Your Dumbest Theory

[mfbrandi]

12 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Well we all know that the Praxian Sun Dome is a strange place — too much time cut off from the rest of the world! The Sun Domes of the southern provinces are the places to be.

In the South, where it is hot? Is temperature the key to any Yelmalian problems — or successes — with sex? We have long suspected that Cole Porter = Zorak Zoran:

• According to the Kinsey Report, ev’ry average man you know
  Much prefers his lovey-dovey to court
  When the temperature is low
  But when the thermometer goes way up
  And the weather is sizzling hot
  Mr. Gob for his squab
  A marine for his queen
  A G.I. for his cutie-pie is not

Is it that those attuned to a cool Northern sun (god) cannot cope with passion in the torrid zones, or does chilly YO offer the balm to make it possible? Are professed Yelmalians who love the heat just closet devotees of another more fiery god who have dressed their idol in borrowed finery for political reasons? Are they true believers emulating their god’s desire for overheated Uncle ZeeZee (played by Kathleen “Matty Walker” Turner)?

A drag bar in Corflu at the height of summer. The Lord Demon of the Legions of Death does his June Christy bit:

• Something cool
  I’d like to order something cool
  It’s so warm here in town
  And the heat gets me down, yes
  I’d like something cool

  My, it’s nice to simply sit and rest a while
  Now I know it’s a shame, I can’t think of your name
  I remember your smile
  I don’t ordinarily drink with strangers
  I most usually drink alone
  But you were so awfully nice to ask me
  And I’m so terribly far from home

Who among us could resist?

[Tindalos]

Dragon Pass is a colossal hotspot/caldera, the remnant of some Creation Age supervolcano. The underlying magma chamber is responsible for Dragon Pass's individual volcanos, toxic vents, and hot springs. This original supervolcano was likely Sh'hakarzeel himself, and when he was slain by Orlanth, his body became the volcanic nature of the pass.

 

[mfbrandi]

33 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

This original supervolcano was likely Sh’hakarzeel himself, and when he was slain by Orlanth, his body became the volcanic nature of the pass.

• This is the path to draconised Lodril.
• Given the horizontal collapse of brother gods, it presents another picture of the murder of the sun–emperor.
• If dragon decapitation stands for self-illumination via utuma, we get a draconised and solarised Orlanth.
• It is an enemy, and I shall eat it to hide it away from us. For ZeeZee the magician, no gap between word and action.
• After Turgenev: in the end, every man must eat himself.

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, Tindalos said:

This original supervolcano was likely Sh'hakarzeel himself, and when he was slain by Orlanth, his body became the volcanic nature of the pass.

Or it is where Aether Primolt penetrated Gata with his Fiery Shaft or Spear, causing Umath to be born.

[scott-martin]

32 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

• This is the path to draconised Lodril.
• Given the horizontal collapse of brother gods, it presents another picture of the murder of the sun–emperor.
• If dragon decapitation stands for self-illumination via utuma, we get a draconised and solarised Orlanth.

Running the film backward reveals that the sun/storm rivalry that drives "central genertelan theism" is just a catabolic decay from the dragon state . . . and maybe the ultimate union of the categories ("solarised orlanth" or in black sun cults the "solar storm") restores the dragon state.

Every dragon that really matters might be a similar union of more or less opposed principles. We perceive these entities dimly through the mythic ecology of the most esoteric cults like black sun (solar darkness) and blue streak (sky sea, the "darkness" in Troll Gods is situational). Native "moon" unincorporated into the imperial system tends to be relevant here, and so you have Tolat but not Shargash.

42 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

every man must eat himself

Troll influenced tantra, probably in vogue in the Autarky.

18 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

A drag bar in Corflu

I think we've found your Jonstown scenario. Get too hot and you're in Feroda where the Teshnan suns never died and as far as I know there are no taboos against transvestism. The distinction between sun and storm may be as simple as the storm putting on a dress (skirt, kilt) for fun while the sun feels shame. Again, bridging the gap raises the "dragon."

--

"Jar" Eel is not consciously named for the barbarian Ginna "Jar" but there are no coincidences on a suitably charged magical timeline, only unexpected repercussions.

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, scott-martin said:

The distinction between sun and storm may be as simple as the storm putting on a dress (skirt, kilt) for fun while the sun feels shame.

