Sir_Godspeed

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

Also its horns are curved!

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.

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.

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.

I hope this suggestion isn't in poor taste, but given that the Orlanthi are a bunch with moral values that aren't always palatable to us (ie. slavery, public murder, occasional infanticide), it is possible that they separate what one might call "assault rape" from other forms of what is commonly now considered sexual assult in real life, ie. engaging in sexual activities with someone who is not conscious, or under the influence of something that makes them unable to consent. The term "seduction" has always had a hazy semantic field, ranging from simply being very charming, to deceiving someone or giving someone false promises and the like. Zeus changing shapes to women's husbands to have sex with them comes to mind. Again, in the courts of a lot of countries in the real world, these things would absolutely be considered sexual assault or rape (and I'd certainly would), but it might be that the Orlanthi don't view it like that. Taking the advantage of someone who is drunk might be conceived differently. Presumably still badly, but maybe not Chaotically. I don't know. There's also the possibility that this thing is contextually sensitive. Taking advantage of an unconscious or drunk person normally? Horrible to Orlanthi. Doing the same to a cosmic force that almost just murdered the entire cosmos? They'll just let that slide. --------- I suppose I'd like to imagine that BOTH Eurmal and Babeester got wasted, and then sorta just hooked up because they were suddenly in the mood (with probably different reactions afterwards), but I realize this is probably not quite what the texts intends.

The main elemental sequence as envisioned by Malkioni thought, and in some theistic theogonies, is one of gradual "condensation" and/or "concretization" (for lack of better terms). Amassing from Chaos/Void, we have Darkness, which further "condences" to the material Sea, which "condences" to the solid Earth. This brings up the awkward position of Fire/Sky in the process, however. One might posit that Sky springs from Earth in this lineage, which is valid, but there is another possibility. Fire does not actually follow the main sequence, but rather is a by-product of the overall condensation process. When the matter-less and penetrative qualities of Darkness get excluded from Sea and Earth more and more, these somehow form their own element, an expansive one known as Fire or Sky. While Sky might seem as the opposite of Darkness, by the logic of this theory, it is rather more of a refinement of certain qualities already present in Darkness, but filtered away from its other descendants. This goes some way to explain why Sky is often considered a somewhat aloof or transcedent element, because its origin is effectively the opposite of that of Water and Earth. Moreover, this also sheds some light (no pun intended) on the extreme potential of Fire-Earth interaction (as they're the respective endpoint refinement of opposing qualities found in primordial Darkness), which resulted in the cosmos-shaking birth of Umath and the creation of the first (and possibly only) "heteroform" element, Air. More consideration is needed.

Dark Earth (Gor), surely? Maran Gor surely seems like the kind of incarnation of Earth who was around to knock in heads while Ernalda was asleep. She's not exactly a Bijiif character, but close enough. And of course Babeester's defining trait is that she was literally born from the dormant body of Ernalda to stand watch over her. Gorgorma is an interesting perpendicular of Babeester, Maran and arguably TKT?