Sir_Godspeed

13 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

IIRC, one of the issues of Tales of the Reaching Moon (#13?) had an article on Oronin. 

Otherwise, I'd recommend @Nick Brooke's extensive work on the region: Carmanian Sources

That's the one I gobbled up hungrily a while back when googling wildly for sources on Glorantha. Good stuff.

A fairly quick question:

The Talastarings were contacted by the Unity Council around 100 after the Dawn, and maintained relations/joined them after that.
They seem to have organized from nine clans to nine tribes?
I am not sure if this means that this was the first time they had contact, or whether they had previously been contacted by Lightbringer missionaries.
We are also told (by @Jeff if I remember correctly) that the Talastarings fared a lot worse than the Heortlings in the Darkness and did not have any significant survival legends/secrets of their own. In practice, this meant that they took in much of the Lightbringer missions' teachings and effectively became Heortlings.

What I am wonder is if what the Talastarings were before the Greater Darkness battered them so low. Were they the last remnant of one of the Vingkotling tribes Are they the amalgamation of the last remnants of several Vingkotling tribes?

This seems to me to be the simplest answer, however the map of settlements of the Dawn Age in the Book of Heortling Mythology places them borth of the Penenthelli and the Berenethtelli, which appear to me to be the northernmost actual Vingkotlings. It also means that these tribes were still around, and not battered so badly they ceased to exist. 

There are arguably Orlanthi even further north, such as the Sylilans (BoHM calls them Sylilings, but same things, I assume), just south of Alkoth, and as far as I know, they are a kind of Storm people devoted to Odayla. I am not sure if they were ever considered a part of the Vingkotling confederation/ethnicity, although there are Heortling myths that state that Odayla was a Thunder Brother, and was granted Sylila by Orlanth, so it would at least seem like they were part of a common cultural area, if nothing else. (Not necessarily in the sense that this myth is literally true, but at least in the sense that Odayla was significant enough for southern Vingkotlings/Heortlings to regularly feature him in their stories, and mention his homeland by name.)

So... yeah... them Talastarings, eh?

(Answers for other Storm Belt peoples is also welcome, but please keep it specific, as I am woefully uncertain about a lot of the Pelorian Orlanthi, such as Brolia, Charg, etc.)

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

You mean like "The Making of the Storm Tribe"? The "Wooing of Ernalda"?

In the Wooing of Ernalda, at least, she's dealing with Orlanth who is basically being a temperamental, insecure teen.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

IMO this is really another case of a classical language adjective gone weird. Umbra is Latin for shadow or dark. XU uses that in a vowel-consonant position exchange. There is an Anglicized form, Umber, for the dark brown pigment used by painters. The Indo-European cognates interestingly include "rot, rotten" as meanings - so the term covers lots of what we love about Darkness.

And "Umbraism" is hard to pronounce, while "Umbarism" is fairly easy.

Yeah, I was thinking that it was just using pseudo-Latin to get across an opposite to enlightenment (which already uses illuminare/illumino from Latin.)

25 minutes ago, MOB said:

Sheng Seleris.

O.o

Kralorela also has mastered the arts of "industrialized" necromancy. At least enough to row their galley fleets. Who, exactly, in the Dragon Emperor's employ is doing this I'm not sure if we're ever told, nor what kind of magic they employ to do it.

Anyway, I'd hazard a guess that "necromancy" probably is less of a specific discipline of sorcery and more of a catch-all/umbrella term that is contextually sensitive.

11 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

There may be a couple of different mystical standpoints on dreams - you could argue that dreams are unusually unreal even compared to regular reality and therefore a problem, or that since everything is ultimately real, dreams are no less real than anything else. 

It also seems reasonable to think that dream logic would apply, which will drive sorcerers bonkers until they can figure out how the dream logic works.

There's the old Taoist parable about Zhangzhu who dreamt he was a butterfly, then woke up. Then he expressed doubt about whether he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, or whether he was a butterfly currently dreaming he was a man.

Centuries later, Decartes touched on some of the same inherent unreliability of the experienced world, by focusing on a systematic discrediting of senses as proofs of reality. He even, much to the chagrin of Brithini I would argue, discredited fundamental mathematics, as the universal proportions of geometry might just be illusory.

Dragon's dreams manifest as baser, more primitive aspects of themselves. In order to ascend to a higher (less entangled, less particularistic too perhaps?) plane of existence, they commit suicide.

Death as the ultimate awakening from the dream that is the cosmos?

There's certainly a lot to work with here if you want to.

Hm... the primeval tree canopy absorbs the light, making the underbrush dark and shadowy.... Too literal thinking, or extended allegory?