Just riffing here …

Surely the Orlanthi are the classic shame culture — honour killing, revenge, maintaining “face”. In face of mockery, the Big O says, “It is not a skirt. It is a kilt.” Maybe Eurmal doesn’t care what anyone thinks, but that is why he is an outcast — it is not the wrong he does but that he cannot take seriously public censure even — especially? — when it is backed up with violence. If shame isn’t motivating, the Orlanthi are lost. If we want to be charitable to the Orlanthi — although I really don’t — we can say that they keep Trickster around because deep down they know the way they have ordered their society is wrong and self-destructive. They keep him around, but out of fear they bind and abuse him.

Solar concern for justice may tie them more to guilt and individual conscience — and that doubtless has its own traps. Yelmalio caught in a skirt will either take his beating because he has decided he was wrong to wear it or take his beating because skirt-wearing is fine and screw you. He will always take his beating, but he will never offer an excuse. He will never squirm.

Spoiler

• The Sartar Police are the best in the world
  I don’t believe one of these stories I’ve heard
  ’Bout them raiding our pubs for no reason at all
  Lining the customers up by the wall
  Picking out people and knocking them down
  Resisting arrest as they’re kicked on the ground
  Searching their houses and calling them queer
  I don’t believe that sort of thing happens here

… so please do not mistake any of this for a fair evaluation of the evidence.

[John Biles]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Solar concern for justice may tie them more to guilt and individual conscience — and that doubtless has its own traps. Yelmalio caught in a skirt will either take his beating because he has decided he was wrong to wear it or take his beating because skirt-wearing is fine and screw you. He will always take his beating, but he will never offer an excuse. He will never squirm.

In a guilt culture, no one is going to take a beating they think they don't deserve.  They might be forced to take one, kicking and screaming, but they won't *accept* it.

But also, a lot of a guilt culture is about getting you to punish yourself. 

[Alex]

11 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Yelmalio caught in a skirt will either take his beating because he has decided he was wrong to wear it or take his beating because skirt-wearing is fine and screw you.

And of course, pace SVP O'Brien's observation that his cult has rules against this, and that one only makes rules when there's an established need for them...  clearly this happens a lot.

[mfbrandi]

20 minutes ago, Alex said:

O’Brien

Clearly Yelmalio — for at least two reasons — will never say, “Do it to Julia.” Picking up on @John Biles’s point, it has already been done to ZeeZee and most likely by the demon lord himself. Doing the obverse/reverse thing perhaps we can say Uncle Zed has a particularly strong cop in the head while YoYo has none — he is pure sweet unapologetic defiance (having ported all self-directed negative feelings to his beloved shadow self). This is perhaps not the expected result, but:

• It is the cop in one’s head that makes one mean.
• In this experimental rewrite, Mr Hyde gets the conscience. (I say nothing about the “standard” Jekyll.)
• Is this bicameral system stable? One suspects it will break down, but how?
• Perhaps a Sun Domer’s self-righteousness comes from failure to own their shadow — wrongness is referred to an actual other.

Orwell’s working title does suggest an epithet for Yelmalio: the last light in Glorantha.

[mfbrandi]

• In 2002, [M. John] Harrison summed up the New Wave’s aims in a self-deprecating reassessment of his novel The Centauri Device (1974), which succeeded, in his view, insofar as it ‘took the piss out of SF’s three main tenets: (1) the reader-identification character always drives the action; (2) the universe is knowable; (3) the universe is anthropocentrically structured & its riches are an appropriate prize for the colonialist people like us.’
  — Nick Richardson, LRB: On the Interface

With equal skepticism, we could likely apply this to RPGs, too:

1. The PCs are the protagonists.
2. Rules simulate the game world.
3. Kill things, take their stuff, and become a god.

[radmonger]

History says Argrath was captured by Praxians and enslaved.

One of his allies was Jann, son of Afadjann.

Much later in his career, he establishes the Temple of the Reaching Storm, reshaping the cult of Yara Aranis to his own ends. 

Could these three things be connected?

Supposedly, the Praxians enslaved him at a time when he had slain a Lunar tax patrol single-handedly. How could that be? Would the Praxians spent scarce resources trying to closely guard such a deadly combatant just to have him do manual labour? Note that he gains his freedom by killing a chaos creature that others could not, suggesting he cannot have been magically incapacitated.

More likely is that he knew he needed to leave Lunar controlled areas on pain of being crucified, he knew he could not survive alone in the wastes, and he knew the Praxians would not adopt him as kin. So he swore an oath to work for his captors. This would be only a fair exchange for them not claiming the bounty the Lunars had posted, which would be their legitimate right having captured him.

Solving his immediate problems by swearing a magical oath is totally Argrath's MO.

