About those Caladralanders

[Sir_Godspeed]

I want to know more about the Caladralanders. Speculation/fanon is welcome, but please specify or else I might get confused.

I mean, I know the basics: They are Orlanthi (but not Heortlings nor Esrolians), but they worship Veskarthan/Caladra, an Orlanthi analogue of Lodril, where the high priest of said cult commands a great deal of religious and temporal power. They practise slash-and-burn horticulture (no plows?), and they live in a (sub-tropic to) tropical environment. They are known to have practised human sacrifice, possibly only to captured enemies, I dunno. Do they call themselves Caladralanders, or something like Veskarthings? Or do they have their own founding hero a la Heort or even something like Imarja?

I assume they have kings and clans and tribes like most other Orlanthi, but exactly what shape they take I don't know.

I also don't quite know what shape their demographics take, ie. whether it's evenly spread out in minor settlements, whether they have any towns/cities of note, whether cultic sites house a lot of people on a permanent basis, etc. 

Honestly, just a bit more about them would be cool. I like being able to sit down and imagine "if I were a member of [culture x] what would be my goals in life, my concerns, etc." and while I feel I can do that to a pretty good degree for Heortlings and Esrolians, it's less clear for the Caladralanders (aside from the obvious "work the land, have full belly, cherish kinfolk, get lots of kids".)
 

[soltakss]

Facts that I know about Caladralanders (At least I hope they are facts from published sources):

• The Vent is their Sacred Mountain, or at least a temple on the volcano
• They worship an aspect of Lodril, Veskarthan, who was chained by Argan Argar to create the Castle of Black Glass
• They used to practice Human Sacrifice, by throwing people into the lava at the crater at the Vent, but when they sacrificed Belintar, he reappeared and declared that nobody else needed to be sacrificed
• One of their cults is Caladra & Aurelion, the Volcano Twins, which is unusual in several ways:
  • It is a cult of twins
  • It has a male, fertile Earth and a female warrior Fire Aspect
  • It has Twin priests, who share a special telepathic bond
  • One of the subcults is of a God Learner founder of the cult
• They are friendly to Mostali, by and large, with Caladra & Aurelion being hostile to Aldrya
• They use Obsidian as a runemetal
• They practice slash and burn agriculture, mainly because the volcanic soil is so fertile, also because Aurelion has spells that make the earth more fertile
• They trade in gems, mined from their volcanoes
• Greymane has invaded Caladraland several times
• Caladra and Aurelion are the closest thing to Founders that I have heard of

 

Assumptions:

• There are very few towns or cities in Caladraland, so I assume they have small villages scattered around
• They are not overly keen on the Trolls of the Shadow Plateau, due to Argan Argar's chaining of Lodril
• They have an Aztec-vibe, perhaps
• They war with the Aldryami of the Jungles/Forests of Caladraland, as Caladra & Aurelion use Firebone and Earthblood (Coal and Oil) that are made from the crushed bodies of Aldryami
• Being friendly to Mostali and hostile to Aldryami and Trolls, they probably take sides in any Elder race conflicts

 

[AndreJarosch]

2 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Facts that I know about Caladralanders (At least I hope they are facts from published sources):

•  
• One of their cults is Caladra & Aurelion, the Volcano Twins, which is unusual in several ways:
  • It has a male, fertile Earth and a female warrior Fire Aspect

As far as i know this is due to a gender-swap by the Godlearners. 
Before the Godlearners it was a female fertile Earth goddess and a male warrior Fire god. 

[Stew Stansfield]

First, a general note.

Caladraland is a conflation of two separate ideas and approaches. On the one hand you have Greg's stories about Lodril/Veskarthan; on the other you have Chuck Huber's stories about the Volcano Twins. Caladra and Aurelion were adapted on their inclusion by Greg into his world, but many aspects are idiosyncratically Chuck's. While these two worlds co-existed fairly well in the earliest days of Gloranthan publishing, that was in part due to the simplicity of their framework. Once each aspect began to be developed in its own right, things started to become incongruent. This is why there's tended to be a lot of confusion on some aspects. (As will no doubt be seen in this thread.)

Chuck's revamped RQ3 write-up of the Twins in Tales of the Reaching Moon #7 kickstarted this process. In it he revamped the Twins into a God Learner experiment... that survived. It was written at a time when knowledge of heroquesting and the God Learners was fairly inchoate, which has rendered some aspects a little fragile.

