Magic in Fonrit

[Manu]

I plan to send my player to Fonrit (or at least to meet regularly with Fonritians). On the role play side, no problem. There is plenty of information in the Guide.

But if I want to plan a more physical/muscular interaction, I have no idea what kind of magic they could have. I imagine some spirit magic. But as for Rune magic???

[Manu]

There is this

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The Fonritians revere Ehilm above all others; although Garangordos is the ruler of the gods, Ehilm directly attends the Invisible God, whom they call Ompalam. Although Ehilm is thought deaf to all entreaties, he worshiped in great ceremonies and pageants.

The Fonritians also worship Aether, Annilla, Asrelia, Ernalda, Gata, Larnste, Lodik, Worlath, Sramake,Tolat, Uleria, and Xentha, as several minor gods without any equivalent elsewhere in the Middle Sea Empire. They hate Eurmal, who they claim murdered Garangordos and blame him for any misfortune.

Are they Sun worshippers or Sorcerers? Do they use rune magic or Sorcery?

Also, I thought they worshipped Ikadz, a Chaotic God. How can this be with Ehilm and Worlath?

[metcalph]

They worship a mixture of gods.  Ompalam is their equivalent of the Invisible God.  Most Fonritans worship Gods such as Teonarpas (spelling?) the Sun and Baraku the Storm.  That many of their gods are chaotic is something that's only come to light since the Vadeli came - before that it was a big secret known only to the rulers (who kept quiet) IMO.  Now that the secret's out, many are disgusted and cynical about the Gods. But they have no choice but because the rulers will punish them if they refuse.

[Manu]

43 minutes ago, metcalph said:

They worship a mixture of gods.  Ompalam is their equivalent of the Invisible God.  Most Fonritans worship Gods such as Teonarpas (spelling?) the Sun and Baraku the Storm.  That many of their gods are chaotic is something that's only come to light since the Vadeli came - before that it was a big secret known only to the rulers (who kept quiet) IMO.  Now that the secret's out, many are disgusted and cynical about the Gods. But they have no choice but because the rulers will punish them if they refuse.

Without wanting to be Godlearnist, but how can they worship god of Chaos and at the same time Yelm and orlanth (as Sun and Storm gods)?

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Manu said:

There is this

https://www.glorantha.com/gods-of-fonrit/

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Are they Sun worshippers or Sorcerers? Do they use rune magic or Sorcery?

I think that text has been superseded by the Guide's section "Ompalam and the Sun", p.553.

Fonrit is first and foremost a theist society.

They do have sorcerers, independent ones (apart from their slave status), and the rulers sponsor their research. There will be lots of Vadeli sorcery about.

The status of the fairly high numbers of Vadeli in the cities isn't quite clear. Are these slaves of the city rulers?

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Also, I thought they worshipped Ikadz, a Chaotic God. How can this be with Ehilm and Worlath?

I don't see the problem, really. Worlath or Orlanth reacts to obvious Chaos, and most of the Chaos deities of Fonrit are subtle and the Chaos doesn't really show in terms of writhing masses of tentacles or similar, and their evil is no worse than the non-Chaotic evils going on.

While the Fonritians appear to be heavily marked (not by tattoos, but by ritual scarification), they don't appear to use the core runes like Theyalans do. The Chaos rune might be replaced by the symbol for the Noose, I suppose (which might look fairly similar, maybe upside down, or lacking one of the horns).

The God Learners will have delighted in finding a deity of purification in Fonrit, and their observations there may have contributed to the Machine God research in the Clanking City.

The Artmali slave population has a pre-history of allying with pretty much the same array of chaos gods.

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Joerg

[Qizilbashwoman]

12 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The Artmali slave population has a pre-history of allying with pretty much the same array of chaos gods.

The modern population of the area descended from the Artmali are called "the Veldang".

But what? The Artmali are from Veldara, the Blue Moon that was slain by Chaos, and the Artmali have always hated Chaos. They worshipped Tolat and Veldara (Annihila) and had a great empire until they were enslaved when Kungatu fell.

It was Garangordos the Cruel, trained by the Vadeli, who really brought mass Chaos worship to Pamaltela when he conquered the Artmali of Fonrit. He set up the kingdom and the fake Malkioni church that had the Chaos god Ompalam as its Invisible God.

