Orlanth Arrives at the Luathelan Court of Dusk

[Sir_Godspeed]

I will admit that this art reference is off in a number of ways. The pseudo-baroque/neoclassical architecture and creature design, the absence of colors beyond black and white, no purple skin, etc. etc. it's all incorrect for Glorantha in general and Luathelans specifically. I acknowledge all of this.

And yet, beyond that, I saw this pic and immediately thought "Yeah this would have made for a great illustration for when Orlanth arrives at the Luathelan court to gain passage to the underworld." Something about the stark, almost ascetic style. The palpable disdain, the towering guards. Maybe I'm just weird. It's cool anyway, so why not share.

(Full gallery here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/82549737/ASTRID?tracking_source=curated_galleries )

[scott-martin]

Sorrowful Rausa. IMG the references naturally get paradoxical that far from the inner world anyway and depending on timing even the sunset colors we usually associate with them might have drained back to her eyes.

The monochrome is iconographically very interesting depending on whose depiction this is or which account they were drawing from . . . absence of modern caste coloration is metaphysically significant + appropriate, but would be lost on a theyalan observer.

This may also be a test or challenge for the supplicant. Always know who you are really talking to out there. They don't lie exactly but can "misunderstand the question."

[Qizilbashwoman]

4 hours ago, scott-martin said:

absence of modern caste coloration

can a sun god be a zzaburi or a malkioni? seems uh

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

can a sun god be a zzaburi or a malkioni? seems uh

Can we find traces of a pre-Ehilmic solar order in the far west when we squint? Yeah!

(This too is a test or challenge for the supplicant: that far out, Vith and Luath wrap back around and Greg himself sometimes gets confused. And what is the archaic MALKYONR but the absence of both?)

EDIT: another enigma revolves around the way archaic sources place the Gates of Dusk on something like the Southpath, "west of Pamaltela." This aligns with the way Therophis in his Monomyth asserts that the "land of the Brithini" is in the "north" (relative to Jrustela of course) while the far west is somewhere else. But for Rausa to be west of Pamaltela bends the equator. Was the sun forced northward? Should the real westfaring really be the southwestfaring, toward the end of the "original" sunpath?

Edited December 6, 2019 by scott-martin
west = southwest

[soltakss]

Having her blood-red would be spectacular. 

22 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

can a sun god be a zzaburi or a malkioni? seems uh

Ehilm was the Malkioni sun power, not a god as such, more of a concept. Yelm seems to have taken on much of this, from what I read years ago.

[Joerg]

Just now, soltakss said:

Having her blood-red would be spectacular. 

Ehilm was the Malkioni sun power, not a god as such, more of a concept. Yelm seems to have taken on much of this, from what I read years ago.

Ralian Ehilm was very much a deity without any interference by the Malkioni for centuries.

The Zzaburite concept of the False Gods was about runic powers fooling mortals (in the sense of "the Many") worshiping them as something beyond the runic power.

For some reason, many of the Ralian deity names coincide with many of the Malkioni names for the runic powers. But that may be later feedback collected by the God Learners, and a set of names different from those known in Brithos.

[scott-martin]

34 minutes ago, Joerg said:

For some reason, many of the Ralian deity names coincide with many of the Malkioni names for the runic powers. But that may be later feedback collected by the God Learners, and a set of names different from those known in Brithos.

It is truly funny that the soi-disant Sorcerer Supreme only knows these entities by their Ralian local names . . . almost as though he was ignorant of them before the first mainland contacts. Someone more sympathetic might say that these were degenerating erasanchula who eventually introduced themselves to the proto-Ralians and were worshipped as gods. 

In parallel it is interesting though that the princess of the Altinelans also refers to Ehilm in the famous fragment. Her close family relationship with the gods probably gives her account authority and subtly contradicts the blue man. (Surprise.) Looking back at it, I've overlooked a lot of the details myself, like the way Ehilm is created to challenge the western air god and is Eurmal's true father, or how Snodal acknowledges Lim as the sun, Umt as the wind and so on. Fronelan names that reveal what the princess explains as linguistic drift from her own fundamental source.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Prose names can't always be trusted though, and they might be artifacts of the RW author's development at the time (ie. Balumbasta is referred to as Lodril in Revealed Mythologies iirc, and seemingly not from a God Learner perspective, but more as a "Eh, I'll edit this later" kind of deal). 

I guess it's possible that the Ralian names have been used for the translation of Zzabur's potentially more archaic or esoteric names. Ralian culture might be a substrata that profoundly influenced early Seshnegi culture, a bit like Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. The commoners' language prevailed and even made it into scholarly usage as the centuries progressed. (Just some speculation). 

