Elmal / Yelmalio in the Alda-Chur confederation

[DrGoth]

22 hours ago, Darius West said:

so... Are you asking if they run faster than the firearrows of Elmali can fly?

All I'm saying is that if there are 5,500 in 1627, there are at least that many in 1626.

In 1627 the Elmali are still probably looking sheepish about Harvar.  if they haven't all decamped to Sun County.  "Elmal? Elmal? Never heard of that guy. We worship Yelmalio. Always have. That's what Monrogh said, anyway."  Sounds of Ex-Elmali furiously polishing their breastplates.

 

[Ali the Helering]

9 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

In 1627 the Elmali are still probably looking sheepish

Sheepish?  Helerings look sheepish, not Elmali...😁

[DrGoth]

Darkened

39 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

Sheepish?  Helerings look sheepish, not Elmali...😁

Darkened? Clouded? Lacking that ruddy glow of health?

[Darius West]

On 4/6/2023 at 8:44 PM, DrGoth said:

"Elmal? Elmal? Never heard of that guy. We worship Yelmalio. Always have. That's what Monrogh said, anyway."  Sounds of Ex-Elmali furiously polishing their breastplates.

Nope.  Hinterland Tovtaros Elmali never converted.  Monrogh was a Lunar agent as far as they are concerned.

[Joerg]

In my Glorantha, the Far Place tribes came from Saird. While they may have had stories about Elmal, they never lost contact with the network of Sun Dome Temples in the region, and probably forgot about any differences when they were first desperately fighting against the EWF and then as desperately dedicatedly for them until Karvanyar and his heirs hired them against the dragons again.

Their ancestors may have sent some folk along with Balazar to settle the Elder Wilds before the Dragonkill War.

[Jeff]

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

Nope.  Hinterland Tovtaros Elmali never converted.  Monrogh was a Lunar agent as far as they are concerned.

You are welcome to have your Glorantha be what you want. But that is not how it is going to be presented in the Sartar Book.

[Darius West]

On 4/9/2023 at 12:41 AM, Jeff said:

You are welcome to have your Glorantha be what you want. But that is not how it is going to be presented in the Sartar Book.

Yes, well, apparently Monrogh came on the scene and suddenly every disparate Yelmalio tradition across Glorantha instantly converted into a monoculture.  That seems credible.

[soltakss]

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Yes, well, apparently Monrogh came on the scene and suddenly every disparate Yelmalio tradition across Glorantha instantly converted into a monoculture.  That seems credible.

That is not the case.

In the Lunar Empire, or on its outskirts if you prefer, the Yelmalio Temples were exactly that. What Monrogh did was to point out that "Hey, all these Little Suns, they are just variations of the Little Sun Yelmalio", and a lot of people said "Hey, look at that, it is blindingly obvious" and many joined the cult of Yelmalio.

So, what effect did this have?

• Lunar Empire: Yelmalio Temples stayed as they were, as they already worshipped Yelmalio. Some Elmali from the Orlanthi areas came down from the hills and mountains and joined the Yelmalio Temples when they experienced Monrogh's revelation.
• Dragon Pass: Many Elmali joined Yelmalio, or recognised Yelmalio as being the same as Elmal. Some joined the Yelmalians at Alda Chur, others joined the new Sun County between Sartar and the Holy Country.
• Prax: The Yelmalians in Sun County stayed roughly the same as before, as Prax did not have a strong Elmal cult. Maybe some Elmali in New Pavis, or Pavis Outside the Walls, joined Sun County. Praxian Yelmalians did not change, as they already knew who they were and didn't want to join Sun County anyway.
• Balazar: The Yelmalians in Elkoi and Dykene stayed roughly the same as before, as Balazar did not have a strong Elmal cult.
• Ralios: Many Elmali joined Yelmalio, or recognised Yelmalio as being the same as Elmal. Some joined the Ralian Sun Counties.

So, rather than a monoculture, many Temples stayed roughly the same. The biggest change was in Dragon Pass.

 

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Maybe some Elmali in New Pavis, or Pavis Outside the Walls, joined Sun County.

Those would have to be horse riders of the Pol Joni, as the founding of New Pavis brought disciples of Monrogh to Suntown. That would date the start of Monrogh's revelation around 1544 (and might be a reason why Tarkalor was absent from the first wave of assassinations of House Norinel).

