Since Trickster seduced Barbeester Gor, Who Was the Child?

[EricW]

A new hero cult waiting to be discovered?

[coffeemancer]

[simonh]

Bearing in mind he got her stupid drunk, and Baeester Gor is the goddess of fermentation, maybe the god of hangovers?

Edited August 9, 2021 by simonh

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, simonh said:

maybe the god of hangovers?

Splitting headaches seem appropriate.  Babeester's revenge upon the Trickster.

[coffeemancer]

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

Splitting headaches seem appropriate.  Babeester's revenge upon the Trickster.

Revenge? I dont think we have reason to believe they didnt part amicably

[jajagappa]

10 minutes ago, coffeemancer said:

Revenge? I dont think we have reason to believe they didnt part amicably

She didn't chop him up into little pieces, so that's certainly amicable on her part.  If she left him with a curse in parting, well he's a Trickster, so deserves some "gift".

[Akhôrahil]

6 hours ago, simonh said:

Bearing in mind he got her stupid drunk, and Baeester Gor is the goddess of fermentation, maybe the god of hangovers?

Bilious, the Oh God of hangovers? 

[Leingod]

Well, Eurmal is the one often blamed for hangovers, so an aspect/child dedicated to it would make sense. Though I imagine the idea of a child of Eurmal and Babeester Gor, even if it's only a god of hangovers, would be sufficiently horrifying that Heortlings would prefer not to refer to this god by name for fear of drawing its attention.

[PhilHibbs]

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

She didn't chop him up into little pieces, so that's certainly amicable on her part.  If she left him with a curse in parting, well he's a Trickster, so deserves some "gift".

Didn't she? I wouldn't be surprised if she did, and that that is a whole nother story.

[Leingod]

4 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Didn't she? I wouldn't be surprised if she did, and that that is a whole nother story.

A story repeated every year, as the cult reenacts the myth of "Babeester Gor Shakes Down Eurmal For His Child Support Payment."

[simonh]

She can join the queue.

Mind you, this does mean she legitimately gets the title "Mother Of All Hangovers".

Edited August 10, 2021 by simonh

[scott-martin]

On 8/9/2021 at 6:09 AM, EricW said:

A new hero cult waiting to be discovered?

IMG this is the deepest of the lost mysteries of the Baroshi complex. We don't actually know a lot about archaic "Varalz" but identification of the female statues is pretty easy. 

I like the notion of the father being ritually dismembered after the annual rite (john barleycorn is dead) and the first man to survive was a local eurmal, who reportedly enjoyed the experience so much they never tried it again. This is an aspect of Dismember known vulgarly as the detachable penis . . . itself another deep earth mystery open to the initiated but rarely discussed.

And thus Sir John in each respect, so paid them all their hire
That some lay sleeping by the way, some tumbling in the mire

There's a lot of eurmal drifting around the Mirrorsea. The hangover propitiatory superstitions reflect and distort these fragments like ghosts in a haunted skull.
 

Edited August 10, 2021 by scott-martin
poetry

[Leingod]

1 hour ago, simonh said:

She can join the queue.

Forcing her way to the front past the other people who want a piece of Eurmal is likely the first station of the Heroquest.

[EricW]

On 8/10/2021 at 11:37 AM, Leingod said:

A story repeated every year, as the cult reenacts the myth of "Babeester Gor Shakes Down Eurmal For His Child Support Payment."

Hilarious - if Barbeester Gor captures a trickster on high holy day, he has to give her all his money and mind the bratty kids while the girls party. But he is under a cult obligation to teach them bad habits

[EricW]

On 8/10/2021 at 6:37 AM, PhilHibbs said:

Didn't she? I wouldn't be surprised if she did, and that that is a whole nother story.

Isn’t there a  Barbeester Gor cult obligation to kill men who make a pass? Or something like that 🙂 

[Qizilbashwoman]

16 hours ago, EricW said:

Isn’t there a  Barbeester Gor cult obligation to kill men who make a pass? Or something like that 🙂 

😠 no, Babeester Gor kills men who sexually assault or rape women. She's "female vengeance". Not that there's a lot of abuse of women going around in the way we think of it in the first place for a whole lot of reasons (fantasy world, thinking you can just seize people cracked open the world and created the Triple Chaos Gods, patriarchy isn't quite a thing in Orlanthland, some cultures don't have rape), but if you step out of line against the Earth Goddesses and their worshippers, she's gonna cut your neck.