At the same time, Greg was working through his own ideas on Veskarthan (as first seen in King of Sartar). While the central myths of Manirian Lodril had been long been known, they'd always had something of a grand and hazy 'in the background' quality, and not directly impinged upon Caladraland in the same way Chuck's more detailed approach had. This began to change with publications like History of the Heortling Peoples and The Middle Sea Empire.

The issue? The two approaches didn't really inform each other.

I had spoken to Greg several times about Caladraland, and when I mentioned the God-Learner methodologies in relation to the Twins, he was honestly confused. Moray and Telerio are perhaps the most detailed and prominent example of God Learner heroquestors we have in published Glorantha (fan or official), and they don't appear in—or inform—those Unfinished Works at all. Similarly, Chuck didn't know how Greg was going to expand upon and develop his own stories in the region.

A lot of confusion about the place comes from the assumption that these two stories are perfectly informed by each other and should be compatible. Sometimes they just aren't.

That tension can also be quite interesting. Caladraland is often referred to as a land of Fire and Earth; but at a deeper level I think it is a land in tension between Harmony (Chuck and the Twins cult) and Disorder (Greg and Veskarthan).

 

[Qizilbashwoman]

11 minutes ago, Quackatoa said:

That tension can also be quite interesting. Caladraland is often referred to as a land of Fire and Earth; but at a deeper level I think it is a land in tension between Harmony (Chuck and the Twins cult) and Disorder (Greg and Veskarthan).

I understood from somewhere - and I have no idea at all where! - that originally the Twin Cults were separate cults of the Volcano that also were intertwined by the GL. This is all very interesting.

In my head I guess my brain thought it sort of went like this: Veskarthan gets mythically enslaved. He often is defeated to make way for his sons in myths, so this is par for the course.

So then we have the next layer, two sons, who we now know as Caladra and Aurelion. The God Learners wrote them together as a single cult, making them a reversed gender pair, separating the elements. Instead of two sons of Lodril with separate worship, there was now this weird Twin stuff with a male Earth deity and a female Fire deity.

This made sense to me because the cult has a consistent problem with priestly incest.

Can't remember where I read any of this!

[Stew Stansfield]

Now some specifics.

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Do they call themselves Caladralanders, or something like Veskarthings? Or do they have their own founding hero a la Heort or even something like Imarja?

Caladralanders gets thrown around a lot, to our occasional ire. Caladrians was mooted as the proper exonym a while back, but there's been some backsliding. The endonym they use is Karkudja (History of the Heortling Peoples, p. 6). 'Kar' seems to reference kin or progeny and its relationship — Greg told me that the name Veskarthan means 'Great Father'.

Their founder and ancestor God is thus Kudja (ibid.). Another critically important hero is the Silver Age heroine Tessele the True, who has been described in somewhat different ways (as noted in my post above) by Greg and Chuck. She is named as the "demigoddess leader of the tribe" at the Dawn, but is occasionally ascribed greater qualities. (I'll edit this when I find the reference.)

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

• One of their cults is Caladra & Aurelion, the Volcano Twins, which is unusual in several ways:
  • It has a male, fertile Earth and a female warrior Fire Aspect

1 hour ago, AndreJarosch said:

As far as i know this is due to a gender-swap by the Godlearners. 
Before the Godlearners it was a female fertile Earth goddess and a male warrior Fire god. 

Gender is one of the most consistently misunderstood aspects of the Twins. While this is in part because gender-inflected elemental essentialism is so strong in Glorantha, the fact that no-one bothers to read the cult write-up doesn't exactly help, either. (Grrr.) Here is what Chuck wrote:

Role of Men and Women in the Cult: By the evident nature of the cult, men and women are equally able to take up any role offered by the cult. Women identify with Caladra and men with Aurelion, but either sex can identify with the Hot (purifying, warrior) or Earthy (fertile, nurturing) aspects of the Twins. The ultimate goal of the worshipper of either sex is to master both in Harmony.

- Tales of the Reaching Moon #7, pp. 28–29.