It is a bit funny that there are as many Praxian beast rider worshipers of Lightfore as there are Orlanthi worshippers of Yelmalio in Sartar (including northern Sartar) and the Holy Country, and that most of them are pygmies.

[Jeff]

On 4/10/2023 at 3:25 AM, Darius West said:

Yes, well, apparently Monrogh came on the scene and suddenly every disparate Yelmalio tradition across Glorantha instantly converted into a monoculture.  That seems credible.

One huge problem with the whole King of Dragon Pass Elmal narrative is that game skipped the breakdown of the Sartarite Elmal cult, their embrace of Yelm, and the civil war among the Sartarites. The view of Elmal as Orlanth's thane collapsed under pressure, until Monrogh showed that Orlanth's thane is part of Yelmalio. And Yelmalio has had centuries of worship among the Pelorian hill tribes and was even recognised in Prax.

[Eff]

It is worth noting that King of Dragon Pass begins more than 40 years before the year Sartar sets foot in Dragon Pass and at least 120 years before the canonical dates for any civil strife over Elmal and Yelmalio, the game's entire progression is about the formation of a kingdom in and around where Sartar would be normally, and at the start of the game, part of its premise is that Dragon Pass has been empty and the people away to the north are made strange by the intervening events of history, so it would be somewhat strange if its "Elmal narrative" incorporated events from somewhere between 50 and 150 years in the future, and saying it "skipped" anything would be very strange indeed. 

[Darius West]

18 hours ago, Jeff said:

One huge problem with the whole King of Dragon Pass Elmal narrative is that game skipped the breakdown of the Sartarite Elmal cult, their embrace of Yelm, and the civil war among the Sartarites. The view of Elmal as Orlanth's thane collapsed under pressure, until Monrogh showed that Orlanth's thane is part of Yelmalio. And Yelmalio has had centuries of worship among the Pelorian hill tribes and was even recognised in Prax.

I have a lot of problems with this interpretation.

(a) Orlanth faces Yelmalio at the Hill of Gold, not Elmal.   Orlanth is a god and could tell the difference between Yelmalio and Elmal.

(b) Elmal is a Thunder Brother.  This makes Elmal actually a subcult of Orlanth.  

(c) What happened with Monrogh was the history of Southern Sartar.  This doesn't translate to every other worshipper of "the masks of Yelmalio" suddenly calling their deity Yelmalio and adopting a homogenized hoplite culture which ignores their clan's cults and traditions.  A localized war in southern Sartar doesn't mean everyone suddenly accepts the same truth.

(d) to highlight (c) consider the Ostrich Riders.  Their "Yelmalio" who we might call Khim, is inherited from the Rinliddi Bird Rider culture from Before Time.  Ostrich riders gain nothing by homogenizing into a Yelmalio hoplite culture, in fact they lose out in every conceivable way.  I mean Ostrich Riders even lose out on Kuschile Horse Archery, because they don't ride horses. 

(e) Now, if the Ostrich riders opt out of the new write-up, then why won't the Elmali of Far Point?  There is no discussion of the Elmali civil war spreading into the North, and I distinctly remember reading that Harvar Ironfist was very determined to wipe out the Elmali by conversion or execution and remake Far Point as a Yelmalio society.  This happens after 1612 afaik.  Personally this seems a lot more interesting as a second front religious war prior to the Hero Wars, and is an excellent basis for a series of scenarios for MGF.

 

 

Edited April 12, 2023 by Darius West

[DrGoth]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

(c) What happened with Monrogh was the history of Southern Sartar.  This doesn't translate to every other worshipper of "the masks of Yelmalio" suddenly calling their deity Yelmalio and adopting a homogenized hoplite culture which ignores their clan's cults and traditions.  A localized war in southern Sartar doesn't mean everyone suddenly accepts the same truth.

I thought the Pelorian sundomes were Yelmalio without interruption?  And that's the majority of Yelmalio worshippers, even post 1625?  In that sense, aren't Sartar and Prax just the country bumpkin cousins of the main Yelmalio cult?

