Storm and Moon (featuring Vinga)

[scott-martin]

55 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

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

Leon, Stan and Greg are all no longer living authors so all we have to argue with now is the text and other necromantic arts. And each other, of course. But maybe there's an empty envelope addressed to you, slow arriving in the post. Turns out Al Ewing found a stack of them recently and has been dropping them in the box but I digress. 

And so it is with "dead gods" we can't call up and ask any more. They say Orlanth's father is dead. He can't tell us who killed him or why, in a sorta fairy tale, his atoning (avenging) son brought back some other guy instead. The family won't talk about it, there's always some semantic slide around the dead spot. They said the moon was dead. She apparently got better but doesn't like to talk much about who killed her.  It's like all that happened to some other girl.

Who needs to forgive Heumath (Yomat), I wonder. Who were the mothers trying to bring back but they got some other girl instead. Surely not all sad families are all that different. There are patterns.

Edited September 3, 2022 by scott-martin
zinger

[Joerg]

Entekos has been known as the faithless daughter of Vadrus, Molanni, mother of Daga, since the days of Wyrm's Footnotes. While Entekos claims a different origin, she clearly is the still air that prevents the Orlanth Storm from reaching his birthplace.

Greg planted an easter egg in the Book of Heortling Mythology introducing Serenha, the sister or daughter of Umath.

When did the primal storm begin to diversify? As soon as dad Sky had been lifted off the Spike, and mom Ga had been pushed down a bit onto that Spike (raising the "foothills" and "high valleys" on the slope of the Spike as that cone gave some resistance to Umath's unbridled power)?

 

There is another goddess of still air, the goddess of the Eye of the Storm, the Doldrums, Brastalos. There is astonishingly little "canonical" information on her, or her relationship with the rest of the Storm Tribe.

Like Molanni or Dendara, she is the wife of a rival elemental tribe.

Brastalos might be the best candidate for a Storm Moon Goddess. Like Teelo Estara Sedenya, she leapt into the Void of Chaos, and survived the experience. She is right on the pulse of the weekly (Wildday) tides as the encapsulated Void expands before being pushed back again. She rotates while siting still, in the center of the Storm.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Greg planted an easter egg in the Book of Heortling Mythology introducing Serenha, the sister or daughter of Umath.

And this fits in fine with Sedenya the Changer being one of the rebel gods who plots against Yelm (GRoY, p. 14).

And sister/schmister — don’t let apparent differences of sex fool you into multiplying entities. Look at how the Thunder family keeps threatening to collapse back into Orlanth only. Smoke, mirrors, and the odd woad-dyed sock.

Edited September 3, 2022 by mfbrandi
hobbyhorse riding

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

They say Orlanth's father is dead. He can't tell us who killed him or why, in a sorta fairy tale, his atoning (avenging) son brought back some other guy instead.

But voices keep telling us — nurse, my pills! — that it is futile to distinguish between parent and child in Stormland: Vinga is Orlanth, and Vinga is Orlanth’s child, too. So maybe Orlanth is Umath, and Orlanth is Umath’s child, too. And Sky is both one and many and parent to Storm. So Orlanth killed his father, and he did bring “the right guy” back (on a cyclical, strictly entropic basis, of course).

[mfbrandi]

I suppose this bit of doggerel must have come up before:

The Wind and the Moon
by George MacDonald

Said the Wind to the Moon, “I will blow you out;
You stare
In the air
Like a ghost in a chair,
Always looking what I am about —
I hate to be watched; I'll blow you out.”

The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon.
So, deep
On a heap
Of clouds to sleep,
Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon,
Muttering low, “I've done for that Moon.”

He turned in his bed; she was there again!
On high
In the sky,
With her one ghost eye,
The Moon shone white and alive and plain.
Said the Wind, “I will blow you out again.”

The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew dim.
“With my sledge,
And my wedge,
I have knocked off her edge!
If only I blow right fierce and grim,
The creature will soon be dimmer than dim.”

He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread.
“One puff
More's enough
To blow her to snuff!
One good puff more where the last was bred,
And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go the thread.”

