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Tell me about Elmal and Yelmalio


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On 9/24/2021 at 2:53 PM, Jeff said:

OK, unless this thread returns to its topic, I am going to lock it down.

That's OK, someone will raise a similar thread at some point in the future, anyway.

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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33 minutes ago, DucksMustDie said:

I have to admit, I'm confused. Who guards a tribal king's stead in Sartar when he leaves for war or a quest, Elmal, Yelmalio, Ricki Lake, no-one? 😮

Trying to resolve to resolve the conflicts and contradictions will lead only to frustration, the differences are insoluble. The idea of a coherent Moon Design-era corpus has been abandoned in favor of revision. Pick whatever you like.

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Personally, I don't see how there's no possible reconciliation between Elmal and Yelmalio. Sure it's a retcon, a retcon of a retcon, but you don't need to get rid of Elmal's myths, worshipers, or temples; just change the name to Yelmalio and it works. Hell, you can still call him Elmal if you really want, the only real difference is that the two names are fully interchangeable now.

Edited by Richard S.
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Yelmalio guards the stead, Elmal ascends the hill of gold, Yelmalio pledges allegiance to Orlanth after being healed by Chalana Arroy, Elmal befriends the elves and protects them in the Darkness, etc, etc. No details need to be changed, all of those myths just belong to one god instead of two now.

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Some things can fit either way, sure. Little Suns having some things in common is clearly a thing. Where it falls apart though is things like Elmali murdering passing Lightbringer worshippers because the cult required them to divorce their wives - that's nonsensical.

Edited by JonL
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22 minutes ago, JonL said:

Some things can fit either way, sure. Where it falls apart though is things like Elmali murdering passing Lightbringer worshippers because the cult required them to divorce their wives - that's nonsensical.

We've only seen the three blows of anger performed by an isolated, extremely radical and conservative temple which had very little contact with anyone outside their little xenophobic community for a long time. Different temples emphasize different parts of their god, based on their culture and surroundings, and we've been told that the culture of the Praxian sun dome is very much not indicative of the attitudes and societies of the more western domes. And afaik we don't know whether the three blows are a common practice there, something uncommon done only by a seriously pissed-off priest, or something truly rare that nobody expected that guy in Biturian's story to try.

And, even if it's seen as a horrific act that nobody wants repeated, it is true that Humakt has a heroquest that involves killing Chalana Arroyans. Yelmalians aren't the only ones who might get Lightbringer blood on their hands.

Edited by Richard S.
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41 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

And afaik we don't know whether the three blows are a common practice there, something uncommon done only by a seriously pissed-off priest, or something truly rare that nobody expected that guy in Biturian's story to try.

It happens randomly to PC river travellers in an HQ adventure, so if we trust that, it can't be utterly rare.

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3 hours ago, DucksMustDie said:

I have to admit, I'm confused. Who guards a tribal king's stead in Sartar when he leaves for war or a quest, Elmal, Yelmalio, Ricki Lake, no-one? 😮

A member of his/her stead

it may be a yelmalio, humakt, orlanth,  yinkin, kolat, eurmal (hahaha good joke), heler, ernalda, babs or any one

and probably not one guy but several, from one or more cult.

that's not because a god guarded a stead in one myth, that people who guard the stead must be its worshippers

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Personally, I am not fond of the whole "Same deity, different land" idea.  As a real world example, I draw readers' attentions to Japan's Hidden Christians, and how their religion bore precious little similarity to the actual Roman Catholicism it was drawn from within a century.  So the question of whether Elmal is Yelmalio is, for me, a far more equivocal matter.  Elmal is a version of the deity.  Yelmalio is a different version of the deity.  Also remember that in Gloranthan myths, there is no Time, as it has not been born yet, so temporal contradictions are acceptable, as the flow of myth is best understood by landscape (drawing on IRL trans-cultural ideas of how myth interacts with land).  This also means that distance means difference.

Thus, the notion that Orlanth would whallop the crap out of his loyal thane Elmal on the Hill of Gold doesn't arise because it never happened.  Orlanth meets Yelmalio on the Hill of Gold, not loyal Elmal.  From an orlanthi perspective Elmal is a thunder brother and Orlanth's friend, while Yelmalio is Yelm's obnoxious kid.  A=/=B.  Also Harvar Ironfist and Monrogh are regarded as Lunar inspired Godlearner heretics amongst the Elmali faithful, who mainly live in the hinterlands of Far Point.  According to the Elmali, Monrogh performed the equivalent of the Goddess Switch and they predict dire horrors to come for the apostates and the world itself.

Thus in my Glorantha, Elmal never went to the Hill of Gold.  Instead he still has access to Fireblade and Firearrow spells, and still gets Kuschile Horse Archery, as he is a patron of horses in the Orlanth pantheon.  He gets Lightning Spear from Orlanth, as he is Orlanth's Spear Thane.  He gets Fearless from his good friend Vinga.  He gets "Hide Herd" (it does what it says) from Finovan, as Elmal and Finovan have a complicated friendship.  He gets Heal Body from Ernalda.  He gets Face Chaos from Urox.  His association with Aldrya isn't nearly as strong, and he only gets  Food Song from her, and an easier time organizing parlays with the elves.  He gets Cats Eye from Yinkin (which is extremely important as a point of faith for the Elmai (who say "Ahah!  But where did this Yelmalio of yours learn Catseye if not from the Cat God?  The Orlanthi Cat God...!").  Rigsdal gives True Spear.  In place of Command Hawk and Catseye, Elmal teaches Protect Horse, which allows horses to receive double the benefits of of magical protection and healing, and ignore spirit magic limitations such as the incompatibility of shimmer/protection/countermagic, and also provides a mindlink between the horse and the initiate for the spell's duration, costing 2 Pow.  Also, Elmal doesn't offer gifts and geases, except perhaps as a result of hero quests.