One thing I don't know, who was actually did worship Elmal? Was it just Praxians and those Orlanthi around Esrolia (some of whom migrated to become Sartar)? Or was it more widespread than that?

[Darius West]

On 4/10/2023 at 8:52 PM, soltakss said:

Lunar Empire: Yelmalio Temples stayed as they were, as they already worshipped Yelmalio. Some Elmali from the Orlanthi areas came down from the hills and mountains and joined the Yelmalio Temples when they experienced Monrogh's revelation.

Why would they have Yelmalio temples at all?  The Yellow Planet is called Antirius or Lightfore among the Dara Happans.

On 4/10/2023 at 8:52 PM, soltakss said:

Dragon Pass: Many Elmali joined Yelmalio, or recognised Yelmalio as being the same as Elmal. Some joined the Yelmalians at Alda Chur, others joined the new Sun County between Sartar and the Holy Country.

The Elmali War was only in Southern Sartar.  This is where the Elmali converted to Yelmalio and was Monrogh's heartland.  There may have been a few converts in Far Point, but the oppressive conversion efforts of Harvar Ironfist only begin in earnest after Starbrow's Rebellion fails in 1612.  As to what is going on in Tarsh, they are likely Elmali, as they are ex-Orlanthi, but as "divide et impera" is a time honored imperialist strategy, we may assume that the Lunars will favor Monrogh's divisive civil war promoting agenda, as the enemy of their enemy is their tool (of oppression).

Then there are the Jardan worshippers of the Grazelands...  They didn't suddenly become Yelmalio hoplites, strangely enough.

On 4/10/2023 at 8:52 PM, soltakss said:

Prax: The Yelmalians in Sun County stayed roughly the same as before, as Prax did not have a strong Elmal cult. Maybe some Elmali in New Pavis, or Pavis Outside the Walls, joined Sun County. Praxian Yelmalians did not change, as they already knew who they were and didn't want to join Sun County anyway.

There are a fair few forms of "Yelmalio" in Prax.  There are the Tharkantus folk from the Second Age in Sun County.  I can see them being somewhat taken by Monrogh and being prepared to somewhat change the name of Tharkantus to Yelmalio, as they maintain close ties with Sun Country in Sartar.  Then there are the Khim followers of the Ostrich Riders, whose avialrty (bird cavalry, did I spell that correctly?), dates back Before Time to Rinliddi.  They aren't going to become hoplites, and are probably the most unusual "yelmalios" in Glorantha.

On 4/10/2023 at 8:52 PM, soltakss said:

Balazar: The Yelmalians in Elkoi and Dykene stayed roughly the same as before, as Balazar did not have a strong Elmal cult.

There was literally no Elmal cult in Balazar.  The Votanki settled Balazar via Ithmer and Balazar was a Little Sun hoplite who came to rule the area early.

On 4/10/2023 at 8:52 PM, soltakss said:

Ralios: Many Elmali joined Yelmalio, or recognised Yelmalio as being the same as Elmal. Some joined the Ralian Sun Counties.

I strongly doubt this.  Ralians are much closer to Darkness cults thanks to Arkat and the Malkioni.  If anything they will have an Ascended Master who is the Son of Ehilm so "Hilmlet, Prince of Ralios"😂(His mom Dendara/Ernalda even shacked up with his dad's (Yelm) murderer (Orlanth) and became the usurper). There is very little contact between Ralios and Dragon Pass, and I have never read much to suggest that Monrogh went to Ralios or even down the Manirian coast. 

On 4/10/2023 at 8:52 PM, soltakss said:

So, rather than a monoculture, many Temples stayed roughly the same. The biggest change was in Dragon Pass.

I think that apart from Southern Sartar, that Monrogh had precious little effect on the world.  I think that the several rider cultures (Ostrich, Pentans, Praxians)  who follow the Little Sun will have precious little to do with the hoplite culture promoted by Monrogh.  The argument I am putting is that Monrogh's Vision is very limited in its effect on the world, and most people don't recognize Yelmalio by that name, and even if the deity is nominally the same, they mainly won't change their tradition to accommodate Monrogh's godlearner ideas, even if they make some sense.

Frankly I like the idea that Elmal never went to the Hill of Gold, and never lost his fire powers.  He may not have Sunspear, but he has Fireblade and Firearrow, and that is more than enough to justify Elmal's existence imo.

