Wonder how detailed descriptions the artist got of the characters. Could be they just picked some runes they thought were cool?

In the examples I listed? Doubtful; like I said, all of the Runes I mentioned (with the exception of that Air Rune for Erinina) are right there in their write-up. Leika has Fire and Illusion Rune affinities in her character sheet, and so on for the rest.

Something else that might obscure cult ties is that people also often get tattoos of Runes they have a personal (and perhaps also cultural) connection to but which aren't a part of whatever cult they're a part of. Looking over the art from the adventure book in the GameMaster Screen Pack, for example, Leika has the Illusion Rune tattooed on her right hand and the Fire Rune on her neck, Asborn Thriceborn has a Fertility Rune on his right bicep and the Earth Rune on his forehead, and Dunorl Brandgorsson has Earth on his left shoulder and Harmony on his right bicep. This even though all three are devotees of Orlanth. And Eranina Chan even has the Air Rune tattooed on her right shoulder despite not having a notable affinity to that Rune at all in her write-up.

Doubtless Tarsh being a major Lunar Province and Dragon Pass being an important trade route means there's a lot of Pelorian influence in the material culture, too. It might be less notable out in rural areas, but in the cities you'd definitely see a lot of people wearing Pelorian-style clothes and the like.

8 hours ago, Hteph said:

I was thinking about this while doing chores in the garden when it was to much sun and heat stroke was rearing up, so take it for what it is worth...

What if Gagarth is tolerated in the “Orlanthi family” for safety valve reasons? There will always be people who don’t really get this “being good honorable and nice” thing. The worst of that bunch would be heading into the embrace of Chaos before you could say Broo-poo, some you could probably divest to Humakt and Stormbull, but there will be those who are lying cowards with thoughts of grandeur.

That is the target audience for Gagarth, a kind of honey trap to catch the last dredge before it gets really bad.

Problem with that is Gagarth isn't tolerated. He's an "outlaw god" and his worship is forbidden among pretty much every clan and tribe - except for Harvar Ironfist's (though it's less that it isn't forbidden there and more that Harvar doesn't care and he's got the backing of the Lunars, who also don't care).

8 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Player characters are always exceptional. I don't have a problem with Humakti or Storm Bulls being over-represented among the adventuring classes, and it looks as if Elmali will be as well. Yay! Just as long as you don't think this means everyone's an Elmali, or shares your weird beliefs about how important Wee Free Elmalism is in modern Sartar.

Sun County is, of course, awesome, and if you walk away from reading that plus Sandheart plus MOB's ongoing "Cradle Aftermath" updates with the impression that they're all prudish killjoys and there's nothing more to it, I honestly can't help you. (The capsule description we used back in the day was "Uptight Spartans in the Wild West," which still sounds like an magnificent campaign concept to me; YMMV)

Oh, obviously there's a lot more to it, and the Praxian Sun Domers have all kinds of interesting storytelling and roleplaying opportunities of their own. I bought the whole Sandheart trilogy, you don't need to sell me on them.

But I'm talking about a surface-level "first impressions" read, from someone maybe just starting to get into the wider world of Glorantha after playing one of the excellent video games. From that perspective, someone is probably going to be going "Elmal sure was cool, but apparently he's not much of a thing anymore? Who's this Yelmalio guy? A xenophobic theocracy of self-righteous types who are scandalized by the sight of a bared ankle and refuse to use the same coins and wagons as everyone else? Wow, that's lame."

1 hour ago, Eff said:

One of the underlying assumptions in most of the Elmal-and-Yelmalio back-and-forth is that we should take things at face value when it comes to Elmal being a trusted servant or boon companion to Orlanth, his right-hand-man, etc. This is an assumption that I am increasingly suspicious of. Why would you put your trusted majordomo right on the outskirts of the divine stead? Why does, if Heortlings accept that Ernalda has multiple husbands and Orlanth is simply the first and best, Elmal only get to be wedded to the more minor Esrola incarnation? Why doesn't Elmal get invited to any parties, in other words?

I think it's also in keeping with the tone of most Gloranthan material- assertions of this kind are generally two-faced and containing various species of hidden meaning to explore.

So an alternate interpretation of Elmal is that Elmal is the quarrelsome second to Orlanth's leadership, always willing to second-guess Orlanth's actions, sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly, and regularly, like Brainy Smurf, getting tossed out of the village and sent to go patrol the walls for a bit. In this sense, being selected to play the role of Elmal in a ceremony might be a notification that the clan chieftain thinks you need to be cut down to size. But regardless, being an Elmali is a frustrating exercise in perpetual subordination.

