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Tell me about Elmal and Yelmalio


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13 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Not sure, that's part of the question. But Beren the Rider likely brought the Elmal cult into the northern Vingkotlings? If Elmal was then spread by the Theyalan missionaries, he might have gone quite far.

Not a clue about Ralios or Fronela.

Dawn Age stuff is not terribly relevant here, but it should be kept in mind that Saird is the original core territory of the Sun Dome Temples. 

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16 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Not sure, that's part of the question. But Beren the Rider likely brought the Elmal cult into the northern Vingkotlings? If Elmal was then spread by the Theyalan missionaries, he might have gone quite far.

This was not too long after the Flood, at latest when Manalarvus took over as emperor in Anaxial's empire in the Storm Age, when Valind's glacier repeated the Flooding, only with frozen water.

While Six Ages points towards Manalarvus era, I don't see why earlier Hyalorings couldn't have married into the Vingkotlings coming from Genert's Garden shortly after Vingkot married Tada's daughters. According to King of Sartar's myths, the other sisters were still unmarried (i.e. had no tribes named after them or their husbands) when Redaylde took Beren as her husband.

Anyway, the Berennethtelli in Saird were destroyed by Lokamayadon, along with most of their resident Beren/Elmal history, wel before the revelation of Yelmalio Daysenerus at the Battle of Night and Day (and the start of the Sun Dome Temples). Only their splinter groups like Exilestead on the wrong side of the Storm Mountains would have continued that tradition.

Would Elmal have been carried over to other populations that received Theyalan missionaries?

Sort of. The missionaries usually sought to find shared mythemes between their Kerofinelan background and the local names for the deities of the people they approached. In the longer run, those lost their names and became known as Orlanth, and Yelm -  even Ralian Ehilm. And Lightfore was Lightfore rather than Kargzant or Reladivus or so.

 

But then I still adhere to the observation that Yelmalio with his parallel expression through priests and lords is two cults combined into one - a mobile source of light in the Darkness, and now the night sky (Lightfore) for the lords, and the stationary bright thing high above from the Storm Age for the priests, rising as the Sun at the Dawn.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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2 hours ago, Joerg said:

In the longer run, those lost their names and became known as Orlanth, and Yelm -  even Ralian Ehilm.

This leads to a side question designed to defuse and obfuscate the usual shield push.

Do you think the original ELM name of the sun comes east from Ralios, west from Peloria, parallel origin or something else (perhaps Sairdite diaspora or primeval pony people precursor)?

I think a lot of people who adopt the missionary hypothesis assume that the Heortlings have priority and pushed their nomenclature onto the peoples they enlightened / enlivened . . . but maybe not. Likewise, Dara Happan propaganda argues for them as the site of the original revelation, in which case the Ralians and Sairdites are part of a continental "yelmic" awakening . . . but maybe not.

In the past my thought was always that the "Y" (truth rune) was added to a primeval E(Hu)LM or E(Hu)LM-aL to create the imperial sun and his friends. But maybe it's worth considering a map where various regional YELMs are stripped of their Y and turn into Ehilms if not Elmals. 

 

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3 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

In the past my thought was always that the "Y" (truth rune) was added to a primeval E(Hu)LM or E(Hu)LM-aL to create the imperial sun and his friends. But maybe it's worth considering a map where various regional YELMs are stripped of their Y and turn into Ehilms if not Elmals. 

 

I'm wary of mixing the real-world Latin alphabet in with in-universe Gloranthan concepts.

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20 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I'm wary of mixing the real-world Latin alphabet in with in-universe Gloranthan concepts.

Normally I am too, but 

1. Paralinguistic games ("over here they say 'Ehilm,' we say 'Yelm'") have been here for decades and are generally generative.

2. The "Y" shaped rune in particular is possibly unique in that it appears in-setting as the Truth Rune and Dara Happan /z/ character while "fortuitously" doubling in terrestrial transcription as a key differentiator between Elmal and Yelmal, ELM and YELM.  Of course the Dara Happans wouldn't use Truth at all to write YELM. But we do!