[Tindalos]

50 minutes ago, Manu said:

Without wanting to be Godlearnist, but how can they worship god of Chaos and at the same time Yelm and orlanth (as Sun and Storm gods)?

Because regardless of their feelings, they are all slaves of Ompalam.

If your master says you must work with your worst enemy, you do so. Because you are their slave, and must obey.

[Qizilbashwoman]

45 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

Because regardless of their feelings, they are all slaves of Ompalam.

If your master says you must work with your worst enemy, you do so. Because you are their slave, and must obey.

Also, as I mentioned in a different (!) thread about Pamaltela, the faux-Malkioni Church (not sure how else to frame this system of belief) of Fonrit says Ompalam is the Invisible God. Ompalam is actually a Chaos god of Slavery, of course. But anyway, about a thousand years they've run one of the worst empires in Glorantha, and the Church's teaching is ever-present and enforced by Chaos deities like Ikadz the Torturer (called "the Purifier") and his Inquisition, a hierarchy that teaches that, for example, the Sun's death and fall into the underworld was due to its hubris pretending to be a God, and it is now correctly enslaved to the Invisible God for its sins.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

The modern population of the area descended from the Artmali are called "the Veldang".

"The Veldang" is as ambiguous as "the Agimori" or "the Doraddi", referring to a racial group, a group of language speakers, or a local population (or several of these at once).

Concurrent to the Dragon Pass campaign, Gebel and the rebel Gabaryanga establish the New Artmali Empire in Tarahorn, so the free blues will refer to themselves as Artmali again.

 

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But what? The Artmali are from Veldara, the Blue Moon that was slain by Chaos, and the Artmali have always hated Chaos. They worshipped Tolat and Veldara (Annihila) and had a great empire until they were enslaved when Kungatu fell.

The pre-history of northern Pamaltela is rather unclear. Revealed Mythologies repeats the "Elamle-Ata - Artmali conflict, and has "the Elamle" as the driving force which ejected Garangordos from his home in Laskal.

We have a number of culprits willing to shoulder the blame. Lukarius of Dara Happa, Storm Gods (likely Vadrus), possibly even Tolat (her twin brother). The Chaos gods as culprits are mentioned in the short encyclopediac bit on p.66 of Revealed Mythology, but seriously - Chaos gods sending a slain deity only to the land of the dead (the land of her dad)?

After Veldara had disappeared from the sky, the Artmali grew desperate, which may explain this bit from the Guide p.642:

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The Artmali ultimately became corrupted by  Chaos,  perhaps  from  their  endless  wars with the Vadeli. They worshiped such demons as  Gark,  Krjalk,  Pocharngo,  Seseine,  and Vovisibor  the  Filth-Which-Walks.  The  god Pamalt  made  the  Sky  break  and  destroyed both the Artmali Empire and the Chaos gods in the Firefall.

There appear to have been three major centers of Artmali culture - Zamokil, the Nargan Sea, and northwestern Pamaltela (the survival area of the Fonritian blues). The Firefall destroyed the Nargan Sea culture and population, but not the southeastern or the northwestern ones.

The northwestern group (perhaps already under Jarkaru) conducted naval raids on the Thinobutans ("the Elamle"), as may have the Vadeli, or perhaps as servants of the Vadeli.

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It was Garangordos the Cruel, trained by the Vadeli, who really brought mass Chaos worship to Pamaltela when he conquered the Artmali of Fonrit. He set up the kingdom and the fake Malkioni church that had the Chaos god Ompalam as its Invisible God.

Garangordos returned it. The later Artmali (later than Jarkaru) were desperate or desensitized enough to ally with the Chaos gods of northern Pamaltela, and while their original deities (Artmal, Veldara) certainly came out of the Gods War victorious (only Tolat sort of triumphed), they did survive it, unlike other cultures, if in an abject condition, and possibly suffering from the Greater Darkness trauma (not realizing the Dawn had come) well into the time when Garangordos conquered them.

The "fake Malkioni church" is really the mis-interpretation of the God Learners rather than where Garangordos came from. Garangordos instituted a substituted Pamalt pantheon (through his own person and those of his siblings), in a theist rather than animist mode. Their description of Fonrit resembles what happened in Carmania at that time (but outside of God Learner reporting), but is pretty much fake news in Fonrit.

Ompalam is a facet of Pamalt, or perhaps Pamalt's Other or antithesis. Theist rather than animist, enforcing cooperation rather than mediating it, domineering rather than yielding the first contest by principle.

