🥔 Gloranthan Potatoes 🥔

[Joerg]

Hon-eel's (re-) introduction of maize shows that crops can be transplanted and added with the appropriate rites. The re-introduction of Clearwine to the Stream area by the Colymar is a similar feat.

[davecake]

On 12/24/2021 at 2:43 AM, Eff said:

Legume and pulse crops in Glorantha as a whole are largely ignored in favor of focusing on the grains, so it probably isn't possible to determine whether we have a genuinely fusional situation where the crops are both American and Eurasian, or an infusional one where maize and possibly a few other American crops have been added to an essentially Eurasian cultivational package.

Pamaltela, especially the southern plains, is notably more focused on beans and pulses. 

[davecake]

On 12/24/2021 at 2:32 AM, David Scott said:

My favourite being in Elovare's Blue Moon Heroquest, in Arcane Lore, where the Blue Moon moulds each member of a Heroquest party into a potato and then plants them in soil of Hell.

The Blue Moon does seem better known in Pamaltela, as the ancestress of the Veldang. Perhaps potatoes (and that intriguing but odd hero quest) are Pamaltelan. 

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 12/30/2021 at 10:40 AM, davecake said:

The Blue Moon does seem better known in Pamaltela, as the ancestress of the Veldang. Perhaps potatoes (and that intriguing but odd hero quest) are Pamaltelan. 

I'd guess the Zaranistangi, also Artmali, brought them to Teshnos; their worship of the Blue Moon remained a constant. Likely the Middle Sea Empire then shipped a lot more; potatoes store well

[Joerg]

16 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I'd guess the Zaranistangi, also Artmali, brought them to Teshnos; their worship of the Blue Moon remained a constant. Likely the Middle Sea Empire then shipped a lot more; potatoes store well

Teshnos is rice country, as is Melib, where Annilla has a rice goddess aspect. I suppose that plantains take the nutritional role of potatoes in the upland parts of much of Teshnos, and I could see the amazons of Trowjang cultivating manioc, and possibly sago.

But then I am not that keen to bring those highland tubers into either my kitchen or my Glorantha. Your Gourmantha May Vary.

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 1/1/2022 at 8:31 AM, Joerg said:

Teshnos is rice country, as is Melib, where Annilla has a rice goddess aspect. I suppose that plantains take the nutritional role of potatoes in the upland parts of much of Teshnos, and I could see the amazons of Trowjang cultivating manioc, and possibly sago.

But then I am not that keen to bring those highland tubers into either my kitchen or my Glorantha. Your Gourmantha May Vary.

Teshnos now is rice country and worshippers of Dayzatar; what was it when the Zaranistangis ruled at the Dawn and then moved inland? Likely the source of papas fritas. Annilla-Rice-Goddess is an adjustment to the change in staple when potates were replaced with a more climate-appropriate foodstuff.

[Joerg]

21 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Teshnos now is rice country and worshippers of Dayzatar; what was it when the Zaranistangis ruled at the Dawn and then moved inland? Likely the source of papas fritas. Annilla-Rice-Goddess is an adjustment to the change in staple when potates were replaced with a more climate-appropriate foodstuff.

Rice is endemic to many civilized places, and you don't get much more civilized than Govmeranen's Empire. The Vithelans dealt with the first coming of Sshorg (in what the rest of the world called the Golden Age, shortly after the birth of Umath) and may have started irrigation after the Togaro invasion that sent the keets quacking.

Kralorela got rice under Emperor Shavaya (Miyo is said to be his daughter), after Metsyla/Osdero was drowned in the Flood that also hit Dara Happa and made Kerofinela an island in a valley of seas. This was roughly the arrival date of the Tolat-worshipping Zaranistangi king who found such an inspired use for his copy of the Red Sword, keeping Melib above the surface.

Lowland Melib has Annilla as goddess of rice (or possibly as goddess of irrigation/drainage, tying in with her tidal powers).

