Sons and Daughters of the Sun

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Yeah. And then what?

Then he grows back, apparently even after being killed by Death.

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 4/27/2020 at 6:53 PM, jajagappa said:

If you go back to the Yelorna cult writeup you'll note: "Yelorna is the daughter of Yelm the sun god and of Ernalda, whom Yelm and Orlanth fought over. She took mostly after her father..."

So, not Ourania, or even a sky deity.  She's like Yelmalio and Yamsur in that regard.  

Yelmalio, Yelorna and Yamsur are Genert's Garden deities. There's a whole proto-Praxian culture thing that was utterly separate from Peloria, which is confused utterly because at least in the modern age, we think of Yelmalio and Yelorna and we think of the Bright Empire and of the territory where Yelmalio was rekindled. But historically, in my brain, the ashes of Genert's Garden may account for Yelmalio and Yelorna's tendency to self-mortification. They were survivors of the fallout, too. Genert's death left them grievously spiritually injured. I don't know what His relationship was with them, but they probably weren't deeply mortifying celibate weirdos back when they were playing in a garden of eden-analogue with a giant phallus fertility deity.

It's also why they are seemingly indifferent sometimes to the rest of the Solar Pantheon; they weren't part of Peloria, and they weren't inhaled like the Rinliddi (who bordered the Garden) were.

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

The status of Hrelar Amali as The City of the Gods implies a whole different scale on stoneworking and refinement to me than Göbekli Tepe, a large scale temple city complex large enough to several hundred people (even by 130 ST Hrelar Amali was still underpopulated for it's size, imo), that required multiple generations of people to create, making me think that skilled masons were involved in it's construction. (Not to speak ill of Göbekli Tepe, that's still impressive as hell.)

IMO it is called The City of the Gods because that's exactly what it was, already in the Golden Age. Gods inhabited it in person, and they or their servants erected the place. The Enerali were just one group of servants who persisted in the place, or who took the place over after most of the previous inhabitants had been slain or fled.

 

You make a cogent argument about the Mostali being anything but enamored of the idea of aiding and abetting a temple complex at the roots of Flamal. (Which almost makes it a good argument that they might have erected a memorial to celebrate his demise...)

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

The Mostali certainly have that skill, but thinking about Muse Roost and how expensive just the walls were for Ethilrist leads me to believe that the Dwarves of Nida aren't going to do a temple city complex on the cheap to help out the Enerali. (I know that the Dwarves of Dwarf Mine and the Nidan Dwarves aren't the same, but Bad Deal points towards them being similar in this regard for what amount of trading Nida does.)

Who said that anybody paid for the dwarf labor? There is a long standing and unfortunate tendency to enslave or otherwise compel captured artisans without much compensation. Think Willandring the giant smith of the Red Cow, waylandring his time amongst his captors' heirs.

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

Now Mostali as a source of tools isn't quite fine, again there's issue of how exorbitant the Nidan's prices are, if they did purchase the tools and training it also would leave us with skilled masons but without a society able to make the tools required to have developed, and maintain that skill for the multi-generational work Hrelar Amali would be.

Again, there are things like ransom, and the Mostali of old were able to craft and shape Adamantium tools, which never get dull. Mostal broke either by the birth or the crash landing of Umath, but the first Iron Mostali were only made after Death had been released from Subere's Vault, and Clay Mostali aka dwarves came even later - they are probably younger (as an Elder Race subspecies) than are Brown Elves or Cetoi and Piscoi Mermen.

No, if there were Mostali involved in the construction of Hrelar Amali, it would have been True Mostali, possibly captured or coerced away from some other repair site for the World Machine.

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

There's also even the question of if the Nidans were even willing to sell the skill of their workers, their tools, or to train the Enerali in their usage in the first place as it would be for memorializing an enemy of the Mostali, Flamal.

Like I said above, I don't think that the Enerali were involved in laying the foundations of Hrelar Amali. They may well have been involved in maintenance or reconstruction later on, but that's a different level of ability.

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

Jade is a possibility, but to my knowledge the nearest known source of it would be Dragon Pass or perhaps Esrolia, in the temple Baroshi will later fight Osboropo and the Chaos Maggot during the Chaos Wars being made of carved jade, so with Gloranthan works not giving us the answer then it's on to geology.

"Jadeite and nephrite are minerals that form through metamorphism. They are mostly found in metamorphic rocks associated with subduction zones. This places most jadeite and nephrite deposits along the margins of current or geologically ancient convergent plate boundaries involving oceanic lithosphere." -Hobart M. King, Ph.D., GIA Graduate Gemologist

Glorantha has no plate tectonics to speak of. Larnste planting mountain seeds or stomping a chaos entity on the ground are the closest we get, or otherwise the Elder Giants described in the Annilla Cult in RQ3 Troll Gods.

I would argue that a piece of solid Sky Dome dropping down to the ground as at Mt Selorn might produce comparable pressure and heat. But then, so might any birth pains experienced by the body of the Earth Mother, or possibly her orgasms, too. The womb is one of the most powerful muscles in human anatomy, IIRC.

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

As Ralios/Seshnela shows no volcanism in the coastal regions of Arolanit, Seshnela, and Tanisor from plate subduction as is found in the Ring of Fire for the Pacific Ocean's coastal regions, and that the Nidan Mountains, and Rockwoods seem to have not formed from oceanic subduction (They seem to have formed from continental collision, and therefore non-volcanic Orogeny, like the Himalayas), it is therefore unlikely that the Enerali had a source of jade to be used for stone mason tools.

