Sir_Godspeed

33 minutes ago, RHW said:

On some dusty scroll somewhere in a locked Yuthuppan library, there's a tale about how, when Aether manifested, his inherent magnificence caused an unnamed Darkness Spirit to grow heavy with his child. The Darkness entity fled to the Underworld, where another of her kind helped her give birth to twins. One child was Dark, the other was on Fire. Immediately they set on each other and the victor ate the loser, absorbing his powers.

What's never been clear is who ate whom.

Big Dumb Dumb Theory coming up:

Nysalor vs. Arkat is a repeat of Shargash vs. Zorak Zoran.

3 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

In the past my thought was always that the "Y" (truth rune) was added to a primeval E(Hu)LM or E(Hu)LM-aL to create the imperial sun and his friends. But maybe it's worth considering a map where various regional YELMs are stripped of their Y and turn into Ehilms if not Elmals. 

 

I'm wary of mixing the real-world Latin alphabet in with in-universe Gloranthan concepts.

4 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

 

 

Skulldixon posted this great YouTube film that features squareish/ovoid/and long houses in antiquity, on Discord...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk2Qbf1YQbI

 

Heh, I JUST watched that!

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

What's the status of Elmal in Orlanthi areas that never had the Monrogh Doctrine revealed to them? Ralios? Fronela? Talastar? 

Would they even have Elmal, or some other named Cold Sun/Sun entity?

Is the bare bones similar to what appears here?

https://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha/dawnAge/nallindia.html

The point here is that Illumination is a profound, transformative personal experience with the All, the Ultimate. Illumination is not something you learn, but something you go through. The knowledge one has forms the context around the experience, the context which leads one to make specific conclusions about one's experience. 

It's the old "blind men describing an elephant by touch" thing, basically. So it would be bizarre if people DIDN'T profoundly disagree.

Eh, I mean, the East Isles have long traditions of mysticism that seem to result in what we would call Illumination (I THINK?), and I'd presume that in order to preserve these traditions, there is some kind of organization, whether that be mountain hermitages or wandering sages or what have you. 

EDIT: Kralorelans also don't seem to hyped about the Immanent Masters using draconic powers openly.

3 minutes ago, AlHazred said:

But if I magically prove Doburdon is Orlanth, isn't that enough? So, the Pelandans don't recognize how great he is; that's a chance for Sartarite former-enemies to show them they're wrong!

Sure! 

Now take a missionary expedition into Lunar heartlands and forment a religious awakening that seriously threatens Lunar stability. Simples!

Jokes aside, I totally think it would mythically/theologically work, but the sociopolitical context is VERY different there. Seems like a helluva campaign though!

I like the use of Ernaldela to group together the smaller regions in south-central Genertela.

1 hour ago, EricW said:

I doubt a greater darkness style gaping maw of chaos could exist inside the compromise, so clearly the crater is something else, or became something else when the goddess won her place in the middle air. But the lunes do like to cluster there. Perhaps it is a place where reality is unreliable, no longer entirely a part of the mundane world, where the light of the moon shines strong, and uncertainty and madness cluster ready to rend the sanity of anyone foolish enough to enter unprotected by the power of the Goddess.

 

There's always the theory (Joerg's?) that the inside of the crater is spatially the same as the surface of the Red Moon.

3 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

So, when the deeper mysteries become apparent through Monrogh's revelations, why was Yelmalio guarding the stead in the Greater Darkness while Orlanth was on the LightBringer quest? 

I'm not entirely sure I follow, but the Lightfore complex's myths all basically include a point where they guard the dying world of the Greater Darkness. Antirius in Dara Happa, Yelmalio/Halamalo over the sleeping Aldryami forests, Elmal over Orlanth's stead and probably a dozen other instances I'm not aware of. 

7 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

coined by me as a Lunar

clos enuf!

As far as I understand, the TERM "occlusion" was coined by/used by the Lunars, to basically describe Illuminates whose worldview they regarded as wrong (like Sheng, for example). Given that it is, as far as I understand it, effectively an opinion and not something objectively concrete, it could be borrowed and applied to... well, basically any Illuminate whose conclusions you find wrong. 