And this is the crux of the cult. It isn't the disparate union of a fire entity and an earth entity, with radically different and separate powers - but the union of two entities that shared their powers equally with each other ("So great was their joy that the Twins resolved to share ever after their elemental natures -- Fire Within Earth.") and encourage and expect their followers to do likewise. I'm not sure why I keep bothering to type this, as no bugger pays any notice.

Chuck doesn't mention the gender of the Fire cult the God Learners found in Caladraland ("They discovered two obsucre cults, Aurelion, a minor Earth god of Jrustela, and Caladra, a subcult of Lodril located in Kethaela."), but Greg refers to the Dawn Age Caladrians worshipping "Caladra, Volcanic Goddess" in History of the Heortling Peoples.

(Like I said, I'm not sure they were on the same page, but...)

Edited October 22, 2019 by Quackatoa
Typo.

[soltakss]

10 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I understood from somewhere - and I have no idea at all where! - that originally the Twin Cults were separate cults of the Volcano that also were intertwined by the GL. This is all very interesting.

Yes, they were separate deities who the God Learners either joined or rediscovered the myths of them joining.

11 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

In my head I guess my brain thought it sort of went like this: Veskarthan gets mythically enslaved. He often is defeated to make way for his sons in myths, so this is par for the course.

So then we have the next layer, two sons, who we now know as Caladra and Aurelion. The God Learners wrote them together as a single cult, making them a reversed gender pair, separating the elements. Instead of two sons of Lodril with separate worship, there was now this weird Twin stuff with a male Earth deity and a female Fire deity.

Personally, I never thought of the deities' genders being changed, I just accepted them as male earth and female fire.

12 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

This made sense to me because the cult has a consistent problem with priestly incest.

I thought that was a reaction to the God Learners, breaking the link between Twin Priest Dynasties, making them acceptable to normal folk, rather than being tainted with God Learnerism.

5 minutes ago, Quackatoa said:

And this is the crux of the cult. It isn't the disparate union of a fire entity and an earth entity, with radically different and separate powers - but the union of two entities that shared their powers equally with each other ("So great was their joy that the Twins resolved to share ever after their elemental natures -- Fire Within Earth.") and encourage and expect their followers to do likewise. I'm not sure why I keep bothering to type this, as no bugger pays any notice.

Don't worry, I take notice. The harmony aspect of the cult is probably its most important part, although I never noticed the tension between their Harmony and Lodril's disorder before.

Also, Twins are sacred to the cult, no matter their gender. Twins can be both male, both female, male and female or whatever, it doesn't really matter. 

Whilst, they could be worshipped separately, with each twin granting its own magic, they are usually worshipped together, with worshippers getting both kinds of magic. 

[Tindalos]

Have some rampant speculation on the nature of the twins:
Just as their cult merger was a God Learner experiment to control the locals, so were the original cults themselves a Mostali experiment to control the locals.

At the dawn, the people of Caladraland worshipped Caladra (along with Veskarthan and Kudja) and obeyed the instructions of the dwarves of the Vent (GtG 711), with the dwarven settlement's true name being Deziramko Cho Al Kalad (708) providing a potential link between Caladra and Kalad.

This gets more interesting with Aurelion, whose original worshippers are likely the inhabitants of Jrustela (given the presence of Aurelion's breakwater on the northern side of the original continent, and now the island of Golathos) The breakwater's also known to have the remains of a golden sun god beneath the waters (508)

This can then be potentially related to the myth of the Vaybeti and the Man of Gold (Middle Sea Empire 8.) The Vaybeti were a human people, inhabiting islands to the south of Tharkarn which was the mythological name for Jrustela. These humans were in a miserable state until the Man of Gold arrived and gave them civilization, teaching them to hunt, build, and spy on their Malkioni neighbours. Some Vaybeti got blown off course and arrived in a strange land filled with fruit and other plants and brought them back home. The Man of Gold returned and got angry, took all the plants and loaded them on a stone boat which sailed off.

It seems logical to me that the Man of Gold was a Gold Mostali (hence the stone boat, and the hatred of grown things) who helped the local population, and became remembered as Aurelion (what with the linguistical connection to Aurum) and likely Caladra followed a similar origin.