There is one cosmogony that talks about colliding worlds, but that only created a single mountain: the Spike.

The Orogeny of the Rockwoods involves Larnste sowing a mountain chain after a request to separate two conflicting groups from one another. Whether by misunderstanding, out of spite, or for furthering change, Larnste did sow the mountains, but he separated both groups into a northern and a southern group, each partition still in contact with their opponents, but the separated groups developing into different new societies.

The Orogeny of the Nidan chain was caused by the Mostali who erupted those mountains in the middle of the Kachasti lands after the tactical mass-suicide of the Vadeli captives there. See Revealed Mythologies for that story.

The Mislari chain may have its own orogeny, but then I don't know it. I know the origins of two peaks, Selon and Doktados. Doktados or Hollow Mountain is the corpse of a former volcano, while Selon is a piece of Sky Dome that fell down.

The Tarin Mountains are the closest mountain range from Hrelar Amali. I don't know their orogeny story, but it may well have involved birth-pains or similar pressure.

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

There is also Vieltor, everything indicates that he's a pre-Theyalan smithing god, he's a known deity to the Enerali when the Theyalan missionaries reach Hrelar Amali, and as we can see with Orlanth, the Theyalans had zero issue with introducing their gods with the Theyalan name. Specifically he's Gustbran as I have said earlier in the thread, not some craftgod associated with soft metal smithing, but the fiery redsmith himself.

Whose bones would Gustbran or Vieltor have worked on in the Golden Age, I wonder?

But yes, the assembled gods (and demigods) of Hrelar Amali would have had their go-to magical artisan from among their number..

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

With the implied lavishness of Hrelar Amali as the City of the Gods requiring stone masons, expense of Nidan stone working tools being well outside the capabilities (or the ability, potentially) of the Storm Age Enerali to purchase on top of not being a multi-generational viable plan, zero access to jade, and finally with a pre-Theyalan smithing deity already present (Vieltor), we are left with but a single reasonable option Joerg, the late Storm Age Enerali were capable of metal smithing other than gold, and that it was lost in the Great Darkness.

Only if your assumption that Hrelar Amali was erected when all the world was falling apart is correct.

I think that an actual city of the gods at the foot of the World Tree is a more likely alternative.

I have no idea who constructed the cyclopean walls of the Vingkotling and contemporary king seats in Dragon Pass. Probably not the Vingkotlings themselves, but friendly or captured master builders from elsewhere, or otherwise foreigners as followers of their great kings doing so in gratitude for protection e.g. against the Flood. I don't think that the Enerali surpassed the Kethaelans as architects.

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

No, I doubt nearly anyone surviving was hit as hard as Tada's people in the Great Darkness, that's kinda what happens when your culture hero-god fights the would-be despoiler and annihilator of existence, and loses. But still the Enerali were hit hard, I have to imagine there was significant fallout from Hate Kills Everything that reduced the Enerali to what they were at the Dawn.

It is a miracle that anybody at all survived the Greater Darkness. The Enerali at Hrelar Amali did so in the ruins of the City of the (lost) Gods. King Dan led them already before the Dawn, in the Gray Age, to prepare for their eventual return from the Underworld, as the Ritual of the net had started to re-create what was left of the world. Unlike other groups like the Hagolings of Talastar, the Enerali needed no awakening from the Greater Darkness.

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

I have never been arguing that the Hykimi weren't capable of a megaliths or structures like Göbekli Tepe or their own innovations. Across this thread and the last I have argued that the Enerali developed a pastoralist civilization, for the Utoni and Fornaoli the pastoralism is Pure Horse, during the late Golden Age, and Storm Age to be capable to create Hrelar Amali, a large scale multi-generational stone construction comparable to something like Angkor Wat, and the Lartuli cliff relief, and that the knowledge and skill was lost to the Enerali as they survived the Great Darkness, but remains in small bits of their post-Dawn culture.

The Galanini appear to have practiced pure horse pastoralism alongside hunting and gathering. The Enerali were horse-breeders and plough-less agriculturalists cum hunter-gatherers, way more advanced than the Botai.

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

I have also argued previously that the Enerali were once Hykimi, but that it isn't all that relevant to them now as they stopped being Hykimi a long long time ago, it would be like trying to call a Runegate Elmali a Dara Happan from Murharazam's reign, it was that long ago.

The Enerali were at best half-blood Hykimi. That's a trait they share with the Pendali and (IMO most likely) the Enjoreli. There may have been Galanini who were more standard Hykimi, like the Basmoli brethren of the Pendali or the non-agricultural Tawari next to the Enjoreli. But then, the Tawari may have been pastoralist analogues to the Praxian Beast Riders, only way more numerous.

 

All of the western Hykimi who emerged from the Greater Darkness are post-apocalyptic groups who fled into a Hsunchen life-style for survival, re-discovering the ancient pure Hykimi/Hsunchen ways. But then, the Golden Age didn't have any requirements for the peaceful wanderers between the temple cities to pursue any agriculture, and is it pastoralism when humans and beasts share their herds?

The western Hykimi are different from the Beast Riders of Genert's Garden, but then they don't seem to have had the Storm Bull himself but only Founder-level deities leading them.

