Storm and Moon (featuring Vinga)

[mfbrandi]

[Spun off from Vinga in Pavis ’cos this is nothing to do with Pavis]

@mfbrandi said (because, you know, broken record: our worst fights are with ourselves):

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Hmm … I thought Storm hated Moon because they both claimed “the middle air” …

In their way, the Storm lot are as much about balancing opposites as the Lunars: “no one can make you do anything” vs. “behave like everyone else”. And can illuminates discern any real difference between themselves and others? “We are all us” … even them.

 

@Nick Brooke said (in Godtime — it is an eternal recurrence):

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The most notable myth involving Orlanth and the Blue Moon is where she teams up with him to assassinate Emperor Yelm, just saying.

And this is all part of my sneaky — well, OK, moronic and obvious — plan to bring the discussion back to subversive non-canon theories about Vinga.

We know that there are Seven Lightbringers and Seven Mothers because the latter are supposed to echo the former.

We know that Moon is the power of balance through cycles, but Orlanth’s great achievement (I am sure he’d claim the credit) was to kill the Sun and have it come back half the time — balancing Light and Darkness in a cycle. But the Sun is Light is Life, and Darkness is the Hungry Void and so is Chaos. So the balance Orlanth/Storm achieved looks a lot like the balance Sedenya achieved between Life/Fertility and Anti-Life/Chaos. And what are free will and change — surely dear to Storm — without time? The murder wasn’t a mistake, it was a necessity. As for the Moon and free will: Natha was “one of the earliest deities who acted on her own volition in the Gods Age” (Hero Wars, p. 82).

Rufelza, we read, “is the Red Moon: red blood, red earth, and red rage. She was created when Wakboth the Destroyer impregnated the great goddess Glorantha.” (Hero Wars, p. 85). The cosmology in Cults of Terror speculates that although Arachne Solara’s “origins are mysterious and subject to speculation … there are strong indications that she is the ghost of Glorantha, the Mother of the Universe.” So the origin of Time in the ritual of the net echoes the birth of the Red Moon.

Now Vinga is the Red Woman “the last defense for women. When a woman screams for help and it arrives, that is Vinga’s power. A woman who has taken the Red Vows is called a Red Woman. Ernalda subcult” Hmm … red earth, red rage, red woman — that reminds me of someone.

So if anyone is upset that Vinga = Orlanth means that Vinga is “really a man”, they shouldn’t worry because Orlanth = the Red Goddess, so you could just as well say Orlanth is “really a woman”. And if when you squint and in a poor light, Sedenya = Inanna, well Inanna could make a man a woman and a woman a man. Humans’ failure to see that all is one, and all is change, and all is held balanced and spinning causes laughter in the middle air. At least, that’s what one whispers to cultists in crisis, and then one scarpers before the lynch mob arrives.

[scott-martin]

34 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

all is held balanced and spinning causes laughter in the middle air

You are cordially invited to present this thread as teaching credential at the Half Closed Open Open University and register for your stew card, library privileges and of course the upcoming debate season, which should be one for the record books.

The only flourishes I would add are that squinting in a poor (red) light is the key to the recognition of ambient POW . . . the first essential step toward collecting it, what we call "errantry" or reification in the west . . . and that sometimes the moon is a man, literally a blue man, as when he deigned to become Artmal (or just impersonate him) and was harried by frightful whirlwind demons on the Running Field of Forbidden Sport. Remember that one?

Day + Earth = Storm. Night + Water = Moon. The lightning lightens, the thunder sounds. And the clock in the sky ticks on.

Maybe the real cosmic distinction between them is that Orlanth is the one who knows his father. Sedenya famously has multiple mothers but the figure she identifies with (or is forced to identify with) is someone else.

 

[mfbrandi]

52 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Day + Earth = Storm. Night + Water = Moon …

Maybe the real cosmic distinction between them is that Orlanth is the one who knows his father.