When connecting this to the myths of the cult (Using the Cult Compendium version, starting page 221) we've got Aurelion's Breakwater being erected to protect against the floods -- a possible connection to Somalz, the great Mostali landraising project which formed a new cube of perfect Earth, with the breakwater being its northern edge. As well as this the cult has an interesting relationship with earthblood, firebone, and diamonds. All things commonly connected to Mostali (what with wanting oil and coal for their designs, and trading gems such as diamonds so much that Deziramko Cho Al Kalad is commonly just known as Gemborg.) They have spells to find these things, as well as other gems and gold, skills with identifying minerals, and of course Mostal being an associate cult.

[Qizilbashwoman]

51 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

so were the original cults themselves a Mostali experiment to control the locals

this is quite excellent heroquesting

[Joerg]

About their phsyical culture and horticulture, looking a the master map of eastern Caladraland (mainly Esrolia and the Mirrorsea Bay) with the distinct absence of settlements which peppered e.g. Esrolia or Heortland) I wondered whether Papua new guinea with its millennia old horticulture and rather small clans or tribes even with distinct languages might be another model for the Caladralanders, united mainly by the Volcano priesthood. They haven't splintered into that many distinct languages and tribes as the Papuans as they had maybe 20 millennia to form their culture (if you count late Golden Age and Storm Age in millennia) whereas the settlement of New Guinea reaches back 50 millennia or more. Still, the forest horticulture and occasional harvest of a Sago palm tree might be an element in Caladrian everyday life. But then, the horticulture on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro might be another model for what goes on on the slopes of the Vent.

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

About their phsyical culture and horticulture, looking a the master map of eastern Caladraland (mainly Esrolia and the Mirrorsea Bay) with the distinct absence of settlements which peppered e.g. Esrolia or Heortland) I wondered whether Papua new guinea with its millennia old horticulture and rather small clans or tribes even with distinct languages might be another model for the Caladralanders, united mainly by the Volcano priesthood. They haven't splintered into that many distinct languages and tribes as the Papuans as they had maybe 20 millennia to form their culture (if you count late Golden Age and Storm Age in millennia) whereas the settlement of New Guinea reaches back 50 millennia or more. Still, the forest horticulture and occasional harvest of a Sago palm tree might be an element in Caladrian everyday life. But then, the horticulture on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro might be another model for what goes on on the slopes of the Vent.

The cultural and linguistic diversity of PNG is the result of intense overpopulation of a region locked-in by mountains for literal ages; much of it is deliberate. In recent history we have records of peoples deciding to reverse all the genders in a two-gender language system in order to set themselves off more distinctly from a neighboring people and another group for the same reason changing sounds in their language: merging some and adopting others from a neighboring language they spoke as a second language.

Caladraland likely has some diversity; there are likely speakers of Karkudja Storm varieties (aka "Orlanthi") as well as, if accurate, Vaybeti varieties. There might even be Jrusteli speakers.

I don't know what Rune Branch Vaybeti would be; I'm not even sure what Rune Branch the Malkioni languages or even the Middle Sea languages stem from!

The Vaybeti could be distant kin to the East Islanders for all I know, and I definitely have no idea what Rune Language their languages come from.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Sir_Godspeed]

I was considering highland South India and Sri Lanka for some visual and possibly social cues for the the Karkudja. Obviously there is the issue that the major societies of this region practices pretty intensive and large-scale irrigation farming, so that's something that doesn't quite fit, but I believe highland areas might fit the bill. Between Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala there are slash-and-burn groups primarily living in fairly small villages, and I believe the same might be true for central Sri Lanka - others might know more about this than me though . I mostly stuck to the coastal delta region of Tamil Nadu when I was there.

Another potential alternative is the wider Melanesian/Polynesian region. Lots of garden horticulture, semi-permanent villages (lasting 5-10 years tops, with some governmental stone-built exceptions), complex cultic and ritual complexes, mix of large scale warfare and ritualized champion warfare, etc. But then I don't want to "steal" too much of the potential "thunder" from a future East Isles sourcebook, if that makes sense.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[Joerg]

11 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

The cultural and linguistic diversity of PNG is the result of intense overpopulation of a region locked-in by mountains for literal ages; much of it is deliberate. In recent history we have records of peoples deciding to reverse all the genders in a two-gender language system in order to set themselves off more distinctly from a neighboring people and another group for the same reason changing sounds in their language: merging some and adopting others from a neighboring language they spoke as a second language.