It isn't clear how much shape-shifting the Hykimi did at the arrival of the Kachisti. Some Orlanthi stories in Anaxial's Roster suggest that the Storm People of the region hid via shape-shifting into beast shape, and both the White Deer and the Wolf Kodigvari of Kethaela and Kerofinela exhibit such abilities during the Greater Darkness.

The dividing line between Serpent Brotherhood Hykimi and Hill Barbarian peoples of the West may be their survival pact and whether they relied on Earth-born demigod leaders or shamans.

 

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

Hrelar Amali was built after Eurmal/Zaval's murder of Flamal,

I can see how you derive that from the following quote, but I don't think that there was any great architecture done this late into the Gods War - not even cyclopean walls any more.

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

"and marks the place where Flamal, the God of Vegetation, was killed by Eurmal the Trickster." -pg 417 Guide Vol 2,

For an easier interpretation, there would have been Flamal's Tree surrounded by a city of temples.

 

4 hours ago, Mirza said:

it was basically the extreme of the late Storm Age/start of the Great Darkness that it was completed. (Kinda hard to build a temple city complex on the spot of a gods murder before he was murdered.)

Easy to build a City of the Gods around his living tree, though, and the remains of that city would mark the place where the tree was felled even though it was constructed way earlier, in a happier age.

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

That's his mythic economy. For those who love God Time paradoxes, Flamal was always the dead, dying and resurrected god even before the confabulation of Taker as death. His city is where that happens. Sacred Rebirth, which is a trick Eastern Brother Genert has yet to achieve and Southern Brother has yet to require. Of course all of this is buried in the seasons of elf and other schismatic cycles, green and brown, Utoni and Vustri, sun and storm, on and on. 

That ties in into the mystery of the Brown Elves and their sudden appearance when strict Monomyth demands that "nothing grows any more" (although entire agricultural civilizations sprung up and disappeared after the slaying of the Evil Emperor). And also into the mystery why there are Day-and-Night and Seasonal cycles reflecting Godtime (apparently already in the Gray/Silver Age) when the monomyth accompanying the God Learner mythical maps denies any such rhythms in Godtime.

The concept of days and of harvest seasons is implicit in the Golden and Storm Age cultures. Maybe Night was mitigated by the never-ceasing street light of the ziggurat orb in the sky (much like modern cities), maybe the seasons were a lot mellower than after the cataclysm that tore the world apart, and reduced it to a patchwork of mismatched shards held together by spider silk and compromise.

It is possible that Brightface's usurpation caused a Sunstop compated to the phasing sun of the White Queen before him. The God Learners never explored that in any depth, but then what they did to the layers of myths they encountered might be compared to fracking, extracting only the magics useful to them.

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I am not sure the old temple complex was stone or wood as we know it. When it died, the hard parts might have been locked into dead stone while other parts blew away on the wind. But that's a much more complicated story.

Like I replied to Mirza, I think that The City of the Gods predated the birth of Eneral by quite a bit, and while I do agree that the Enerali became the housekeepers of (mostly dead) Hrelar Amali and did repairs and some of their own sacred architecture, quite a lot of the architecture predates them and maybe was just re-purposed for their temples and needs. Much like the Bronze Age farmers around where I live re-purposed megalith places from the Neolithic farmers that preceded them into sacrificial places, only with way nicer architecture.

 

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I like bringing jade into the conversation. They might have had a cutting stone now lost to a history of systematic plunder, drawing on a source that has been cut off. The coast has a history of tectonic activity and there are local accounts of the Rockwoods emerging catastrophically via the living mountain seeds. The punchline to that one is that the local Lodril entity is an erosive force here, shaking the mountains down when they get tall enough to offend the sky. Greg likes erosion. Maybe the right landslide unearths something hard and sublime in the depths. Maybe something like glass. Somebody has since taken it all away or it wore out.

Flamal, the greatest of the Great Trees, was felled. It probably crashed down hard enough to have petrologicial consequences, too.

 

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Flamal was killed by the Trickster, as commemorated in Hrelar Amali. Zorak Zoran also killed him when he chopped him down using Death. The trolls ate all the plants, which killed Flamal, I think, but maybe that was the same thing as Zorak Zoran killing Flamal.

The Trickster killed Flamal by taking back the original Death from the Mostali (after they had turned it into an axe) and slipping that axe to ZZ, then getting him to chop down the tree.

If you like an uncomplicated monomyth with fewest possible contradictions, try that.

If you can live with convergent myths, Flamal probably had as many killers as Yelm (Verithurusa, Shadzor, Rebellus Terminus, the Bat). Eurmal and ZZ being just two of the conspirators.

 

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Yeah. And then what? The aldryami speak of multiple iterations of the Grower / Taker cycle. They remember multiple deaths and multiple rebirths. It isn't linear history and it isn't the wibbly wobbly of godtime either. Another mythic economy.

On the other hand, the Flamal Tree was the local version of the Spike, the World Mountain, likely the birthplace of Humat. (That still leaves Top of the World for Erulat.) Earlier death may have been escaped, but being cut down by real capital D Death may have broken those cycles.

 

29 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Then he grows back, apparently even after being killed by Death.

Coppiced, but un-deterred?

If Flamal grew back after the Greater Darkness, somebody surely would have noticed that tree, if he grew back on the Surface World of the mortals. E.g. the Theyalan missionaries, or the Seshnegi visitors before them, or the wielders of Vadeli magic to destroy the city in the second century.

The temple city was reborn several times before Monotheism put an end to those efforts. I am less sure about the tree of trees. Even if we are talking about a Hidden Green like site mainly outside of Time.