The "Elamle" who drove Garangordos, his mom and siblings out of their happy little town in Laskal send Garangordos down a route that resembles the early career of Sheng Seleris, only that Garangordos wasn't opposed by two of the most powerful empires of his time. Instead, he or his followers fell upon a traumatized population still dazed from their Gods War experience and probably not really realizing that the Great Darkness had ended. (And it doesn't look like Garangordos brought them any sense that it had...)

"Around 500 ST" is not to mean at the start of the Second Age. It might have been as early as at the Sunstop, some people even have theorized that Garangordos did his thing just after the Dawn. It might have been well past the arrival of the Olodo in Umathela.

Apart from the blues, the westernmost Thinobutan populations (Thinokos, and later on Kumanku) suffered enslavement by Ompalam. Whether the Thinokans were viewed as part of the Elamle who had done bad things to the Laskal population of northern (doraddic-descended) Agimori (as opposed to "racial Agimori" which describes all native Pamaltelan (and Slon, Teleos, Kumanku) humans except for the Veldang) or just as another hapless group easy to enslave isn't said anywhere.

The God Learner Maps for the southern edge of the Spike are fairly dubious in their veracity. Endless yellow elf jungle from the Spike to the Fense Mountains? A navigable connection between the Helerian Sea and the seas around Thinobutu? Both at the same time?

Edited August 21, 2019 by Joerg
Undid accidental deletion of New Artmali

[Joerg]

6 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Also, as I mentioned in a different (!) thread about Pamaltela, the faux-Malkioni Church (not sure how else to frame this system of belief) of Fonrit says Ompalam is the Invisible God.

The God Learners, having conquered the Fonritian city states, equated Ompalam (the superior of all the enslaved gods of the country) as the obvious equivalent of their Invisible God, and the Fonritian practices as some form of henotheism.

They never claimed that the Fonritians were in any way Malkioni. They got hung up on a few parallels and fantasized from there. (A bit like Arthur Evans did when he posited matriarchal Minoan culture and "reconstructed" parts of Knossos, or like Schliemann using a gold mask as "Mask of Agamemnon" that he replaced by the one known as such today when he found the second one which looked a lot more like his image of the heroic king than the first one his excavations had found in Mykene.)

Fonritian culture is predominantly theist.

And we don't talk about "churches" any more (except we read about them in Revealed Mythologies, which hasn't seen the necessary rewrite to become compatible with the basic assumptions of the Guide, and pre-RQ3 concepts of Malkionism).

6 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Ompalam is actually a Chaos god of Slavery, of course.

He is another face of the southern Earth King, possibly his opposite. Enforced obedience replaces voluntary cooperation.

In many ways, Ompalam is the ugly face of Yelm. Uglier through his associates. Comparable to Sheng's Empire's Yelm cult, really.

6 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

But anyway, about a thousand years they've run one of the worst empires in Glorantha, and the Church's teaching is ever-present and enforced by Chaos deities like Ikadz the Torturer (called "the Purifier") and his Inquisition, a hierarchy that teaches that, for example, the Sun's death and fall into the underworld was due to its hubris pretending to be a God, and it is now correctly enslaved to the Invisible God for its sins.

That's what the God Learners thought was what went on in Fonrit. And they appear to have been pretty confounded when the Fonritians rebelled against them to regain their previous pantheon. In other words, their analysts screwed up.

I'll agree that Fonritian society is probably the most brutal form of humans ruling over humans, on par with the antigod race domains in the East, or with the mostali overlordship over their human slaves in Slon. Ramalia and Sheng's Empire have been similar, and Vadeli "Kongo" (Chir, Oabil) would have been as bad. The Thinobutan intermediate settlement areas were as bad, which is why they kept fleeing.

[Qizilbashwoman]

15 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Ompalam is the ugly face of Yelm

Like the Tyrant/Red King, then?

I had thought he was explicitly a Chaos god, his runes are Chaos, Mastery and Illusion.

[Joerg]

Just now, Qizilbashwoman said:

Like the Tyrant/Red King, then?

I had thought he was explicitly a Chaos god, his runes are Chaos, Mastery and Illusion.

Like the Red Emperor and his mother goddess - a clear chaos deity, right?