Then we have some clear differences, like Lodik and Ladaral, where differences seem to have been preserved. Or maybe Ladaral is Fronelan, idk.

[Qizilbashwoman]

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Ehilm was the Malkioni sun power, not a god as such, more of a concept.

elephant in the room much hahaha

literally Rausa is the god in question here, I was talking Rausa

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I guess it's possible that the Ralian names have been used for the translation of Zzabur's potentially more archaic or esoteric names. Ralian culture might be a substrata that profoundly influenced early Seshnegi culture, a bit like Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. The commoners' language prevailed and even made it into scholarly usage as the centuries progressed.  

Zz-b-r Says is theoretically a direct communication with only passing concessions to define terms unfamiliar to the malestini audience . . . some of the entities mentioned alongside Ehilm are known in other contexts or are completely obscure today. For what it's worth, while the Serpent Kings culture is an interaction of colonist and continental patterns, my suspicion is that whatever the White Wizards were pushing was direct from the island so would only use continental vocabulary to demonize or otherwise belittle. Sometimes the words stuck and sometimes they didn't.

I don't know the name the original solar people of Ralios called the sun but if it was Ehilm (and not for example something horsier) there's probably a good story behind it. Ehilm worship (so called) is extremely well entrenched in this part of the world, which is interesting. 

Reading more deeply into the names the Altinelans called the ancient gods reminds me of the cosmic grudge between the people of the northern and western corners. They fight like seelie and unseelie. Esoteric musing about Rausa's allegiance aside I wonder where we can find traces of a primeval "pole shift" far back in the never never. We know the fall of Umath tilted the Dome. Maybe the Blasts or some other cataclysm also bent the surface as much as 90 degrees off true north. 

Edited December 7, 2019 by scott-martin
Blasts

[Mirza]

There is a pretty reasonable connection well before the Dawn that can explain why both Zzabur and the Enerali use the name Ehilm for the Sun, even if they use them in different meanings, with Zzabur using it for a faceless construct, and the Enerali worshiping it. The Enerali learned it from an ancient people of Law, the Kachasti.

The Kachasti went on their Speaking Tour during the early Storm Age, with what would become Ralios right at their doorstep, and met many different peoples and learned from them while also teaching them. The Horse Hykimi that would become the Enerali were probably one of those peoples that interacted with the Kachasti, and learned many things.

Like my thoughts are that the Horse Hykimi would naturally have something of a Solar identity, with the Air being learned from Humat leading to the split between the Utoni/Fornaoli and the Vustri/Korioni. Then the Horse Hykimi meet these people from the west who teach them to be different than just Hykimi, and they learn new skills such as their goldsmithing, they learn some language like Krjalk, and the name the Kachasti use for the Sun, Ehilm.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Mirza

[scott-martin]

5 hours ago, Mirza said:

Then the Horse Hykimi meet these people from the west who teach them to be different than just Hykimi,

Great phrase. Looking at it makes me think back to a puzzling assertion the princess of the Altinelans makes to Snodal:

At that time the oceans rose to the land, and the sun died to make the night.  The winter started when Flamal, the vegetation god died, and also was made the race of the Brithini, the second race of men.  The first having been these descended from Hykim, the animal-god, for many other gods had been born at by that time. 

It's easy to accept the droning of maseren and paseren and who came first when we don't have anything else to contextualize or contradict it. But while a demigoddess might lie about these things for her own undoubtedly sinister and interesting purposes, the notion of the Hykimites coming first and Brithini following actually confirms obscure details buried in the White Wizard creed. The "human ancestors" in question do not really come from a separate stock but are crafted elsewhere by others. Only later, amid the chaos upheavals, does a Malkion "bear logic to humankind." For most, the teaching fails to take hold and they remain what they were.

Some, on the other hand, are converted and become Malkioni humans. A second race. The people of the "colonies." The colonists themselves may not come here in the flesh in boats but as a kind of armada of invasive ideas, a new teaching. They adopt the hykimites who are receptive and leave pure beast rune and forest in their wake: "Green Woods, inhabited by Beast Men, where no foes can walk.”

Now in this scenario all the kachasti and other western precursor peoples may be pure spirit tribes or have bodies that work differently from ours. Some stay home. Others interact with other creations and become entangled there. Think of watchers, egregores, nephilim. They experiment with various relationships between bodies and spirits. One or two might come early to the islands off the west coast and transform the consciousness of native humans there, creating new covenants and new hybrid lineages out of hapless "warerans" and the people Vadela mated with. The really ancient people of the uttermost west may not even notice.

