Worship in Malkioni lands

[Darius West]

On 10/22/2022 at 7:34 AM, hipsterinspace said:

I think the big difference is that Arkat wasn't a Malkioni, he was a Brithini. When you contextualize it with his Hrestolism I think it makes sense, ultimately he was a Hrestoli acting in the service of justice.

Everyone who follows Malkion is a Malkioni.  Brithini are Malkioni.  Hrestoli are Malkioni.  Arkat begins his life as a Malkioni, going from Brithini to betraying them and becoming a Hrestoli before betraying them to become a Pagan.  As a pagan he chooses to worship Humakt, and is sometimes called Humaktson, because of his unbreakable sword.  Clearly joining a pagan cult was seen as opportunism and betrayal by Malkioni.

On 10/22/2022 at 7:34 AM, hipsterinspace said:

As for the bigger question of the pagan gods, they probably contextualize their relationship with the gods differently. Maybe their relationship with the god is more instrumental than it would be for a non-Malkioni, but the big difference seems to be in the understanding of the gods as an emanation of the runes. I'd imagine that for them Humakt isn't a literal divine personage who owns the Death rune, but rather an emanation of the Death rune from primordial Law (Invisible God), which has been mythically personified into the archetype of Humakt.

 I like this idea, but there are problems.  The first one is that Humakt isn't an emanation of the Death Rune, or he would be named in the sorcery spells that use the Death Rune.  Instead, we have the Celestial Court member Kargan Tor named.  Humakt doesn't emanate from the Death Rune, but is an emanation of Umath, that comes to reinforce the Death Rune, (possibly because Umath is a Primordial Breath, and the dead don't breathe, but that's stretching it).  The fact is, every ascended master is seen as a person within Malkionism, and Humakt and other gods will be seen as ascended masters, not runic emanations.

On 10/22/2022 at 9:37 PM, metcalph said:

That's correct.  There's multiple possible answers for that.  One is that Arkat was not a Horali but a Man-of-All worshipping the Invisible God. 

You can only become a Man-of-All if you are a Hrestoli.  When Arkat left the Brithini and joined the Hrestoli it was a betrayal of the Brithini.  When Arkat left the Hrestoli to join the orlanthi it was a betrayal of the Hrestoli because he joined a pagan cult and joined the traditional enemies of the Hrestoli.

On 10/22/2022 at 9:37 PM, metcalph said:

 In any event, you are using an little known event that occurred about at least thousand years ago to determine what Malkioni society must be like now.  

Foundational historical episodes are not forgotten, and serve as a basis for all future events.

On 10/22/2022 at 9:37 PM, metcalph said:

But the Malkioni today don't really have any clue about how Arkat broke faith or why it was received so badly.  makes them irrelevant as the Brithini.   

Perhaps that is true of village idiots, but you are lightly dismissing historical events which occurred to a Grimoire culture where books are all-important and everything important is recorded.  The Hrestoli bemoan Arkat's treachery from when he joined the Orlanthi, just as the Orlanti remember how Arkat betrayed them and became a troll.

On 10/22/2022 at 9:37 PM, metcalph said:

They didn't practice them.  They practiced similar religions but weren't satisfied with what they had.

You misunderstood my question, so let me rephrase it...   If the God Learners had always followed the Orlanth Pantheon, but used a practice of Malkioni Rightness on top of it, why did then need to steal myths from the Orlanthi to hero quest with?  There would be no need to do so.  They would know all the myths already, and had a head start on the Orlanthi because the God Learners knew about hero questing, and few Orlanthi in that period would know about hq-ing at all.

[Godlearner]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Everyone who follows Malkion is a Malkioni.  Brithini are Malkioni. 

Are they? Or do they just offer their worship to Invisible God directly without going through Malkion.

[Jeff]

On 10/21/2022 at 10:40 AM, Darius West said:

No, this makes no sense to me.  If this was true, then Arkat wouldn't be considered a Traitor by the Malkioni for joining Humakt.  In fact Arkay would likely have worshipped Humakt for most of his life since becoming a Hrestoli.  Similarly why would there be Orlanthi resistance to missionizing as it says on The Middle Sea Empire pp34-35.  And why would the Malkioni have needed to infiltrate other societies to "God Learn" their hero quests if they already practiced them?  Then on page 38 of The Middle Sea Empire we see that the Emanationists take a very dim view of the "pagans and their spirits", and are encouraged to completely destroy them and their belief systems.  This is an odd comment, considering that the Malkioni have always worshipped the same gods according to some people.  Then on page 41 we see that the God Learners were apparently quite happy about destroying the Pagan Worldview.  How can this be, if they are partaking of it, and allegedly always have?  There are too many things that don't fit the facts. 

This looks like a great big retrofit to me, and a clumsy one at best.

This is not to say that I dislike the idea of Rightness or Caste Magic, but the notion that Pagan gods are routinely worshipped in Malkioni areas seems extremely far fetched when Pagan is unquestionably a pejorative term and the whole idea flies in the face of the existing literature and established lore.

