Women in Glorantha

[g33k]

On 9/26/2021 at 10:13 AM, Jeff said:

... long-dormant threads ...

At  SEVENTEEN PAGES  in length, I think it's simply been demonstrated that the thread has legs!
(n.b. also worth noting, it's had other dormant periods before)

I personally find thread-necromancy worthwhile, in cases where it's staying on-topic and/or legitimate followup.  The context of the thread is part of the value of the forums!  A new thread looses that context, and often tends to re-hash the same-old points...

[HeartQuintessence]

Question to  the Tribe:

We have discussed  Women and Runes, and how they are perceived.

 

What about Goddesses?

Dendara is often viewed as Ernalda's  overlord, Mistress., while Ernalda does all the work in  Yelm's realm (raising children, managing the house hold).

 

Is this an expectation of  Glorantha women, that the women in the house hold will defer to some kind of  'overmistress' and that is proper?

Cause in my one stint as a initate of Ernalda in a glorantha game,  Ernalda- took little shit from Yelm ( and never spoke with Dendara.. which does make me wonder, why Dendara isn't more featured in Ernalda's myths. They are both women, and yet  it seems that Dendara is forever just 'Yelm's trophy wife'. She's there to look pretty, bear his children and little more.

I would figure that any cult write up is gonna hopefully expand on her. But I am tired of the same old narritive of women in fiction being, demure, baby producing, housewives.

Now they need not be  Vinga or Babesteer Gor or Maran Gor either... but I always feel weird htat there is such a strong.. dichotomy, of Earth women, and Air women.. we hardly hear of Fire, Water, or Darkness or Sky women..  of a female girl being born in Glorantha and lacking the sterotypical Earth rune, but perhaps a fire rune with fertility still strongly present. That should produce some interesting characters.

Just lets put aside the Orlanthi 'all' for a moment. lets talk about those women shouldn't always = Earth.

The more I thought about it the more it made me think a woman with Fire/Sky, Fertility, and Harmony- change the one rune from Earth to Fire/Sky and that should produce a completely different sort of girl.

She'd buck trends, and probably lack the associated 'firmness' of an earth aligned sister.

The whole 'Men are active' /women are 'passive', needs to go away in Glorantha.  More fiction about non earth women please.

 

More building about it too, because  something I noticed is that when making characters the moment you deviate the more interesting and harder it becomes because social, customs, and cultures are ultimately design to work a certain way, and without precedents most women struggle.

 

I think it was said someone in this thread or one of the other's I'd started ' Does Griselda have a place in RQG?"

Silly rant over.

[Leingod]

54 minutes ago, HeartQuintessence said:

What about Goddesses?

Dendara is often viewed as Ernalda's  overlord, Mistress., while Ernalda does all the work in  Yelm's realm (raising children, managing the house hold).

 

Is this an expectation of  Glorantha women, that the women in the house hold will defer to some kind of  'overmistress' and that is proper?

Cause in my one stint as a initate of Ernalda in a glorantha game,  Ernalda- took little shit from Yelm ( and never spoke with Dendara.. which does make me wonder, why Dendara isn't more featured in Ernalda's myths. They are both women, and yet  it seems that Dendara is forever just 'Yelm's trophy wife'. She's there to look pretty, bear his children and little more.

I would figure that any cult write up is gonna hopefully expand on her. But I am tired of the same old narritive of women in fiction being, demure, baby producing, housewives.

It was pointed out to me at some point that Dendara is the urban domestic wife; divorced from the fields and the pastures, she's been distanced from the production of food, leaving her only with things like childbirth and weaving, and in patriarchal Peloria her only uncontested authority is over the household servants (which Ernalda also has and embodies, in the form of her various aspects).

As for why she features in so few of Ernalda's myths, it's because she isn't of much interest to the Orlanthi who tell the myths we know of. The Orlanthi men certainly just see her as "Yelm's quiet trophy wife" and many of the women probably do, too. Even urbanized Orlanthi (including the Esrolians) just adapt Ernalda to their needs, because why wouldn't they? They have no built-in disdain of rural "peasantry" like the snobby Dara Happans do.