Now, the Redline history says, covering the creation of Yara Aranis,  'the Red Emperor used the secret fear of the nomads to summon their Godess of Tormented Death, who ruled over a hell reserved for outlaws, exiles and captured sylphs'. If you ignore the slight issue that these are two different groups of nomads being talked about, then it makes perfect sense for a captured Orlatnhi to have to swear on that Godess. Such an oath makes them part of the tribe, and so subject to afterlife punishments if they get outlawed or exiled. So better get to shovelling that bison dung...

Another piece of the puzzle is that in the lunar cults book, an associate of Yara Aranis is Ikadz, the god of torture, who ensures the obediance of the First Slave. Whcih, per the Prosopedia, is in the Chaos and Fonritian pantheons.

Ikadz counts as chaotic because good orlanthi are not supposed to do that; honour should be enough to ensure the terms of a ransom. Ikadz is stated to be an enemy of Humakt. Praxians, Storm Bulls aside, are sometimes more pragmatic about chaos.

Fonrit brings in the Jann. A land where worship of the God of Torture is larger scale and more developed than anywhere else...

 

 

 

[mfbrandi]

Why I Chose Chaos and the Degenerate

• The Alpine fictions are tales of longing for high places, of the challenge and ordeal of the elemental, the primitive; they are about the vertigo before power, symbolized by the majesty and beauty of mountains … [Next come the] epics of achieved community, in which everyday reality is transcended through ecstatic self-control and submission; they are about the triumph of power. And The Last of the Nuba, an elegy for the soon-to-be extinguished beauty and mystic powers of primitives whom Riefenstahl calls “her adopted people,” is the third in her triptych …

  Riefenstahl’s films are still effective because … their longings are still felt, because their content is a romantic ideal to which many continue to be attached and which is expressed in … diverse modes of cultural dissidence and propaganda for new forms of community … The exaltation of community does not preclude the search for absolute leadership; on the contrary, it may inevitably lead to it.
  — Susan Sontag, New York Review of Books, 1975–02–06

Does she mean us? Gulp! So spare a thought for those who put the head over the heart, the individual over the community, intellect over feeling, the bearers of a destructive corrupting ‘critical spirit.’

Edited November 22 by mfbrandi
missing link

[scott-martin]

"The historical Malkion" most people talk about was of course a syncretic union of formerly distinct storm and sea ancestors into a solitary figure who then recedes or becomes "invisible."

Some people have explored what "invisible" Orlanth means. But there is also the potential for an "invisible Yelm," a solar ancestor who has receded so far up into the sky that we can no longer see him in normal light.

This is of course only a new way to write "Dayzatar," the former sun of the grandfathers.

[AlHazred]

Everyone knows the Runes that the God Learners identified. But what everyone ignores are the deeper, more powerful Runes that were discovered, but whose meaning and importance were indecipherable to Mortals whose perceptions were defined by their origin inside the limitations of Time and Space; only those whose perceptions were developed free of such constraints, such as many Lunar spirits, were able to comprehend them and use their strange and wondrous powers. But now, a former Praxian nomad who resides in Pavis has rediscovered these Runes and published a book which details them. Called On Beyond Zebra, it includes the Runes seen in the following image; unfortunately, the author disappeared during an investigation of the name and function of the last new Rune.

Edited November 13 by AlHazred

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

"The historical Malkion" most people talk about was of course a syncretic union of formerly distinct storm and sea ancestors into a solitary figure who then recedes or becomes "invisible."

I.e. Grandfather Mortal, and then the Flesh Man. 😉 Hiding in plain sight, stripped of his mythic "clothes".

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

[T]here is also the potential for an “invisible Yelm,” a solar ancestor who has receded so far up into the sky that we can no longer see him in normal light. This is of course only a new way to write “Dayzatar,” the former sun of the grandfathers.

Dayzatar–Yelm–Lodril is one of our classic ACG tricks. But how many invisible suns does it yield?

• Dayzatar is invisible because he is long ago and far away behind some Final Barrier™.
• Yelm is invisible because he is dead: Orlanth killed him. [points to light in sky] “That’s not Him.”
• Lodril is invisible because he is captive in the dark underground. He keeps us warm, plans prison breaks.

Dayzatar and Yelm are the suns of the distant and not-so-distant pasts. Lodril is the sun of the future, but be careful what you wish for when you pray for the return of the sun. Winter is cold, but the coming of Lodril is a volcanic apocalypse — possibly the conversion of the lozenge and its rock bubble into a new star, shining as a beacon for any Outer Atomic Explorers still lost in the Void. Bad news scanners: you really can’t go home again.

