Sir_Godspeed

History of the Heortling Peoples goes into a little detail about the settling of Dorastor, iirc. The population was mostly Heortling, but with large Elder Races minorities, iirc, and massive influences from the Feldichi(?) ruins there. I don't think we get any hard numbers.

They did? Heortland certainly saw itself as part of the periphery, but I didn't get the impression that Kerofinela did.

Yup, I got you!

I suppose #2 would depend on how pious they are. Not every Lunar is going to be all that gung ho on high ideals.

Eight pointed star? CHAOS! GET THE PITCHFORKS!

I've harped on about this elsewhere, but I think it's pertinent to note that Illumination/mysticism is not just an explanatory model of epistemology/cosmology ("okay, how does stuff work, *actually*), arguable much more significantly, it is a practice of *experience*. A state of being rather than knowing, as it were. This can be picked apart any which way of course, such is the nature of existence. Certainly some mystics attempt to make charts and diagrams, but these in themselves are not illumination, if this makes any sense to anyone. 😅

Jeff also pointed out that the *vast* majority of illuminates in and around Dragon Pass in the 17th century are Lunars, which basically means that accusing Argrath of being an illuminate is tantamount to accusing him of being a Lunar (from an in-universe, non-omniscient perspective), which is clearly ridiculous.

I guess there's a lot of "our oldest known ancestor is basically a stand-in for Daka Fal" as well? A bit like how Sartar is a stand-in for Orlanth Rex in the Sartarite political leadership cult - admittedly not a direct parallel, but hopefully you catch my drift.

Looking good! Love the chunky feel of both rider and horse. And DAMN if that horse isn't massive.

Ooh, interesting. Doing a little Old Gods-y charade where his half-asleep essence is trapped in the mountain, but his consciousness walks around in multiple bodies. I like it.

I'm not sure what to say, but my take on it is somewhat mundane. It was a project to recreate the Golden Age. But it was done in Time, and so was doomed to fail. Hubris might be a cliché, but Glorantha needs a trope-codifier for that too, I guess. You might argue that what caused the failure was the exclusion of trolls and others. But I'm not sure if it would have been possible to involve all of them. Intrinsically, the world of Time is one which not all truths can be active at the same time, unlike the God Time. And so it was doomed to fail. Not that they didn't try. They retroactively changed the myths of the involved parties. They cast the role of Bad Emperor onto Yelm. They cast the role of Rebellus Terminus onto Orlanth. (EDIT: And I suspect that it was THEY who codified the Compromise as a thing, and turned the Lifebringer Quest into the Lightbringer Quest). They made the Monomyth possible before it existed, or else created some kind of proto-Monomyth. But it was limited in scope, and we also know the Monomyth itself is a flawed construct. And so it was doomed to fail. Who knows. If the Bright Empire had stayed west of the Rockwood, or north of Dragon Pass, they might've survived in some form, but I doubt it. They would not, could not, limit themselves. They were going to transform the world. Self-imposed limits is anathema to their very raison d'etre. And so they were doomed to fail. I don't think Nysalor and Gbaji are separate entities as such. I think the reality is a lot less high-concept. Those who agreed with the project pronounced him Nysalor or Osentalka. Those who didn't pronounced him Gbaji. Those who followed him received boons. Those who didn't received agony. That's how empires work. And most gods too, come to think of it. The question to ask whenever someone proposes utopia is this: who do you need to exterminate or oppress to make it happen? For those that it applies to, the utopia is a dystopia. For those, Nysalor was Gbaji. I don't know. The story of the Bright Empire is what you make of it, I guess.

Wow, that's a lot of rooms! My first thought was how it must me hard to keep that lit with no inner courtyard or anything. Is there some connection to the second floor?

I've recently read the Fortunate Succession, and while far from a red thread, there does seem to be somewhat of a (loose) trend of Elves coming out of the forests of western Peloria and killing Dara Happans, or alternatively just being a massive roadblock for expansion to the west. They never form an Empire, unless you count Dawn Age Greenwood which extended to at least Pelanda, but they might've held some kind of hegemony around the Sweet Sea and Oronin during the Dawn. It's not explicit at all, but it might be read in such a way that the elves were considered some kind of time bomb that the Lunars got rid of before it went off. *VERY* speculative, though.

Greg's writings on the Aldryami from the 90s also emphasise how they don't see the gods as literal anthropomorphizations, but part of the grander whole of Grower and Taker, and also how they are all part of a larger plant-consciousness. This is, if not exactly Illumination, somewhat Illumination-adjacent. Maybe the elves of Brithos were particularly "mystical"/contemplative, etc. for whatever reason.

The specific map showing a semicirular wall is from Harmast's Time, but some of the other aspects aren't dated, I believe: The above quote can be taken to be limited to the elite's perspective, not the popular one. All of this is circumstantial, of course, but the picture it does present Orlanth in a particular fashion.

10k Goddesses certainly makes a hullabaloo about how his temple in Nochet is closed off with a wall, the Grandmothers fret about "him" returning (basically meaning Heortling-style kingship, I think), and emphasises how his main source of worshippers are rural shepherds and the like.

Damn, those Dacians are one fine sculpt.

"I'm Argrath and so can you!" "I can't believe this isn't Argrath."

That's a good point. Air must be utterly frustrating for Celestial seers to chart or predict, possibly adding something to the cultural Othering of the Orlanthi.

Sounds like Neo-Godlearnerism to me. Get 'im!

Not sure if this matters, but if Daka Fal is understood to be the same as Grandfather Mortal in-universe by the PCs, then there is the very literal connection between KL and DF as mates who begat the trolls together. Humans and Trolls have the same Grandpappy, so to speak. Grandfather Mortal is even stated to have been a king over the trolls after he was murdered and sent to Hell, so not just an abstract progenitor, but some kind of active/ritual leader as well. As I said, I have no idea how this spins the actual gaming, but there are lots of angles to work with here lorewise, imho.

Inspired by a certain other thread I cooked up this (almost certainly wrong) alternate take: Nysalorean missionaries Illuminated Arkat, robbing him of his comfortable place in the cosmos, sending him on a rampage to destroy Nysalor's illuminating efforts forever. Arkat took Illumination... badly. He stared into the Void, and the Void stared back into him. Better for the world to live a lie than to subject it to the bleak, empty truth that renders everything null. If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him. (Literally.)

I don't disagree with you, but these are, ultimately, examples of the Bodhisattva as powerful - imperialistic even - temporal rulers, which DOES happen, but is not, at least to my knowledge, the norm. Whether you belong to a culture that despires or loves them, their political and military power is undeniable. What we don't have a lot of examples of, are named illuminated individuals who act in other spheres of social life, ie. leading ashrams, monastic cults, meditative retreats, traveling sages, (or even expert craftsmen), etc.etc. This isn't meant to trod down what is already there. It's a desire to have more, which I hope is taken as a compliment.

Which is in itself ironic for several reasons.

Possibly also emergent patterns, like fractals?