Caladraland likely has some diversity; there are likely speakers of Karkudja Storm varieties (aka "Orlanthi") as well as, if accurate, Vaybeti varieties. There might even be Jrusteli speakers.

I don't know what Rune Branch Vaybeti would be; I'm not even sure what Rune Branch the Malkioni languages or even the Middle Sea languages stem from!

The Vaybeti could be distant kin to the East Islanders for all I know, and I definitely have no idea what Rune Language their languages come from.

I don't really see any indication for a Thinobutan ancestry in Caladraland (which would be the case if Vaybeti coincides with Kumanku).

The human settlers in Jrustela had two language families - Olodo, from pre-Malkionized Slontos, and Seshnegi from Seshnela. Even with Telerio and Moray being Jrusteli in origin I don't see much of the western language creeping into the local language - possibly on par with Hanseatic German creeping into Finnish. If their priests had grimoires, those would have been written in Seshnegi.

There doesn't seem to be evidence for earlier human habitation of Jrustela, except possibly as slaves of the Mostali. Those would have been Tadeniti, one of the six ancestral tribes of the Westerners (and possibly birthplace of Lhankor Mhy). Gives a whole new dimension to this "Son of Mostal" business.

The other possible place of origin for the Vaybeti lands would be northern Slon. This is pre-Breaking of the World, so you have to imagine Slon still inhabiting the lands north of Umathela, as if the splinter that was cut off the world by the thwarted cut towards Magnetic Mountain was pulled back in place. The Elevens of Slon have similarly unclear ancestry - they might be a mixed slave population sold here by the Vadeli, or they may have been a genuinely native population of unknown ancestry. If anything of this points towards Caladraland, it would be quite a stretch, though.

 

Who would have been the human worshipers of Aurelion? The shores around the Breakwater were among the first to be colonized by the Malkioni, without much contact with Olodo folk. Still, some Olodo, or more recent immigrants from (by then malkionized) Slontos may have brought some old Volcano worship with them. (Note the Slontos temple of halfway mentioned in the Cult of Caladra and Aurelion. Not mentioned anywhere in the Guide, though.)

[Tindalos]

Just now, Joerg said:

I don't really see any indication for a Thinobutan ancestry in Caladraland (which would be the case if Vaybeti coincides with Kumanku).

Honestly I doubt it does.

Vaybeti and Thinobutu were contemporaries in the Early Storm Age (GtG 684). The Vaybeti Isles were destroyed by then in the Landraising well before Thinobutu was sunk, and it's more likely that the Vaybeti became the ancestors of the "Friendlies" of Slon (who worship Lodril) and any pre-Olodo Jrustela inhabitants. It's possible they were  isolated Tadeniti, and noting on page 686 the Mostali created Tharkarn Isle to divert Churkenos, it's possible that the island itself was Aurelion's Breakwater.

If the Friendlies are descendants of the Vaybeti, it could be that Odendva Golden Diamond Dwarf, who'd tamed the humans before time (518), may be the Man of Gold.

[Joerg]

I don't trust the God Learner Maps for northern Pamaltela much.

The Thinobutan diaspora started well before the sinking of Thinobutu. The first torrent may have been part of the rivers invading the land, but then the Thinobutan creation myth talks about an island raised from the Sea, which is either as late as the Storm Age (parallel to the arrival of the Artmali), or way way earlier when the Earth Cube first pierced the upper end of the Seas.

The Man of Gold definitely sounds like a gold mostali. That doesn't mean anything for the origin of those humans.

Aurelion's Breakwater is way too far north for any Pamaltelan or Slon connections, though - it is basically adjacent to Ernaldela, and if in the lowlands, a human population there may have been destroyed in the Solkathi flood.

I don't have any solid evidence, but to me the Vaybeti Isles story takes place south of the line between the Gates of Dawn and Dusk, not north of it where Aurelion used to stand. Unless there are countless shards of myth that failed to be re-assembled in this area by the Web of Arachne Solara, and any continuous story would only be conjecture in that case.

[metcalph]

11 hours ago, Quackatoa said:

Chuck's revamped RQ3 write-up of the Twins in Tales of the Reaching Moon #7 kickstarted this process. In it he revamped the Twins into a God Learner experiment... that survived. It was written at a time when knowledge of heroquesting and the God Learners was fairly inchoate, which has rendered some aspects a little fragile.