And Pelorian men would care to learn even less of Dendara's mysteries, because they're even more hard-line gender essentialist than the Orlanthi are. Even though the emergence of the Lunar Way has changed a lot, your average Pelorian man still likely doesn't learn much about the old "women's goddess."

1 hour ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Now they need not be  Vinga or Babesteer Gor or Maran Gor either... but I always feel weird htat there is such a strong.. dichotomy, of Earth women, and Air women.. we hardly hear of Fire, Water, or Darkness or Sky women..  of a female girl being born in Glorantha and lacking the sterotypical Earth rune, but perhaps a fire rune with fertility still strongly present. That should produce some interesting characters.

Just lets put aside the Orlanthi 'all' for a moment. lets talk about those women shouldn't always = Earth.

The more I thought about it the more it made me think a woman with Fire/Sky, Fertility, and Harmony- change the one rune from Earth to Fire/Sky and that should produce a completely different sort of girl.

She'd buck trends, and probably lack the associated 'firmness' of an earth aligned sister.

You can only really think that there are no women associated with Darkness if you're only thinking purely in terms of human women; the Uz are more matriarchal than the Esrolians! Though admittedly troll women are rarely sighted above-ground, but that's because they're too important for that. Scrabbling around in the Hurtplace is for expendables.

We could definitely do to have a light shone on the Dark Orlanthi, though (pun very much intended). I've always been interested in learning what human worship of Kyger Litor looks like, and Yrsa Nightbeam could be a very interesting counterpoint to all the other powerful women in Dragon Pass right now if she got to be more than just a name.

As for what happens when a woman doesn't have the Earth Rune, and instead has another Element? She joins an appropriate other cult, which may or may not have an Elemental Rune in it. It's really that simple. Fertility and Harmony, but some other Element? Good fit for Chalana Arroy. Humakt, Lhankor Mhy, Yelmalio... There are a literal multitude of deities who allow members of either gender, far more than those who are actually rigidly set on what gender you can be.

[Bill the barbarian]

25 minutes ago, HeartQuintessence said:

we hardly hear of Fire, Water, or Darkness or Sky women..  of a female girl being born in Glorantha and lacking the sterotypical Earth rune, but perhaps a fire rune with fertility still strongly present. That should produce some interesting characters.

I might mention, The Red Goddess would hit some of those notes... Lune Rune replacing Fire.

[Alex]

2 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Is this an expectation of  Glorantha women, that the women in the house hold will defer to some kind of  'overmistress' and that is proper?

Bear in mind that Dendara is a Fire-pantheon deity -- or her myths are Dara Happan accounts of a particular Mask, if you prefer -- and the Solars are hellaciously hierarchical.  The Orlanthi likely see the same myths as oppressive and illustrative of Yelm's tyranny.  (Lots of hierarchy in Orlanthi society too, mind you, but likely less overall.)

 

2 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Now they need not be  Vinga or Babesteer Gor or Maran Gor either... but I always feel weird htat there is such a strong.. dichotomy, of Earth women, and Air women.. we hardly hear of Fire, Water, or Darkness or Sky women..  of a female girl being born in Glorantha and lacking the sterotypical Earth rune, but perhaps a fire rune with fertility still strongly present. That should produce some interesting characters.

Those are -- apparently -- rarer among the Orlanthi, but that certainly aren't a Glorantha-wide stereotype.  Yelorna.  Nyanka.  Xiola Umbar (not exclusively an Uz deity, there's the likes of the Kitori too).  More lunar goddesses than you can shake a fist at.  

 

2 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

I think it was said someone in this thread or one of the other's I'd started ' Does Griselda have a place in RQG?"

