Your Dumbest Theory

[Ormi Phengaria]

The atheists of God Forgot are kind of a special case even in the sometimes foreign Gloranthan usage of that term. Postmisotheism? God was real, he lived among us, and he was an unreliable fool who got our hopes up and then dashed them against the rocks again and again. A tragic kind of Trickster, maybe.

This is also a population primed and ready to learn from those mistakes and do it better, if they ever discovered or were given the knowledge and power to do so.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

Postmisotheism? God was real, he lived among us, and he was an unreliable fool who got our hopes up and then dashed them against the rocks again and again.

On the term misotheism (which I had to look up, but which fits nicely):

Quote

It is comparable to the original meaning of Greek atheos of “rejecting the gods, rejected by the gods, godforsaken” … Applying the term to the work of Philip Pullman …, [Bernard] Schweizer clarifies that he does not mean the term to carry the negative connotations of misanthropy: “To me, the word connotes a heroic stance of humanistic affirmation and the courage to defy the powers that rule the universe.” — Wikipedia, Misotheism: Terminology

[scott-martin]

2 hours ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

A tragic kind of Trickster, maybe.

Tell Thaumas the great god malkion is dead.
 

Of course a lot of the really developed trickster influences were collected in Slontos and either didn't make it or found a way to be transformed into something else. We can't know. Same as usual!

[Ormi Phengaria]

Let's see what happens when we read "A God Forgot Story" as a recollection of Western wanderings, the Speaking Tour and the Expulsion Walk.

First is the ancestors of God Forgot living with their god.

Second we have the Kachisti. In this view, they are wandering to find their god. If they understand their god as communication, that's already compatible with the Speaking Tour.

Third, they settle with the help of a goddess. This is most likely a land goddess, and I think the only viable candidate if we are to name one is Seshna Likita. They are driven from this place by unnamed waves of invaders. Nidan Mostali, Vadeli, Aerlithi, Banthe, or others.

Fourth, they settle with the help of a son. Their god dies to Trickster and they are driven away by Hyalor. This seems to me as pointing inland to Tanisor, Ralios, and the Enerali.

Fifth, a Chaos place, with another son. There's a loose inference this is New Malkonwal. Most interesting here is the mention of their god becoming imprisoned by Argan Argar. Later, we we would know such a god as being named Veskarthan, Caladra, or Lodril. Here I recall the Malkion of the Fifth Action being Elmalkion, Malkion the (G)Old.

Quote

Then Malkion the Founder summoned the powers of the Creator to recognize itself through the Hidden Power of the Fifth Action, and to reorganize the world around him. It worked, but not well.

The foes of his people became the Demons of Matter and the Krjalki of Entropy. They spread everywhere. Malkion died, and the Tower of Reason crumbled. The survivors found their only refuge in the Caves of Instinct.

Lastly, they fled to the Leftarm Islands. I once discovered something interesting here, in the Greater Darkness: moving southeast from Heortland, the Pole Star vanishes behind Kero Fin, and the archipelago is bereft even of that flickering light.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Ormi Phengaria

[metcalph]

I see the God Forgotten story as suggesting they are the descendants of the Feldichi.  If they had fought with the Enerali, then they wouldn't mention Hyalor in their myths.

[Ormi Phengaria]

26 minutes ago, metcalph said:

I see the God Forgotten story as suggesting they are the descendants of the Feldichi.  If they had fought with the Enerali, then they wouldn't mention Hyalor in their myths.

That's very dubious to me. Most likely, Hyalor means "horse-riders". The specificity of the horse-riders or the name of their founder hero is immaterial to a tale post-dating Belintar. Also, if they were coming from future Dorastor, what sea would they be fleeing across?

Addendum: That's not to say that the Feldichi don't have some kind of distant relationship here. Friendly with Aldryami, hostile with Mostali, founded by a being identified in Talastar as Eurmal who is also called the father of ogres. There are a lot of threads to trace. If they do have a Western heritage on some level, I'd expect them to have come from the north, after the Flood Age.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Ormi Phengaria

[Ormi Phengaria]

So let me pull and be pulled, it's that kind of day. The Feldichi. Sources are lacking. To read them, we must read from context. Starting with the surrounding regions:

On the other side of the Rockwoods, we have the Enerali. Dorastor lies between the western and eastern horse peoples. Parts of the Enerali become friendly with both elves and, most interestingly, unicorns, spurious and anachronistic as it is. Other than that, the Enerali and the Feldichi seem to have little in common.