He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone.
In the air
Nowhere
Was a moonbeam bare;
Far off and harmless the shy stars shone —
Sure and certain the Moon was gone!

The Wind he took to his revels once more;
On down,
In town,
Like a merry—mad clown,
He leaped and halloed with whistle and roar —
“What's that?” The glimmering thread once more!

He flew in a rage — he danced and blew;
But in vain
Was the pain
Of his bursting brain;
For still the broader the Moon—scrap grew,
The broader he swelled his big cheeks and blew.

Slowly she grew — till she filled the night,
And shone
On her throne
In the sky alone,
A matchless, wonderful silvery light,
Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.

Said the Wind: “What a marvel of power am I!
With my breath,
Good faith!
I blew her to death —
First blew her away right out of the sky —
Then blew her in; what strength have I!”

But the Moon she knew nothing about the affair;
For high
In the sky,
With her one white eye,
Motionless, miles above the air,
She had never heard the great Wind blare.

[mfbrandi]

Godlearner report just in:

Quote

 

Oceanic tides lead to some of the largest currents of the world ocean and have important implications for oceanic circulation … Here we present evidence, using coupled high-resolution ocean-atmosphere simulations and in situ measurements, that ocean tides can drag the atmosphere above …

Ocean tides are mainly produced by the gravitational forces of the Sun and Moon and represent one of the main sources of energy of the world ocean …

In the literature, only two categories of atmospheric tides are documented: the gravitational tides (similar to oceanic tides) and the thermal tides, i.e., the effect of diurnal heating of air masses by the sun. These atmospheric tides are shown to be an important transport mechanism in the upper atmosphere. However, while they dominate the dynamics of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere, they are very weak in the troposphere. Yet their effect on pressure propagates to the surface and can add (by an inverse barometric effect) about 1 cm of elevation amplitude to the oceanic S2 tide—overall a small contribution to the tides. We demonstrate here the existence, to the best of our knowledge, of a new class of atmospheric tides induced by the drag of ocean tides.

 

TL;DR: Tides in the air driven by the sun and the moon. In Dara Happa, some people are feeling very smug.

[Joerg]

39 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Godlearner report just in:

TL;DR: Tides in the air driven by the sun and the moon. In Dara Happa, some people are feeling very smug.

In Glorantha, the sun and the seas appear to ignore one another a lot, otherwise the colder winter sun which has a lowered Sunpath (according to a model presented by Nick Brooke, explaining the shortened day by having the hoop of the sun's path pulled downwards into Hell, would cause higher tides on winter days if proximity is the main factor for the strength of attraction, while the summer pun's path is higher, resulting in longer diurnal upward pull despite greater distance.

Incidentally, the path of Lightfore experiences the opposite variation over the year, while the other Sunpath planets (Mastakos/Uleria, Dendara/Moskalf, Lokarnos) don't appear to have any seasonal variation of their path length or height. Since these planets are always eclipsed by the sun and not vice versa, I would assume that even the highest path of the sun (or Lightfore) still is a little lower than the path of those three planets. If the sun exerts a pull on the waters (mytholgically, it might as well be a push), chances are that the planets do, too. Whether or how much this is measurable is another question.

Moons we have two, one with a measurable effect on the non-weekly swelling and quick release caused by the Blue Streak, the other only mirrored in the south-facing moon as reflects the greatest expansion of the Chaos Void which coincides with the red side of the moon facing that way, and the lowest weekly tide while the black side faces south (or slightly southeasterly  towards Magasta's Pool, if you want to be pedantic). The Roving Searchlight theory of the moon makes a direct attraction between the red side and the seas unlikely, otherwise the Thunder Delta would experience the weekly tides about half a week delayed.

The climb of the Blue Moon follows the course of the Celestial River, starting in the constellation of Lorion, and thus has a 24 hour rotation which might lead to a slight circular modulation of the waters of the world towards the Lorion constellation, possibly the most strongly observable when the blue moon is about halfway up.