I think I quoted someone else as saying that, but my sense is that their query -- or rhetorical point -- was in complaint about "too much cults, clans, and society stuff these days!", rather than a gendery one.  Had she ever troubled to get initiated, in runic terms she'd seem very Vingan with a large side of Sandals of Darkness to me.  (If the latter is canonical these days, or is in the future.)

[HeartQuintessence]

5 hours ago, Alex said:

Bear in mind that Dendara is a Fire-pantheon deity -- or her myths are Dara Happan accounts of a particular Mask, if you prefer -- and the Solars are hellaciously hierarchical.  The Orlanthi likely see the same myths as oppressive and illustrative of Yelm's tyranny.  (Lots of hierarchy in Orlanthi society too, mind you, but likely less overall.)

 

Those are -- apparently -- rarer among the Orlanthi, but that certainly aren't a Glorantha-wide stereotype.  Yelorna.  Nyanka.  Xiola Umbar (not exclusively an Uz deity, there's the likes of the Kitori too).  More lunar goddesses than you can shake a fist at.  

 

I think I quoted someone else as saying that, but my sense is that their query -- or rhetorical point -- was in complaint about "too much cults, clans, and society stuff these days!", rather than a gendery one.  Had she ever troubled to get initiated, in runic terms she'd seem very Vingan with a large side of Sandals of Darkness to me.  (If the latter is canonical these days, or is in the future.)

That's an good point, the more we talk about the way each society views its women, it does start to bring up how much we don't know.

We have no myths, no legends, Orlanthi and the DRagon Pass vs. the Lunar Empire are the focus.(for so much of Glorantha).

I'd actually love to see more on Esrolia (I know I know its an 'eventual project). But I wanna seen Darra Happen mythos about women. Yes its an extremely patriarchal culture. Esrolian myths about its goddess and women would be a nice change.

Part of the problem I see as a female gamer ( and player) in my RPGs is that the little boys get cool myths to  play. (I mean  play for children is remembering).

Boys get to be Orlanth, and Ermal and dozens of other male deities to embody, if a girl wanted to play, she'd be told to be Ernalda, and then be told to stay with the steading.

 

It kind of occured to me that so many of these things we never really see or acknowledge. The lives of the female characters are seperated, and Griselda only 'stands out' because she eshews female things (sort of) and becomes a real Adventurer.

 

Honestly,  the commen about it being too much 'Clan, Cult and Society stuff' is thag I may have helped to kick out into the open because I was knew, but its also important.  Glorantha stayed with it s war-gamey fighting roots and yet still managed to tell us so much about the people at its heart.

 

We should ( and at least through the Jonstown Compendium) are showing that the clans and societies these characters come from do indeed shape them.

 My little Tardis-valley clan is probably one of the funkiest things on the boards here (because its all over the map), but it got started because I asked myself as a writer : so what happens when a group of women form without many any adult males for its formantive years ( the 10 years between them living on borrowed/given land and then realizing they must leave)?

 

An entire clan of whose Fire, Air, Water, Earth runes actually matter. Men are luxury for them, their living legends include a Neval Initiate who pulled off a Heroquest (how's that for a cool idea, didn't think the little Sheep Goddess from Thunder Rebels would have such a cool idea attached.

Admitedly I realize that I have a long long way to go in make them a good people, but it go me thinking about how women with little male help would thrive. and these are women from very different groups the clashes of culture, but need for survival in sisterhood is important.

 

 

[JonL]

Personally, I see Dendara with Ernalda's rune set as we've seen in the Cults preview to be a misstep. The Guide has Light & Harmony for Dendara while Oria is their Earth & Life mother. Lodril & Oria and are all about the plowing & germinating (so to speak) while Yelm & Dendara are above that sort of thing.  Those differences tell us quite a bit about how both the urban Dara Happans & rural Lodrili see the roles of men & women differently from one another, and from their neighbor cultures.

[Joerg]

Ernalda gets to play around in the Green Age. There are unicorns, lots of flowers, song, secret and not so secret kisses and trysts, suitors to toy with, mighty deities to confront and partner with. Until Yelm stops these things being fun. She gets to explore and heal the half-formed world.