But the distinction between day and night, life and death is an illusion, for if Yelm is the day, the source of all life (“allfather” — a title once claimed by a certain storm king too), he is also:

Quote

The shadow of Yelm, which was left behind when everything else was gone, coalesced as a limpid, wavering flicker of black fire. Kazkurtum … Death and Lord of the Dead (GRoY, p. 16)

And if Yelm = Death (“Notbeing …an absence, not a presence” (GRoY, p. 14)) — so the void, the end of all things — then not only is he the cause of his own disintegration — not another utuma! — but also (as Wakboth/Kajabor — also famously cyclic) the father of the moon and time and so the agent of his own rebirth into cyclic magnificence. (And if Arachne Solara has always seemed to have something of the dark about her, clearly she is also the sun spider.)

Note also on Moon–Storm equivalence:

Quote

 

One day something else came to Yelm. It was not a known thing, and when questioned it would not reply. It was a New Thing. It was named by Yelm to be Entekos but it did not accept that name. “I have a name of my own,” it said foolishly. So that was the first Rebel God, who did not submit …

Entekos. Literally “Right Air.” Later, a kinder goddess accepted this title (GRoY, p. 14)

 

Sedenya is famously not Entekos (if I understand correctly), but maybe she is Wrong Air. Is it worth trying to slide a cigarette paper between Umath the first rebel, Sedenya the Changer, and Lanatum the Thunderer?

Clearly, we have been given toys we can play with in different ways:

So with my mystic’s hat on, I say, “There is one myth — suicide, rinse and repeat — open your third eye and touch the divine — the one is many, all is one.”

If I had a polytheist’s hat, I’d say, “These apparent identities are traps set by the Deceiver. Burn the heretic!”

Godlearners: “Hat schmat! Identity schmidentity! Let’s freak out the rubes and blow something up.”

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

the figure she identifies with (or is forced to identify with) is someone else

I like this: whoever I am, I am certainly not me.

It had to be a counting song:

Edited September 1, 2022 by mfbrandi
caption

[mfbrandi]

I think we can mark this one officially kicked to death and abandoned in a rat-infested alley. This morning, I stumbled across Ron “Sorcerer” Edwards’ Why Glorantha, and brutally condensed and distorted, it’ll make a fine full stop:

Quote

California counter-culture: a mix of pop philosophizing, retro-pulp revival, underground comix, recreational drug use, world mythology as understood at that time, neo-shamanism, violent heroism, and playful humor … offered to set one’s imagination into overdrive rather than outlining and codifying things to look at … then the acid and the heavy progrock kick in … if you take enough drugs or concentrate enough on abstruse philosophy or chant for hours with sweaty like-minded people on a holy day or kill enough people or monsters to make a difference in terms of a god’s identity …

This is not about the real setting or the right one or the only one.

 

[scott-martin]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

it’ll make a fine full stop

A very dear friend (not exactly pictured, left) used to set off sections of text (it was ASCII times) with a line of periods like an endless ellipse: . . . . . . .

One day someone new entered the discussion to marvel, "thats alot of dots!" without reacting to the content (something esoteric at the time about aliens and typhonic cults, pretty gloranthan stuff really) and the phrase entered the vernacular. Alot of dots. Sometimes "toomany dots."

I think the real white moon debate season begins sometime after the fire-blasting electric guitar noise of that essay fades back into ambient silence. We're already here. Might as well inhabit the space between the stops.

After all, who says Entekos was the wrong air and not the moon? What evidence do they provide beyond "because I say so?"

Edited September 2, 2022 by scott-martin
clarity allows expansion

[mfbrandi]

17 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Might as well inhabit the space between the stops.

Well, anyone can pick it up and blurt with it, but I think people deserve a rest from my wittering.

[scott-martin]

Just now, mfbrandi said:

Well, anyone can pick it up and blurt with it, but I think people deserve a rest from my wittering.

Never. But I'm going to run the ball a few yards up the field of forbidden sport, let's see who joins in.