Dissent in "heaven." One ideology argues for progressive alienation and separation. It dominates. The other "was determined to teach the truth once again, and bring together his peoples." It exiles itself and once again goes east like bodhidharma. Foreign spirits return to the mainland, this time to both teach and stay. Soon they're wrapped in bodies taken from whatever stock was available. A second race crystallizes within the hykimite world, sets up a new kind of religion on the mainland, builds a new kind of city. "Colonists." They segment according to their spirits, find themselves clerics and fighters and sorcerers and peons within the convert communities. They remember the horse gods and other gods of their ancestors but it doesn't matter so much any more. It's technical interest only, pushed down into a psychic underworld. We live different now.

The hardcore zzaburites, as though tipped off to something, stay home. The western continent sinks, leaving its remnants interwoven into the north like roots from another tree. Separatists keep sinking land that looks too close for comfort. This much, at least, is true.

EPILOGUE: In 1499 ST, the prince of Loskalm is troubled, remembering maps from the future and Fronela no longer exists. Somebody showed him those maps. It worked. Finally some time alone.

[Sir_Godspeed]

7 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Now in this scenario all the kachasti and other western precursor peoples may be pure spirit tribes or have bodies that work differently from ours. Some stay home. Others interact with other creations and become entangled there. Think of watchers, egregores, nephilim. They experiment with various relationships between bodies and spirits. One or two might come early to the islands off the west coast and transform the consciousness of native humans there, creating new covenants and new hybrid lineages out of hapless "warerans" and the people Vadela mated with. The really ancient people of the uttermost west may not even notice.

 

Thought: the Hykimi were emerging in the interplay with the established Beast Rune and the emerging Man Rune. The Brithini (Danmalstans/Malkioni or Real People if I remember the Revealed Mythology lingo) are more purely Man Rune entities. What else they may have been embedded in (matter, spirit, condition, etc.) I won't speculate in.

[Joerg]

13 hours ago, Mirza said:

There is a pretty reasonable connection well before the Dawn that can explain why both Zzabur and the Enerali use the name Ehilm for the Sun, even if they use them in different meanings, with Zzabur using it for a faceless construct, and the Enerali worshiping it. The Enerali learned it from an ancient people of Law, the Kachasti.

The Kachasti went on their Speaking Tour during the early Storm Age, with what would become Ralios right at their doorstep, and met many different peoples and learned from them while also teaching them. The Horse Hykimi that would become the Enerali were probably one of those peoples that interacted with the Kachasti, and learned many things.

True, the Kachasti (or Kachisti for the Genertelan ones, as per God Learner maps and comments) spread out into Hykimi lands in the Golden Age. According to the God Learner map on p.683 in the Guide, the late Golden Age. The commensurate maps in the Sourcebook depict the earliest arrival of Neliom in the northwest and some Waertagi dragonships there, or fail to show Brithos at all but have Luathela in the Lesser Darkness (post-Flood) map.

This leaves the mythic maps from Revealed Mythologies for the west, which suffer from their disjunction with the Monomyth, providing the Actions instead. The PDF has square color maps where my print edition still has hand-drawn triangular maps drawn by Greg, with a fair bit of extra information.

 

13 hours ago, Mirza said:

Like my thoughts are that the Horse Hykimi would naturally have something of a Solar identity, with the Air being learned from Humat leading to the split between the Utoni/Fornaoli and the Vustri/Korioni. Then the Horse Hykimi meet these people from the west who teach them to be different than just Hykimi, and they learn new skills such as their goldsmithing, they learn some language like Krjalk, and the name the Kachasti use for the Sun, Ehilm.

Most Hykimi have (or have been associated with) ties to some elemental rune. Occasionally more than one. Earth as the mother of the land based beasts by Hykim, Storm as the founder of most mammals, Sky for birds, Earth for lizards and snakes.

 

There are three advanced descendants of Hykimi origins in western Genertela: the Pendali (related to the Basmoli), the Enjoreli (related to the Tawari) and the Enerali (related to the Galanini, who may themselves only be borderline Hykimi hsunchen). Some of the Serpent Brotherhood beast folk are pretty sophisticated, too, including the Pralori, the Telmori and possibly the southern branch of the Rathori (Resanti?) from whom Jonat claims his descent.

I am on board with the suggestion that the ones who sparked the feats of civilization like temple cities may have been the Kachasti.