Men don't know even a fraction of these events. Lay worshipper probably neither.

 

[Alex]

7 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

I'd actually love to see more on Esrolia (I know I know its an 'eventual project). But I wanna seen Darra Happen mythos about women. Yes its an extremely patriarchal culture. Esrolian myths about its goddess and women would be a nice change.

I'm very hopeful we'll see significantly more on Esrolia soon -- or at least sooner than that many of the 'eventual projects'.  It'll still be a Theyalan culture though, so not a huge step away from the Earth-female/Air-male model.  With a very large rebalancing of the two, and a ton of extra local detail, of course.  Actually, in a "runic" way, it might do almost the opposite of what you say you want here.  Ernalda is "forced" to always be Earth, but the various Husband-Protectors get an even bigger menu of Air/Darkness/Water options!  (And Moon as an option for both, but that's really gonna split the room.)

Have you looked at the Entekosiad?  It's not Dara Happa, but it's... DH-adjacent.  Its a confusing and frustrating read, but IMO a wonderful one.  Of the many things Greg wrote I found personally meaningful, I think this is perhaps the one that's the most so.  Of course, also perhaps the one with the largest "... now how do I go about gaming this?" distance.  Might be either the best or the worst $10 you've spent on a "RPG" product.

 

7 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Boys get to be Orlanth, and Ermal and dozens of other male deities to embody, if a girl wanted to play, she'd be told to be Ernalda, and then be told to stay with the steading.

I know you said you were setting it aside but inevitably this gets us back to "Orlanthi All".  Too soon, sorry!  Girls and boys are both told lots of things by their interfering busybody elder relatives, but No-One Can Make You Do Anything.  An initiand to adulthood is able to insist on spending a year in a role of their own choice, which is their opportunity to prove their annoy aunties and uncles wrong.  Obviously you're free to ignore any degree of gender-normativity if it's just plain annoying.  Or you could approach it as an in-game theme:  the hicks around here keep telling me that 6/7 is perfect gender equality, I've done the maths, it ain't.  Or any point in between.

 

7 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Honestly,  the commen about it being too much 'Clan, Cult and Society stuff' is thag I may have helped to kick out into the open because I was knew, but its also important.

I think we're talking at cross-purposes here.  I was referring to a very different critique from a very different discussion.  Specifically, someone on another forum seeking to characterise the "clan setting" background as oppressive anthropowanking, and evidently wanting a supposed "return" to crunchy D&D pseudo-medievalism of forty years ago, or more accurately, that never actually existed at all.  Apologies if I've caused needless confusion -- some confusion is needful, ask any Trickster, they'd never Lie to you -- by doing so.

 

7 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

An entire clan of whose Fire, Air, Water, Earth runes actually matter. Men are luxury for them, their living legends include a Neval Initiate who pulled off a Heroquest (how's that for a cool idea, didn't think the little Sheep Goddess from Thunder Rebels would have such a cool idea attached.

It is indeed a cool idea, but it's not a huge distance outside of the "traditional female Earth cult role" box.  Sheep being sheep, presumably Earth with a side of Air and Water, but still largely in that pattern.  I'm inferring here, of course, as TR doesn't give us a "full subcult" writeup -- many would say mercifully, it already sliced its salami veeeerrry thin.  IMO this is "standard" Ernalda functionality, but in the form of a specialised local form of worship (and indeed, heroquesting).  In much the same way that many of the "dozens of male deities", the Thunder Brothers, are Orlanth in a funny hat or a Groucho Marx mustache.

[Alex]

52 minutes ago, JonL said:

Personally, I see Dendara with Ernalda's rune set as we've seen in the Cults preview to be a misstep.

