Your Dumbest Theory

[metcalph]

Past ideas I have had:

Vashanti is Lhankor Mhy

Sheng Seleris and Argrath heroquested back to the Nights of Horrors to kill the Red Emperor and stuff up the Lunar Empire.

Shargash is Zorak Zoran.  

GanEstoro is Argan Argar.

Ompalam is Pamalt.

Xemela is Chalana Arroy.

 

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

 

There is only one heroquest with 4 steps

you start, you challenge, you finish, you come back with something

 

Failure and success don't exist, it is just what you bring back (curse , death...) that describe if the quest is a failure or a success

[Darius West]

On 6/15/2020 at 10:00 PM, qws2 said:

God Forgot people's dead god is really Genert, not Malkion. They were Earth-worshiping Logic people, and now pretend brithni. 

Zistor was just a effort to reconstruct Genert. Unfortunately, machine was not solution.

Hats off to this one.

[Qizilbashwoman]

7 hours ago, metcalph said:

Past ideas I have had:

Vashanti is Lhankor Mhy

Sheng Seleris and Argrath heroquested back to the Nights of Horrors to kill the Red Emperor and stuff up the Lunar Empire.

Shargash is Zorak Zoran.  

GanEstoro is Argan Argar.

Ompalam is Pamalt.

Xemela is Chalana Arroy.

I have fun questions, because we have discussed Ompalam being one of the faces of Pamalt (the Chaos face)

Shargash as Zorak Zoran is very fun, and while it contradicts "canon", insofar as canon exists, does that make Shargash the Darkness Sun?

[Sir_Godspeed]

44 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I have fun questions, because we have discussed Ompalam being one of the faces of Pamalt (the Chaos face)

Shargash as Zorak Zoran is very fun, and while it contradicts "canon", insofar as canon exists, does that make Shargash the Darkness Sun?

I've lately been mulling over the idea that Shargash might, in addition to the Red Planet, also be the setting sun, the evening red, etc. This thread is a pretty good place for that theory, since it doesn't really fit anywhere in the chronology and causes more headaches than it solves. But I kinda like it nonetheless.

[metcalph]

5 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Shargash as Zorak Zoran is very fun, and while it contradicts "canon", insofar as canon exists, does that make Shargash the Darkness Sun?

It came to me many years ago wondering if Shargash was so important, why wasn't he mentioned in Cults of Prax?

I qualify the theory somewhat these days by making Shargash the equivalent of Amastan, the fire spirit caught by Zorak Zoran and that Shargash has his own dark shadow, through which he can obtain darkness magics.  So really Shargash and Zorak Zoran have become Cosmic Twins of Fire and Darkness, worshipped throughout glorantha by many people unaware of their true nature.

[Ian Absentia]

1 hour ago, metcalph said:

So really Shargash and Zorak Zoran have become Cosmic Twins of Fire and Darkness, worshipped throughout glorantha by many people unaware of their true nature.

I really like the visual of a twin god, back-to-back with opposite natures.  Every time they turn around to see what the other is doing, the other turns as well.  Fire never sees Darkness, Darkness never sees Fire.

Sorry, sir, your theory is too intriguing to be "dumb".  You lose!

Next!!

!i!

[g33k]

21 hours ago, Crel said:

Bouncing off of Jeff's comments over in the Kallyr's LBQ thread...

It's suspicious to me just how similar the Seven Mothers' story is to the Lightbringer's Quest, and I believe there's some canon/apocryphal stuff about God Learnerism and using the LBQ or whatnot, but here's an extra Theory: they didn't just use the LBQ, they actually did the LBQ. The LBQ brings back what's needed for a Good Cosmos. For some reason, what was needed when the 7M did the LBQ was the Red Goddess.

I'm pretty sure the 7M quest was explicitly derived from (a variant/repurposing of) the LBQ.  As such -- yeah, they DID do the LBQ ... but they  put some "spin" on it... Lunar, Chaos, and something else, probably Nysalorian/EWF'ish/Mostali/??? -- something explicitly about  assembling a deity  (which wasn't (so far as I can tell) a Lunar thing, until done for/by/with Sedenya).

(edit:  I don't think this is a "dumb theory" per the OP/topic -- apologies!)

Edited June 17, 2020 by g33k

[Richard S.]

Maybe someone should start a "Smart Theories" thread at this rate, or at least a "Reasonable Theories" one...

[Austin]

2 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Maybe someone should start a "Smart Theories" thread at this rate, or at least a "Reasonable Theories" one...

Suspiciously-Plausible-But-Not-Quite-Substantiated Theories.

[g33k]

29 minutes ago, Crel said:

Suspiciously-Plausible-But-Not-Quite-Substantiated Theories.

SPBNQST ?

That word looks/sounds more Cthulhoid than Gloranthan...

[Sir_Godspeed]

The Doraddi knows that in Glorantha, all Empires are destined to bring turmoil and destruction, and so they have deliberately established an anti-Empire as it were, so as to maintain as idyllic an existence as feasibly (and mytho-typically) possible. That's the purpose of all those "we already tried that" stories. Continuity over greatness. That's also why the Kresh are riling them up so much. Empires inherently mean trouble.