For a start, why would the Westerners essentially piggyback onto the Orlanth pantheon, and not have their own specific deities that they control the institutional structures of?  It makes no sense, given they could literally have built them during the God Learner period, and yet we know that the Orlanth Pantheon existed before time, and the Malkioni don't control it, despite the God Learner period.  Why didn't they follow the Solar Pantheon and its extremely orderly and hierarchical social system, which already mirrors Malkionism in many ways (certainly a lot more than Orlanth and his pantheon does)?  Why not the Earth Pantheon?  I could understand that, for the Dronar class at least.  Or why not a completely different Pantheon based on the abstract concepts of Sorcery?

Arkat was considered a traitor because he initiated into the cult of Humakt and then turned over all of his Brithini and Hrestoli secrets to outsiders - despite the shocked outrage of the wizards. He showed people who did not even acknowledge the Invisible God the deepest secrets of the Malkioni religion. He showed secret Brithini paths to Orlanthi, he showed secret Orlanthi paths to trolls. His treason was infinitely worse than merely joining a cult.

Like all of the Stafford Library, Middle Sea Empire is a notebook and was never intended to be a final word on anything.

[Jeff]

11 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Arkat was considered a traitor because he initiated into the cult of Humakt and then turned over all of his Brithini and Hrestoli secrets to outsiders - despite the shocked outrage of the wizards. He showed people who did not even acknowledge the Invisible God the deepest secrets of the Malkioni religion. He showed secret Brithini paths to Orlanthi, he showed secret Orlanthi paths to trolls. His treason was infinitely worse than merely joining a cult.

Like all of the Stafford Library, Middle Sea Empire is a notebook and was never intended to be a final word on anything.

So from an Orlanthi perspective, Malkionism is pretty radical. First it posits that the cosmos is a rationally created thing - instead of being simply born out of a cosmic egg. It demands that creator is worshiped as the supreme god, despite being abstract, unapproachable, and non-reciprocal. Second, it imposes a radically different form of social organization and says that it is demanded by how the cosmos is structured. But the Malkioni - especially their wizards - know a lot about the cosmos and its overall structure. 

Most Malkioni acknowledge the gods and worship specific gods as ancestors, localized beings, or useful spirits. They worship them and gain powers from them, but deny them the role of supreme - or even most important - being. The gods are often thought of as aspects, constructs, emanations, or devolutions from the supreme Invisible God. 

[Joerg]

How much is Malkioni worship of deities or ancestors tied to their concepts of afterlife? Do they join their deities after death?

Hrestoli sects in general believe in reincarnation, rather than the complete destruction of self upon (irreversible) death. The individual intellect won't transmigrate intact, though.

 

[Darius West]

12 hours ago, Jeff said:

Like all of the Stafford Library, Middle Sea Empire is a notebook and was never intended to be a final word on anything.

And here I was thinking they were kinda canon...

[metcalph]

 

16 hours ago, Darius West said:

If the God Learners had always followed the Orlanth Pantheon, but used a practice of Malkioni Rightness on top of it, why did then need to steal myths from the Orlanthi to hero quest with?  There would be no need to do so.  They would know all the myths already, and had a head start on the Orlanthi because the God Learners knew about hero questing, and few Orlanthi in that period would know about hq-ing at all.

The myth that the God Learners stole was the Lightbringers Quest which had been identified during the Gbaji Wars by Harmast Barefoot.  People (including the Malkion) have worshipped the Orlanthi Gods long before this without knowing this secret.  The LBQ was uncovered as a result of Orlanthi HeroQuesting by Harmast.   Contrary to what you say, the Orlanthi did have HeroQuesting in that period and were one of the two main practitioners of it, the others being the Arkati.  The God Learners didn't get into HeroQuesting until the destruction of the Autarchy circa 740 ST and subsequent looting of Arkati secrets. 

[metcalph]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

And here I was thinking they were kinda canon...

"This is not intended to be a finished product, and is subject to change by Greg at any time for any or no reason whatsoever"

Middle Sea Empire p2

[Jeff]

16 hours ago, metcalph said:

 

The myth that the God Learners stole was the Lightbringers Quest which had been identified during the Gbaji Wars by Harmast Barefoot.  People (including the Malkion) have worshipped the Orlanthi Gods long before this without knowing this secret.  The LBQ was uncovered as a result of Orlanthi HeroQuesting by Harmast.   Contrary to what you say, the Orlanthi did have HeroQuesting in that period and were one of the two main practitioners of it, the others being the Arkati.  The God Learners didn't get into HeroQuesting until the destruction of the Autarchy circa 740 ST and subsequent looting of Arkati secrets. 

Yeah let me expand on this. The God Learners started experimenting with the genealogy of the gods around 700 or maybe earlier - Tanian's Victory showed how useful this was. But in order to understand the structure of the cosmos (and thereby have ways to exploit that structure with sorcery), the God Learners needed to learn about the gods and their myths.