Fans of Yelm Disintegrates might say that Yelm is not gone but remains split even after the supposed compromise and return: underfloor heating + overhead light-without-heat (on a ceiling track, even). Each night, there is a temporary reunion — so Egyptian! — symbolised by the penetration of ZeeZee by Yelmalio, the Unfulfill’d Queen (always the illuminator, never the illuminated). There is iconography, but the more genteel Solars don’t frequent that sort of temple.

Spoiler

One night, Yelmalio will enter our dear uncle and lodge there. Then the New Sun will consume the other elements and — in the first true dawn — initiate the era of the Golden Void. Some of the more tormented broo prophets maintain that on that day their people will be healed … but likely also vaporised.

• I don’t wanna spend my time in Hell
  Lookin’ at the walls of a prison cell
  I don’t ever wanna play the part
  Of a cold dead star on Buserian’s chart

Edited November 13 by mfbrandi

[Nevermet]

 

Since Malkioni castes are defined by colour, then Men of All must will be called the Rainbow Men in locations, such as Maniria, with a strong Heler presence. Malkioni who wish to become Knights of All must go through all castes, which will include at least 1 gender change.

 

 

Edited November 15 by Nevermet

[Nevermet]

(Ive been gone a while... trying to come back)

[Malin]

I was eating breakfast and reading the forum, and just realized that Argrath really has very little to do with Sartar, he's just one in a long line of steppe warlords conquering sedentary lands in the style of Sheng Seleris, Jaldon Goldentooth, and the like...

Not sure where I am going with this, but it changed something in my head when I think about him.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Malin said:

I was eating breakfast and reading the forum, and just realized that Argrath really has very little to do with Sartar, he's just one in a long line of steppe warlords conquering sedentary lands in the style of Sheng Seleris, Jaldon Goldentooth, and the like...

Not sure where I am going with this, but it changed something in my head when I think about him.

Argrath spent much of his free adult life in and around Pavis, as soon as he emancipated from his slave status among the Praxians. As Garrath Sharpsword, he was a leader of the Sartarite ethnic community in Pavis, whether from the original settlers of New Pavis or more recent refugees from the Lunar invasions or individual breaches of Lunar occupational laws like himself (not that he advertised his back-story). Although only distantly related to Dorasar, his actions in New Pavis sort of imitated his kinsman's playbook by building up support from rather disconnected groups willing to take a chance on his leadership.

I do wonder about the education that obscure branch members of the House of Sartar receive in their youths. How many of these were around? How many aren't documented in the genealogical charts in the Sourcebook? Kallyr isn't IIRC.

Kallyr apparently had a high level of education, beyond tribal nobility, and some notion of gratitude towards the Telmori despite apparently never having had a personal werewolf bodyguard. Did Argrath experience something similar early in his youth?

[Nevermet]

This is less a dumb theory than a dumb hermeneutic, but...

 

My mind has decided that Arkat is the Gloranthan version of William Blake's Orc, the morally ambiguous incarnation of freedom and revolution.

 

This is dumb because, well, it really adds little how I think about things, but I can impress non-Gloranthaphiles now by bringing in Blake.

[Alex]

10 minutes ago, Nevermet said:

This is dumb because, well, it really adds little how I think about things, but I can impress non-Gloranthaphiles now by bringing in Blake.

And hermeneutics!  Always quite the power move.  Really the only place to go in the bidspace after that is "Hegelian".

[mfbrandi]

52 minutes ago, Nevermet said:

Arkat is the Gloranthan version of William Blake’s Orc

Would that make Nysalor Urizen?

Spoiler

Not a trap: I have no idea. 😉

[John Biles]

On 11/15/2024 at 2:39 AM, Malin said:

I was eating breakfast and reading the forum, and just realized that Argrath really has very little to do with Sartar, he's just one in a long line of steppe warlords conquering sedentary lands in the style of Sheng Seleris, Jaldon Goldentooth, and the like...

Not sure where I am going with this, but it changed something in my head when I think about him.

I would normally never defend Argath, but while he wanted to destroy the Lunars, if he was a steppe warlord, he would have obliterated Pavis completely and destroyed every city he conquered and handed everyone in Sartar over to his Praxian hordes as slaves and he didn't go that far.

 

[Alex]

8 minutes ago, John Biles said:

I would normally never defend Argath, but while he wanted to destroy the Lunars, if he was a steppe warlord, he would have obliterated Pavis completely and destroyed every city he conquered and handed everyone in Sartar over to his Praxian hordes as slaves and he didn't go that far.

Well no.  He went further!  Playing the long game...