I wonder whether Annilla's rise has an influence on the intensity of the Skyfall?

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

In Glorantha, the sun and the seas appear to ignore one another a lot

It is weird, isn’t it, that we’re supposed to accept that the Gloranthans have their cosmology/astronomy figured out correctly? But maybe we are not quite meant to accept that: In GRoY (p. 71) we have:

Quote

Lunar Solutions
Finally, many of the questions of the celestial mechanics are
answered in the Lunar Settlement. This was proposed and
proved by the Red Emperor in Dayzatar’s Gathering of
1/14.

It involves a series of crystalline spheres which move in
very complicated patterns which are acceptable to
mathematicians and a mystery to normal humans.

This suggests that Gloranthan science isn’t done, yet. If the story of Glorantha is one of thinning — and thinning I think should be viewed as a Good Thing — perhaps Fourth Age Glorantha will have its Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler. Of course, if the Aldryami (see proxy below) view it as thinning ( --> ), perhaps the Mostali see it as the repair of the world machine ( <-- )

Quote

A great change is coming, this world and all we have known will pass away.
Trees and stone, wind and rain, will be as naught.
It will be a world of artifice, of vast gears interlocking in one enormous mechanism.
— Lisa Goldstein, Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon

I like to think of it as the slow comedown from a mammoth trip with the world as it always was slowly reasserting itself in its inhabitants’ minds.

Edited September 4, 2022 by mfbrandi
remove spurious emoji

[Qizilbashwoman]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

But voices keep telling us — nurse, my pills! — that it is futile to distinguish between parent and child in Stormland: Vinga is Orlanth, and Vinga is Orlanth’s child, too. So maybe Orlanth is Umath, and Orlanth is Umath’s child, too. And Sky is both one and many and parent to Storm. So Orlanth killed his father, and he did bring “the right guy” back (on a cyclical, strictly entropic basis, of course).

i mean yes, he's Umath, but he's also Umath FILTERED. He's not Urox, Kolat, Humakt, Serenha, or Vadrus. Every generation down is Decision made.

Some say Vinga is Orlanth. Others say she is his child. Both allow for her to be the same as Orlanth Adventurous, theologically. Either she's one generation more specific, or she is a preferred aspect.

Edited September 3, 2022 by Qizilbashwoman

[metcalph]

I though I might have said this in Your Dumbest Theory, but you are looking at the wrong Orlanth for Vinga's origins.  There's also Vingkot.

So originally there were two storm gods among the Vingkotlings - Vingkot and Orlanth.  They were quite similar and the two moieties understood them to be the same god and also different in some ways.  Vingkot was born at Kero Fin and associated with the tribes of the north while the tribes of the south followed Orlanth who had wandered from Dini near the Spike.  Vingkot was killed in at the Battle of Not Relevant Here.  His sons duly mourned their loss, said their farewells and took up the worship of Orlanth.   After all, they were quite similar so much that they were almost the same.  Thereafter Vingkot's importance was gradullay reduced until he was the son of Orlanth.

But some parts of Vingkot didn't die.  And some parts of Vingkot couldn't be replaced by Orlanth.  One of these was Vinga, his feminine side...

 

[Bill the barbarian]

On 9/2/2022 at 8:07 AM, Ali the Helering said:

On 9/2/2022 at 6:27 AM, mfbrandi said:

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

On 9/2/2022 at 8:07 AM, Ali the Helering said:

I think this is somewhere near Nochet...

 

Hm, I thought it was near Redding...

 

8 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

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

No, but considering you and I are the only two outside of Clancy Street or a Stan's Soapbox to have a clue what a no-prize is I will gladly give you one. Who is this Tolstoy fellow you nay-say?
<wink>

Excelsior!

Edited September 4, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

It is weird, isn’t it, that we’re supposed to accept that the Gloranthans have their cosmology/astronomy figured out correctly?

I wasn't talking about the Gloranthans but about the great this world pioneer of Glorantha celestialogy, Nick Brooke, father of the Gloranthan Ephemeris, originally programmed in Visual Basic, using the celestial maps from an early version of the Fortunate Succession to make sense of the actual celestial happenings.