Think of Arkat, who (after becoming a troll to force his way into ever-more desparate Dorastor leaning on chaotic blessings) ultimately faced Nysalor (buffed up by chaos) with equivalent buffs, in all likelihood a chaos monster himself. (Zorak Zoran doesn't really mind cave troll-type Chaos. He hates enemy chaos. He hates enemies. He hates, period.) Arkat went on to rule the Autarchy aka Stygian Empire. Assuming he had taken on Chaos gifts for his final confrontation, do you think he would have been able to shed them as if they were nothing, or did he carry them for the rest of his life, until (and possibly through) apotheosis?

Finally, Time has the Chaos rune. Yet it is fervently defended by the forces that undid the Sunstop.

[Qizilbashwoman]

Hm.

Real brain questions: are slarges what happens to dragonewts when dragons are dedragonated in Pamalt

[Sir_Godspeed]

5 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

a hierarchy that teaches that, for example, the Sun's death and fall into the underworld was due to its hubris pretending to be a God, and it is now correctly enslaved to the Invisible God for its sins.

Interestingly enough, this belief of the sun falling in hubris and coming back as a being rightly bound to the will of its true master is a belief the Fonritans share with the Doraddi to the south. If my memory serves correctly, the non-Veldang Fonritans are supposedly descended from northwards-migrating Doraddi sometime during or prior to the Dawn Age. This means that this idea of the sun as enslaved (or at least bound) is actually an ancestral belief, which existed prior to the whole Garangordist holy-slavery regime. 

Anyway, sorry for the sidetrack. What I wonder is what form Fonritan theist cults take - priests are slaves of their own gods, right? In Heortling culture, high-ranking worshippers gain powers by acting in stead of their gods through rituals and so forth - so does this mean that a Fnoritan slave-priest can act in its master's stead, ritually? Or is the worshipper(Rune Lord, for example)-deity relationship in Fonrit different from how we see it in theist Central Genertela?
 

[Manu]

Whouaw, I like to ask questions on the forum... Always good info and ideas for my campagne

But I come back to the topic questions (RQG) : If my player are to meet a group of Fonrit adversary (they are in Nikosdros, and there are a lot of Fonritians), should I make then initiate of Ehilm/Worlath with spells and magic same as Orlanth/Yelm (from the RQG book). For a game play perspective I mean

[metcalph]

12 minutes ago, Manu said:

 

But I come back to the topic questions (RQG) : If my player are to meet a group of Fonrit adversary (they are in Nikosdros, and there are a lot of Fonritians), should I make then initiate of Ehilm/Worlath with spells and magic same as Orlanth/Yelm (from the RQG book). For a game play perspective I mean

You can even add Humakt and Zorak Zoran. Fonrit's a big place and they have just as any gods as the Orlanthi. 

[Manu]

8 minutes ago, metcalph said:

You can even add Humakt and Zorak Zoran. Fonrit's a big place and they have just as any gods as the Orlanthi. 

Humakt, I see. But ZZ??? Any Uz there?

[metcalph]

12 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Also, as I mentioned in a different (!) thread about Pamaltela, the faux-Malkioni Church (not sure how else to frame this system of belief) of Fonrit says Ompalam is the Invisible God.

Ompalam's persistence in Fonrit is not because of some human hierarchy but because he embodies philosophical truths that have been proven true again and again in Fonrit.  He is the God they have rather than the God they would like. The mythical Vadeli didn't create him as a tool to oppress their slaves - they discovered him and ordered their lives accordingly. 

Yes, Ompalam is chaotic.  But he is also God. 

[metcalph]

1 minute ago, Manu said:

Humakt, I see. But ZZ??? Any Uz there?

There are human worshippers for instance the Battling Brothers of Yngortu. 

[davecake]

I figure each of the Glorious Ones has just a little Rune magic, usually shared with their equivalent Doraddi Pamalt pantheon deity (who is explicitly acknowledged in their rites). Plus teaches spirit magic like a normal cult. There are a couple of exceptions - notably Mandakusour, who probably some shamans, and Garangordos, whose power is very different to Pamalts. 

Sorcery is mostly a separate thing, but there are lots of sorcerers, and a real wide mix of traditions, including plenty of sinister Vadeli magic. Shamans are rare, though ancestor worship is definitely a thing there and a few other things. 