[scott-martin]

4 hours ago, g33k said:

(a variant/repurposing of) the LBQ

There's apparently a weird document in the archives that purports to describe "A Western View Of The Lightbringers Quest." Many of the key figures are the same but the figure they summon is identified with (a) "zzabur." Again, this might be a lost hrestolite teaching . . . the point is that something like this might have come in through Carmania as the mystery of mysteries and then the desperate geniuses in Torang put it to work.

So again, a regrettably non-dumb theory after all.

4 hours ago, g33k said:

(edit:  I don't think this is a "dumb theory" per the OP/topic -- apologies!)

Please try to do harder! 😀

So as many know and kindly ignore, I am obsessed with the notion that trollkin (average SIZ 9-10) are not the feral tots we often see in the art but are in fact can stand as tall as 5'8" (SIZ 12) if they were ever to walk tall and proud. On average they're as strong, as robust and more agile than an adult human, and can theoretically become as intelligent as the average human when given the right opportunities. To a dark troll, humans undoubtedly smell funny but at first glance look like unusually valuable enlo. 

Every time they encounter us, we remind them of the awful broken babies they bear so often and probably get abandoned or exposed as infants fairly often. (I know about food and value, but I also keep hearing about feral trollkin hordes.) We are their curse that went on to organize and came back to wreak time's revenge. This is our world. The Womb Biter gave the mothers a profound gift by turning their babies into creatures like us who can thrive on the surface. The mothers just didn't see it that way.

Of course we look at a trollkin and see a pitiful blinking wretch of a person, ugly, twisted and craven. Nobody but XU ever gives them any love or teaches them anything beyond rote vocational skills. But I wonder what free trollkin can become after a few generations to get used to the sun. Maybe they lose their darksense because they don't need it any more. Their diet improves. Maybe their hearts and souls grow. Where once were broken trolls eventually walk people of a darkness heritage: maybe a little ugly, a little furtive, a little small, but people more like us than uz.

Maybe the trolls remember this, the nations that died out and left something like humans behind. The trollkin inherit the world. And for all I know an especially big and brutal human can resemble a particularly fragile troll who can't feel in the dark. Those people are eligible for adoption. 

Now what's really dumb is how some efforts to model the Brithini ensure that they're roughly trollkin size. When the mothers, grieving and traumatized with bitten wombs, saw the little people of the west they must have been horrified. But there are records of darkness people ("tamali") marrying into the Seshnelan populations in the dawn age. Maybe the wombs of the west already contained the poison and Nysalor simply activated it. Hrestol himself may have been half "troll," fathered on a princess of the local people who one day came to take her back.

Edited June 17, 2020 by scott-martin
moreover

[Eff]

The real cause of the Hero Wars, and indeed of all major crises of Glorantha (Gods War, Arkat Wars, whatever we call the assorted imperial collapses) is the increasing density of chain restaurants (Lokamayadon's Lokomokodonald's locations, spreading all over the Barbarian Belt, the Here and Now Dragons Faction proposing to emplace a Four Eyes Burgers and Fries across Dragon Pass, Prax, and Peloria to pin down the shape of the World Dragon, and let's not talk about the food crimes the Middle Sea Empire got up to...). The Geo's Inns were pushing it. The Moon Rock Cafe franchises tipped things over the edge. There is, associated with this, a Praxian legend called "Waha the Locavore"...

[Joerg]

Mistress race and dark trolls are evolving into the Grey Ones (the Asgard of Stargate) via . Neotenic features, receding jaw-line, big eyes...

[The God Learner]

7 hours ago, g33k said:

I'm pretty sure the 7M quest was explicitly derived from (a variant/repurposing of) the LBQ.  As such -- yeah, they DID do the LBQ ... but they  put some "spin" on it... Lunar, Chaos, and something else, probably Nysalorian/EWF'ish/Mostali/??? -- something explicitly about  assembling a deity  (which wasn't (so far as I can tell) a Lunar thing, until done for/by/with Sedenya).

I'm myself quite unenthused about using the LBQ for everything significant in Gloranthan history (but then My Glorantha Varies). As I see it, the 7M quest was about collecting various moon goddesses turned into gravel during the Gods' War, along with some 'secret sauce', and reassembling them into the Red Goddess, an amoral tool of vengeance and domination. Since I also view the RG as someone created to contest the Middle Air -- hence, a catspaw for a certain Sky pantheon -- Ginna Jar may well be a Yelmic high priest on a secret mission. 

[Austin]

Orlanth has a cuckold fetish. (I'm a little sorry for that.)