[scott-martin]

MOUNTAINS OV THEE MOON
(COUNTING SONG)

1. There is only one wind, a system of heat and kinetic energy exchange that circulates across the world and by "wind," I say consciousness: the one who reads this.

[document damaged]

4. Call the wind Œrl and pronounce it something like "whirl." Derive the fractions of the wind thereof: wum, eum [yume], hum, horl, eurln.

5. When the wind carries the no-longer-present in its head, we call it memory. When the wind carries the presently-absent in its belly, we call it motherhood [eurln da].

6. Every wind ultimately murders his father. Every moon is murdered by her father. This is the pleasure [literally "wonder," miracle] of the wind but generally considered the sorrow of the moon.

7. The fraction of the wind that encounters itself ("rolls its own number") recoils in shame, regret, responsibility thus mothers its own moon as an act of atonement ["utuma"]. This is Œing, the One Moon.

8. Thus are all the pleasures [sorrows] of the One Wind [One Moon] multiplied and the world continued.

[Ali the Helering]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Well, anyone can pick it up and blurt with it, but I think people deserve a rest from my wittering.

 

I think this is somewhere near Nochet...

[Jeff]

18 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

[Spun off from Vinga in Pavis ’cos this is nothing to do with Pavis]

@mfbrandi said (because, you know, broken record: our worst fights are with ourselves):

@Nick Brooke said (in Godtime — it is an eternal recurrence):

And this is all part of my sneaky — well, OK, moronic and obvious — plan to bring the discussion back to subversive non-canon theories about Vinga.

We know that there are Seven Lightbringers and Seven Mothers because the latter are supposed to echo the former.

We know that Moon is the power of balance through cycles, but Orlanth’s great achievement (I am sure he’d claim the credit) was to kill the Sun and have it come back half the time — balancing Light and Darkness in a cycle. But the Sun is Light is Life, and Darkness is the Hungry Void and so is Chaos. So the balance Orlanth/Storm achieved looks a lot like the balance Sedenya achieved between Life/Fertility and Anti-Life/Chaos. And what are free will and change — surely dear to Storm — without time? The murder wasn’t a mistake, it was a necessity. As for the Moon and free will: Natha was “one of the earliest deities who acted on her own volition in the Gods Age” (Hero Wars, p. 82).

Rufelza, we read, “is the Red Moon: red blood, red earth, and red rage. She was created when Wakboth the Destroyer impregnated the great goddess Glorantha.” (Hero Wars, p. 85). The cosmology in Cults of Terror speculates that although Arachne Solara’s “origins are mysterious and subject to speculation … there are strong indications that she is the ghost of Glorantha, the Mother of the Universe.” So the origin of Time in the ritual of the net echoes the birth of the Red Moon.

Now Vinga is the Red Woman “the last defense for women. When a woman screams for help and it arrives, that is Vinga’s power. A woman who has taken the Red Vows is called a Red Woman. Ernalda subcult” Hmm … red earth, red rage, red woman — that reminds me of someone.

So if anyone is upset that Vinga = Orlanth means that Vinga is “really a man”, they shouldn’t worry because Orlanth = the Red Goddess, so you could just as well say Orlanth is “really a woman”. And if when you squint and in a poor light, Sedenya = Inanna, well Inanna could make a man a woman and a woman a man. Humans’ failure to see that all is one, and all is change, and all is held balanced and spinning causes laughter in the middle air. At least, that’s what one whispers to cultists in crisis, and then one scarpers before the lynch mob arrives.

Just like sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not all Red Women are the Red Goddess. And let's be fair, Vinga is the red-HAIRED woman (Orlanth also is normally described as having red-hair but nobody really cares about that). She is Orlanth's warrior "daughter" (or perhaps Vingkot's fully divine "sister") but her identity is Orlanth. 