To contrast, Yelmalio is independent. To turn the memes on their head, Elmal gets to stay at home and babysit while Yelmalio has a cool motorycle and glowing yellow sunglasses as he does wheelies on the foothills of the Spike. (Metaphors are always imperfect.) And of course, Elmali would be primarily drawn from the nobility given the centrality of horses to the cult. With the exception perhaps of horse-breeding specialists (who are the remaining Elmal worshipers as of 1625!), Elmal is a cult for people who are going to eat shit fairly often and be stuck in a medial position. Yelmalio gets to eat shit fairly often too, of course, but the light at the end of the tunnel is more obvious there.

(All of this is my interpretation. It also largely ignores the Elmal of Six Ages, who is not totally irrelevant to the modern day but certainly has quite a bit more Godtime to go through before ordinary Time can begin!)

Thing is, from the standpoint of a new player making a character (speaking from experience), that probably makes Elmal more appealing, not less. As does the fact that his cult barely exists anymore, at least IME. Because it's easy to be loyal and honorable when you're on top in a position of respect and honor, showered with praise and rewards and treated as the trusted right hand of the chief or king. A character who's loyal to a clan or tribe whose leaders don't appreciate that loyalty as much as they should or otherwise keep that character at arm's length, whose contributions are overlooked because it's not as flashy to stand guard and play defense, a character who's constantly drafted to play the enemy in rituals because they're the only guy around with a strong Sky Rune affinity, etc., has its own obvious appeal. Because now you're not just the loyal, steadfast solar warrior: You're also The Last DJ Elmali, who stubbornly sticks to his guns even as the world has moved on and his former compatriots all "sold out" for the glitz and glamor of a big golden dome with farms worked by gray-skinned slaves and lucrative mercenary contracts. You're doing "the right thing" not because you're going to get heaped with accolades for it, those are probably going to go to whatever glory-hungry young Orlanth-worshiper is in the party, but because your clan/tribe need you to do it, and no one ever said doing the right thing was easy.

You can totally do more or less the same thing as a "tribal Yelmalian" per RQG, and at this point as far as the actual canon is concerned Elmal is basically just a local name for Yelmalio used around Runegate with maybe some extra horse magic in a local subcult or something. But you're starting with the thing I described above, where most of the material you can easily find on Yelmalio is from Sun County and doesn't do a great job of selling the cult of Yelmalio (and the Sun Dome culture) as cool and fun to be a part of. It's easy to walk away from that with the impression that a Yelmalian character almost has to be some flavor of prudish killjoy.

Basically, "Yelmalio" is a title for the Cold Sun, the Light that's left to give hope and protect the people when the original Sun dies. This is and/or isn't the planet Lightfore, depending on who you ask. There are many gods who represent the Cold Sun, each through a different cultural/religious lens: In Pent he's Kargzant, to the Heortlings he was Elmal, in Dara Happa it's Antirius, etc. These gods all share certain essential traits, but their cults and the traits ascribed to them also differ. All are nonetheless "correct," and the proof is that their magic works and you can Heroquest to them. Canonically none of them has Fire power, though in the past some have been portrayed otherwise.

The Vision of the Many Suns is the revelation that these are all, in fact, aspects or "masks" upon the true Cold Sun, and Yelmalio is the name he's been given in the Third Age; previously it was Tharkantus, and before that he might have been Daysenerus. This revelation has been lost and then rediscovered in various times and places, and the recent re-awakening in Sartar led to the tribal cult of Elmal being converted into that of Yelmalio en masse, with some stubborn holdouts here and there, mostly at Runegate.

(My own totally-not-canonical conspiracy theory is that Yelmalio is actually just as much a construct, or "mask" if you will. After all, just because you've realized that all the Cold Sun gods are essentially the same and put together your own composite deity out of them that doesn't mean you've actually revealed his "true" face, and in fact I'd bet that Yelmalio's creation/revelation all the way back in the age of Nysalor was a very conscious process of picking and choosing the parts most suitable for what was needed by Nysalor and Palangio, which is obviously not how finding the real god behind all the masks would work if they were legit about it. I'd also argue no god can be truly known and understood behind the masks different cultures have put on them, at least not by ordinary humans)

On 7/14/2021 at 5:05 PM, Jape_Vicho said:

You are not alone, waves after waves of newcomers to Glorantha fall for the radiance of the Sun God of the Orlanthi, myself included (until I saw the Light of the Vision of Many Suns). I don't really know why he's so appealing but it's a fact he is. The writters had some problems fitting together all the Yelmalio-Elmal stuff, but apparently they have come up with the final solution; parts of it have been told here by Jeff and others but the final description of all this seems that will be in the upcoming Cults of Glorantha book.