Naturally, her worshippers aren't really that friendly, and death cults don't make good mothers, but I don't think it's been settled whether they can't casually have sex. There's no reason to assume not; even death cultists aren't "on" 100% of the time. Well, I'm sure some of them are, but sometimes they wash the skull paint off.

Orlanthis are still human, even if they are fantasy humans.

[Eff]

14 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

😠 no, Babeester Gor kills men who sexually assault or rape women. She's "female vengeance". Not that there's a lot of abuse of women going around in the way we think of it in the first place for a whole lot of reasons (fantasy world, thinking you can just seize people cracked open the world and created the Triple Chaos Gods, patriarchy isn't quite a thing in Orlanthland, some cultures don't have rape), but if you step out of line against the Earth Goddesses and their worshippers, she's gonna cut your neck.

Naturally, her worshippers aren't really that friendly, and death cults don't make good mothers, but I don't think it's been settled whether they can't casually have sex. There's no reason to assume not; even death cultists aren't "on" 100% of the time. Well, I'm sure some of them are, but sometimes they wash the skull paint off.

Orlanthis are still human, even if they are fantasy humans.

I think my default assumption is that Babs Gor cultists are obliged to avoid Life-related entanglements with other people, so preferably casual sex. Or ritualistic invocations of the casualness of the relationship. Ceremonially refusing to cuddle afterwards, growling "It's not that I like you or anything", that sort of thing. But my Gloranthas are laugh-a-minute. 

EDIT: I almost wrote a thing about how Babeester Gor is a sacred guardian of the Earth and prefaced it with "to be pedantic", but now that I think about it, I suspect that it's not actually that pedantic in terms of where Babeester Gor's violence is directed. After all, one's body is made of Earth, and if someone defiles another person's body, such as via sexual assault, then quite possibly that constitutes a defilement of sacred Earth and so Babeester Gor cultists engage in murderous violence against rapists generally, with this looking gendered because of the ways in which Gloranthan gender roles are similar to our own. But all this is a passing thought. 

Edited August 12, 2021 by Eff
Insight into the Dark Earth

[Ironwall]

The whole if babs gor cultists can have relantionships could also be based on how high up the ladder you are

[Leingod]

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

EDIT: I almost wrote a thing about how Babeester Gor is a sacred guardian of the Earth and prefaced it with "to be pedantic", but now that I think about it, I suspect that it's not actually that pedantic in terms of where Babeester Gor's violence is directed. After all, one's body is made of Earth, and if someone defiles another person's body, such as via sexual assault, then quite possibly that constitutes a defilement of sacred Earth and so Babeester Gor cultists engage in murderous violence against rapists generally, with this looking gendered because of the ways in which Gloranthan gender roles are similar to our own. But all this is a passing thought. 

Well, it's also because to the Orlanthi mind the concepts of "Earth" and "female-ness" are so intertwined as to be practically interchangeable in many contexts.

[Sir_Godspeed]

11 hours ago, Eff said:

I think my default assumption is that Babs Gor cultists are obliged to avoid Life-related entanglements with other people, so preferably casual sex. Or ritualistic invocations of the casualness of the relationship. Ceremonially refusing to cuddle afterwards, growling "It's not that I like you or anything", that sort of thing. But my Gloranthas are laugh-a-minute. 

The idea of a tsundere Babeester Gor and her off-and-on dumbass Eurmali lover is hilarious and kinda endearing.

[Joerg]

Off-and-on as in "Remove Body Part"?

[Qizilbashwoman]

17 hours ago, Eff said:

if someone defiles another person's body, such as via sexual assault, then quite possibly that constitutes a defilement of sacred Earth and so Babeester Gor cultists engage in murderous violence against rapists generally, with this looking gendered because of the ways in which Gloranthan gender roles are similar to our own.

one of the ways Glorantha has failed me is its reification of Our Society. It's pretty obvious rape, assault, and patriarchy isn't really a thing, societally, in Orlanthi societies in any way it is like ours. (there are real human societies without rape and sexual assault, incidentally.) that's literally not how people work. Babeester's violence is directed at different kinds of violations of Earth and motherhood, or at external threats where rape occurs, like Chaos.