Looks like CoG is going to be doing to be doing a lot of Lumping on a number of fronts.  That might be partly for space;  might be because it's the final word in the theistic object-identity problem;  might be a a bit of both.  Until we get One True Land:  Why Did You Even Bother With Other, Necessarily Lesser Homelands? (AKA a doorstep-sized Dara Happa book) I'll hold out hope there's more detail and nuance to come out on that.

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, JonL said:

Personally, I see Dendara with Ernalda's rune set as we've seen in the Cults preview to be a misstep. The Guide has Light & Harmony for Dendara while Oria is their Earth & Life mother. Lodril & Oria and are all about the plowing & germinating (so to speak) while Yelm & Dendara are above that sort of thing.  Those differences tell us quite a bit about how both the urban Dara Happans & rural Lodrili see the roles of men & women differently from one another, and from their neighbor cultures.

Yeah, well I have done a lot of thought about Dendara specifically since I wrote the Guide. She has the same runes as Ernalda. Indeed she is so similar to Ernalda that the God Learners were absolutely convinced that they are the same deity.

[JonL]

39 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Yeah, well I have done a lot of thought about Dendara specifically since I wrote the Guide. She has the same runes as Ernalda.

You're certainly entitled to change your mind, even in print. 🙂 If you feel inclined to share, what do you see as the benefit to this revision? You are obviously under no obligation to justify your creative choices to randos on the internet, but if you're in the mood it might aid in understanding. (If that belongs in a different thread, that's fine too.)

43 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Indeed she is so similar to Ernalda that the God Learners were absolutely convinced that they are the same deity.

Well, if the God Learners were confident that two Goddesses were the same, what could possibly go wrong? 😉  

[Sir_Godspeed]

I think the general (God Learnery) angle is that Dendara is to Ernalda as Oria is to Esrola. Ie. one goddess associated with the more spiritual/intellectual aspects of Earth while the other is associated with the more material ones. This is obviously a generalization, but it mostly works.

[Jeff]

8 minutes ago, JonL said:

You're certainly entitled to change your mind, even in print. 🙂 If you feel inclined to share, what do you see as the benefit to this revision? You are obviously under no obligation to justify your creative choices to randos on the internet, but if you're in the mood it might aid in understanding. (If that belongs in a different thread, that's fine too.)

Well, if the God Learners were confident that two Goddesses were the same, what could possibly go wrong? 😉  

Well the God Learners were normally pretty spot-on with their Mythical Synthesis. And Ernalda and Dendara are SO close. They both share the same Yelm magical association, their priestesses can participate in each other's ceremonies etc. And so the God Learners tried to get Ernalda and Dendara to acknowledge that they are the same deity by another name (like they had done countless times before - Shargash and Tolat, Lodril and countless other volcano gods, Yelm and Ehilm, etc.). And that failed. There is a core of Dendara that is incompatible with being Ernalda and vice versa.

Now the meta-game thing is that in the oldest manuscripts, Ernalda was an aspect of Dendara, and Orlanth Rex was an acknowledged husband of Dendara. This got changed pretty early, as Greg decided it was important that Yelm and Dendara acknowledge each other as spouses, BUT Ernalda can call Yelm and Orlanth (and several others) as husbands. And so the goddesses became separate although magically they are nearly identical.

[Eff]

There's a metaconversational element here when it comes to Dendara and her specific Runes, (although the ones in the Guide don't really prove much of anything- can you definitively say Ernalda is dissociated from Light as a Condition?) and it's about divine gender and the extent to which that is reflected in ordinary people. But of course, gods can appear in multiple genders, or have masks in multiple genders. (Indeed, if we go back to the Glorious ReAscent, Plentonius appears to declare Yelm to be agender. This is a thread worth tugging on for places like Pent and Ralios and Fronela where sun worship exists and has some definition but has direct spaces for a less masculine vision of the Sun.) And in Orlanth, for example, the prevalence of having some divine encounter with Orlanth and seeing Orlanth as a she is so frequent there is one definite canon cult that is just woman-Orlanth, and I suspect at least one other. So there is, at least,  feminine Storm at play here. And of course, for Moon we have plenty of implicit and explicit gender balance going on. 

