Sir_Godspeed

There's a Bruce Wayne joke in here somewhere.

Happy Easter, folks!

Galaxy brain plays.

Sorry for dropping all these names and terms on you, None. We're kinda dealing with a big and muddled field here.

One thing that the Fortunate Succession does really well is dispel a lot of the notions that the Dara Happans have about themselves. To the Dara Happans, there is in unchanging continuity between the society and beliefs they have now and all the way back into the God Time and Golden Age. This is propaganda. The idea of Yelm and the idea of Dara Happan society has changed quite significantly, both in terms of swinging back and forth, and also linear innovations. Horse Lord ideas, Nysalorean ideas, EWF ideas, Spolite ideas, Carmanian ideas, Lunar ideas, as well as native ideas. It's highly doubtful that there is some internal, "true essence" here, however much the Yelmic aristocracy likes to pretend there is. I will add that, if I recall correctly, the Fortunate Succession also supplies examples of a) bad emperors (Ten Tests or not), and b) unruly commoners that have to be allied with/compromised with rather than "justly" squashed. The point is that the hierarchical pyramid of Dara Happa is a lot less stable and static than what official propaganda common understanding would have you believe. Of course, after an old emperor is usurped, or a commoner revolt is integrated into a new power structure, the new ruler will declare that this simply restores the "true" nature of Yelmic society. And so on. There's a bit of the Mandate of Heaven going on here, as it were. Lots of historical revisionism. Exactly who was or wasn't a bad emperor or ideology in the past depends on who is currently in power. It's not CONSTANTLY changing, and some are more universally admired than others (typically most of the Emperors before Time), but there is no objective understanding of history. (Admittedly, this applies to all societies). I believe in the "Voices of Glorantha" booklet, there is a text from the perspective of a Dara Happan mid-ranking Yelmite (iirc, I can't remember whether it's a aristocrat or commoner, but it's a Citizen I'm fairly sure), and it is a deeply militaristic, disciplined worldview. Service to their city and Emperor is tantamount. Duty and discipline. Their relation to their wives and mothers is somewhat cloistered. My impression is that the genders are more homosocial than most other places (ie. women tend to sozialize with women, men tend to sozialize with men)., but if I were you, I'd play with this model to create friction (a Dendaran widow, for example, presumably have no fucks to give. Her oldest son might claim to rule the family now, but no one is going to gainsay mom). I'm not sure to what degree the Dara Happans believe in "noblesse oblige", but it might be used to soften them somewhat. It can also be used in a calculated manner to entrench one's own family's safety and prevent revolts. ------ The whole Brightface and White Queen myth, is, I believe, a Darsenite myth. This is from the Entekosiad, which is arguably the most esoteric and confusing of all of Greg's writings. It basically deconstructs a lot of previous writings. In-universe it was written by a woman who wanted to legitimize the Lunar religion in previous Pelorian tradition, failed, and then shifted to instead analyzing myth to combine Dendara and a deity called Entekos, the primary Pelorian air goddess (with mixed results). The end result, I believe, is still a continuation of her first objective: to show how female deity legitimacy is not some newfangled thing, but very much native to the region. It is a valuable book, however, because it does supply some subaltern views (the views of those of lower status or minorities) on the orthodox understanding of Pelorian Solar myths and Empire. Darsen is a country/region west of Dara Happa. it's a goddess-worshipping region, and draws on some ancient traditions that might predate Yelmic-Solar religion. The essence of the myth is that there used to be a goddess who ruled the universe, and her brother served as the war-leader or protector of the people. Then, one of them, called Brightface, usurped his sister and took over as ruler. Joerg, me, and others, see in this a possible transition from a prior state of the cosmos ("Green Age", probably, when the cosmos was young, constantly innovating and changing and growing) where it was presided over by an Earth Goddess or Celestial Goddess (or both in one, who knows) before the Sun God took over and froze everything in a "perfect" state of eternal day and imperial rigidity. It turns Yelm from a divinely appointed ruler into a bit of a fraud/thief. There are some loose parallels here with some other western-Pelorian myths, that often seem to involve brothers or husbands or sons of goddesses coming and being sacrificed etc. All of this is, as mentioned, deeply esoteric, and not something anyone in Dara Happa would know, aside from a hypothetically VERY experienced heroquester or mystic. It's possible that none of the Darsenite Grandmothers (leaders and high priestesses of Darsen) would be able to connect the dots, their wordview being more conservative (as in: focusing on preserving their own traditions) and inward-focused. ------ Anyway, my overall point is that you should be wary of buying into a lot of stuff written in the definitive about Dara Happa, because it is very often parroting, in a sense, official Dara Happan propaganda. It's not wrong per se, it's just a very limited perspective. Unfortunately, as you've notice, we sorely lack subaltern perspectives on Dara Happan society and religion. Most of the info we get on commoners is, again, from the aristo perspective. So yeah, Dara Happan cities probably are quite a bit more vibrant and chaotic than what the official line would have you believe. But it's simmering under the surface, or kept at arm's length from the temples and palaces.

That's true. I should've worded it differently. Still, the point got across.

Are the associations alongside the feudal/tenant relations and venture patronages, or are they synonymous?

So it's like an urban patron-client network?

Impressive! Tried to parse the last part, but I'm no good, unfortunately.

Can't wait to build myself a hangar to house the clay tablet version of the Guide.

Finally realizing Greg's ORIGINAL vision.

You don't need empires to directly impact peripheral groups. It's enough for the empires or hordes to devastate the lowlands and send enough refugees away to disrupt (and displace) the peripheral peoples. I have no particular opinion, I think both possibilities seem legit. No idea.