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3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Normally I am too, but 

1. Paralinguistic games ("over here they say 'Ehilm,' we say 'Yelm'") have been here for decades and are generally generative.

2. The "Y" shaped rune in particular is possibly unique in that it appears in-setting as the Truth Rune and Dara Happan /z/ character while "fortuitously" doubling in terrestrial transcription as a key differentiator between Elmal and Yelmal, ELM and YELM.  Of course the Dara Happans wouldn't use Truth at all to write YELM. But we do!

And if we want an in-universe textual game, Dara Happan Y is a combined Law and Fire Rune. Which certainly suggests the Yu-prefix. 

But when the Dara Happans talk about their deep lore of the Sun, they use names like Ezelvetay, Antirius, Zaytenera/s etc. which are not part of the ELM phonon. And of course we have a tradition of interpreting the ReAscent as a first ascent- that originally this was Arraz to Murharzarm. That Z keeps cropping up. It's even loosely in "Shargash", and directly in "Shadzor". And Z is Truth and Light combined. 

This doesn't seem to get us anywhere, but it's clear there are a couple solar strata here, even if we can't be sure what the earliest are. The Riders of Six Ages call their god Elmal and remember Reladivus as a distinct, different entity- but we know they're both lightfores of Nivorah. 

I have had my suspicions about Malkioni arriving in Pelanda very early on. It's possible ELM arrives with them. 

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

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44 minutes ago, Eff said:

The Riders of Six Ages

Another Y-sun: Yonesh. Of course, like Little Yelm, Yonesh is plainly a slightly shifted Elmal in the visuals (and Shargash is a significantly shifted one.) But this Cold Sun seems like a bit of a black box linguistically, or paralinguistically. There's that Yu prefix, but beyond that signifier, I'm not sure whether he has any other connections, beyond the obvious one of being the Other that Y/Elmal/io must reconcile with to achieve true immortality.

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

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15 minutes ago, Eff said:

This doesn't seem to get us anywhere,

I think this feint is achieving its goal of disorienting the otherwise stale phalanx and getting the wheel of Lokarnos the beetle rolling again.

Pelorian /y/ (solar law / eye in pyramid) looks a lot like terrestrial D (delta) so it's not hard to reconstruct a hypothetical timeline where someone important in ancient times saw the character and pronounced it /d/ . . . maybe there was trouble with the initial semivowel  and something more like ð was an easy transition. Or maybe there was confusion with a foreign character and the /d/ usage took over.

Either way, eventually a reformer rectified the system and the god we now know as DAYZATAR is handed the modern /d/ character to reflect that we no longer say anything like Jajatar. [Compare "Jaja gappa."] Another god (or phase) either retains or receives the "solar law" character and becomes YELM, but as compensation, The mystic sun receives a kind of doubled internal truth rune: Y (pronounced /z/) and the solar triangle (nominally pronounced /y/ but notably a silent or honorific character here).

This doubling between phonetic and typographic (or even ideographic) significance strikes me as happening around a consolidation between an oral tradition with a written one. Some people concerned with the god would have associated him primarily with the sounds of his name. Others would have interacted more closely with the shapes. 

Meanwhile Y (pronounced /z/, "truth") retains priority as first carver, Number One. Oddly cosmic for what is an obscure cult today, especially when /y/ doesn't even get a number but is wedged in at the back near the "semi-foreign" gods  . . . but maybe the Plentonians accidentally preserved something there not even they understood way back when.

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21 hours ago, Eff said:

The Riders of Six Ages call their god Elmal and remember Reladivus as a distinct, different entity- but we know they're both lightfores of Nivorah.

Lightfores of Nivorah from Dara Happa
Crossing Dome to haven, a Luathelan dawn,
With idols of ivory,
And gold and silver,
Sacrificing cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Great Ernaldan Grandmothers coming from Esrolia,
Shipping to the East Isles by the palm-green shores,
Encrusted with diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Bounty of Asrelia, kept indoors.