So the main things here would be masculine Earth apart from the Tada/Genert/chalk figure complex, which is not quite relevant to women in Glorantha, feminine Fire, and Water and Darkness. For these latter two, the broad problem is that we just don't have substantial human culture representation going on in depth, and without that, it's just difficult to make firm statements about gender dynamics (both have been fairly liminal, but I always read Dark as trending fem because of Kyger Litor and Water as trending masc because of Zola Fel and Skyriver Titan/Engizi). 

That leaves us with femme Fire. If we go by the cultural stereotypes of King of Sartar, Sartarites probably see Fire as a stereotypically feminine Rune. Of course, we have Mahome. Gustbran is also a working fire god, furnaces and forges and kilns, and pottery has had associations with Ernalda. It is quite possible to envision a feminine mask of Gustbran associated with casting pottery, or possibly blowing glass. Back in the day, Sartarites gendered horse breeding as a feminine activity. This is no longer the case and I wouldn't revive it, but horses are generally gendered as women by default in source materials. This certainly implies something about Sun Horse/Little Sun cults, though I suspect femme Yelmalio is going well into Your Glorantha Has Varied. There's certainly material to work with here. 

[Alex]

35 minutes ago, Eff said:

This certainly implies something about Sun Horse/Little Sun cults, though I suspect femme Yelmalio is going well into Your Glorantha Has Varied.

Femme Yelmalio is a red -- as it were -- flag for Yelornan Niche Protection, I feel!

[Tindalos]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

This certainly implies something about Sun Horse/Little Sun cults, though I suspect femme Yelmalio is going well into Your Glorantha Has Varied.

Well, there's the Praxian spirit of Sun Daughter, last I'd seen. Associated with the Lightfore, may have a spirit cult.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Tindalos

[JonL]

Redalda is femme Fire, as was Osara in 6 Ages.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Vith's wife Laraloori appears to be associated with the (day?) sky. She's also the mother of at least two directly fire-related deities, one of crafting and one more of fire generally, I think, so her fiery-ness seems at least contextually likely.

That being said, the sun itself seems to be associated with Vith or Govmeranen, I think? Both of which are male. There are others here that have dipped deeper into the Parlothi than me.

East Isles mythology is not only poorly integrated into the God Learner monomyth, making its figures, myths and overall concepts harder to directly pair with the the former, but they're also, out-of-universe-wise, probably not quite "updated" to the current vision of Glorantha, aside from the few things we get in the Guide.

[Jeff]

16 hours ago, Eff said:

There's a metaconversational element here when it comes to Dendara and her specific Runes, (although the ones in the Guide don't really prove much of anything- can you definitively say Ernalda is dissociated from Light as a Condition?) and it's about divine gender and the extent to which that is reflected in ordinary people. But of course, gods can appear in multiple genders, or have masks in multiple genders. (Indeed, if we go back to the Glorious ReAscent, Plentonius appears to declare Yelm to be agender. This is a thread worth tugging on for places like Pent and Ralios and Fronela where sun worship exists and has some definition but has direct spaces for a less masculine vision of the Sun.) And in Orlanth, for example, the prevalence of having some divine encounter with Orlanth and seeing Orlanth as a she is so frequent there is one definite canon cult that is just woman-Orlanth, and I suspect at least one other. So there is, at least,  feminine Storm at play here. And of course, for Moon we have plenty of implicit and explicit gender balance going on. 

So the main things here would be masculine Earth apart from the Tada/Genert/chalk figure complex, which is not quite relevant to women in Glorantha, feminine Fire, and Water and Darkness. For these latter two, the broad problem is that we just don't have substantial human culture representation going on in depth, and without that, it's just difficult to make firm statements about gender dynamics (both have been fairly liminal, but I always read Dark as trending fem because of Kyger Litor and Water as trending masc because of Zola Fel and Skyriver Titan/Engizi). 