(Greater Darkness notwithstanding)

3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

If you're in some alternate state of existence when you dream, it stands to reason that you should be able to quest it somehow. For most people, their dreams are probably far too flimsy and fleeting for this to happen, but a powerful and proficient dreamer should be able to extract magic from it in a way somewhat similar to a heroquest. Going by The Other Chaosium Game, we might call this Dream-Questing.

I'd assume that learning to actively interact with one's dreams (ie. lucid dreaming of some kind or other) is something that many traditions, including shamans, mystics*, sorcerers and probably various theists develop - though which ones I couldn't tell.

(*Mystics are arguably developing lucid dreaming abilities within the waking world, if they cosmos can be seen as just another layer of dreams to escape to achive Liberation/Stillness/Nothingness, etc.)

On 9/2/2019 at 11:43 PM, Qizilbashwoman said:

@Jeff

Real question: is the Groke(start) from the Moomins a version of Rashoran(a)?

I was going to say that's like a female version of Himile, but sadly that's not relevant for the thread.

EDIT: Also, please put this behind a spoiler tag next time, you have no idea how much the Groke traumatized me as a child! (and adult ) 

I don't know if this is an attempt at trolling or if its straightforward crassness, but can't we just let people enjoy things?

59 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

I didn't know until now that Red Sonja was an Uz! All makes sense now. 

Well, the Lunar slogan is "We are all uz".

Just now, PhilHibbs said:

Quadkini, since it's a four-piece garment?

You juuust missed the correction boat, sorry.

Also, I'm guessing the Greek is standard, since the onesie version is apparently called a monokini.

(In reality, both Latin and Greek are merely intruding onto what is rightfully Pikinni, from Marshallese, an Austronesian language, but that is neither here nor there.)

@Joerg very kindly reminded me that it would be a tetra-kini, given that it's not counting the individual cups of the top, but rather the top and bottom pieces.  I am deeply sartorially ashamed.

I've been silently amused by the fact that the Mistress Troll is straight up drawn with a chainmail bikini*, one of the most egregious tropes of fantasy. But in this piece it just sorta works.


(*or hex-kini, if we want to be playful and ignore the actual etymology)

7 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

My habit is to read the op and try to answer in my best possible way by how I infer the question. Mostly in this case though, I am aware I do not know enough about wyters, so I approach these questions with a greater desire to learn than teach. Though I will agree I do tend to the simple.

Alas.

For what it's worth, I don't think your answer was simple at all - it was sufficiently complex enough for me to struggle following it, which is why I guess I ended up laying out my own long-winded post without quite realizing I was repeating your points.

Sorry about that Bill, it certainly wasn't my intention. :S

 

Gonna jump on the train of reasoning of @Qizilbashwoman above.

The French social theorist Emil Durkheim phrased religion and religious rituals as something along the lines of "the community celebrating itself." He saw the manifestation of beliefs in culture heroes, patron deities and so forth, and the celebration of these, as a manifestation of the community's fondness of its continued existence, the fondnenss of its individual members of each others (even if only an abstract sense), and effectively a mechanism through which this fondness and investment was created anew. (He put it in very much a more complex and well-reasoned way, but please bear with me).

In Glorantha, with Wyters and other patron entities, this proposition has essentially become objective reality as far as Gloranthans and its players are concerned. The Wyter acts as both the focal point of this expression of self-celebration for the community, as well as the primary mechanism by which this communal mutual goodwill is actualized.

What this means, however, is that if that the wyter is taken out of the equation (dead, incapacitated, or otherwise rendered inaccesible or irrelevant), you also lose this focal point.

This shouldn't mean, in my opinion - and unless there is some very gameified mechanic that just makes it so through magic - that the community suddenly loses its communal, mutual goodwill and cohesion, but in more prosaic terms, it rather loses the mechanism by which all these were expressed. As time passes, there is no longer any reason to gather sacrifices for wyter rituals, there is no longer an occasion to call on the wyter to help out in dire times. The intense interconnectedness of the community slowly becomes looser and looser, and less and less relevant... at some point members might feel like migrating away, or seeking association with other communities that have functional wyters.

It reminds me of something that happened in my family many years ago: back in the day, the oldest surviving grandparents used to invite all their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and their great-nephews and -nieces for a grand family gathering. It was very fun, and as a kid, this was the only time a year I would meet some of my more distant cousins, and play with them or catch up.

Then, after these grandparents passed away, there was a break in the family gatherings due to grief and loss. A half-hearted attempt to continue the gatherings followed a few years later, but it never really took off. The main focal point of the gatherings were gone, and it just didn't quite feel the same, nor did it feel as much as an obligation to turn up. It all petered out. Some were possibly put off by it due to associating the whole deal with the loss of their relatives.