That software plotted the nightly journeys of Lightfore across the constellations, with surprising stories about young Yelm resulting from that.

Here's a link to the Reddit location of Nick's later illustration on the Sky Dome tilt and the height of the Sunpath (scroll down for the second set of graphics for that):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Glorantha/comments/k4d3uy/sky_dome_and_sunpath_crosssections_through_the/

(displayed as a link since the pictures didn't show)

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

But maybe we are not quite meant to accept that: In GRoY (p. 71) we have:

[mention of crystalline spheres]

This suggests that Gloranthan science isn’t done, yet. If the story of Glorantha is one of thinning — and thinning I think should be viewed as a Good Thing — perhaps Fourth Age Glorantha will have its Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler. Of course, if the Aldryami (see proxy below) view it as thinning ( --> ), perhaps the Mostali see it as the repair of the world machine ( <-- ) ,

Unlike our planet, there is no way to map the celestial movements of Glorantha to a heliocentric model with a rotating (cubical) planet. The Sun Path behaves like you are looking up from our planet's equator while the constellations work like you are looking up from one of the Poles of our planet (and I have only a 50% chance to get it right if you ask me which of the two poles, as one has the firmament apparently turning clockwise and the other has it turning counter-clockwise, but that's due to observer bias and easy to get wrong as east on the left in firmament maps because you are looking up, not down.)

 

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I like to think of it as the slow comedown from a mammoth trip with the world as it always was slowly reasserting itself in its inhabitants’ minds.

The Gloranthan heliocentrist round world "theories" fail to match the observations, and thus are philosophically and scientifically unsound. They are a lot easier to falsify than our world's Flat Earth or Inside of a Hollow Earth theories.

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Hm, I thought it was near Redding...

Reading to Wittering is 133 kilometers (83 miles), apparently. To me that is a fair bit of shoe leather, but we are a very small country — with very small minds, but sadly no longer with very small cars.

Redding is where the lifts/elevators come from, right?

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Gloranthan heliocentrist round world "theories" fail to match the observations, and thus are philosophically and scientifically unsound.

So I take it you have no truck with what sometimes seems like orthodoxy: in Glorantha, two contradictory things can both be true.

[Joerg]

18 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

So I take it you have no truck with what sometimes seems like orthodoxy: in Glorantha, two contradictory things can both be true.

There is a limit to how much contradiction can be permanent, and where transient reality aka Lie and Illusion take over.

Ptolemaeus, Kopernikus, Kepler and Galilei found their observations to lead to one conclusion. The observable sky mechanics of Glorantha do lead to one conclusion, too, and that isn't heliocentric. It was you who wanted disciples of the Truth by absence of falsification aka science in Glorantha, and then to prove a heliocentric world model, then that model only works through lies and illusion if you want to avoid to be caught by falsification. (And there was a period when Illusions were real. In Vithela, the reign of Avanapdur had many transient things, a few of these beneficial, but most of them nightmarish - it was the Greater Darkness, after all. But the lands under this influence - including the least accessible part of the Errinoru jungle - failed to notice an absence of the Sun. Was that Eastern sun real, or was it just another illusion? Was it a magically empowered shard of Lightfore?)

It is a bit like the proof of the "rounded down whole nnumebr Pi" machine by Bloody Stupid Johnson in Pratchett's Going Postal - if you warp the world, or even just the perception of the world, it is bound to be ripped apart in interesting and very fatal ways. Rather similar to this (exceptionally safe for work) Oglaf comic strip:

https://www.oglaf.com/collider/

It is not like the Gloranthan's cannot imagine life on a sphere - for most of the Third Age, they can look up to the Red Moon to witness it. (It is less clear whether the original Blue Moon of Annilla and/or Veldara was a sphere or some other shape - possibly a disk or a crescent shaped, wide-bellied boat? And if it was a boat, did it float on the visible Lorion River in the Sky, with the deck facing towards the Surface World, or did it soar through the Upper Air by its own levitating powers?)