Towards Peloria either northeast or southeast, there is another spurious and anachronistic link in the form of the Gold Wheel Dancers, who are their own set of unknowns. They are also linked to fabulous creations and fading from Time, and both historic named Yardoni seemed invested in the Unity which Dorastor represented.

North is where it gets interesting. This is the land of Keftavar and the Plow, Vanstal, between the Esel and Doresel rivers. Here there are contests with the Metal Shapers, and Keftavar gains the Plow. There is food for everyone now, but they castrate his brother (perhaps over winning the contest) and in return Keftavar stamps the ground into hard earth, making them need the plow.

Here was a tribe called Enelvi. It split in half, one remaining in Vanstal and the other following the hero Kereus to fight the Orendanarans who were mistreating the Enelvi's Wendarian kin. They won, becoming kings of Bindle and establishing suzerainty over the blue peoples of the Sweet Sea and its rivers. Later the bulls headed east to Lake Oronin to fight Yargan and his Kingdom of Logic(!), again succeeding. Bisos killed Yargan, but fascinatingly brings him back to life. He respects his opponent that much. The Cannibal God.

There are other blue peoples, who fled the bull to live beneath the water, or made distant mountains for themselves, or perhaps went elsewhere. But it's reasonable to assume that this empire still contained many Logicians, and the descendants of the Metal Shapers (the ancient Wendarian men), and the bull-folk, and the Oroninae, and Naverians with their Jernotian Way. That's quite the suggestive mix for this search.

Anyway, the bulls win by violence and everything is perfect and wonderful, we eat the food of the gods, and so on. What happens next is almost farcical in its implications. It's short but I won't reproduce it here. "The Bad Gods" in the Bisos Cycle of the Entekosiad. After those terrible gods have their way, the world is growing colder. Food isn't growing so well. Obviously, the answer is for the bulls to invade their own ancestral lands of Vanstal. They kill the False King and take his warmer lands. And everything is better again! We aren't told where the ancient other half of the Enelvi or the river people go.

Some ages later, the Theyalans find Dorastor a land of ruins and hard-packed earth, but no people. It is settled by the Plow Clan.

[e: I forgot Yargan's (or his god's) taste for human life.]

Edited June 24, 2023 by Ormi Phengaria

[metcalph]

On 6/24/2023 at 12:14 PM, Ormi Phengaria said:

That's very dubious to me. Most likely, Hyalor means "horse-riders". The specificity of the horse-riders or the name of their founder hero is immaterial to a tale post-dating Belintar. Also, if they were coming from future Dorastor, what sea would they be fleeing across?

The Hyalorings were a specific tribe in Peloria.  If the God-Forgotteny had fought the Galanini or the Enerali, then the legend would have said so.  As for the sea, the last place before then was 

Quote

After many losses and miseries, the survivors of the tribe were chased towards a place where Chaos creatures lived. Again they made a great sacrifice, and another son appeared to help them. But he broke his weapon, and was then taken prisoner by the hordes of Argan Argar.

That sounds like the Vent to me (Lodril came to earth in the Sky Spear to impale a chaos thing.  But the spear snaped and he was later imprisoned by Argan Argar) and crossing the sea to the Leftarm isles indicates that the sea would be the Mirrorsea or whatever it was known then.

 

 

[scott-martin]

5 hours ago, metcalph said:

The Hyalorings were a specific tribe in Peloria.  If the God-Forgotteny had fought the Galanini or the Enerali, then the legend would have said so.  

Ordinarily I would follow this line of logic but this time it gets complicated. Greg already had access to the Ralian horse cult names and history in the early (c. 1980) mythic development of the Holy Country and yet someone called "Hyalor" (Hyalorings, Hyalorela) emerges a key competitor against the proto-Esrolians and other ancestral communities. 



This might not be "our" modern Hyalor of course. If not for its persistence in the GF story it would be easy to write it off as another of those cases where Greg recycles a name in a dramatically different historical context and hopes we'll negotiate the translations on our own. And of course we can construct hypotheses to explain how two Hyalor horse tribes emerge in the prehistory of both Peloria and the Mirrorsea basin: maybe the GF progenitors encountered the Pelorian culture early in their expulsion and that became their generic term for horse tribe of this type (instead of using Eneral or Galanin more familiar to the people who would become the Seshnegites), maybe the eastern horse diaspora had made it down to the coast by this point so these are "southern hyalorings," etc.