Historically, her cult appears to have appeared as a tribal protector of the Bereneth Tribe in Saird, with their "Red-Haired Women." In stories all the daughters of Redayla Vingkot's daughter and Bereneth the Rider are "Red Headed Women".  Heort's mother Drenyan was said to be a Red-Haired Woman of the Alynx Clan, which ties this altogether. In the Dawn, the Red-Haired Women were incorporated into the Orlanth cult, and the rest is, as they say, history. 

The Red-Haired Women get a lot of interest because Harmast's descent from the Bereneth royal line. Scholars latch onto it because it is a tantalising hint into the origins of the Orlanthi people, but it is just that - a tantalising hint. They are female versions of the one hundred sons of Dhritarashtra by Gandhari. In stories you'd have the many red-haired daughters of Redaylda and Bereneth fight battles, shake their spears, and be Thunderdaughters, female Maruts or a band of sister Amazons.

To me trying to draw a connection between Vinga and the Red Goddess is a stretch too far. The Red Goddess is her own thing, and a world-changer. 

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Just like sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not all Red Women are the Red Goddess …

To me trying to draw a connection between Vinga and the Red Goddess is a stretch too far. The Red Goddess is her own thing, and a world-changer. 

Sure, absolutely, and this is not an attempt to remake canon. Just having a bit of fun with:

• monomythic reductive tendencies;
• people who think that identity is a directional relationship.

I would never try to subordinate Sedenya to Orlanth. Orlanth, Schmorlanth: I wouldn’t know him from Adam! (This is a callback to Saul Kripke.)

[radmonger]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

 her identity is Orlanth. 

What does that actually mean? Is it a statement about national, cultural or gender identity? Is it a reference to some unpublished rule system? Or just a shorthand way of saying 'if someone established a rune cult in her name, it would offer the same magic as does the current Orlanth rune cult'?

 

 

[Eff]

22 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

So if anyone is upset that Vinga = Orlanth means that Vinga is “really a man”, they shouldn’t worry because Orlanth = the Red Goddess, so you could just as well say Orlanth is “really a woman”. 

I'm gonna offer a little bit of a counterpoint- this can be said, to be sure, but for representational purposes (in one sense), you do need some degree of representation (in another sense). Not to say that Orlanth needs to be regularly depicted with conventional androgyne symbols like one flat and one rounded breast or what have you, but certainly weaving the visual reality of this equation within your Glorantha is helpful. 

(It also offers opportunity for playfulness- draw Orlanth like Maitreya Bodhisattva and then put some striped stockings or a shark that looks suspiciously stuffed or a hairstyle that looks remarkably like cat ears in proximity and I'm already cackling. Granted, the symbolic languages are arcane to the uninitiated...) 

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

What does that actually mean? Is it a statement about national, cultural or gender identity? Is it a reference to some unpublished rule system? Or just a shorthand way of saying 'if someone established a rune cult in her name, it would offer the same magic as does the current Orlanth rune cult'?

 

 

I mean it in the same way that Thunderous, Adventurous, and Rex are all Orlanth. We could have exactly the same discussion about how Thunderous is a different deity from Orlanth, but that's not really true (at least in the last two ages) and is certainly not really useful for playing RuneQuest.

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

Just like sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, not all Red Women are the Red Goddess. And let's be fair, Vinga is the red-HAIRED woman (Orlanth also is normally described as having red-hair but nobody really cares about that). She is Orlanth's warrior "daughter" (or perhaps Vingkot's fully divine "sister") but her identity is Orlanth. 

Historically, her cult appears to have appeared as a tribal protector of the Bereneth Tribe in Saird, with their "Red-Haired Women." In stories all the daughters of Redayla Vingkot's daughter and Bereneth the Rider are "Red Headed Women".  Heort's mother Drenyan was said to be a Red-Haired Woman of the Alynx Clan, which ties this altogether. In the Dawn, the Red-Haired Women were incorporated into the Orlanth cult, and the rest is, as they say, history. 