[Joerg]

35 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Yelmalio, Yelorna and Yamsur are Genert's Garden deities. There's a whole proto-Praxian culture thing that was utterly separate from Peloria,

And a lot of it was absorbed by the Vingkotlings who extended all the way into Saird. The sons and daughters of Vingkot were born to the twin daughters of Tada, the Summer and the Winter Wife.

Genert's Garden extended well into what is modern Pent. The orogeny of the Rockwoods cut off part of that, the Eder Wilds, and possibly separated Peloria from the southern culture that retained more of those traces. South of the Rockwoods, those influences may have continued, possibly even across the then still low Nidan hills.

There is evidence for Yelmalio in aldryami interactions both in the northern part of Genert's Garden and in the Greatwood to the west.

Yelorna/Galana may be tied to the celestial fallout of Mt. Selon on the western end of the Mislari chain. "ye" and "ga" aren't worlds apart linguistically, and neither are "lor" and "la".

(That doesn't invalidate a "Yelm-Ourania" origin for Yelorna, at all, though.)

 

35 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

which is confused utterly because at least in the modern age, we think of Yelmalio and Yelorna and we think of the Bright Empire and of the territory where Yelmalio was rekindled. But historically, in my brain, the ashes of Genert's Garden may account for Yelmalio and Yelorna's tendency to self-mortification. They were survivors of the fallout, too. Genert's death left them grievously spiritually injured. I don't know what His relationship was with them, but they probably weren't deeply mortifying celibate weirdos back when they were playing in a garden of eden-analogue with a giant phallus fertility deity.

Genert's death and Flamal's have similar consequences, even if they have different causes and time-lines.

And gods walk the world in numerous incarnations, which may at times meet and clash or meet and merge.

The unicorn is of course a phallic symbol par excellence. The virgins riding the phallic beast.. nuff said.

 

35 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

It's also why they are seemingly indifferent sometimes to the rest of the Solar Pantheon; they weren't part of Peloria, and they weren't inhaled like the Rinliddi (who bordered the Garden) were.

Dara Happa proper was mostly free of horses. Horses replace augner avilry rather late in the depictions, during the later Anaxial dynasty IIRC, well after their last gazzam perished. Ancient Dara Happa was a lot funkier than dour Plentonius suggests, at least IMG. Fluffy dinosaur howdas, riding birds and step pyramids, what's to dislike?

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Yelmalio, Yelorna and Yamsur are Genert's Garden deities.

Yamsur probably, but Yelmalio's core territory is in Saird, and Yelorna seems to be from Ralios.

The cults of both Yelmalio and Yelorna were introduced to Prax in Time, with one or the other known before that to the Praxians as Sun Daughter.

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

It's also why they are seemingly indifferent sometimes to the rest of the Solar Pantheon; they weren't part of Peloria, and they weren't inhaled like the Rinliddi (who bordered the Garden) were.

There are Solar Pantheons, but not one Solar Pantheon (there seem to be major distinctions between those of Teshnos, Saird, Ralios, and Peloria). I suspect we get a false view of Solar (and Storm) religions because the primary focus of published material has always been Dragon Pass.

Regarding jade: only yesterday writing non-canonical material for my current project, I referred to sacrifices of various things, including jade, to Safa.

[Tindalos]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Yelmalio, Yelorna and Yamsur are Genert's Garden deities.

Yamsur's appearance at Earthfall doesn't require him to be from Genert's Garden.

Honestly I'd regard it as a source of confusion if he was the god there, given how alien horses are to the wastes.

All we know is he was a fighter there, but given Storm Bull and members of the Celestial Court could have been there, it'd not be strange for a foreign god to battle there. And it's worth noting that he's been listed as part of the Yelm pantheon, but not the Praxian one. (Despite his death.)

[Joerg]

26 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

Yamsur's appearance at Earthfall doesn't require him to be from Genert's Garden.

Honestly I'd regard it as a source of confusion if he was the god there, given how alien horses are to the wastes.

All we know is he was a fighter there, but given Storm Bull and members of the Celestial Court could have been there, it'd not be strange for a foreign god to battle there. And it's worth noting that he's been listed as part of the Yelm pantheon, but not the Praxian one. (Despite his death.)

But then the Beast Riders are just a fringe population from Genert's Garden, much like the Baboons (who at least had an urban culture similar to that of the Tada-shi. Yamsur may have been the main deity for an entirely different group of inhabitants, essentially lost at Earthfall.

The northern part of Genert's Wastes is full of horses and horse riders. It is called Pent, and it has suffered a lot less Chaos damage than the southern parts. Still enough to eliminate most of the Golden Age culture of the Garden, though.

[Tindalos]

7 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The northern part of Genert's Wastes is full of horses and horse riders. It is called Pent, and it has suffered a lot less Chaos damage than the southern parts. Still enough to eliminate most of the Golden Age culture of the Garden, though.

I'd never seen Pent included as one of the regions inside the garden, which seemed to end at the Celestial Eagle Hills. But then with there being very little on Pre-dawn Pent, it's possible.

[Joerg]

1 minute ago, Tindalos said:

I'd never seen Pent included as one of the regions inside the garden, which seemed to end at the Celestial Eagle Hills. But then with there being very little on Pre-dawn Pent, it's possible.

The Troll Pak Uz Lore troll migration map shows two interactions with brown elves from the Garden and Yelmalio aiding them. Both are too far north to be part of the Beast Rider wastes, IMO.