IMG the persistence of Hyalor in the MOLAD rites makes the world richer so it stays. Other Gloranthas will vary . . . there are hints that these people were the real original ancestors of Mirrorsea storm/air people, for example, which I think the archaeology no longer really supports. But in the rarefied atmosphere of the tournament, this is the name they used and the story they told, the story surviving participants remember. Whether Belintar drew the name and the story from archaic Esrolian sources, God Forgot, both or neither is probably an empty question unless someone can recollect enough of that phase of the tournament to make an educated guess.

[scott-martin]

Dumb Theory: the failed continent of Jrustela was once what we call the historical Brithos. Apparent discrepancies in location can be explained any number of ways: a bad reconciliation between mapping systems, known "jumper shift" as compass points rotate about 45 degrees, tectonic disaster, mostalic meddling, deep magic. This makes the relationship between the Blue Man and the god learner establishment unusually interesting.

But if we're still talking about Hyalor, here's something fun, textual evidence for the "Not Yet" story:

[mfbrandi]

15 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

But if we're still talking about Hyalor

He used to be called Hyalor Butterfingers for his clumsiness, but after he blew the first glass horses, he became Hyalor Horsebreaker. This is the true connection for horses. Flesh-and-blood horses came later.

Hideous images hidden to protect your eyes:

Spoiler

(Oh, and one is always allowed to suspect Voralan involvement — them’s the rules.)

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 6/23/2023 at 5:43 PM, mfbrandi said:

On the term misotheism

One of my favorite series of blog posts is about dystheism (god(s) exist(s) and they hate us)

https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/11/god-hates-orcs.html

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Dumb Theory: the failed continent of Jrustela was once what we call the historical Brithos. Apparent discrepancies in location can be explained any number of ways: a bad reconciliation between mapping systems, known "jumper shift" as compass points rotate about 45 degrees, tectonic disaster, mostalic meddling, deep magic. This makes the relationship between the Blue Man and the god learner establishment unusually interesting.

I'm afraid that this is closer to canon than a dumb theory has any rights to be.

Jrustela is a remnant of greater Brithela, aka Danmalastan, the ancestral land(s) of the Vadeli. The island on the edge of the Neliomi Sea is only a portion of that mainland, although it still contains a number of significant features like Kala's Hills (the birthland of Dronar and/or Dromal, children of Kala and (an incarnation of) Malkion).

More to the point, the Curustus Range is what remains of Magnetic Mountain, plus the western mass of the Spike foothills that escaped the implosion of the Spike through attraction to Magnetic Mountain. (Possibly including bits of the actual Spike, aka Truestone.)

As far as I can discern, the island of Brithos somehow ended up on the Genertelan/Neliiomi side of the Breaking of the World, with the main rift aimed at the core lands of Endernef (and occupied/corrupted Zerendel, the Kadeniti homelands). Parts of Old Seshnela were considered Brithelan turf, too, like Neleoswal.

The definition of Brithela varies a lot, and might be limited to the island of Brithos in Enrovali territory at other mentions.

[Joerg]

IMG Hyalor was a man from Genert's Palace, a descendant of Yamsur who had neglected the welfare of his steed for too long to recover Hippogriff intact. When the Starlight Ancestors migrated eastward along the edge of the Glacier, Hyalor entered from the Redlands from the opposite direction.

There is a slight possiblility that the Clawfoot tribe of Eirithans was actually a tribe of equine riders that committed a breach of a taboo (before Waha made breaking such a taboo obligatory).

[Ormi Phengaria]

10 hours ago, scott-martin said:

This might not be "our" modern Hyalor of course. If not for its persistence in the GF story it would be easy to write it off as another of those cases where Greg recycles a name in a dramatically different historical context and hopes we'll negotiate the translations on our own. And of course we can construct hypotheses to explain how two Hyalor horse tribes emerge in the prehistory of both Peloria and the Mirrorsea basin: maybe the GF progenitors encountered the Pelorian culture early in their expulsion and that became their generic term for horse tribe of this type (instead of using Eneral or Galanin more familiar to the people who would become the Seshnegites), maybe the eastern horse diaspora had made it down to the coast by this point so these are "southern hyalorings," etc.