The Red-Haired Women get a lot of interest because Harmast's descent from the Bereneth royal line. Scholars latch onto it because it is a tantalising hint into the origins of the Orlanthi people, but it is just that - a tantalising hint. They are female versions of the one hundred sons of Dhritarashtra by Gandhari. In stories you'd have the many red-haired daughters of Redaylda and Bereneth fight battles, shake their spears, and be Thunderdaughters, female Maruts or a band of sister Amazons.

To me trying to draw a connection between Vinga and the Red Goddess is a stretch too far. The Red Goddess is her own thing, and a world-changer. 

IMG:

• there are peoples in some places who know Vinga as Orlanth's daughter (or sometimes grand-daughter)... and they can prove they are right, with quests into God-time.
• there are peoples in other places who know Vinga as Orlanth him/herself... and they can prove they are right, with quests into God-time.
• there are yet other peoples in yet other places who know Vinga as Orlanth's sister... and, yes, they too have proofs via God-time quests.

I am perfectly OK with having these all be "provably true," with no singular "most true" version.

My Glorantha Varies far more than this, I can assure everyone!

Edited September 2, 2022 by g33k

[radmonger]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

I mean it in the same way that Thunderous, Adventurous, and Rex are all Orlanth.

It seems to me the significant difference with those is the she is not called something like Orlanth Feminus, but Vinga. Things with a name that has been remembered inherently have an identity that has not yet been forgotten.

This is different from one group calling a thing  by one name, and another by a different one, like biscuit and cookie. If it the same people using both names, that means that those people do maintain the distinction between the two, like cake and biscuit.

Maybe they are wrong to do so, but it seems to me they are in the best position to know.

 

 

[mfbrandi]

40 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I mean it in the same way that Thunderous, Adventurous, and Rex are all Orlanth.

And presumably there is nothing mysterious or sense-stretching about this: when we are talking gods (rather than cults), Orlanth Thunderous = Orlanth Adventurous = Orlanth Rex = Orlanth tout court. Not many gods, but one god. Identity, pure and simple. Right?

So the various cults or subcults may celebrate different aspects or achievements of the god, but their POW in worship all goes to the same entity. The worshipers don’t have to grasp this — though many will, one imagines — but we “IRL people” know what is going on, and we don’t need proofs or demonstrations: Chaosium can just stipulate identities, and that is fine.

Now, gods are slippery characters, and doubtless they can change sex, gender, and appearance, and be in two places at once, so in Glorantha/from the characters’ point of view, “that can’t be Orlanth on the green, Orlanth is passed out in the pub” won’t get you anywhere. Characters need to engage in religion — dissection of scripture, religious experience, “magical proof”, whatever — to settle such matters. Clearly, if we as players did that, we would be crackers.

It seems clear that Orlanth = Vinga is canon. (And I am not here to dispute canon: YGMV, so what would be the point?) This doesn’t have to be dressed up any more than Thunderous = Rex — it is a simple statement of identity, not an “ooh, how can that be?” moment for the players. If that is the case, I have to agree with @Eff that this should be handled sensitively, and if possible playfully — with non-masculine/non-male attributes and pronouns adhering to Orlanth outside of the cult of Vinga, and Vinga not seeming like a drag act (as I know I will get dumped on from a great height if I suggest that the Orlanthi are a bunch of barbarian conservatives who know no better). I am not going to make any claims about current representation of Vinga — I am not qualified — but certainly, this hasn’t always been the case: Hero Wars’ “girls can play, but they have to dye their hair and wear a skirt” (i.e. women dragged up as women, no?) was perhaps no one’s finest moment, especially as it seemed that Adventurous was open to women, anyway. (There was a statement that some Orlanth subcults were men-only, but either I didn’t look hard enough or none of those specified were. Maybe Rex if there was an assumption that no woman would get to be clan leader or king.)

IMHO — and it is just my opinion, not holy writ, and not a call to arms — if Orlanth were to be deemed “all man” and Vinga just a dress he puts on to con “the ladies” into worshiping him, that would be kinda tasteless. Presumably, that is not @Jeff’s intention.