I had the impression that mainland Teshnos only came under Zaranistangi rule with the Loper People expansion, within History, possibly only in the early Second Age. The Loper King somehow made it to Ralios and fought the Seshnegi during their conquest of the Autarchy, possibly as an ally or mercenary of the Autarchy. After Paslac's fall, the roamed eastern Safelster and Slontos, where the (or a) Red Sword was lost and obtained by a Jrusteli adventurer who used it to become king of Melib.

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

I had the impression that mainland Teshnos only came under Zaranistangi rule with the Loper People expansion, within History, possibly only in the early Second Age. The Loper King somehow made it to Ralios and fought the Seshnegi during their conquest of the Autarchy, possibly as an ally or mercenary of the Autarchy. After Paslac's fall, the roamed eastern Safelster and Slontos, where the (or a) Red Sword was lost and obtained by a Jrusteli adventurer who used it to become king of Melib.

The Zaranistangi were in Teshnos before the Dawn. They had been driven out of the Eastern Isles by an antigod, apparently? This bit is unclear to me. It happened in the Great Darkness.

They had lost much of Teshnos by 265 ST and by 400 ST the Teshnan Principalities were all completely independent states. That was the end of their control of Teshnos, although the worship of Annilla remained important there as one of the five high gods. She seems to have replaced the Earth goddess role as grain mother there.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Qizilbashwoman

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

The Zaranistangi were in Teshnos before the Dawn. They had been driven out of the Eastern Isles by an antigod, apparently? This bit is unclear to me. It happened in the Great Darkness.

That Antigod could have been Sshorg, drowning most of the Vithelan civilization during the Flood Age. But then, the Veldang peoples only arrived on Glorantha after Orlanth had slain Yelm, as their ancestress Veldara was born in Hell, to Dead Emperor Sun and the younger twin sister of Umath. Before the Great Darkness, though, but that feat with the Red Sword uplifting the land needs to be in this conflict, too.

The Zaranistangi claim descent from Emilla, the planet goddess for the body known as Mastakos by the Orlanthi and Uleria by the Dara Happans, with traits of both these deities, and they helped Artmal and/or a successor emperor against the Storm Invaders and obtained Tolat's sword and blessings from that. But then the flood and the pastoralist expansions may have taken some time, or we have a case of cycles crossing from later into earlier ages.

For there to be a Artmali Empire to be overrun by the Storm pastoralists descending from the slopes of the Spike, the Sun Emperor must be dead in Hell, and the Good Wife must have voluntarily followed, turning black in the process.

And for Artmal to be fathered by Lorion (later known as Sky River Titan, worshipped by the Orlanthi as Engizi) the rnvasion of the Sky turning the golden mirror put in place by vain Brightface blue, Lorion must have been ascending, accompanied by the Blue Moon.

But then we have Annilla morning for her unnamed Elder Giant husband, and bearing his dead child to turn its body into the Blue Moon, in the Troll Gods composite myth. All of that could have happened with Yelm in the Sky, after the dismemberment of Umath.

 

Both the God Learners and Greg Stafford had their troubles aligning the Veldang Godtime experiences with the Monomyth.

 

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

They had lost much of Teshnos by 265 ST and by 400 ST the Teshnan Principalities were all completely independent states. That was the end of their control of Teshnos, although the worship of Annilla remained important there as one of the five high gods. She seems to have replaced the Earth goddess role as grain mother there.

There are Loper People ruins in western Teshnos which I assume to have been of more recent date - the early and middle Second Age - but Melib has blue-skinned folk of mixed ancetry, and major temple cities.

[dumuzid]

51 minutes ago, Joerg said:

And for Artmal to be fathered by Lorion (later known as Sky River Titan, worshipped by the Orlanthi as Engizi) the rnvasion of the Sky turning the golden mirror put in place by vain Brightface blue, Lorion must have been ascending, accompanied by the Blue Moon.