That leaves us with femme Fire. If we go by the cultural stereotypes of King of Sartar, Sartarites probably see Fire as a stereotypically feminine Rune. Of course, we have Mahome. Gustbran is also a working fire god, furnaces and forges and kilns, and pottery has had associations with Ernalda. It is quite possible to envision a feminine mask of Gustbran associated with casting pottery, or possibly blowing glass. Back in the day, Sartarites gendered horse breeding as a feminine activity. This is no longer the case and I wouldn't revive it, but horses are generally gendered as women by default in source materials. This certainly implies something about Sun Horse/Little Sun cults, though I suspect femme Yelmalio is going well into Your Glorantha Has Varied. There's certainly material to work with here. 

Fire/Sky is largely viewed as masculine by the Sartarites. Yelm, Yelmalio, Tolat, Mastakos, Polestar, Mule - all masculine. Moskalf, Artia - female. Twin Stars, male and female. Lodril, Aurelion, Oakfed, Gustbran - male. Caladra, Mahome - female. Hippoi is female, but Hyalor is male.

 

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

the sun itself seems to be associated with Vith or Govmeranen, I think? Both of which are male. There are others here that have dipped deeper into the Parlothi than me.

The God Learners equated Vith with Aether and Govmeranen possibly with Yelm, although I would argue that Govmeranen is more like the Solar Emperor (Murharzarm) than he is the sun god. To start with, he seems to reside somewhere near Vormain and not in the sky.

Vith's wives are all bright or all dark, Vith himself is both. That does resemble the sky (within Time) more than it does the sun.

Revealed Mythology has the Viceroy of day Maluraya (the sun) and the Viceroy of Night Farsanrana (Orlanth's Ring) as parloth created by Korudel, who then together would create the other celestial entities (planets, prominent stars). Neither of the viceroys is especially powerful or active other than arranging the sky.

 

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

East Isles mythology is not only poorly integrated into the God Learner monomyth, making its figures, myths and overall concepts harder to directly pair with the the former, but they're also, out-of-universe-wise, probably not quite "updated" to the current vision of Glorantha, aside from the few things we get in the Guide.

Do you mean their rather strict understanding of the north west as theist, the south west as animist, and the far west as sorcerous?

Or their disconnect from the God-Learner understood pantheons with their (is)land deities?

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Do you mean their rather strict understanding of the north west as theist, the south west as animist, and the far west as sorcerous?

 

Revealed Mythologies, where most of my East Isles mythology knowledge comes from at least, is a product of an earlier era of Glorantha development, from what I understand. The strict division is one thing, although I'm sure there are other aspects as well. This is all to say that if we ever get a new source for it, I expect it to look quite different. 

That being said, East Isles myth, as it stands, divides the world into gods and antigods, an arrangement that is fairly unique, and it lacks a proper Darkness, once again fairly unusual. Additionally beings like Vith and probably others are only (imho) partial fits for their closest Monomyth equivalents. 

 

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread, my point was just to try and add some examples of feminine Fire/Sky.

[HeartQuintessence]

Going to take a breath here,

but do we know of any mythos that is active for women? Non-Vingan?

I recently read this critque of the Penny Arcade comic "The Tithe"   and it hit me.  This too exists in Glorantha (of course it does it was created mostly (at its inception) by men).

But it made me think: in Glorantha, a girl travels through the green age (mostly for Sartarites) gaining her Souls to emerge on the other side knowing of the World and her place and her power in it.. She sleeps she is not dead.

Passivity in  way its finest.

It urks me.

And it got me thinking.

What if we flipped it, straight up Women become Active and the men passive.

Women become Fire, and Air, Men are Earth and Darkness... what happens? Then if we literally  try and place the men into these non-active stories, where they become.  Where men are called?

It maybe time for more writers to consider this? Active earth, and Darkness, not sitting not waiting moving towards something, instead of being rooted.