If Orlanth is officially sex-changing and gender-fluid, what does everyone think of their representation? I am supposed to be shutting up, after all!

[mfbrandi]

23 hours ago, radmonger said:

This is different from one group calling a thing  by one name, and another by a different one, like biscuit and cookie. If it the same people using both names, that means that those people do maintain the distinction between the two, like cake and biscuit.

Here are two ways to look at the thing:

1. The octopus–sock puppet theory: The true Orlanth is unknowable by mortals, but on the end of each of their tentacles is a puppet; these puppets are Orlanth x, Orlanth y, …, Hedkoranth, Vanganth, and our old friend, Vinga; the Gloranthan mortals interact with the sock puppets — lucky them!
2. The identity theory: You too can touch the face of god, who is fully present in every manifestation, and just as Hesperus/the evening star = Phosphorus/the morning star = the planet Venus, so Orlanth = Vinga, no ifs, no buts, no shell game, no find the lady, and no Shari Lewis.

(I was going to call these the Transcendent Orlanth (1) and Immanent Orlanth (2) theories, but on reflection: poncy and unnecessary.)

Bearing in mind that these are “theories” about a deity/deities, not about cults/subcults, according to the octopus–sock puppet take on things, Hedkoranth != Orlanth Adventurous != Vinga. Crucially, none of them is Orlanth, tout court, who remains unknowable. It seems to me that this could be handled so as to offend no one. However, if one picked one of the male or masculine sock puppets as the real Orlanth, but held all the others — including Vinga — still to be sock puppets, or hats, or disguises, my guess is that some people wouldn’t like that.

In let’s-not-try-to-rewrite-canon mode, I like the identity theory. Worshipers don’t have to know all the identities (and can argue about them) — just as not everyone knew the morning star was the evening star — but no one’s god gets to be second-rate. It doesn’t matter whether you see Venus in the morning or the evening, you are seeing the same planet, the whole planet.

There is no need on either theory to hold that the deity is essentially male or essentially masculine. How hard a group of Orlanthi lean into this will depend on their knowledge of the “mysteries” of their god/dess … as well as their mundane needs and insecurities.

In play, you don’t have to embrace all or any of the canonical identities, and you certainly don’t have to heed anything I say. YGWV.

Edited September 3, 2022 by mfbrandi
grammar

[Joerg]

"I am Brian, and so is my wife!"

Arcane Lore toys with the concept of pluripresence of magical entities, of being active in two or more places at a time, possibly at different tasks.

A deity will have more than one way to interact with the world.

A deity's Godtime feats (from wuch their Rune Magics are derived) may be jost a reflection or repeat (in a different cycle) of an archetypical event. Vadrus slaying Enkoshons, Orlanth ripping apart Aroka, Barntar completing the Banishment of Daga all share the same mythic meme while remaining both distinct individuals and sharing a mask.

A player character becoming Orlanth when casting a Thunderbolt is a weak analogy of that.

When it comes to claims that "deity X is just a mask of deity Y because they both have the same myths A, B and C except for local color" is a bit harder to place. Sharing a planet or star means at the very least that different entities share a mask, and some associated myth. Having different birthplaces is possible. The Theyalans know that Orlanth was born on and to Kero Fin, which gives Orlanth siblingship with Inora, Quivin, Yinkin, and others, but Top of the World is just as valid as his birthplace, possibly with different siblings. But where does this leave Mt.Aerlit between Tanisor and Old Seshnela? Is the storm ancestor of the Malkioni yet another mask of Orlanth?

 

Using the RuneQuest Sight, if the runes and enough of the feats match, there is little reason not to transfer one expressions myth to another. If this associates feats from another expression of these runes with an entity previously not associated with that feat, so much the better! That's what the Lightbringer missionaries did.