[Darius West]

24 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

I thought the Pelorian sundomes were Yelmalio without interruption?  And that's the majority of Yelmalio worshippers, even post 1625?  In that sense, aren't Sartar and Prax just the country bumpkin cousins of the main Yelmalio cult?

Nope.  They are Antirius or Lightfore, and occasionally Yelmalio as it means "The little sun".  As to who is the bumpkin, I find bumpkins tend to be closed minded and parochial, so that accounts for most of the so-called Yelmalians except for the Elmali imo.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Darius West

[radmonger]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

(d) to highlight (c) consider the Ostrich Riders.  Their "Yelmalio" who we might call Khim, is inherited from the Rinliddi Bird Rider culture from Before Time.  Ostrich riders gain nothing by homogenizing into a Yelmalio hoplite culture, in fact they lose out in every conceivable way.  I mean Ostrich Riders even lose out on Kuschile Horse Archery, because they don't ride horses. 

To pick on this one, i really don't get what perspective you can have that could cause you to think that is the case.

Do you think the ostrich riders _literally_ follow the rq;g rules. so if the is only a short-form writeup if a cult in canon, everyone forgets the unpublished spells until the long form is out? Is that why the pdfs are now delayed until the print release, to miniseries the number of changes the long-suffering Gloranthans have to endure?

To state the obvious, Ostrich riders worship  in their own way, with their own secrets and in a way compatible with their own language, lifestyle, infrastructure, organisation and politics. They would likely claim to have the oldest continuous worship tradition, and so be the baseline from which other takes deviate. They might plausibly be right. Certainly they would know secrets of avilry that are long lost to everyone else.

Perhaps there is a problem of names in the rules, in that a sub-cult carries the implication that it is hierarchically 'under' a rune cult, and so can only validly exist as part of the main cult writeup? Maybe a  term like 'compatible cult' would help. Describing Khim, Khelmal, Elmal, Yelmalio and co as compatible cults does seems much more natural, and avoids the implication that one is correct and the other wrong.

In any case, some form of cross-initiation is, in gameplay terms, clearly going to be necessary if you ever want to have an ostrich rider pc in anything other than an ostrich-rider only campaign.

[Darius West]

6 minutes ago, radmonger said:

Do you think the ostrich riders _literally_ follow the rq;g rules. so if the is only a short-form writeup if a cult in canon, everyone forgets the unpublished spells until the long form is out? Is that why the pdfs are now delayed until the print release, to miniseries the number of changes the long-suffering Gloranthans have to endure?

Consider radmonger, unless the Ostrich Riders get a separate entry to explain their position, how is a new RQG Game master going to know that?  Yes, of course I have homebrewed Ostrich Rider Khim/Yelmalio, but I know the lore, as you do too.  We need to commit these exceptions to paper in the RQG Gods of Glorantha books and insure their posterity, when the danger is they will be forgotten and ignored, and Ostrich riders will become monocultural hoplites or something equally silly and unlikely.  We are not dealing with a one size fits all monoculture, we both know that.  the danger is the false perception that a bad/ incomplete cult write-up could cause in RQG GoG.  That is my concern.  The success of Monrogh is grossly overstated in the present write-up afaik and doesn't adequately account for all the cultures who have a Little Sun cult that is not a hoplite cult, or a horse archer cult for that matter.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Darius West

[mfbrandi]

6 minutes ago, Darius West said:

We need to commit these exceptions to paper in the RQG Gods of Glorantha books and insure their posterity, when the danger is they will be forgotten and ignored

I wouldn’t sweat it. Just as religions don’t reside in their holy books but in the play cultures practices of their adherents, so RPG cultures don’t reside in their splatbooks. Maybe think of the splatbooks as like icons: the pretty pictures are revered but there needs to be a whole lot going on in people’s lives for the pictures to make any sense.

[DrGoth]

27 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Nope.  They are Antirius or Lightfore, and occasionally Yelmalio as it means "The little sun".  As to who is the bumpkin, I find bumpkins tend to be closed minded and parochial, so that accounts for most of the so-called Yelmalians except for the Elmali imo.