Abuse is a dangerous game in a world where mighty powers exist and Chaos corrupts the, uh, I guess "sinner" is the word. Huge networks of support exist for women, it makes no sense to put our real-world Western social problems onto Orlanthis where they make no sense when they have their own social problems.

And hoo boy do they have social problems

[EricW]

34 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

one of the ways Glorantha has failed me is its reification of Our Society. It's pretty obvious rape, assault, and patriarchy isn't really a thing, societally, in Orlanthi societies in any way it is like ours. (there are real human societies without rape and sexual assault, incidentally.) that's literally not how people work. Babeester's violence is directed at different kinds of violations of Earth and motherhood, or at external threats where rape occurs, like Chaos.

Abuse is a dangerous game in a world where mighty powers exist and Chaos corrupts the, uh, I guess "sinner" is the word. Huge networks of support exist for women, it makes no sense to put our real-world Western social problems onto Orlanthis where they make no sense when they have their own social problems.

And hoo boy do they have social problems

Remember a lot of people are lay members of whatever cult is in charge, so they aren’t under major cult strictures to behave. There would be no need for Barb Gor if women were always well treated.
 

Someone who makes a habit of “chaotic” acts like rape or kin murder still only has a small chance of being infected with chaos. A much bigger chance of being hunted and killed by vengeful clan members, or a scary red head with a big axe.

[Eff]

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

one of the ways Glorantha has failed me is its reification of Our Society. It's pretty obvious rape, assault, and patriarchy isn't really a thing, societally, in Orlanthi societies in any way it is like ours. (there are real human societies without rape and sexual assault, incidentally.) that's literally not how people work. Babeester's violence is directed at different kinds of violations of Earth and motherhood, or at external threats where rape occurs, like Chaos.

Abuse is a dangerous game in a world where mighty powers exist and Chaos corrupts the, uh, I guess "sinner" is the word. Huge networks of support exist for women, it makes no sense to put our real-world Western social problems onto Orlanthis where they make no sense when they have their own social problems.

And hoo boy do they have social problems

Broadly, I think it's pretty easy to move Babeester Gor away from the I Spit On Your Grave model because the core elements are sacred guardianship/Durga/Anat and none of these things are inherently tied up with sexual assault, and the extent to which they're tied into gendered patriarchal violence is complicated and metaphorical. Flexible. 

But some people just have castration anxieties, I guess? Less glibly, BG seems, like a lot of Gloranthan material, predicated on being a spooky Other who's actually sympathetic once you let down your barriers. It's just that our (Glorantha fandom's) primary means of communicating and discoursing over this Otherness has been in ways (you could delicately describe them as symbolically playing Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" whenever BG is the subject of conversation) that are unfortunate outside of particular contexts. 

(I don't even mean a purely gendered one- get enough Arthurian mystics around a gaming table and they might start lining up for the Axe Maidens to deliver Dolorous Strokes, or argue over who gets to be Fisher King'd.) 

All of which is to say that moving things into a domain where BG is still weird and violent and a little scary but for a broader swathe of people (not universally, of course) is something I think about and occasionally make efforts to do. 

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 hours ago, EricW said:

There would be no need for Barb Gor if women were always well treated.

incorrect!

Earth needs defenders the same as every single other element does. It has its own array of abilities, offensive and defensive. "Rape" isn't a special role we need to give to Earth. "Defending against the pollution of Earth" is, and us reading that as "rape" is my objection. Yes, one way that happens is broo. But of all the millions of dangers that Babeestor Gor protects against, broo is like... what percentage? There's oathbreakers and raiders, krjalki of all kind, and they are the last defense of the sacred places and the assassins send to avenge the worst threats.

Orlanthi society is not the 1950s. You don't fuck with Orlanthi women. They have de jure and de facto power in Orlanthi territories equal to that of men even without counting in the backing of the Earth cults (or Goose Girl land, where men are second-tier). This is a wildly foreign culture and we consistently think of it in terms of our own, which is a mistake of framing.

And even where Orlanthi have assimilated with outside cultures, you'll find these new hierarchies still end up having interesting power balance. The King of Sartar gets their title by marrying the Feathered Horse Queen, a Solar dynastic role with a startling female lead. Despite the masculine title, it seems like the Vingan Kallyr Starbrow, may her name be remembered, was aspiring to the title when she perished.

edit: I don't know who the child is

Edited August 12, 2021 by Qizilbashwoman