All of the Garden had an ecology totally different from what you find there today. There were no human survivors far from the Shan Shan or the Rockwood Mountains, or the coasts. Tada's people only survived in Prax. A few of the Lesser Tribes appear to have survived outside of Prax - IIRC the Ostrich Tribe came in from the east.

Pent (outside of Orathorn) may have had reindeer-herding survivors after the Greater Darkness, but those probably joined or made up the Starlight Wanderers and flocked into Dara Happa around the time of Jenarong and became just another flavor of horse warlords. I don't think there were many (if any) nomads left in Pent, when they could be lords in the Pelorian basin already before the Dawn. And for a while, their presence was beneficial to the urban survivors of the bowl, like the Lendarshi. Still, after Alavan Argay, all horse warlords were expelled, and some were exchanged for Praxian ones.

[Ali the Helering]

20 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The Troll Pak Uz Lore troll migration map shows two interactions with brown elves from the Garden and Yelmalio aiding them. Both are too far north to be part of the Beast Rider wastes, IMO.

I read these as connected with Lentasia, a lost Aldryan forest if ever there were! 

The petrification l attribute to the Chaos Wars, although a link to the Uz is not impossible. 

[Tindalos]

23 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The Troll Pak Uz Lore troll migration map shows two interactions with brown elves from the Garden and Yelmalio aiding them. Both are too far north to be part of the Beast Rider wastes, IMO.

True, I'd forgotten those elves called Genert Lord, although their land is still quite far. And Yelmalio's presence isn't helped by the fact that Dara Happan remnants are part of that self-same force.

Those mountains thrown by Genert are likely those same Celestial Eagle Hills I mentioned.

1 minute ago, Ali the Helering said:

I read these as connected with Lentasia, a lost Aldryan forest if ever there were! 

The petrification l attribute to the Chaos Wars, although a link to the Uz is not impossible. 

Ah yes, the remnants of Tallseed Forest, thank you! I'd forgotten about them.

Given that's shown as gone by the time of the Second Council, I'm not sure if its Destruction can be laid at the feet of Arkat and Nysalor.

[Ali the Helering]

22 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

Ah yes, the remnants of Tallseed Forest, thank you! I'd forgotten about them.

Given that's shown as gone by the time of the Second Council, I'm not sure if its Destruction can be laid at the feet of Arkat and Nysalor.

On reflection IMG it will be due to a slow motion curse of Pocharngo's, transforming wood to rock. 

[dumuzid]

3 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

they probably weren't deeply mortifying celibate weirdos back when they were playing in a garden of eden-analogue with a giant phallus fertility deity.

My own research into Argan Argar and Darkness myth recently led me to looking into the star gods, which turned up these Yelorna details from her old cult write-up courtesy of jajagappa:

On 4/26/2020 at 12:21 PM, jajagappa said:

"She [Yelorna] began a battle with the children of dread Xentha, the night sky. To aid in this struggle, she brought Pole Star and some of his children to the world through the upper sky, with the blessing of Dayzatar. For bringing these gods into the battle, she obtained the sobriquet of “Starbringer.” At one point, Chalana Arroy healed her of several wounds suffered while Yelorna sought the Meteor Bow. This bow eventually became her main arm. She used it to hurl fiery missiles at Argan Argar in an epic struggle, but was badly beaten and almost extinguished by that son of Night. She escaped, but was weakened."

I wasn't aware of Yelorna's Ernalda/Genert connection until today though.  I'd been looking for myths dealing with the relationships between the stars and Xentha.  What I've found ist mostly bits like Yelorna mustering the star captains into the Sky Dome to oppose Xentha's new reign there.  Yet the stars hung in the night sky, without breaking the darkness and without being devoured by it, for an awful long time until they descended in the Great Darkness, where Argan Argar's son was also helping the last hold-out populations survive.  I can't help but wonder if the story of Yelorna's epic struggle with Argan Argar had a rather different connotation and conclusion in the part of the Gods War where Genert's Garden still exists.

[Mirza]

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

But not impossible!  

(I get it, though, if we're going to preserve any kind of sanity about this some level of causality, even in the God Time kinda has to be supposed.) 

I've always valued the internal narratives of the peoples of Glorantha, and other settings, so I already feel a bit bad for assigning these events to points on the Godlearner monomyth timeline, don't get me started.

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

- Hrelar Amali was to a large degree reappriopriated from some previous structure, potentially an abandoned Kachisti city/temple? 

The Kachisti were an ancient people of Law that had similar views towards the gods as the Brithini/Danmalastani. While yes, to their credit, they were certainly more willing to move about, and speak to other groups of peoples, and learn from them, why would they ever build a structure like Hrelar Amali right in the heart of the domain of Flamal?

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

- Do we know that no parts of Hrelar Amali were wooden? Not planks, per se, but magically purpose-grown? It is a temple of Flamal, after all, and even in death who knows what could be done. 

11 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I am not sure the old temple complex was stone or wood as we know it. When it died, the hard parts might have been locked into dead stone while other parts blew away on the wind. But that's a much more complicated story.

I do not think that wood or petrified wood are the construction of Hrelar Amali, it was left unattended for several thousand "years" until the Dawn when it was repopulated which rules out a wood construction as that wouldn't last the period of abandonment. For petrified wood, if Hrelar Amali were to be made of it, then wouldn't that be something notable about it, and in the descriptions we have? Like if there were a passage that says "The petrified city of the gods, Hrelar Amali", then I'd say sure, but there isn't so I have to assume it's probably made of the most reasonable construction material that can last as long as it did, stone.