I've looked into this chain of events as closely as the documents permit to run heroquests of some of the relevant myths, and as best I can reconstruct Artmal was born at some point in the mid-late Golden Age, saves Tolat/Shargash in his battle with Umath, encounters and woos his spouse Cathora, ascended with her to the body of his mother, and descended during the early Storm Age after Cathora bears him three hundred children and they form the Three Hundred Families, possibly by finding their own spouses on Earth like their father.  At some point after the return to Earth, probably in Pamaltela, Yeetai the First Emperor saves Artmal and gains his descendant of the Red Sword, and this is the sword that is stolen by, given to, or perhaps creates an offspring for the Zaranistangi royals later in the Storm Age.  That latter hand-off is connected with Artmal's defeat by Baraku/Orlanth, and in designing a heroquest for the myth I placed the act after Artmal's dismemberment, as the culmination of the chain of events that turns back the Storm invasion and positions Jarkaru, the future Indigo Conqueror, as Artmali Emperor.

Note: I've interpreted the Artmali imperial title before Jarkaru as the 'Emperor of the Artmali People,' rather than the 'Emperor of the Artmali Empire' per se, in the same sense that Louis Philippe of the July Monarchy claimed to be 'King of the French' as opposed to the Bourbon title of 'King of France'.

This next bit is a little flimsier, but I hypothesize an early connection between Artmal and Heler/a, based on the repeated descriptions of Artmal and his posterity traveling in ships made of cloud, or clouds shaped like ships.  The Artmali may have lost this power when Artmal was dismembered, leading Jarkaru to establish a more traditional surface navy, the Aquamarine Armada, in the aftermath of the Storm invasion.

Edit: 

  

3 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

The Zaranistangi were in Teshnos before the Dawn. They had been driven out of the Eastern Isles by an antigod, apparently? This bit is unclear to me. It happened in the Great Darkness.

They had lost much of Teshnos by 265 ST and by 400 ST the Teshnan Principalities were all completely independent states. That was the end of their control of Teshnos, although the worship of Annilla remained important there as one of the five high gods. She seems to have replaced the Earth goddess role as grain mother there.

I have had a devil of a time reconstructing the history of Teshnos before the God Learner conquest and the founding of Eest.  Such a paucity of sources, and those mostly contradictory! 

Edited January 3, 2022 by dumuzid

[davecake]

On 1/3/2022 at 10:07 PM, Joerg said:

you don't get much more civilized than Govmeranen's Empire.

Most Eastern ‘history’ is a reconstruction of what the past must have been like, based on what the people in power would like you to believe about now. I mean, even more than history elsewhere. I don’t think Govmeranen’s Empire was any more civilised than anywhere else. Like Murharzarms analogous empire, it was a bunch of quite different communities seen as unified in later mythologies. 

most current East Isles myth is probably the consensus of the Sage debates in the Empire of Golden Mokato, with the resulting mythic reinterpretation of everything. 

Shavaya seems to have been ‘emperor’ when a real urban culture based around cities built to a particular plan, and based around rice cultivation, emerged in Kralorela. Emperors before that are mythical beings that demonstrate the mythic unity of the Empire. 

[Alex]

8 minutes ago, davecake said:

I don’t think Govmeranen’s Empire was any more civilised than anywhere else.

Not everywhere need have been equally (un)civilised always!  Though equally, not everywhere -- anywhere, likely! -- is telling the truth about it, either.  Well of course it is true -- mythically true.  Historical accuracy much less important;  not to mention, much harder to determine...

I notice the same thing with the "same god/different god" thing.  There seems to be a default that the "true" account is that there was originally just one cult, and one name, and they all split and the current state is essentially the product of linguistic and cultural drift.  But it might be just the opposite -- a synthesis of different deities that just happen to be able to "recip".  (Or with some integration work, have been made to be able to.)  Or something more complex -- look at the "ring species" cultic shenanigans with Dendara and Entekos in the Library material.

I rather like the apparent discrepancies between the Eastern account and those from elsewhere.  Even if it's self-serving nonsense, it's entertaining and evocative nonsense.  And the implications if it is true are...  interesting.