[dumuzid]

Theory: Argrath's role in destroying the world in the Hero Wars comes about when he turns away from fighting "a new Battle of Doom"--or rather, because mythically he shouldn't be fighting it, but needs someone to.  By embodying Orlanth (with draconic elements) he did effectively set himself up to orchestrate a new Great Compromise, but Orlanth wasn't there for, and didn't lead, the Unity Battle.  It was Ezkankekko who gathered up the last survivors of the living world into the Unity Army that vanquished the Devil's Chaos horde and sent him fleeing to Prax, to face Storm Bull and the descending Block.

Argrath's Lightbringers Quest goes astray in part because he's staging it at the critical moment without a Unity Hero to rally and lead the apparently hopeless struggle against Chaos in the Middle World, and the mythic resonances go all lopsided.  Without a Unity Hero working separately but together with Orlanth Lightbringer, the cosmos-shattering conclusion of Argrath's quest was inevitable, and possibly exactly what the Devil intended to make his victory in the next age that much surer.

Edited June 17, 2020 by dumuzid

[Bill the barbarian]

On 6/10/2020 at 8:00 PM, Cragspider said:

By the same token, no one's ever seen the Red Emperor and Quackjohn in the same room.  Damning evidence, if you ask me. 

Had you ever heard Quackjohn’s version of Opera, you might be noting that Wakboth and Quackjohn have never been seen together...

[Ian Absentia]

12 hours ago, scott-martin said:

So as many know and kindly ignore, I am obsessed with the notion that trollkin (average SIZ 9-10) are not the feral tots we often see in the art but are in fact can stand as tall as 5'8" (SIZ 12) if they were ever to walk tall and proud...

[...snip...]

And for all I know an especially big and brutal human can resemble a particularly fragile troll who can't feel in the dark. Those people are eligible for adoption. 

Two of my favorite characters ever were played by me and a friend -- Aleks and Oddo Gruntfartt, twin Great Trolls who as twins were, technically, trollkin.  Don't tell us the rules, we'll only break them for you.

12 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Now what's really dumb is how some efforts to model the Brithini ensure that they're roughly trollkin size. When the mothers, grieving and traumatized with bitten wombs, saw the little people of the west they must have been horrified. But there are records of darkness people ("tamali") marrying into the Seshnelan populations in the dawn age. Maybe the wombs of the west already contained the poison and Nysalor simply activated it. Hrestol himself may have been half "troll," fathered on a princess of the local people who one day came to take her back.

We shall refer to this as the Schrek & Fiona Theory.  Congratulations -- you, sir, are "dumb".

!i!

[Nevermet]

I feel inadequate because I cannot think of a sufficiently dumb theory.

 

uh... lessee... Belintar is the God of Silver Feet!

[g33k]

9 hours ago, The God Learner said:

I'm myself quite unenthused about using the LBQ for everything significant in Gloranthan history (but then My Glorantha Varies). As I see it, the 7M quest was about collecting various moon goddesses turned into gravel during the Gods' War, along with some 'secret sauce', and reassembling them into the Red Goddess, an amoral tool of vengeance and domination. Since I also view the RG as someone created to contest the Middle Air -- hence, a catspaw for a certain Sky pantheon -- Ginna Jar may well be a Yelmic high priest on a secret mission. 

Oh, yeah -- I agree that the LBQ shouldn't be "everyquest!"

I just think that the Sedenya/Orlanth thing explicitly models the Roman/Greek thing, with huge numbers of 1:1 correspondences.  And in particular, I think the 7M quest is very-explicitly and intentionally a mirror image of the LBQ, a Chaos-tinted reflection... up to and including bringing a deity out of death, out of Hell, aimed at the Sky.

I gotta admit, though -- I really like your notion that there was Yelmic anti-Air motivation in the origins of the 7M's project!

[The God Learner]

6 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

you might be noting that Wakboth and Quackjohn have never been seen together...

Wak wak wakboth, gentlemen.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

5 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Two of my favorite characters ever were played by me and a friend -- Aleks and Oddo Gruntfartt, twin Great Trolls who as twins were, technically, trollkin.  Don't tell us the rules, we'll only break them for you.

 

Great!

 

4 minutes ago, The God Learner said:

Wak wak wakboth, gentlemen.

 

Gives new insight in Fozzie’s “Wakka, wakka.”, no?

[The God Learner]

5 hours ago, g33k said:

And in particular, I think the 7M quest is very-explicitly and intentionally a mirror image of the LBQ, a Chaos-tinted reflection... up to and including bringing a deity out of death, out of Hell, aimed at the Sky.

You are in this 'more correct' than I, more aligned with the published material. I just don't enjoy the concept. But if one accepts it, then there are certain similarities. If memory serves, Danfive Xaron corresponds to Orlanth, etc.

5 hours ago, g33k said:

I gotta admit, though -- I really like your notion that there was Yelmic anti-Air motivation in the origins of the 7M's project!

Perhaps the 7M LBQ should be properly read from the Yelmic side? It makes some sense given the origins of the participants. More so if there is hidden Yelmism.

Edit: I would also add that I would consider the 7M LBQ a perverted LBQ in many respects. 

Edited June 17, 2020 by The God Learner
Esprit de l'escalier