A tour to get to know the various scions and branches of the Eel-Ariash, and to get to know the Imperial administration and vassals seem like as good a guess as any. Aristocracies run on personal relationships, after all.

Oh yeah, there's the Heron Goddess ritual that killed Takenegi once. He got better, of course, but you'd imagine that death to be permanent for other kingly participants who get eaten (it seems to be implied that this isn't a sure deal, though.)

The Storm side of the Heortlings/Orlanthi doesn't seem to be too much into human sacrifice, afaik, but they are an Earth people too, and Earth, specifically Dark Earth, has a long history of human sacrifice.

Isn't there a Pentan invasion sometime during this period?

Most of the examples above have to do with Orlanthi/Storm deities (at least in part) suggesting perhaps that this is tied into the relative latecoming of the Storm Pantheon. Storm are perpetual younger relatives, trying to carve out their own sphere/property, even amongst each other. If I were to put my anthropologist hat fully on, I'd definitely try to tie it into their inheritance system(s), but as far as I know, it's probably a coincidence overall, since Orlanthi isn't matrilineal with avuncular inheritance or anything like that.

Lots of religions have martyrs, even aside from Abrahamic ones. Besides, to a Hrestoli, that might count as martyrdom, regardless of Brithini views on the matter. I don't know.

Malkioni mythology (the mortal variety, not Brithini) seems to have a common mytheme of sacrifice/martyrdom. Malkion the Sacrifice saved the world. Xemela sacrificed herself during the Darkness I think? Hrestol was straight up martyred for professing his beliefs. There might be others. It's not that the other mythologies don't have it, but I posit that Malkionism seems to idealize it more centrally, perhaps?

First off, that's super-interesting about the brother deal and I'd love to hear more about that! Secondly, you're right of course. The Lightbringer cycle is to a very large degree about the importance of reconciliation and facing consequences honorably (whatever that entails).

A major mytheme in Central Glorantha is rebellion. In Solar Pelorian mythologies, rebellion is the social corrosion that drives the cosmos towards degradation and corruption. In Orlanthi/Lightbringer mythology, rebellion is the legitimate assertion of autonomy against tyranny ("No One Can Make You Do Anything" and "Violence Is Always An Option"). Obviously, neither culture completely disallows nor completely promotes rebellion in all forms, where they largely disagree is on the form of legitimate authority, which has put them at odds for centuries, but which also means that they kinda share many of the same underlying ideas. (Orlanth's killing of Yelm can be seen as a form of brother-killing - technically an uncle-killing, but neither mythologies really acknowledge this implicit relation in any overt ways, so it doesn't appear to be significant). The survival myth is also extemely important all over Glorantha (with the possible notable exception of the East Islands/Vithela), which appears to often be used as an explanation for the form of society. It does, however, take wildly different forms. On another note, and one you're likely aware of so it might be unnecessary to mention, exploiting mythemes/mythical archetypes to achieve magical results within Time is a long-established method in Glorantha, so you'll probably see a lot of these running around. The Dara Happan Emperors are all emulating Yelm/Murharzarm, for example, and derive strong magic from it. Heroquesting is basically just reenacting mythemes in order to strengthen the moral lessons they provide, and likely derive magical benefits from it. You could also argue that Esrolian foreign policy is an emulation of Ernaldan/Earth mythemes, where aligning oneself with whichever male deity is in ascendance is preferable to asserting overt political power oneself. Earth cultures all over Glorantha have a long-standing practice of sorta seemingly submitting or withdrawing, while drawing benefits from this relation. It's obviously a "moral lesson" that we can critique in the real world as idealizing a form of feminine-masculine smybiosis that is overly idealized and realistically a lot more harsh for the feminine (it's hard to argue that the Oasis People in Prax have a complete consent in their relation with the Beast Nomads, for example, perhaps a bit like how a housewife might be understood as having some power in her domestic sphere, but her autonomy is still pretty limited and she is often at the mercy of patriarchal practices. There's a reason why Ersolans are wary of the orthodox Orlanthi king model). My point is, this appears to be a kind of Gloranthan moral lesson that might've been embraced by some human cultures at various points in human history, even if it appears... uncomfortable to us. (I guess it helps that in Glorantha fertility magic and the withholding of such is a lot more powerful than in the real world. In Glorantha, pissing off the Earth Queen is BAD.) The Doraddi, arguably an Earth people in their own right, basically said "f*** this shit I'm out" and appear to be doing pretty well with that solution.

*makes notes for worldbuilding in Northern Pent*

Thanks Jeff, that is exactly the kind of answer I needed. 🙂 I guess I say "Chaosium does this" simply because I don't have another way to distinguish the imagined, cumulative in-universe practices of people and possible editorial policy. I'm pretty new to the fandom/community/hangers-on, and I gather there is a history of, uh, confrontational fans, but personally I'm still throwing feelers out there and trying to work out a decent jargon, as it were, so sorry if this all comes off as annoying grognard hairsplitting.

It's just interesting how Chaosium so consistently chooses to gloss the volcanic god as Lodril, even in a Sartarite or Esrolian context (where, culturally, the likelier name would be Veskarthan or something, surely?), while they, for example, never gloss Dendara as Ernalda, or Oria as Esrola, even though, runically, it seems like Chaosium's interpretation (and I might be reading incorrectly between the lines here) is that they are equivalents (much to the confusion of some, iirc.) I'm not saying it's *wrong*, it's just interesting trying to guess at the editorial strategy and to which degree it does and doesn't overlap with in-universe practices. Sorry, this is quite off-topic now.

Not that I agree with the overall take, but are you sure the locations of merfolk in God Time are as static as that, Joerg?