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

IMO it is called The City of the Gods because that's exactly what it was, already in the Golden Age. Gods inhabited it in person, and they or their servants erected the place.

Hrelar Amali did not exist before Flamal's death as we have been told, moreover I cannot see Flamal even accepting it's construction while alive. Hrelar Amali is a stone construction, for as much as the Mostali are enemies of Flamal so is stone his enemy as well. To Flamal a stone city of the gods built around him would be wholescale rejection of him, Flamal's gifts are the bounty of the forest, the growth of life, to have a portion of his forest torn down just for some stone buildings is a grave insult.

But if Flamal is dead when construction occured then well there's no issue with his relation to stone, the forest is dead already, and every indication points towards that being the case.

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

No, if there were Mostali involved in the construction of Hrelar Amali, it would have been True Mostali, possibly captured or coerced away from some other repair site for the World Machine.

The Mostali were near the peak of their martial power during this time, in fact it is more likely to be the other way around, the Nidans as slave takers, like they did with the Kachisti, rather than those enslaved. As well I cannot see the Mostali idling around while the Enerali build Hrelar Amali for multiple generations with Mostali slave labor, the Nidans have zero problem just sending out the Irons to kill the Enerali if that's what they need to do to retrieve their people. Also if the Enerali had enslaved some Mostali, why wouldn't they just force them to teach the Enerali masonry, and smithing themselves? Like there are certainly secrets a Mostali isn't going to tell the Enerali even under pain of death, but redsmithing isn't one of those.

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

- Earth-shaping/Rock-shaping magic by way of Earth cults. 

The only known source of this magic is Mostali sorcery to my knowledge which still leads us to the same problems as before with them. Most earth cults seem to just build their temples and such with good old elbow grease, and artisinal skill, not earth shaping magic.

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

- Giants? 

The Jolanti weren't freed yet, and they are the kind of giants that have the Mostali stone shaping sorcery. As for True Giants, the Giants of Ralios are unknown to us, but like most other True Giants do not seem to be as knowledged or skilled in construction as the Rockwood Giants north of Prax. As well we again reach the question of wouldn't the Enerali just have the giants teach them the skill of stone masonry?

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Glorantha is an incredibly selectively realistic and unrealistic universe. This could be a good argument, or it could be entirely irrelevant depending on whichever writer takes a crack at it. Block of rock floating in an infinite ocean and all that. 

I can't speak to Greg or Jeff's knowledge of geology, but no texts to my knowledge have jade in Ralios, as I said the closest known source of jade is somewhere available to Dragon Pass, perhaps Esrolia, and Caladraland, because of the volcanic activity in that region, and thus a source for metamorphic rock and potentially jade.

There's nothing that indicates that jade has a different origin in Glorantha than it has in the real world, it is still a metamorphic rock that requires intense heat to form. In fact I would go so far as to say that there are myths in Glorantha where jade is a gift (or one of many) from Lodril to Ernalda for their marriage, but for the Enerali, Lodik never married Gata, and seems to not be associated with volcanos but fire as a whole, no wonder as there are no volcanoes in the region.

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

Orogeny

My point with the orogeny comment was to make it clear that neither the Rockwoods nor Nidan Mountains are the necessary source of metamorphic rocks to make jade tools a reasonable option for the period of time it would take to create Hrelar Amali, as their orogeny is most like continental collision than oceanic subductive orogeny. I do not deny their mythological origins, but that the result for what the peaks were composed of would be similar to the Himalayas.

Mount Selon wouldn't produce jade save in very small particles that wouldn't be useful for the Enerali as tool stone as they'd be embedded in impactite from the mountain crashing down, not as the kind of small chunks that could viably turned into a tool.

Doktados is on the other side of the Mislari Mountains from Ralios, it is a non-viable source of jade for the Enerali, presumably the Mislari have existed as long as the Rockwoods, with only Mount Selon coming crashing down later.

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Galanini appear to have practiced pure horse pastoralism alongside hunting and gathering. The Enerali were horse-breeders and plough-less agriculturalists cum hunter-gatherers, way more advanced than the Botai.

Right, I forgot you believed this, as I said however long ago it was, I still go with the answer that doesn't include there being another solar horse people, one Pure Horse and Hykimi, one not, but never mentioning the other in the same write-up.

The Galanini are the Solar Enerali, descendants of two sons of Eneral, Uton and Fornao, they are Pure Horse People.

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I get that it's more reasonable to look for RW-adjacent methods, but considering the examples we have from Glorantha that essentially amount to "and then they did a big ritual for lie a long time and *BAM* the thing they needed was there holy crap!", I'm a bit worried about getting "realism-myopia".

I hardly call it "realism-myopia" to say that a people had the ability to construct a stone temple city complex in Glorantha, right as their civilization hit it's peak, just before a sharp decline from the apocalypse going on.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Mirza

[Joerg]

6 hours ago, dumuzid said:

My own research into Argan Argar and Darkness myth recently led me to looking into the star gods, which turned up these Yelorna details from her old cult write-up courtesy of jajagappa:

I wasn't aware of Yelorna's Ernalda/Genert connection until today though.  I'd been looking for myths dealing with the relationships between the stars and Xentha. 