The numerous deities claiming the stellar bodies of the sun(s), moons and planets are a case where such contradictory "it's all mine" statements don't worry me.

[svensson]

Wow.

You guys really know how to 'flog the molly'... [in reference to both the Boston-Irish punk band and the slang for doing too much meth...]

This entire conversation, while interesting, is really just a digression to the segue to the footnote of the addendum to the apocrypha. And in absolute truth, I don't really know the purpose of the whole thing.

Vinga IS Orlanth, Orlanth IS Vinga. They are separate facets of the same divine being.

Vinga allows women whose personalities do not fit the Ernalda 'maiden-mother-queen-crone' archetype a place in the pantheon and in the clan where they can not only contribute but excel. Vinga women are celebrated for achievements in Courage, Justice, Passion and Honor, and this allows provides the clan 'tomboys' a path that isn't quite as dark as those laid out by Humakt or Babeester Gor. What's more, these roles are out in full view of the world, not closed by steading life, motherhood, or temple life. And the path of Vinga does not deny her worshipers femininity, it encourages it and it celebrates it.

Lastly, Vinga IS NOT the Orlanthi equivalent of the Red Goddess. Vinga existed before Sedendya was destroyed and reassembled and will exist after the Red Moon is made dust. The Seven Mothers tried to copy the Lightbringer's Quest and failed, and their basic failure then led to Sedenya's failed apotheosis quest and required her to use Chaos to achieve her ends. The acceptance of Chaos was NOT part of Jakaleel and Irrippi's plan. The Scarlet Harlot needed the infusion of the power of Chaos to pass the trials of her apotheosis and this has been anchor shackled to the leg of the Lunar 'We Are All Us' motto ever since.

This whole discussion boils down to this: Vinga IS, just like Lhankor Mhy IS. She exists herself to herself. She is not a parable or a lesson. She is not a stand-in for any other being. Whatever she was in the God's Age, whatever she was in the Age of Dragons and Empires, in this Age Vinga is as she is. There is no subtext, there is no propaganda 'message behind the message'.

Accept the goddess just as you would romance one of her worshipers: Accept her as she is for who she is, without reservation or label. To treat her any other way belittles her.

Edited September 4, 2022 by svensson

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

There is a limit to how much contradiction can be permanent …

The observable sky mechanics of Glorantha do lead to one conclusion, too, and that isn't heliocentric.

Thanks for your reply, Joerg.

IRL, if someone said to me “p and ¬p”, I would not understand what they meant. You can have two equally well confirmed statements that contradict each other, but that’s not the same as saying they are both true. That is nothing to do with the putative physics of Glorantha, so how do we “relax logic” (as it were) when discussing fiction? That’s not a put-down or a counter-argument: I just don’t know how to do it.

I am happy to be put right about Gloranthan celestial mechanics — my ignorance is, after all, boundless. I had in mind the story of Greg on being asked what the Fourth Age was like, pointing out the window. The wrinkle I added was: what if this wasn’t a rewriting of reality but a rewriting of Gloranthan perception (picking up from the Ron Edwards’ recreational drugs/Cali ’60s references). I know I didn’t spell any of this out, but this thread is explicitly a flight of fancy — not a jeu d’esprit, as that would imply a display of intelligence on my part — and not a solemn contribution to Gloranthan studies.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, svensson said:

This entire conversation, while interesting, is really just a digression to the segue to the footnote of the addendum to the apocrypha. And in absolute truth, I don't really know the purpose of the whole thing.

Vinga IS Orlanth, Orlanth IS Vinga. They are separate facets of the same divine being.

Not just that, it is a zombie digression to the segue to the footnote of the addendum to the apocrypha — I expect Delecti or some angry ducks to turn up any minute now. It is just a bit of fun for people who find this kind of thing amusing, not an attempt to piss on anyone’s chips. It is explicitly not an attempt to rewrite Gloranthan canon — that is safely in the hands of Jeff and company.