[davecake]

1 hour ago, Manu said:

But I come back to the topic questions (RQG) : If my player are to meet a group of Fonrit adversary (they are in Nikosdros, and there are a lot of Fonritians), should I make then initiate of Ehilm/Worlath with spells and magic same as Orlanth/Yelm (from the RQG book). For a game play perspective I mean

It depends which Fonritians - it is a pretty diverse place, and any given Fonritian city can diverge significantly from the standard scheme, and there are lots of weird little traditions - including isolated cities that reject the Ompalam slave religion. 

But most of the non-Veldang population of the cities are going to worship one of the 17 Glorious Ones, plus acknowledging Garangordos as ruling god, and Ompalam. You generally would give them a few spells (Spirit and Rune) related to their profession (many of the 17 are effectively deities of professions and sort of guilds), and perhaps some appropriate elemental spells. Grab appropriate spells from any relevant cult. 

Particularly popular Glorious Ones include - Bendaluza, whose magic is mostly about building stone cities but also very phallic, and his magic is mostly about knowledge and fire, and El Jazuli the Earth Witch (a bit like Asrelia,with Earth elementals and domination of the powers of the Land), and Varama the Sun God. Many of the Fonritians you meet in Genertela are going to be sailors, who might worship Chouanaibos, patron of boat building, navigation, and exploration - probably Movement rune magic and spells like Float

Soldiers mostly would worship Abdamedric, the Man of Two Swords, who I think you could roughly treat as Humakt without any of the Truth or honour parts. As he is supposed to correspond to the Fire-War god Vangono, Fireblade is pretty likely. 

There certainly are Ikadz (torture god) worshippers, and they make good antagonists because they are pretty hatable. Stealing the Pain Tooth spell from The Bloody Tusk (in the Bestiary) isn't a bad start for improvising some Ikadz magic. 

Outside the cities, many worship the Millet Goddess, Ernamola - she is roughly a standard grain goddess, so the agricultural aspects of Ernalda. You are also going to find a lot of smaller shamanic traditions, most connected to Earth or Sea and worshipped by farmers or fishermen. 

Baraku is the Fonritian equivalent to Orlanth, but he is more of a rebellious enemy storm god - he is worshipped, particularly by outsiders like sailors, but is not a leader or culture hero god to most Fonritians, more a god you worship if you are afraid of the power of storms (or want others to fear your storm powers). 

There are plenty of other minority religions in fonrit - Notable are the Selarn thief cult, the Jokuto murder-tricksters, and Seseine as a seductive Chaos cult of desire. Plus lots of sorcerers, many of whom are involved in odd variations on the Invisible God (usually acknowledging Ompalaman and slavery), but also many independent sorcerers (many of whom have studied Vadeli corrupted magic). 

Most of the Veldang are wretched slave and have very little good magic at all. If you want them to have good magic (usually meaning they are part of a secret illegal rebel cult), they can have all sorts of mysterious things, probably Invisibility as a blue moon power for example. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

13 hours ago, davecake said:

Most of the Veldang are wretched slave and have very little good magic at all. If you want them to have good magic (usually meaning they are part of a secret illegal rebel cult), they can have all sorts of mysterious things, probably Invisibility as a blue moon power for example. 

Maybe do something cool like have these slave rebel cultists have invisbility during high tides, maybe, if you want to add something time-sensitive to the plot.

[davecake]

On 8/21/2019 at 9:50 PM, Manu said:

The Fonritians also worship Aether, Annilla, Asrelia, Ernalda, Gata, Larnste, Lodik, Worlath, Sramake,Tolat, Uleria, and Xentha, as several minor gods without any equivalent elsewhere in the Middle Sea Empire. They hate Eurmal, who they claim murdered Garangordos and blame him for any misfortune.

Annilla, Tolat largely worshipped by the Veldang. Ernalda and Gata mostly we are talking about the local grain goddess (millet). Lodik = Lodril? = Balumbasta. Worlath = Bandaku, who is regarded as a foreign invader god probably worshipped by Seamen, bandits, etc. They do hate the Trickster, and regard him as a antisocial murderer. 

But this is in large part the God Learners totally misunderstanding what they are seeing. 

[Jeff]

I have an Ompalam cult writeup but it won't be appearing in the Cults Book. 

[Manu]

13 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I have an Ompalam cult writeup but it won't be appearing in the Cults Book. 

As it will not be printed soon.... any chance to have the cult writeup?