God Learner constructs with a made-up mythos
Butting through theology all in a haze,
Cargo-cults to minimax,
Misapplied worship,
RuneQuest Sight is a passing craze.

Edited by Nick Brooke
Inspired by John Masefield’s “Cargoes” (Quinquereme of Nineveh…)
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On 9/3/2021 at 9:39 AM, Joerg said:

And now tell me all about Eurmal and Yelmalio...

I believe that's (Y)RML as opposed to (Y)LM(L). You'll see that the "ML" is shifted in Eurmal, subtly indicating he's an inversion of Yelmalio's Truth. The "R" denotes his mastery is magic as opposed to arms.

EDIT: Wait, this isn't the "Your Dumbest Theory" thread.

Edited by AlHazred
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ROLAND VOLZ

Running: nothing | Playing: Battletech Hero, CoC 7th Edition, Blades in the Dark | Planning: D&D 5E Home Game, Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle, HeroQuest 1E Sartarite Campaign

D&D is an elf from Tolkien, a barbarian from Howard, and a mage from Vance fighting monsters from Lovecraft in a room that looks like it might have been designed by Wells and Giger. - TiaNadiezja

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The Elmal of Sartar is interesting because a fusion of Hot and Cold Suns (the Katy Perry Sun) is something most people seem to have believed in at the Dawn. But a general separation happened at some point as people began to compare notes and experiment and so on. So why does Elmal, this throwback cult, exist in the Modern Age?

Well. We know that there are some divinities, like Ogorvale Summer, so draconified by EWF worship forms that they were simply forgotten and suppressed rather than cleansed of draconic influence. We know there was a Dragon Sun cult the EWF promoted, and which the Dara Happan emperors struggled to cut out of their myths after the Dragonkill. We know there's a draconic Yelmalio, also suppressed in the Prax Sun County. 

So perhaps Elmal worship emerged from the need to cut away all possible EWF influence, or indeed due to the holes in the post-EWF cults (from Minarian Memory Removal or similar) the Big Sun and Little Sun collapsed together. But only where EWF held sway and where there wasn't a surviving Yelmalio/Tharkantus cult to separate the deities. 

So Maniria and Ralios and Fronela and Umathela, never under EWF influence, never had to cut out the Sun's arangorf and so maintained a consistent but diverging set of cults, until the Revelation of the Many Suns began the process of stitching these separated cults together again...

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

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31 minutes ago, Eff said:

The Elmal of Sartar is interesting because a fusion of Hot and Cold Suns (the Katy Perry Sun) is something most people seem to have believed in at the Dawn. But a general separation happened at some point as people began to compare notes and experiment and so on. So why does Elmal, this throwback cult, exist in the Modern Age?

Well. We know that there are some divinities, like Ogorvale Summer, so draconified by EWF worship forms that they were simply forgotten and suppressed rather than cleansed of draconic influence. We know there was a Dragon Sun cult the EWF promoted, and which the Dara Happan emperors struggled to cut out of their myths after the Dragonkill. We know there's a draconic Yelmalio, also suppressed in the Prax Sun County. 

So perhaps Elmal worship emerged from the need to cut away all possible EWF influence, or indeed due to the holes in the post-EWF cults (from Minarian Memory Removal or similar) the Big Sun and Little Sun collapsed together. But only where EWF held sway and where there wasn't a surviving Yelmalio/Tharkantus cult to separate the deities. 

So Maniria and Ralios and Fronela and Umathela, never under EWF influence, never had to cut out the Sun's arangorf and so maintained a consistent but diverging set of cults, until the Revelation of the Many Suns began the process of stitching these separated cults together again...

And now I have found a female god to go along with my Indlas Somer (male) god -- Katiperi, the Sun of the Somer, the Dark Horse That Roared.