If you are looking for an opportunity of Yelorna going at loggerheads with Argan Argar, the arrival of the trolls at Halikiv under AA's leadership would place the Dark Walker in proximity to the sun horse riders of the Galanini.

 

6 hours ago, dumuzid said:

What I've found ist mostly bits like Yelorna mustering the star captains into the Sky Dome to oppose Xentha's new reign there.  Yet the stars hung in the night sky, without breaking the darkness and without being devoured by it, for an awful long time

According to the Copper Tablets, the stars only came out after Umath invaded the Sky. One of the planetary sons of Yelm enters Stormgate/the Pit, and in response the stars spill out into the sky, populating the previously unicolor Sun Dome. Plentonius' Dara Happan tallying of years places this 30,000 years before the disintegration of Yelm, followed by 11,000 years of Storm Age and Darkness (the Dominations of Antirius and Shargash).

 

6 hours ago, dumuzid said:

until they descended in the Great Darkness, where Argan Argar's son was also helping the last hold-out populations survive. 

The descent of Liorn and Forosil appears to date into Urvairinus reign (destruction of Elempur, loss of the Lastralgortelli before Nivorah). Garan and Sedenor may be later arrivals, as the Garanvuli form only in the ninth generation of descendants of Jorganos. The circumstances sound more like the reign of Manarlavus the Roofer.

 

6 hours ago, dumuzid said:

I can't help but wonder if the story of Yelorna's epic struggle with Argan Argar had a rather different connotation and conclusion in the part of the Gods War where Genert's Garden still exists.

The destruction of Genert's Garden predates the implosion of the Spike only by very little.

I am rather unsure when Oakfed would have been released in Prax - the worst of Valind's advance was before the Glacier was split by Chaos, nut the loss of the light on top of the Spike (or Flamal's tree) may have plunged the wrld further into Darkness and cold, independent from the Glacier.

 

1 hour ago, Mirza said:

Hrelar Amali did not exist before Flamal's death as we have been told,

That is an extremely narrow interpretation of "marks the place". Plus there is hardly any population left after ZZ's arrival, and most definitely not a dozen or so generations of that as your description mandates. Whitewall became the hilltop forest of Garan in the comparable situation, and it had much less in ways of temples (Orlanth, Ernalda, the founders, and Argan Argar are known). The holy site of Orlanth at Whitewall probably was established as a victory shrine over the Flood, around the time the Vingkotling kingdom was established generations earlier. Whitewall had a Star Captain coordinating the survivors.

 

1 hour ago, Mirza said:

moreover I cannot see Flamal even accepting it's construction while alive.

These deities already inhabited the tree - Ehilm its crown, Humat its boughs, etc.

The canopy of Flamal would make the area around its trunk rather sparsely populated by lesser trees or other plants, even with Ehilm residing in that canopy.

 

1 hour ago, Mirza said:

Hrelar Amali is a stone construction, for as much as the Mostali are enemies of Flamal so is stone his enemy as well.

That kind of "declare everything as enemy" thinking irritates me to no end.

Stone is part of the ground that Flamal roots on. A tree of Flamal's dimensions needs bedrock to stabilize its roots.

Aldryami groves are described using standing stones, too.

Hrelar Amali is a place of peaceful co-existence, that's its point. Dwelling overly much on petty hostility defies the mythic theme of the place.

 

1 hour ago, Mirza said:

To Flamal a stone city of the gods built around him would be wholescale rejection of him, Flamal's gifts are the bounty of the forest, the growth of life, to have a portion of his forest torn down just for some stone buildings is a grave insult.

Flamal is the bringer of fertility, not the warrior of doom. The temples may be rooted over on their lower steps, giving an Angkor vibe only if the masonry co-existed with the World Tree. Once Flamal had been hewn down, the strangling roots would no longer have expanded.

 

1 hour ago, Mirza said:

But if Flamal is dead when construction occured then well there's no issue with his relation to stone, the forest is dead already, and every indication points towards that being the case.

If Flamal was dead, then the massive trunk would have been the readily available and logical building material.

If the forest was dead, then what supported the civilization that toiled for generations to erect these monuments? The construction of great temples requires a great fertility to provide for the workers. 

 

1 hour ago, Mirza said:

The Mostali were near the peak of their martial power during this time, in fact it is more likely to be the other way around, the Nidans as slave takers, like they did with the Kachisti, rather than those enslaved.

Since you are looking at a different time-table than I do, this observation isn't that relevant.

You are also forgetting that the production of Clay Mostali produced a much lessened quality of workforce, with deviants that may drift away as misfits a greater probability. Hrelar Amali with its peaceful coexistence would have become an attractive destination for any defective Mostali.

 

Your story that the Enerali produce enough fertility in the worst period of the Greater Darkness to construct temples to all manner of foreign (and by this time probably dead) gods doesn't gel with the guarantor of that fertility gone and two major Chaos armies and a troll army led by Zorak Zoran roaming the region. Look at the Eleven Troll Battles map in Uz Lore, battle 9, The Great Victory. Within sight of Hrelar Amali, two Chaos hordes battle it out as they don't have any other foes left, then Zorak Zoran springs an ambush. That's not an environment where you produce enough food for subsistence, let alone a surplus that can go into building a temple city.

 

[Mirza]

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

That is an extremely narrow interpretation of "marks the place". Plus there is hardly any population left after ZZ's arrival, and most definitely not a dozen or so generations of that as your description mandates.

