Voyage Myths

[dumuzid]

Hello all, I'm on the lookout for myths involving long sea voyages, involving actual ships.  It's a bit of a heroquesting lacuna, what with most of our available sources being focused on decidedly non-maritime societies like the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass and the Lunar Empire.

Off the top of my head I can think of the voyages of Artmal, after he and his children descended from the moon but before they settled Veldarahab in Pamaltela, and potentially the Westfaring, though I don't know that the Lightbringers used an actual boat to reach the Gate of Dusk.  Presumably there's a whole trove of this sort of lore among the Waertagi, but it's never seen print to my knowledge.

Other than events that happened within Time (Tanian's Victory, the voyages of Dormal) I'm a little stumped.  Do relevant stories occur to anyone else?

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, dumuzid said:

Presumably there's a whole trove of this sort of lore among the Waertagi, but it's never seen print to my knowledge.

Best I've found are the origin stories of the Maslo (Thinobuto?) in Revealed Mythologies.  This ties a bit into the East Isles as well.

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, dumuzid said:

Off the top of my head I can think of the voyages of Artmal, after he and his children descended from the moon but before they settled Veldarahab in Pamaltela, and potentially the Westfaring, though I don't know that the Lightbringers used an actual boat to reach the Gate of Dusk.  Presumably there's a whole trove of this sort of lore among the Waertagi, but it's never seen print to my knowledge.

When I ran a short-lived Maslo campaign years ago, I also drew upon real-world myths from the Philippines, Polynesia, and Melanesia as there was not a great range of Sea-related content at the time.

[Runeblogger]

28 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

When I ran a short-lived Maslo campaign years ago, I also drew upon real-world myths from the Philippines, Polynesia, and Melanesia as there was not a great range of Sea-related content at the time.

What was your campaign mostly about? Who were the PCs?

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

What was your campaign mostly about? Who were the PCs?

It was one I started running for my kids using HQG.  They wanted to be sailors/explorers and Maslo seemed like an interesting (and relatively unexplored) place to start from.  If I recall correctly, they avoided or got past the Mother of Monsters (and her spawn) in leaving the Maslo Sea.  Headed west along the coast and encountered some Waertagi who sought help in approaching a ruined God Learner lighthouse (they couldn't do so because of some curse).  And that's about as far as we got, though I had sketched out encounters with Malasp in the Marthino Sea and then with a ghost fleet(?).  There was then going to be some interaction with a shaman in Fonrit that may have led into the Spirit World/Gods War.

[soltakss]

16 hours ago, dumuzid said:

potentially the Westfaring, though I don't know that the Lightbringers used an actual boat to reach the Gate of Dusk

They rode on the back of a turtle, but that is just like a boat or ship.

I would have said that Waertag or Dormal would be good places to start. Dormal having Seven Voyages in his mythology was inspired.

Agimori sailed to Genertela to join Arkat, so they might have some myths about that crossing of the seas.

Maybe someone sailed into what became Magasta's Pool, to guide him when the Void opened up after the Spike was destroyed.

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

just an idea: the craddle

 

a big travel, from the mountain to the hell

maybe a too passive quest however ?

but the prize would be changing your own nature (baby -->young adult) could be understanding the world, making friend / alliance with weird entities (in Hell planes) or a big gain in any physical capacity

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

just an idea: the craddle

 

a big travel, from the mountain to the hell

maybe a too passive quest however ?

it follows a standard birth journey.  Constructed in the womb of the mountains, sailed down the birth canal, then flushed into the "hell" of "life" from which the giant must grow.

[French Desperate WindChild]

4 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

it follows a standard birth journey.  Constructed in the womb of the mountains, sailed down the birth canal, then flushed into the "hell" of "life" from which the giant must grow.

interesting, I did not notice the birth , more focused on what I remember (or believe I remember) about the "back from hell" prize (well is there a documented travel to show how a giant come back from hell ?)

however thanks for this perspective so obious once said !

 

[jajagappa]

Just now, French Desperate WindChild said:

(well is there a documented travel to show how a giant come back from hell ?)

Maybe each giant must make their own myth?

[Richard S.]

Could Waertag's voyages work? They're discussed a bit in either Revealed Mythologies or The Middle Sea Empire I think.

[Joerg]

On 2/9/2022 at 4:42 PM, dumuzid said:

Hello all, I'm on the lookout for myths involving long sea voyages, involving actual ships.  It's a bit of a heroquesting lacuna, what with most of our available sources being focused on decidedly non-maritime societies like the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass and the Lunar Empire.

Anaxial, Waertag, Diros, Varanorlanth, Jeset, Artmal, Miirdek come to mind, and any number of heroic figures from the East Isles. Basically any deity that you can associate with the Boat Planet.

Many a Godtime "actual" ship is made from impossible components. Including living or "dead but active" creatures.

Take for instance the Lightbringers' sea journey on Sofala, the sea turtle goddess owing Orlanth a favor for him saving her Diroti children from the Seabird Army. That turtle could easily be a Waertagi Dragonship that lost its crew.

There is a problem with the God Learner maps of Godtime Glorantha - they have a very short window to allow inland seas, and otherwise only offer Sramak's River as the surface where naval journeys were possible.

The invasion of Sshorg brings the first deluge to the island (!) of Thinobutu. Both the Togaro and the Hudaro oceans begin invading the Dry Land surface of the Earth Cube after the birth of Umath pushed the cube down the shaft of the Spike. (Possibly deforming it from a perfect cube into the Lozenge that floats just about the sea level.) 

The river gets defeated or arranged with and accepts its banks, and apart from a couple of pools that have other origins, there are hardly any inland bodies of water that would register as seas.

That changes in the Flood Era, when standing waves enter the land and even lay themselves across mountain ranges like the Rockwoods (and presumably the Mislari). For the duration of their war against the dry lands defended by Orlanth or Tada, the area around the Spike is covered by seas. After the standing waves have been blown away by Storm, only the Faralinthor basin remains for a while, offering quite the surface initially but ultimately dried out by the onslaught of Vadrus.

The flooding of lowland Vithela is irreversible, and while the Neliomi had been tapped out of all energy by both Brithini and Vadeli, it never went away either. Other seas or currents or waves from that period came and then disappeared in the later Storm Age or Ice Age, at least north of the Spike. The sea around Thinobutu apparently extended all the way to Kumanku and Thinokos, and may have been linked to the Churkenos Sea before the Somelz magic raised that square land in the southwest.

The seas only returned (with a vengeance or two) after the Breaking of the World, bringing in Magasta's Pool and the Doom Currents. This marks the rough extent of the modern shore lines, give or take a few lands drowned in the Second Age cataclysms or otherwise during the Closing.

The Flood Age in western Glorantha brought Artmali, Banthites and Helerites to rival Waertagi and (a little later) Vadeli sailing.

 

On 2/9/2022 at 4:42 PM, dumuzid said:

Other than events that happened within Time (Tanian's Victory, the voyages of Dormal) I'm a little stumped.  Do relevant stories occur to anyone else?

Finzalvo the Fisherman and the East Isles campaign against the Antigods on the eastern shoe of Pamaltela is another one.

The Sendereven migration onto Sramak's River is one. The Outrigger epics around Thinobutu are another one, a sequel to the Sendereven story tracking a lost vessel from that fleet.

The rise of Mokato and its ally against the Waertagi expansion into the East Isles, the sea and sky journey of Errinoru, and the Closing-defying sea travels from Jrustela or by Jonat are notorious, too...