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ROLAND VOLZ

Running: nothing | Playing: Battletech Hero, CoC 7th Edition, Blades in the Dark | Planning: D&D 5E Home Game, Operation: Sprechenhaltestelle, HeroQuest 1E Sartarite Campaign

D&D is an elf from Tolkien, a barbarian from Howard, and a mage from Vance fighting monsters from Lovecraft in a room that looks like it might have been designed by Wells and Giger. - TiaNadiezja

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52 minutes ago, Eff said:

Umathela

Love all this but this note in particular gets me wondering whether the transported brought a little sun with them to the far hot country and if so, who it was. Presumably this deity wouldn't have maintained an equestrian tradition or developed a conventional Dome . . . but would have evolved in other directions.

You also get me wondering how central to Dragonslayer the northern and western domes were and are.

15 hours ago, AlHazred said:

The "R" denotes his mastery is magic as opposed to arms.

Absolutely love this by the way. "R" is for magic. "T" is for combat.

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I think there’s room for a Gloranthan Velikovsky, armed with Dara Happan primary sources and absurd self-confidence, to speculate as to whether it was Lightfore and not Yelm that rose through the Gates of Dawn at the Dawn of Time, 1 ST; with Yelm himself not rising for the first time (turning night into day) until the Anarchy Year, 111 ST.

“Everyone who was watching noticed the difference. Thus was signaled the end of the Darkness, for the realms of Day and Night switched places. Kargzant was defeated, ridden by Lightfore. Antirius, stronger and brighter than that old sun, rose…” (GRoY p.36).

Edited by Nick Brooke
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8 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Love all this but this note in particular gets me wondering whether the transported brought a little sun with them to the far hot country and if so, who it was. Presumably this deity wouldn't have maintained an equestrian tradition or developed a conventional Dome . . . but would have evolved in other directions.

The Umathelan Orlanthi are mainly from Maniria from the first and early second ages right? That region is not particularly known for its solar worship (very far from any Pelorian influences, it has never been built a Sun Dome there, and its hilly and forested terrain is bad for horsebreeding), and if they migrated before the First Revelation or right after the fall of the Bright Empire, they could have practiced no solar worship at all (even if they practiced, it would have been very marginal). But where they migrated to there are loads of Aldryami, and that means a lot of Halamalo worship. Umathelan Orlanthi clans are said to coexist and be allies (or friendly vassals) of the Aldryami, so my best guess is that they adopted Little Sun worship from them, both for its useful magics and as a elf-friend cult, and thus, their Yelmalio worship is very "Aldryamized". But of course I don't think there's any canonical mention of this, it's just an idea. 

Edited by Jape_Vicho
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:50-power-truth::50-sub-light::50-power-truth:

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Umathela is underexplored in public-facing materials (and thus probably equally so in private notes or unfinished manuscripts), but there's quite a lot of complexity there- Orlanthi transplants synchronizing with the locals and promoting a 9-god Lightbringer cult, Sedalpists, the Gift Carriers of the Sending Gods, all those Aldryami, and of course we have Silence and Ompalam and Pujaleg and Artmal and Pamalt and Vadeli all poking their heads in. So it's like much of Glorantha in that regard- room for fractal complexity. 

With that in mind, in Pamaltela the Doraddi peoples consider the motion of the Sky Dome to be a positive thing, so here we may have an antipodean Sun that proves more dynamic. And in this sense, the Halamalao form may be more static as a counterbalance. 

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

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12 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

The Umathelan Orlanthi are mainly from Maniria from the first and early second ages right?

I kind of doubt it.  I think they were Malkioni who abjured the Wizards in order to save their sorry hides when the Gift Carriers came calling.  Since the lower castes had worshipped Orlanth and other gods anyway, they became Orlanthi at the end of the Imperial Age.  

12 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

That region is not particularly known for its solar worship (very far from any Pelorian influences, it has never been built a Sun Dome there, and its hilly and forested terrain is bad for horsebreeding),

Ehilm is mentioned as one of the Gods that led the False Gods revolt (Guide p622).  I think rather than import a Seshnegi version, the God Learners imported a Fonritan version (Varama - Guide p553) as a counterpart to the Storm worship that naturally grew there.  The cults of Ehilm and Halamalo would probably have problems with each other.  