Maybe its just me being stirred up but realizing that Vingan at least in Sartar culture is one of the few 'active' outlets for female characters.

Maybe Chalana Arroy as well, but only Vinga is truely active and participatory in /things/.

 

 

[jajagappa]

16 minutes ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Women become Fire, and Air, Men are Earth and Darkness... what happens? Then if we literally  try and place the men into these non-active stories, where they become.  Where men are called?

It maybe time for more writers to consider this? Active earth, and Darkness, not sitting not waiting moving towards something, instead of being rooted.

IMO, all Runes have active and passive natures.  It is possible to have myths for any element that are active, but it just takes time to think through what it means and when it happened.

Look at Earth.  It's first action is to distinguish itself from Water.  How did it do that?  What's the story of that action?  What did Ga/Gata do to form her body?  Did she scoop up the black mud of Darkness and build herself a house, or a boat (a house-boat?)? 

What did she do next?  She organized it, decorated it, filled it with all sorts of mysteries (metals, gems, clay, etc.).  Where did she get, find, make, or grow those?  Each is a story, and each an opportunity for more action interacting with the Darkness, the Water, the formless substance of Chaos(!!!), and the Runes of Power.  If someone knows how to take the stuff of Chaos and Order it into something new, seems like a good bet it was Earth/Ga/Gata. 

And you can go on from there with the Green Age development.  Who gave birth to Grower and Maker?  Those are powerful forces that seem to have come out of the Earth.  Did Gata delve deep into herself to find these secrets?  And how does the Moon fit into this picture?  An ugly child of Earth?  Something else?

The stories are there - they just need to be brought out. 

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

It's a gendered archetype, definitely, one that's pretty widespread IRL as well. 

One thing that's worth digging into is distinguishing active vs. passive vis-a-vis violent vs. non-violent. Specifically, that we do not immediately qualify every event where someone performs a non-violent action as passive simply because they do not beat someone up. Chalana Array and Lhankor Mhy joining the Lightbringer Quest comes to mind, for example. Neither are archeypically violent (CA moreso, obviously). Both definitely very involved and proactive, though. 

I know there are examples of goddesses performing actions ("participating in things") in their own capacity and not primarily through or along with someone else (which, in fairness, happens a lot with Ernalda, because that's sorta her thing), such as Babeester or Maran Gor, Kyger Litor and obviously the Red Goddess or perhaps even Oslira to some degree, but listing these piecemeal might only serve to obscure rather than dispel the general trend of goddesses being less overtly proactive or involved than male gods.

I know this is something that's been discussed before, and it's also been brought up in relation to how RPGs often are kinda railroaded into simulating violence specifically rather than a wider range of human actions, possibly in this very thread. It's often easier for us as readers/gamers to recognize violent acts as innately active or noteworthy than other actions, even if that's not necessarily the case in Glorantha's canon, even. 

A bit rambly, I admit, but I guess what I mean overall is:

- There ARE examples of goddesses doing shit by and for themselves, but I think they are on average less likely to be explicitly violent acts and often therefore less easy to pinpoint and mentally make note of. 

- However, even with this isse of "apologetics", the criticism of goddesses more often having a supporting or "passive" role ("reactive" might be more accurate) stands true and this is something that can be rectified. 

- The theme of femininity in Glorantha strikes me as often one of social relations, which kinda makes less room for the kind of wild journeys and quests that the typical "heroic adventure" stories of gods and mortals are made of, but I admit this might be a bias of my reading. I know there are sample characters and many campaign characters who are women off doing stuff of their own accord, and there is likely some of that among the gods as well. Still, the themes of most of the feminine myths I can recall tend to be about establishing social relations (it's present in male god myths as well, because myths are often explanations for social customs or the like, but I'd argue it's less diagnostic for them.)

Dunno if this is a valuable contribution. It'd probably be more worthwhile for more women to speak together on what they take away from what's written. 

Edited October 6, 2021 by Sir_Godspeed