But as you are here, take a glass of wine — red, naturally — relax, and join the party …

Think of a D10 as a cut gem: if 9 = Vinga and 0 = Orlanth [insert favourite aspect here], clearly the facets of the gem are not identical with each other, nor with the gem. Hence octopus–sock puppet vs. identity. (I do appreciate that the way people naturally express themselves does not constitute a commitment to either theory.)

My pet conceit is that Orlanth/Storm is the Red Goddess/Moon. It is an Arkat/Gbaji/Nysalor thing. Vinga, I am afraid, is a bit of an innocent bystander caught up in the kerfuffle.

Remember, Enki and Eurmal are clever, but I am just a fool.

[g33k]

On 9/4/2022 at 6:24 AM, mfbrandi said:

... My pet conceit is that Orlanth/Storm is the Red Goddess/Moon. It is an Arkat/Gbaji/Nysalor thing ...

IIRC (and I may not!) isn't it future-canon that Argrath (standing in for Orlanth) and Jar-Eel (standing in for Sedenya) each come to the conclusion that they are one another's shadow-selves?

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, g33k said:

they are one another's shadow-selves

I guess Jung gets into Glorantha by way of Joseph Campbell and the fantasy authors influenced by Jung — Ursula Le Guin and Michael Moorcock spring to mind. Here is a bit of the Wikipedia entry on the Shadow:

Quote

From one perspective, the shadow “is roughly equivalent to the whole of the Freudian unconscious”; and Carl Jung himself asserted that “the result of the Freudian method of elucidation is a minute elaboration of man’s shadow side unexampled in any previous age”. Contrary to a Freudian definition of shadow, however, the Jungian shadow can include everything outside the light of consciousness and may be positive or negative.

What is the relation between the mutual shadows? And what do we do with our shadows?

“Those were all the bad thoughts I never really had, and now I have killed them. Hooray!” doesn’t work for me. “Yes, that is me — and synthesis/compromise is possible” I like better.

Edited September 7, 2022 by mfbrandi
original version was MUCH too long

[g33k]

15 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

...

“Those were all the bad thoughts I never really had, and now I have killed them. Hooray!” doesn’t work for me...

So far as I can tell, that doesn't happen.  Instead, you have mostly just blinded yourself to those thoughts, and are unaware of them ooozing out sideways, affecting things you say & do in ways you don't realize are driven by your "Shadow."

But I think for shamanic Stafford, the "shadow-self" of Glorantha is a mythically-linked doppelganger, someone the universe demands exist for all great figures; a reflection, a shadow, a complementary completion:  by concentrating so much of "this thing" in one place, the Universe demands that the "the complementary thing" come into existence, too.
 

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, g33k said:

But I think for shamanic Stafford, the "shadow-self" of Glorantha is a mythically-linked doppelganger, someone the universe demands exist for all great figures; a reflection, a shadow, a complementary completion:  by concentrating so much of "this thing" in one place, the Universe demands that the "the complementary thing" come into existence, too.

I don’t think I would disagree with any of that, but I guess I would stress an aspect and ask a question:

• each is the other’s shadow: it is not that shining a light on Jar-Eel produces Argrath; each because the other (or both because some third thing);
• putting it visually, does the universe demand a black disc for every white disc, or is it more that each shadow pair is one yin–yang?

 

Edited September 8, 2022 by mfbrandi
image format

[g33k]

I think the Eel-Ariath program that produced Jar-Eel created an  inevitablity-of-Argrath  condition in the universe.

I think the act of creating Nysalor created an  inevitablity-of-Arkat  condition in the universe.

I think if someone had instead created an Arkat/Argrath figure, that would have created an   inevitablity-of-Nysalor/JarEel  condition in the universe.

(I considered the Yin/Yang, but it carries a lot of cultural baggage, unwanted connotations of Active/Passive, Male/Female, etc; all assigned to Yin on the one hand & Yang on the other)

 

Edited September 8, 2022 by g33k

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, g33k said:

unwanted connotations of Active/Passive, Male/Female, etc; all assigned to Yin on the one hand & Yang on the other

Sure. Great bit of design, though.