There is also the existence of the eku ponies in Maniria and Ralios around the Mislari foothills and valleys. This isn't just an ancient population of wild horses, but the descendants of horses which refused to serve Kargzant and be ridden. The Rockwoods and the Mislari are often hinted to be less impassable than presumed, and I'd say that certainly riders could have crossed the Mislari if the ponies can. Those secrets are just lost to us. Whether riding came across the Rockwoods as Hyalor isn't really as important as acknowledging that there were riders in western Genertela in the Godtime (though it is my belief that it did).

[scott-martin]

On 6/25/2023 at 4:53 PM, Joerg said:

I'm afraid that this is closer to canon than a dumb theory has any rights to be.

I need to try harder!

The dumbness inherent in the Jrustelan Identity Hypothesis is figuring out where Hrestol goes and where the Return To Righteous crusade comes from if "Brithos" was only what we called Jrustela in the dawn age. It works but there's some slightly strenuous calisthenics involved.

More on horses later. I still owe a response to the previous horse thread. Busy season.

---

Form runes only superficially refer to the type of "body" you have. Each really represents an equally robust relationship to death. This means that for example the original Agi might not have Man as we know it. On the other hand, in the Arbennan system they may use runes that are elements in the north as their "forms" and vice versa, much as they swap in powers in the East.

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, scott-martin said:

there's some slightly strenuous calisthenics involved. More on horses later.

Callisthenics on horses — it is what the world needs, especially a world under a big top.

       The boy was in the hallway drinking a glass of tea
       From the other end of the hallway a rhythm was generating …
       In the sheets, there was a man
       Dancing around to the simple
       Rock and roll song

[mfbrandi]

Mallia — Mother of Microbes — has many faces (and no masks). For example:

• Mallia — Who Passes Us By (Mallia of the Wink)
• Mallia — Eater of the Living (Mother of Disease)
• Mallia — Eater of the Dead (Parent of Putrefaction)
• Mallia — Eater of the Sun (St. Mallia of the Chloroplasts)
• Mallia — Mother of Mitochondria (Mistress of All Tomorrow’s Parties)
• Mallia — Variegator of Leaves (Mallia Mosaica)

She is also a healing goddess:

• Mallia — Parent of Phages

[mfbrandi]

Over in the other place, they were discussing the pros and cons of becoming a god because, you know, “in Glorantha the gods are real” and all that. It occurs to me that the reality of the gods and the category of god occurring in respectable Gloranthan natural science are two different things.

Prime ministers are real — and prime minister is a real category (legit. predicate, if you like), but it is not a category that natural science has any truck with, and we are not expecting to see a reduction of the category to some complicated nat. sci. gobbledegook. Efficient causation has no truck with prime ministership.

So is being a god more like [a] being made of platinum and having nitric acid for blood or is it more like [b] being prime minister? We can imagine that the godlearners started off firmly in the [a] camp but through [ahem!] rigorous application of scientific method moved into the [b] camp: “science has no room for folk concepts like god and worship, and we can exploit the gods without recourse to them.” The gods — being preening narcissists, like most prime ministers — were firmly in the [a] camp: if you want to understand how the gears of the world mesh, you have to understand us as gods. Unfortunately for the MSE, the godlearners were better chemists, physicists, and magicians than psychologists of the gods — they knew how their chariots worked, but not their tender egos — and that is why the godlearners got squished.

So the late godlearners got wise, and that was their folly. But post-Middle Sea Empire a crude early-stage godlearnerism — in which theological concepts lay at the heart of Gloranthan natural science, named the gears of the world — was popularised by Gloranthan Jungs, von Dänikens, and like snake-oil salesmen. So now common-sense religion of the “don’t argue with me, Sunny Jim, this hand has shaken the right hand of Orlanth … well, one of his right hands” variety is (in Genertela) dominated by a debased second-hand godlearnerism. That is why the gods haven’t squished them: they lack insight. This seems to suit the boorish mortals and the vain gods just fine. Perhaps in the figure of Argrath, this “just enough to be dangerous” approach will bite the gods — and likely many others — in the arse.