I think the most widespread usage I've seen out-of-universe, is as a term for those Illuminates who embrace thier Illumination as a path to power (cf. Jajagappa's megalomania comment above) as opposed to the more renunciate and less involved Illuminates that orthodox mystic traditions tend to produce. This, obviously, puts Lunar Illuminates (who are the absolute vast majority of Illuminates in central Genertela) in a really interesting spot, given their obvious temporal-political agenda, at least collectively, if not necessarily individually.

Wouldn't a bunch of rando foreigners keeping a massive treasure hoard also be EXTREMELY susceptible to just be... you know... murdered by the local bigwigs and lose everything anyway?

15 hours ago, EricW said:

Then why are they susceptible to occlusion?

Isn't, ultimately, occlusion just a term for "conclusions based on illumination that we don't like"? 

7 hours ago, Leingod said:

So, this Blue Goat is "immortal and unkillable" and capable of intelligent thought. Which means it might have survived into the Third Age. And now, to outline the actual dumb theory (emphasis dumb) that brings me here: The goat is blue, knows ancient secrets, and goats are associated with Chaos by Orlanthi. There's a Blue Moon, whose goddess is associated with ancient secrets, and moons are associated with Chaos by Orlanthi. Ergo: The Blue Goat has some connection to the Moon Rune, and if it reappears it might have a role to play in the future of the Lunar Empire.

Also its horns are curved!

1 hour ago, sufiazafran said:

Hello, very interesting thread. I just have one question:

Isn't there already a muskox people in Fronela? GtG vol. 1 mentions Agnost and Hingol as musk ox people settlements called the noyaling (GtG, vol. 1; pag. 218, 220).

 

There are! But when I started this project, I was mostly looking to develop a less detailed area. And honestly muskoxen lent themselves very well to the region of Far Northern Pent. The alternative could be reindeer, which of course is also present elsewhere (in Fronela and Peloria) or just making them hunter-gatherers. 

On another note, jeeez, it's been a year. I should put up some of the stuff I wrote before the second (and more demoralizing) lockdown occured.

Might be mythical precedent as well. Esrolia is where Gata gave birth to Asrelia, or whatever. Shaker Temple is where Maran killed her enemies and/or killed Grandfather Mortal and/or accepted human sacrifice for the first time or whatever. Point is, it might precede mortal decisions on the matter. 

Then again, the matter of mythical landscape and human decisions might be blurred to the point of the distinction being irrelevant, of course. 

That being said, if the Esrolians wanted to keep their core lands "clean", they sure messed up with the Necropolis.

5 hours ago, Eff said:

Solar Storm. I wonder what that means. 🤔

Umath shook the heavens and destroyed or altered several planets/lesser suns. And even if they eventually managed to protect the skies, his fall caused the firmament to rock back and forth. Then his son straight up murdered the sun, causing ages of confusion and anarchy. 

I'm going to guess that the Solar Storm is a "failure state" where Storm never stops messing up the Heavens, pathologically.

If Darius worked on the same presumption (ie. taking other people's comments on the myth for granted) as I did, then I can see why he would come to his conclusion, because people kept writing about how Eurmal got Babeester drunk, and then "seduced" her. Those comments, while now in hindsight clearly not from the myth themselves, did make it seem rohypnol-y. Then @Eff cited the actual myths and showed that those comments were... completely spurious.

I believe there's some comment in either the Guide or possibly the online design notes for the Guide about how the Year King thing isn't actually a thing. So presumably non-canon nowadays.

Hey, that's not fair! 

There's plenty wrong with us Protestants too!

This just reminds me how stupidly huge RW sauropods are, even in a fantasy setting were there are other exaggerated imaginary critters around.

So we just had a semi-lengthy discussion over a fan interpretation of a fan article without even questioning it. 

Well, I certainly have egg on my face.

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

what text is this?

I'm not sure I'm aware with the exact text, all I know is the general outline of the myth as told to me by others. I'm just projecting YGWV, I think.