[radmonger]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Here are two ways to look at the thing:

1. The octopus–sock puppet theory: The true Orlanth is unknowable by mortals, but on the end of each of their tentacles is a puppet; these puppets are Orlanth x, Orlanth y, …, Hedkoranth, Vanganth, and our old friend, Vinga; the Gloranthan mortals interact with the sock puppets — lucky them!
2. The identity theory: You too can touch the face of god, who is fully present in every manifestation, and just as Hesperus/the evening star = Phosphorus/the morning star = the planet Venus, so Orlanth = Vinga, no ifs, no buts, no shell game, no find the lady, and no Shari Lewis.

 

 

Have to admit, I don't quite get the distinction you are making there, or how those two things are different.

What i find much simpler, elegant and understandable to players is the SHE-HULK theory. Jennifer Walters and Bruce Banner are separate people, but have rather similar powers. Like Vinga, Jennifer did happen to got her powers from a male relative[1]. But how she uses them and what she did with them, are up to her. It's a common conceit amongst her fans that she uses them with more subtlety, skill and control than Bruce. Meanwhile, his fans claim he has more top-end raw power.

You can gain a fraction of those powers by injecting a vial of Hulks blood. The powers you get from this are nearly-identical in nature, and the same underground clinic will happily sell you a vial of blood from either superhero. Both will work equally well, although those who are fans of one or the other will have their preference.

Fans mostly learn about both heroes from stories in the media, which often have only a loose connection with what actually happened. If a person who believes in an entirely false narrative about a superhero happens to meet them, new stories may happen.

Any unity between  the two Hulks is strictly below the level of individual identity. Supposedly, they have 'similar DNA' that allows them to 'absorb gamma radiation', or whatever. About as many Gloranthans know anything about how that works, or care, as do people in the world of SHE-HULK[2].

[1] For which Ernalda will no doubt subtly put her down at their next family dinner.

[2] Most of the group who ran experiments to find out were killed or captured by the Avengers.

 

 

 

 

 

[mfbrandi]

33 minutes ago, radmonger said:

What i find much simpler, elegant and understandable to players is the SHE-HULK theory.

I agree that She-Hulk != Hulk, and that they are not sock puppets or masks of some unknowable Über-Hulk.

I was merely navigating within the canon that Vinga is Orlanth — in some sense, and possibly in a quite straightforward sense. I am neither supporting nor attacking that bit of canon, but it is canon, right?

The identity theory doesn’t need explanation, right? In the octopus–sock puppet theory, Shari Lewis is the unknowable Orlanth/octopus, Lamb Chop is Vinga, and Charlie Horse is Orlanth Rex.

Edited September 3, 2022 by mfbrandi
add image

[soltakss]

19 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

If Orlanth is officially sex-changing and gender-fluid, what does everyone think of their representation? I am supposed to be shutting up, after all!

Vinga is both a daughter of Orlanth and an Aspect of Orlanth.

She embodies Orlanth in the same way that Barntar embodies Orlanth Thunderous. I.e. They are both refinements of the Orlanth cults.

 

[scott-martin]

Look how beautiful she is, my toddler crush restored. The psychic octopus, however, is probably an exotic chaos creature ("you one one two, he one one two") so I feel the need to tread a little carefully through the dreamscape without the symbolic mediation of the gods who have built their houses in my head.

Let's start with Entekos. Nobody in Glorantha knows that she emerged when somebody called Greg, having isolated the original Orlanth sun god, went looking for the original Pelorian storm. To do this, he drew a face on a sock, pinned a little wig on it and send it in to collect the information. Once this puppet entered the Gloranthan dreamscape, she met the moon, who famously told her that from the moon's perspective the Pelorian storm was a totally different goddess. Sad little sock face, scrunched up around the bones inside. But we must imagine the puppeteer happy or at least satisfied.

And the camera pulls back to reveal that the moon was on the other hand all along, Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse did all the singing but Shari Lewis is the one who got paid. We all spent a little time entertainingly and maybe learned something along the way. Is the Pelorian storm the moon? The moon says no. I don't recall what the Pelorian storm said about it (maybe that page got lost), but we're all free to interrogate any god we can access. We can ask her where she ends and the moon starts turning.