Actually predates Tales #7.  The God Learner experiment origin is found in the Gods of Glorantha Prosopaedia

Quote

The cult of Caladra and Aurelion is an example of a successful God Learner experiment. The God Learners took two independent cults with variant views of the universe and interlinked them to create a third, stronger religion. This religion still dominates portions of the Holy Country.

https://www.glorantha.com/docs/caladra-aurelion/

I have no idea with this reflects Greg's views at the time or was a Huberism or what.  In any event the idea that the cult of Aurelion has a variant view is now somehwat defunct with the Olodo of Jrustela being from Slontos.  A somewhat more serious problem is that the Seshnegi settled northern Jrustela where Aurelion's Breakewater is, yet nobody says anything about the Aurelion worshippers at the time.

Looking at the Guide I see:

Quote

Breakwater: This long reef off
Gothalos Island is the ruins of an ancient
God Learner structure. Sailors have reported
seeing the remains of a great golden Sun god
underneath the water

Guide p508

Which is quite a change from how he was previously described.  My guess is that Aurelion was a Sun God worshipped by the Jrusteli and that he became roped into the cult of the Twins if it still exists (Meething Hall which is supposedly located in Slontos is not mentioned in the Guide or the Middle Sea Empire).

Edit:  Found a reference to the Twins Caladra and Aurelion in the Guide p243 but not described as the Volcano Twins.  

 

 

Edited October 23, 2019 by metcalph

[metcalph]

11 hours ago, Quackatoa said:

Now some specifics.

Caladralanders gets thrown around a lot, to our occasional ire. Caladrians was mooted as the proper exonym a while back, but there's been some backsliding. The endonym they use is Karkudja (History of the Heortling Peoples, p. 6). 'Kar' seems to reference kin or progeny and its relationship — Greg told me that the name Veskarthan means 'Great Father'.

Their founder and ancestor God is thus Kudja (ibid.).

The best reference is the Guide which says

Quote

Solung Plateau: This cave temple was
home of the Karkudja or Caladrian people.
This was where the Karkudja people emerged
from beneath the ground to tend to the
skin of the volcano gods. They were slash
and burn horticulturalists who worshiped
Veskarthan, Caladra, and Kudja the Ancestor.
They unfailingly follow the commands of
the dwarves of Deziramko Cho Al Kalad,
who lived inside the Vent. Tessele the True
was the demigoddess leader of the tribe. The
population was approximately 300 humans.

Guide p711

I note the three gods are distinguished.  My guess is that Veskarthan is the Volcano God of what is now the Shadow Plateau.  After he was conquered and enslaved by Argan Argar, Caladra of the Vent took up the leadership (as the only other contender Quivin had his head kicked in by Maran Gor). Hence  Vesktarthan is worshipped as a father god, Kudja the first man and Caladra the God of the Vent.

 

 

[metcalph]

14 hours ago, Tindalos said:

It seems logical to me that the Man of Gold was a Gold Mostali (hence the stone boat, and the hatred of grown things) who helped the local population, and became remembered as Aurelion (what with the linguistical connection to Aurum) and likely Caladra followed a similar origin.

It's not quite that clear.  The Man of Gold teaches the Vaybeti how to live of fish and pigs, which does not seem a mostali activity to me.  Also Gold is a symbol of rule among the Malkioni - he could be one of the Yellow Vadeli (mentioned in the Guide p527, which makes his desire to spy on the Tadeniti and access to mostali boats.  Of course there are problems with the Man of Gold being a Vadeli as well (why would he be upset that the Vaybeti reached Kovano?)  What's even more curious is that the Vaybeti isles seem to be based in Kumanku which raises the question of why this myth is doing in a book about Jrustela?

A possible solution - the Man of Gold is Aurelion.  He would have to be a Vymorni rather than a Vadeli but if true, we could use the myth to figure out stuff about the cult of Aurelion, now within the cult of twins, namely:

• Fire-making
• Spear and net hunting
• pig and fish hunting
• stone-carving and shapeing.
• hatred of elves

Aurelion is no longer a volcano deity but a sun god grafted onto the volcano worshippers of Caladra under the myth that they were twins.  Needs more work, I think...

 

 

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

After the death of Yelm, people called "Men of Gold" appear in the Hyaloring myths in Six Ages, appear to collectively compete with the other named Lesser Suns.