Part of it is definitely the fact that as he's often been portrayed in Sun County (the traditional epicenter of writing about him and his cult), Yelmalio is distinctly uncool and unsexy: He (or rather his worshipers, in fairness) is depicted in a lot of the old material set there as a fussy, hidebound, xenophobic misogynist, scandalized and outraged by everything from the sight of a bare ankle to the concept of a coin that isn't made of gold. And despite being held up as a martial god his most important myth (and honestly the only one that gets a lot of attention) is about that time he got beat up and had his lunch money taken, repeatedly, by other gods. Meanwhile just upriver you can find the Sartarite settlers, who worship a god who loves and respects his wife and is the exact opposite of fussed by nudity or premarital sex.

However, an honorable warrior and solar god who manages to survive and keep the flickering Light of hope alive even in the deepest darkness, staunchly soldiering on even as the world falls apart around them and nobody would blame them for giving up, is still inherently cool and something people would want to play a character devoted to emulating. The way he's portrayed in stuff like King of Dragon Pass, Elmal essentially has all the cool bits without having to roleplay as a square, sexist prude.

In other words, IMO the biggest reason for Elmal's enduring appeal is that most of the literature a newcomer to Glorantha will tend to find on Yelmalio is squarely centered on the cult in Sun County, where he comes off as a hidebound sexist jerk who gets his butt kicked up and down the Gods War and Elmal is basically everything he is but less of a ponce and with a wife that turns into a horse. As more RQG material releases that can shine a light on how the cult is outside of that one specific region of zealously hidebound xenophobes and we can maybe learn more about his Godtime exploits that aren't just a series of events best summed up as "And so once again Yelmalio got the stuffing beaten out of him. But he remained steadfast and so won the most important victory of all, the moral victory," that will probably start to change.

I like the portrayal King of Dragon Pass had with the dwarves (or at least this is how they remember them; it's been a while for me), where they're so to-the-point and so hate wasting time that they cut out as many words as they possibly can without rendering themselves unintelligible. It's basically caveman talk, but out of brusqueness rather than stupidity, and if they need to they can and will drown you into long, verbose technical info about something related to their task. Personally, for similar reasons I imagine that they'd also speak as quickly as they could without making themselves harder to understand (because repeating yourself is even more inefficient than speaking slowly), so they always sound very rude and impatient. Their enunciation is immaculate, though.

I also lean towards the "very deep and rumbling" interpretation for trolls; in fact I like to think that Uz (especially the Uzuz and Uzdo) actually have to take care to "pitch up" their voices in some cases, because their voices can actually get so low as to be incomprehensible to human ears. Similarly, I think you would actually feel the war cries of a charging Uz horde rather than hear it. Except in the case of trollkin, obviously, who on top of all the other ways they're so un-Uzlike are also shrill little bastards whose awful cries can be absolutely torturous to Uz ears and still pretty darn annoying to others.

I haven't really got anything in particular in mind for other races, though, other than the obvious, well-known one that dragonewts (at least when speaking human tongues) are very sibilant.

On 7/12/2021 at 8:31 AM, Akhôrahil said:

I love the naive interpretation the Orlanthi have, that before Sky and Earth were separated, they pushed against each other so that people could hardly move, and that this explains why things were so static.

Is that a "naive explanation" or a "useful metaphor?" The two aren't clear-cut when we're talking about myths of a "time before time."

I would posit that an educated, philosophical Orlanthi (and yes, those exist, and not just in a Lhankor Mhy temple, whatever those bearded fusspots might say to the contrary) takes the typical Orlanthi equivalence of one's "breath" with the concepts of both a "soul" and "freedom" to mean that before Umath separated Sky and Earth and filled the space between with Air, people in fact didn't need to breathe. But this also meant they were without what later people would imagine is a fully-formed human soul with all its component parts, and also (thus?) without true free will.

3 hours ago, Voord 99 said:

ne interesting detail, though, is that in the Vulgate there are two Yvains, the main one and  his half-brother, Yvain the Bastard (who has a rather different origin story than your PK — he has the same father, but different mother).  (All IIRC!  My copy is on the other side of the Atlantic.)

You do indeed recall correctly, "Yvain the Bastard" is the son of Urien by his seneschal's wife.

Meanwhile, the original Owain is also attributed a twin sister named Morfydd (or Morvydd), who is mentioned in several Welsh Triads as the lover of Cynon son of Clydno, later made into a different character called Colgrevance or Calogrenant and turned into Yvain's cousin.