This is how I imagine the less of a wyter could feel like.

The lack of protection against hostile spirits is of course a major part in this as well, but is a bit more straightforward than the social causes I've tried to outline above.

33 minutes ago, g33k said:

Jeff is involved in that, too.

If either Jeff or Kalin are too busy with paying projects -- or have any other distractions -- then the series languishes.

I believe things have been distracting for a while, now... but I do think they plan to finish(?) !

One can only hope, it's the piece of media that made me look at Glorantha further.

It has that slightly otherworldly storybook quality to it, which makes me feel very nostalgic, so it could be fun to see applied to Glorantha.

I made a related question a while back which might be somewhat helpful:

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/9731-other-cultures-equivalent-of-wyter/

24 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

except we know a significant portion of it is in fact patternable. it's just the monomyth with local names replacing the monomyth names afterwards. not all of it is neat - it's messy and trails off and isn't linear - but it is, in fact, not a random collection. it is in fact the monomyth.

More like monomyth-adjacent, (in my opinion, anyway).

Even Heortling and Esrolian mythologies have stuff in them that contradicts the Monomyth, and they even contradict themselves, respectively.

I never assumed the Entekosiad was random, just that it represented a fairly different way of looking at the genesis of Glorantha, presented in the form of highly experimental knowledge-seeking.

40 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Or I could be really fun and point out that Entekos appears long before Orlanth does and call Orlanth "Bro Entekos".

I wonder if any of the spawn show up on the Storm Gods list in the theogony?

Several months ago I proposed that Entekos was basically the Pelandan version of Orlanth, just feminine and with the "barbaric" aspects reduced to a minor attendan (Buburstus or whatever he's called - the thunder guy with a club, iirc). This never really catched on, so I proposed that she might be an hitherto unnamed sister of Orlanth, but I couldn't find any precedent for that. Lately I've been reading the Book of Heortling Mythology, however, and it introduces Serenha, the daughter of Umath, whose myth mentions that she arose in the "wake" of Umath's movement. She is not given a mother.

There are things to count against this: her only real function in the Heortling pantheon seems to be to provide us with an explanation of where the breath-spirits that Kolat uses came from (Ha, He, Ho, etc.), and she is so obscure in Heortling mythology that I'm hesitant to believe that Greg would write a massive tome centred on what seems like a throwaway name. Additionally, there is not implication of her being associated with anything Dendara-like in the small snippet I've read.

Someone also suggested the Entekos may be a sister or aspect of Umath, but I have to admit I'd prefer if we only had one Primal Storm/Air, if only for some semblance of simplicity.  

40 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

You can't incarnate a goddess before she exists.

But, like, the Red Goddess has ALWAYS existed, so there!

23 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

origins, not role. we know what she does, we just don't have a solid role in any pantheon for her.

Is Orogeria a cognate/parallel of Velhara, the Lady of the Wild?
If so, Heortling myths present as the daughter of Kero Fin.

I'm tempted to say that this might mean that each "Land Goddess" has a daughter/incarnation that acts as a regional "Lady of the Wild" and/or "Huntress", much like they have grain daughters and herd daughters. The tamed and untamed aspects of the Earth Mothers. This would make Orogeria a daughter of Oria/Pelora or whichever is the most relevant entity.

Pure speculation, of course. Always trying to impose patterns on the unpatterneable.

1 minute ago, Nevermet said:

I honestly have no idea what the Monomyth thinks about Natha.

But yeah, the Entekosiad is a real mess in part because of how gods are  blurred.  Turos is ViSaruDuran, the son of ViSaruDaran, and an internal aspect of ViSaruDaran.  ...you can find this sort of embraced complication in real world polytheistic religions (Meso American cultures like the Aztec come to mind), but my God... it makes me want to drink.

We don't have to go that far - Christian trinitarianism is a headscratcher in itself.

10 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Bisos is a bad fit for Urox, but is an equally bad fit for Waha the Tracker. He doesn't have any history with hsunchen, although there's no specific reason he wouldn't work well with them given the tribal situation of Prax, but he also has no known-to-us footprint outside of Prax with some bleed into Kerofinela. I guess the Bison Riders could have brought his worship? His hatred of the Zora Fel and its worshippers seems on point.

If Bisos is a parralel to Waha as some have suggested, it might not require one having migrated to the other, but rather that they have a common origin somewhere south of the Rockwoods. Maybe the sunken lands between modern-day Kethaela and the Spike.

I have no idea if indeed Bisos is a parallel of Waha, and the exact geography is a bit irrelevant, but the point is the potential for a common origin outside of the places where the respective gods are worshipped now.

Wooah nelly! Ole' Orly' lookin' mighty fearsome there.