Obviously, this is more than a continent away - but they are implied to be mortal (possibly semi-divine of some kind), and they are Solar.

[Tindalos]

On 10/22/2019 at 11:09 PM, Joerg said:

I don't trust the God Learner Maps for northern Pamaltela much.

The Thinobutan diaspora started well before the sinking of Thinobutu. The first torrent may have been part of the rivers invading the land, but then the Thinobutan creation myth talks about an island raised from the Sea, which is either as late as the Storm Age (parallel to the arrival of the Artmali), or way way earlier when the Earth Cube first pierced the upper end of the Seas.

The Man of Gold definitely sounds like a gold mostali. That doesn't mean anything for the origin of those humans.

Aurelion's Breakwater is way too far north for any Pamaltelan or Slon connections, though - it is basically adjacent to Ernaldela, and if in the lowlands, a human population there may have been destroyed in the Solkathi flood.

I don't have any solid evidence, but to me the Vaybeti Isles story takes place south of the line between the Gates of Dawn and Dusk, not north of it where Aurelion used to stand. Unless there are countless shards of myth that failed to be re-assembled in this area by the Web of Arachne Solara, and any continuous story would only be conjecture in that case.

Certainly the Blue Men the Thinobutan deserters sail away with could be Waertagi, given the Vaybeti's close connection to the Tadeniti (given they spied on them)

And certainly the God Learner map would be inaccurate as to the location of Thinobutu, given it's said to lie under the Marthino Sea (and is likely its namesake)

I agree that the Vaybeti Isles were south of the central line, in part as it's depicted as south of Mostal's Mountain/Tharkarn/Curustus/The Captstan, which became the core of Jrustela. I just think they may have migrated northwards and the islands are completely different to the Kumanku Islands. (In any case they were likely extinct before the current crop of Thinobutan settlers came in the dawn age)

 

Back to Caladraland itself, other cults found there include Ernalda, Barntar, and Flamal, specifically in Vinavale (the northern most, most populous portion of Caladraland), with Thelos (the capital) also being the home of the Free Father (god of wine, fertility, and freedom. And the son of Ernalda and Veskarthan)

 

 

[metcalph]

37 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

And certainly the God Learner map would be inaccurate as to the location of Thinobutu, given it's said to lie under the Marthino Sea (and is likely its namesake)

I think Thinobutu is likely Loral.  Otherwise we have a massive island in the area and no myths about it!

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

54 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

Barntar

I wonder what his worship is like in an area with little plowing.

A big strong god of hoeing, perhaps?

[Gallowglass]

In my Glorantha, I've decided that Caladraland also has a native population of intelligent apes and gorillas. Like baboons in Prax, they sometimes serve as mercenaries or guards for local chieftains or merchants. The only place I can remember Genertelan gorillas actually being referenced in the Guide is in Teshnos, but why not in the Holy Country too? There's jungles, mountains, people need gorillas to intimidate their enemies, etc.

[Tindalos]

14 minutes ago, Gallowglass said:

In my Glorantha, I've decided that Caladraland also has a native population of intelligent apes and gorillas. Like baboons in Prax, they sometimes serve as mercenaries or guards for local chieftains or merchants. The only place I can remember Genertelan gorillas actually being referenced in the Guide is in Teshnos, but why not in the Holy Country too? There's jungles, mountains, people need gorillas to intimidate their enemies, etc.

I'm not sure about the Teshnos reference, but the Bestiary does mention them living in the forests of southern Genertela, which would include Caladraland.

[Sir_Godspeed]

So what do people think a Caladralander settlement looks like? What does a powerful Chieftain/King's residence look like?

Do we know of any actual named tribes there? Do we know if they have any cultural idiosyncracies in terms of organizational or structural traits? (matrilineality, neolocality, polygamy, archaisms like fixed partner groups that exchange partners between them (I am totally blanking on the term now, even though it's literally anthro101), or something else?

Centralized granaries (except for tubers, maybe?) with redistributionism, or localized ones? Preference for pigs and sheep over cattle? Authority of priests over kings (ie. little Alakoringite influence)?

I'm game for some speculation. They seem like an Orlanthi group that has the potential to add to the diversity of expressions, much like Esrolians already do - although I suspect the Karkudja are not quite as radically divergent from the Heortlings we are familiar with.