I ran a long game of RQ3 using the Tovtaros clan as the focus many years ago, and over the course of play the role of Elmal became more of a focus of resistance to Lunar occupation and Yelmalion oppression than even I as GM expected.  3 out of my 5 players became utter Elmal fanatics during play, having started out with other deities.  They just couldn't get enough Elmal for some reason, and they were all first time players of RQ.  Their characters would go as far as dressing up as women (albeit Vingans) and sleeping under red blankets, just to make a point.

Edited by Darius West
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55 minutes ago, Darius West said:

the Elmali faithful, who mainly live in the hinterlands of Far Point. 

Word of Greg from the late 90ies already was that the Pelorian-speaking Orlanthi had Yelmalio rather than Elmal, as tribal members. YGWV, of course...

 

There is a question why the Elmali and the neighboring Yelmalions across the Creek did not compare notes earlier. Goldedge is a fricking Sun Dome Temple, with hoplite training etc., and the Bush Range used to be full of horse-archers using the Kuschile skill before their families relocated to the Alone territory.

 

My current un-allocated lesser sun is Golden Bow. Surely a Lightfore-candidate, too.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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15 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

If you meet Monrogh on the road, kill him.

Monrogh: "Why are you attacking me? I was just-"

Ali: roaring "WE'RE NOT DOING THAT AGAIN!!!"

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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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On 10/21/2021 at 2:26 PM, DucksMustDie said:

I have to admit, I'm confused. Who guards a tribal king's stead in Sartar when he leaves for war or a quest, Elmal, Yelmalio, Ricki Lake, no-one? 😮

Yelmalio won't guard the stead, but he'll patrol the general area, subject to appropriate payment of his Day Rate!

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On 10/21/2021 at 8:58 PM, Joerg said:

Word of Greg from the late 90ies already was that the Pelorian-speaking Orlanthi had Yelmalio rather than Elmal, as tribal members. YGWV, of course...

Language-family quibble, wouldn't that be Northern-Theyalan-speaking?  Though certainly granting they were in Peloria when they were talking! 🙂

 

On 10/21/2021 at 6:18 PM, Darius West said:

Thus in my Glorantha, Elmal never went to the Hill of Gold.  Instead he still has access to Fireblade and Firearrow spells, and still gets Kuschile Horse Archery, as he is a patron of horses in the Orlanth pantheon.

I like @soltakss's patch of this, which is that (IIRC, to boil it down doubtless a little too glibly) they have rather similar myths and consequently heroquests, but that relationship with Orlanth is very different.  So in the HoG, they don't fight, they trade shields.  Presumably the fire powers ones are myths that are entirely missing or essentially unrecognisable, and vice versa for the "hoplitey" and "pals around with Yelm" stuff, and so on.  Then again, I'm unlikely to need a longform Elmal RQ cult writeup anytime soon, so I can't say I've done into the details of this -- but commend those that do!

 

On 10/21/2021 at 3:29 PM, Richard S. said:

Yelmalio guards the stead, Elmal ascends the hill of gold, Yelmalio pledges allegiance to Orlanth after being healed by Chalana Arroy, Elmal befriends the elves and protects them in the Darkness, etc, etc. No details need to be changed, all of those myths just belong to one god instead of two now.

Personally I think changing significant such details is pretty key, though!  Now of course, you can validly see them as different variants, as there are in all myths, which just happen to cluster around "am extremely loyal to Orlanth" and "meh, not so much", according to social and political distribution.

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On 10/24/2021 at 1:24 PM, DucksMustDie said:

Thanks Martin, that's what I was looking for 🙂 Great work (y). In my game, there's a village that needs to be saved, and Yelmalio is the right guy for the job

Humakt saves the village. He walks away and never comes back.

Orlanth saves the village; he agrees to stop raiding it if you acknowledge him as Rex.

Yanafal Tarnils saves the village. There are no catches, what makes you think there would be?

Eurmal saves the village, unless it would be funnier if they didn't,

Storm Bull saves the village, if and only if the problem it is facing is being wiped from existence by chaos.  If not, then the problem becomes how to save the village from Storm Bull.

Yelmalio saves the village, and then you have to show up for militia drill every Fireday and do what he says.

Elmal saves the village, and then hands it back to some guy who somehow went missing when things got tough. Except there are few Elmali these days, and those that remain don't run villages.

Ernalda saves the village, by working out which of the above is the best option.

 

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On 10/24/2021 at 5:24 AM, Martin Dick said:

 

Who guards a Sartarite village when the militia leaves? It depends! Sometimes, some men and women are left behind to guard the village. Sometimes, the village gets defended by those too old or too young to go. Sometimes half the militia is left behind, and only the warrior society leaves. It just depends.

The Orlanthi are flexible about such matters. They don't have a universal cult position whose responsibility is to Defend the Village When Most of the Men Are Gone to War. 

And as an aside, they don't even have a universal myth regarding that. In many, maybe most, versions of the Lightbringers story now told, Orlanth appoints nobody. In others, he named a chieftain (not necessarily Yelmalio or Elmal - could be a grandson of Vingkot, could be Tada or someone else) to command while he was gone, and his people swore to remember and support him, and made the Eternal Ring, and set armed men to defend it all around.

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