People where Greg came from had trouble with that direct experience of gods as living entities and instead relied a lot more than we do on received and derived understanding, which is valid in its own way but different from simply being able to open your mouth and ask someone a question. Any Gloranthan with gumption can find a god and start a conversation. You trade some POW and open up a little empty space in yourself for the god to fill. Then you have a little symbolic god to carry with you and talk to whenever you are lonely or in trouble or simply want to know something. You've bought the puppet.

In my dream there were three blue puppets because famously Orlanth has three arms whereas Shari Lewis and Greg only had two apiece. Thunderous talked only to priests. Maybe once upon a time he made his first friends openly and directly (godis) but in modern society access is mediated by specialists and the rest of us are barely barntars. If I'm looking for Thunderous, I have to rely on a priest to tell me the truth. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Your Glorantha will vary according to your level of faith in "theistic" authority. And if I'm looking for a direct conversation with the storm, Adventurous provides wind words that let me do it. Thunderous doesn't have this spell. This is why.

Or maybe I'm one of those exemplary people who don't need to ask the storm how it blows because I have a reservoir of that knowledge built up one way or another. This is how Rex operates. Maybe we don't need a third hand for this because Rex is the head. You are the representative of Orlanth in the world now. You're storm dad, operating on the authority of the god within (en-theos-ousia). Vinga, by the way, is a routine of the "adventurous" type. I suspect it's the priests who try to keep her in a skirt and keep the skirts off everybody else. This is why adventurers don't trust priests. The authority of the priests used to be much stronger and is fading day by day as the hero wars blow out all the masks but for now their weight falls more heavily in some gloranthas than others. Let them go when it's time to let them go.

But we lost Entekos here again, didn't we? The moon herself said Entekos isn't the moon, and while the moon can prevaricate, in this I'm willing to believe her. Poor little thing was making it up as she went half the time anyway and somehow she pulled it off. Maybe the divine Addi in her little puppet wig simply knew more about Entekos than the moon did, and maybe she knew more about Entekos than she knew about the moon. 

I think what we actually learned in that puppet show was that the Pelorian storm and (a) Pelandan earth are like a matched pair of stripey socks and that the third sock in the "drawers" is actually Ernalda, the seventh color of the rainbow who is neither a land nor a grain nor a virgin nor a crone. When old earth and the sun commingled they had a son and they had a daughter. The son of the sun wrenched his parents apart in some oedipal (heodipal) spasm and then felt really bad about it because he blamed himself. The daughter of the sun did something else we only found out about more recently when Honeel (heornalda) took the old Entekosiad down from the shelf on a rainy day and really read in. Sorrowful Rausa. Scrunchy sad puppet face. We cannot imagine her happy, can we?

The Heortlings today worship the twins: heort, heorlanth, heorlnalda. The -anth is the left sock. The -nalda is the right sock. They are always together like poles on a magnet. We say they're in love. The priests have some convoluted story they tell with wigs and skirts and gender roles but anyone can reach out to the gods directly and find out the truth. The moon says she isn't the air as a woman and canon (priestly authority and direct experience united) agrees with her. While the moon is not Entekos, Heornalda Adventurous might well be the moon, volatilized salt climbing high into the middle air. Is she a "storm" goddess? Someone will need to ask her.

I tried but here's the thing: none of the goddesses are interested in being identified with each other. "Guys tried that before," they say. "We'd rather be individuals not archetypal figurines mass produced to swap into someone else's dollhouse. Every guy thinks he's unique but thinks all women are types. Are all happy families alike?" So I stopped asking but it makes a fun story I hope.

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by scott-martin
forgot to include the alchemical punchline! sorry no "hulk force" content though

[mfbrandi]

37 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Are all happy families alike?

Well, I am always happy to contradict Tolstoy, so I’ll say “no”. Will Stan Lee send me a no-prize?