Meanwhile, what do the quietly, thoughtfully, sincerely religious think? One strand may be something like this: “The prime minister is one who legitimately holds power; legitimacy is a normative concept. Similarly, a deity is one who is worthy of worship or [insert religious concept here], and worth, or desert, is a normative concept, too. A god ought to be shown respect, but you cannot derive one “ought” from an ocean of purest “is” — recite all the awesome powers and mighty deeds of your putative god, still nothing will close that gap. No array of storms and waterfalls, none of your Mostali telescopes and microscopes, nor even the wing of a butterfly will reveal the divine.” Then she crossed her legs and levitated out of the room, swishing her tail and humming the Ode to Joy.

Edited July 4, 2023 by mfbrandi
clarity

[JRE]

A mystic would say "we are all gods, but we have to learn to let all wants go, and leave our godhood, to leave this universe. Those capitalized Gods are those who want things so strongly that they become one with their want, and at a certain point they no longer are an individual, but a mechanism of the Universe.

To avoid the entanglement is the only way to be free. Illumination deceives you, thinking you are free, when you are even more entangled with both your old and new viewpoints.

Gods in Glorantha can only do a limited set of things, but their mortal followers can "train" them to do new things, usually at the expense of something else. As such, they are the World and its natural laws, though mortals (people who still are free) can change the laws. But then the new law becomes part of you, and you are in the path of imprisonment and godhead.

[mfbrandi]

Eighth Wane Spiritual Exploration as arms race.

When Oppy said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” I don’t think he meant that the Manhattan Project was an example of spiritual exploration. And I like to think that he was not acquiescing to the duty handed him, but expressing horror at what he had done. Call me a sentimental old fool if you must.

——————————————————————————————
I AM TIME, DESTROYER OF WORLDS.
Even before you act, all these warriors,
rank upon rank in the opposing armies,
are already dead. I have destroyed them.
From the perspective of eternal time,
the everlasting present,
those men you see lined up, eager for battle,
full of the vigour of their youth and strength,
are dead already.
The bodies which have known cold and heat,
pleasure and suffering, already carry
death and decomposition in their bones.

“The Pandavas will be victorious. Now
rise up, hero. Be my instrument!”

— Mahabharata, A Modern Retelling, Carole Satyamurti, p. 418
——————————————————————————————

Krishna as Gbaji, and not in a good way.

Edited July 22, 2023 by mfbrandi
added link to review of Ray Monk’s Oppenheimer biography

[mfbrandi]

Well with the Sartarites, we have a slightly lower percentage of society engaged in food production …

• 15% animal husbandry – main cults Orlanth Adventurous, Ernalda

 — Jeff Richard
——————————————————————————————

His educational career began interestingly enough in agricultural school,
where he majored in animal husbandry,
until they caught him at it one day.

— Tom Lehrer
——————————————————————————————

Well, at least we now know why the subcult is called “adventurous”.

Edited July 6, 2023 by mfbrandi
horizontal lines

[metcalph]

57 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Eighth Wane Spiritual Exploration as arms race.

When Oppy said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” I don’t think he meant that the Manhattan Project was an example of spiritual exploration. And I like to think that he was not acquiescing to the duty handed him, but expressing horror at what he had done. Call me a sentimental old fool if you must.

His actual words after the first test were "Well, I guess that worked".

[mfbrandi]

25 minutes ago, metcalph said:

His actual words after the first test were "Well, I guess that worked".

Well, I guess it did. That people discuss the quality of the translation and attribute to Oppenheimer a Sanskrit teacher suggest that he probably said it or wrote it at some time — but I wasn’t there, and I don’t know. I think I probably picked it up from the Sam Waterston TV series or from an article written in response to it.

[mfbrandi]

Relocating Prax to the Home Counties

The Rothschilds had their share of eccentrics, and for that we give thanks. Now:

• Walter Rothschild … the man behind the spectacular collection of specimens housed in the Natural History Museum at Tring … There are three things that people tend to know about Walter Rothschild — that he trained three zebras to pull a carriage, that he was obsessed with the classification of cassowaries and that he was once photographed sat upon a giant tortoise.
  — Waddesdon, A Rothschild House & Gardens

• Pavis Wood is an area of woodland on a hill located near Hastoe in Tring, north-western Hertfordshire, England.
  — Pavis Wood

So, which hellhole of the Wastes do we equate with Grays in Essex?

No? Well, it was worth a try.