Yeah, it is the narrow view of "marks the place" but that's sorta the common interpretation of that phrase with that context. If I were say something marks the place you're either saying the thing marked is either measured for some kind of construction, destruction or alteration in a project (writing, building, carpentry, treasure hunting, etc), or that something commemorates or memorializes the location is some way for an action that previously occurred there.

If it were to say that something happened there, or some other more passive phrasing that doesn't imply causality like the other descriptions of Hrelar Amali in the Guide, I wouldn't have ever even attempted to argue this, but it's not, instead it's a phrase that's almost always used in context for stuff like memorials, plaques, signs built afterwards so that they can learn of whatever happened.

I do not think that Hrelar Amali took 12 generations of building, that's around 240 years or so, and as Angkor Wat (still my mental image) took around 100 years, closer to 5 generations is my estimate, and I am not so sure that Zorak Zoran left "hardly any population left". The Lartuli cliff relief depicts the Solar Horse Woman fighting the Dragon Ruler of the Underworld, I would date this relief to the Middle to Late Storm Age after the Uz had left Wonderhome and fought the Enerali, and it's certainly not a monument to just Zorak Zoran killing everyone, from it I'm willing to say that the Storm Age Enerali held their own for the forays the Uz made that far west.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

That kind of "declare everything as enemy" thinking irritates me to no end.

I will give you this, yeah that was a misstep on my part, my bad.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

If Flamal was dead, then the massive trunk would have been the readily available and logical building material.

I'm not so sure that Flamal's body was still around, Zorak Zoran is still an Uz deity and hunger is a part of him, moreso he's a god that wields fire. I'm no poet, or really all that creative, but you could probably say the "consuming flames of Zorak Zoran" or some such after he chopped Flamal down.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

If the forest was dead, then what supported the civilization that toiled for generations to erect these monuments? The construction of great temples requires a great fertility to provide for the workers. 

Yeah I made a mistake, again, and decided for a dumb statement that in the moment I thought was better than it clearly was. Flamal was dead, yes, but thinking, the earth sleep would take more than just Flamal's death in Ralios as Rala, and Gata still provide earth fertility til they eventually went to sleep/died as well.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

Your story that the Enerali produce enough fertility in the worst period of the Greater Darkness to construct temples to all manner of foreign (and by this time probably dead) gods doesn't gel with the guarantor of that fertility gone

As I said, I think that Flamal's death occured in the late Storm Age as is backed up by the God Learner Maps in the Guide, before the Earth went to sleep, and so Hrelar Amali was started or more than likely even finished during that age. It's true that the Earth after even just Flamal's death would be reduced in fertility, but Rala and Gata haven't died yet, and I do not think that any of the gods the Enerali worshiped would be considered "estranged" at this point.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

Look at the Eleven Troll Battles map in Uz Lore, battle 9, The Great Victory.

Isn't that Hate Kills Everything? That took place well after the end of construction of Hrelar Amali in my timetable, like maybe several hundred years (well "years") after the completion of Hrelar Amali, maybe somewhat longer if Six Ages perspective on the God Time is to be taken as accurate. (According to an event in Six Ages it's been thousands of years since Yelm was killed by Orlanth, with "current" times being Valind's Glacier bearing down on Vanch.) I don't think that the Great Darkness just took a hundred years to occur, or at least for Hate Kills Everything to occur, and as I have said in a previous post, Hate Kills Everything massively messed up the Enerali even in my version of events.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Mirza

[dumuzid]

13 hours ago, Joerg said:

If you are looking for an opportunity of Yelorna going at loggerheads with Argan Argar,

We all already know plenty about how Light and Dark have fought.  What I am more interested in is when and how they've made peace.

[Sir_Godspeed]

29 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

We all already know plenty about how Light and Dark have fought.  What I am more interested in is when and how they've made peace.

I'm getting the impression that the various incarnations of Moon has been there somewhere.

[dumuzid]

14 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I'm getting the impression that the various incarnations of Moon has been there somewhere.

Or Genert as a mediator, the way Pamalt seems to be in his part of the cosmos--or indeed both.  In any case, it seems to be a form of elemental interplay that lost some of its necessary components in the Greater Darkness.

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, dumuzid said:

We all already know plenty about how Light and Dark have fought.  What I am more interested in is when and how they've made peace.

The teachings of Nysalor unified and fused together the Storm and the Solar religions, under a mystically oriented demigod.

That ended well...

[scott-martin]

11 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

The teachings of Nysalor unified and fused together the Storm and the Solar religions, under a mystically oriented demigod.

Nice. When you worship the light exclusively, the storm looks dark. When you worship the storm, the thunder darkens and the lightning lightens.

For me the tragedy of the Council was when politics and prejudice determined that the new god would be bright. The dark quite rightly objected. But in a black-and-white world, he had to be one or the other.

[Sir_Godspeed]

52 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

Or Genert as a mediator, the way Pamalt seems to be in his part of the cosmos--or indeed both.  In any case, it seems to be a form of elemental interplay that lost some of its necessary components in the Greater Darkness.

Possibly, but it's also possible that the Sun overstepped its authority already with the beginning of the Golden Age, as outlined in the Brightface myth in the Entekosiad. That's very far back, though.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Sir_Godspeed

[Qizilbashwoman]

9 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Possibly, but it's also possible that the Sun overstepped its authority already with the beginning of the Golden Age, as outlined in the Brightface myth in the Entekosiad. That's very far back, though.

It's very far back but boy the karma kickback sure did come singing in with a banger eventually, didn't it?