 

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21 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

The Umathelan Orlanthi are mainly from Maniria from the first and early second ages right? That region is not particularly known for its solar worship (very far from any Pelorian influences, it has never been built a Sun Dome there, and its hilly and forested terrain is bad for horsebreeding), and if they migrated before the First Revelation or right after the fall of the Bright Empire, they could have practiced no solar worship at all (even if they practiced, it would have been very marginal).

Palangio gained his Iron Vrok after diving down to Erenplose and visiting Mt. Selon in the region, and he brought the Ryzel dragonewts with him to cement his rule as governor for the Bright Empire.

You might say that there was some Yelmalio Daysenerus influence in the region, for at least 50 years.

 

From the descriptions of Umathela and early Jrustela, it does look like the first Olodo transplants to Jrustela may have predated Palangio's arrival in the region, but later batches to Jrustela may have been people disgruntled by the presence of the Bright Empire.

The Lascerdans died out only towards the end of the Dawn Age, some time inside the Gbaji Wars / Bright Empire, and it doesn't look like the first Theyalans were dropped there much earlier than 500 ST.

 

While Yelmalio is a common cult for elves wandering outside of their home forests, I think the main interface between the Vralos and Enkloso councils and their human subjects would have been High King  Elf.

 

 

 

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

My Heretical Take: To say that Elmal and Yelmalio are both the Little Sun is like saying that St. Louis and Kansas City are both cities in Missouri. They are built from a common foundation and substance, and are part of the same greater whole, but that doesn't make them the exact same thing, or make one the-real-one and the other an error.

Edited by JonL
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24 minutes ago, JonL said:

They are built from a common foundation and substance, and a part of the same greater whole, but that doesn't make them the exact same thing, or make one the-real-one and the other an error.

And along this line of reasoning, the fact that Spirits of Reprisal do not come after either shows that BOTH are valid methods in the socio-religious and metaphysical realms in Glorantha.

IE, the being doesn't really seem to care how they receive worship/veneration. This also seems to be supported by the additional "variations" of Yelp and Orlanth as you move further west.

SDLeary

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My heretical idea: Elmal became or claimed Lightfore in 109 ST, when he bridled Kargzant.

The Barbarian Warrior in the sky doesn't have to be Orlanth. It could just as well be Elmal.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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On 8/25/2021 at 2:45 PM, Richard S. said:

Buddy, have you read this thread? We've gotten several explicit, objective confirmations that yes Monrogh was right. If you want your idea to be true in your Glorantha then YGMV, but there's no more debate to be had on the issue in canon.

A key thing contextually here is as emphatically as Jeff is stating things as being the way they are now, they also non-trivially contradict things he wrote years ago in products that were still in the regular catalog earlier this year (as opposed to the explicitly deuterocannonical Vault) and were referenced on glorantha.com as works upon which future Glorantha products would be built until fairly recently. (And the still-on-sale Guide is more congruent with the HQ2/G materials than it is with some of these more recently presented perspectives.)

Now, Jeff & the rest have every right to make changes to the product line(s) that reflect their evolving tastes and perspectives on such matters as they deem fit. That's entirely legitimate. 

Let's not pretend though that they weren't also selling Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes at full-price concurrently with the new RQG stuff, which you that in Sartar the Yelmalio cult has 3000 Initiate and up members, while the Elmal and Redalda cults have 1000 each. Similarly, a Guide to Glorantha bought today still lists the Sun god in the Orlanthi pantheon as Elmal, and that his Runes are Truth and Fire

That's a different picture than the new messaging paints. It's not just that YGWV. Chaosium/Moon Design has/had multiple varying Gloranthas on offer as well, concurrently, and that when they have previously said, "I know things were a bit all over the map at times in the past, but here are the works we will reference going forward in new products..." there was an unwritten "...until we change our minds again." Once you walk something like that back the very concept of a canonical point of reference gets a bit squishy. 

Again, they can and should change things if they think it's the best move for whatever reason, (even if I don't like it, lol) but the more often they do the more limited any pronouncements of "this is how it is" become. 

Edited by JonL
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