OK, but I thought that was basically the same cult, right down to pikes and phalanxes, just a different name for the god. So Antirius = Yelmalio, same spells, same myths.

Or have I just turned over another heaping pile of dog poo? 😉

Edited April 12, 2023 by DrGoth

[hipsterinspace]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

Then there are the Jardan worshippers of the Grazelands...  They didn't suddenly become Yelmalio hoplites, strangely enough.

Jardan isn’t the Little Sun, he’s an aspect of Yu-Kargzant, Yelm, the (big, regular) Sun. Rules-wise he is Yelm the Archer in the RQG book. Among their relatives, the Pentans, the Little Sun is called Kargzant.

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

The Elmali War was only in Southern Sartar.  This is where the Elmali converted to Yelmalio and was Monrogh's heartland.  There may have been a few converts in Far Point, but the oppressive conversion efforts of Harvar Ironfist only begin in earnest after Starbrow's Rebellion fails in 1612.  As to what is going on in Tarsh, they are likely Elmali, as they are ex-Orlanthi, but as "divide et impera" is a time honored imperialist strategy, we may assume that the Lunars will favor Monrogh's divisive civil war promoting agenda, as the enemy of their enemy is their tool (of oppression).

One thing that has been pointed out elsewhere is that the Little Sun worshippers of Tarsh and the Provinces never lost contact with the old Pelorian Solar traditions. The reason the Elmal civil war stuff happens in southern Sartar is that that’s the only place where the Elmal cult meaningfully exists, where the Heortling Little Sun was disconnected from the Pelorian Solar cults and old traditions by the Inhuman Occupation. This being the case, Harvar didn’t need to convert anyone, they were already Yelmalio worshippers up north, that’s how he was able to take over in the first place. If he’d had to convert a bunch of Elmal worshippers by force it would have made it impossible to leverage his position against the more numerous Orlanthi in the way that he did.

6 hours ago, Darius West said:

(d) to highlight (c) consider the Ostrich Riders.  Their "Yelmalio" who we might call Khim, is inherited from the Rinliddi Bird Rider culture from Before Time.  Ostrich riders gain nothing by homogenizing into a Yelmalio hoplite culture, in fact they lose out in every conceivable way.  I mean Ostrich Riders even lose out on Kuschile Horse Archery, because they don't ride horses.

I think David Scott does a good job of clarifying how their cult is represented rules-wise and what they get here. They wouldn’t worship him like a Sun Domer, just like Pentan Kargzant worshippers wouldn’t worship their little sun like the Sun Domers. I don’t think Monrogh’s revelation is supposed to be that you have to be a hoplite who lives in a Sun Dome.

Edited April 12, 2023 by hipsterinspace

[Joerg]

21 hours ago, Eff said:

It is worth noting that King of Dragon Pass begins more than 40 years before the year Sartar sets foot in Dragon Pass

Almost a century more. The Colymar have formed their tribe, but the Malani have not yet arrived as neighbors of your future clan.

 

21 hours ago, Eff said:

and at least 120 years before the canonical dates for any civil strife over Elmal and Yelmalio,

The Elmali had little trouble coping with their contact with the Grazer sun cult, even as fellow horse-lovers. 

 

21 hours ago, Eff said:

the game's entire progression is about the formation of a kingdom in and around where Sartar would be normally, and at the start of the game, part of its premise is that Dragon Pass has been empty and the people away to the north are made strange by the intervening events of history, so it would be somewhat strange if its "Elmal narrative" incorporated events from somewhere between 50 and 150 years in the future, and saying it "skipped" anything would be very strange indeed. 

Arim became king over people who built a Sun Dome Temple at Goldedge (and there is a saga lost there, too), with contacts to temples in territories conquered by Hwarin Dalthippa.

IMG there is no northern Heortling ("Tarshite") word for Elmal. People from the north worshiped the same deity as did Balazar, unless there were some Imtherites among the forlorn hope immigrants who followed Arim.

[SDLeary]

1 hour ago, hipsterinspace said:

... I don’t think Monrogh’s revelation is supposed to be that you have to be a hoplite who lives in a Sun Dome.

I think the conversion was once characterized "...our ways are better."

Based on what we know of Yelmalio Cult at the moment, that would mean a Hoplite/Phalangite, or someone that supports a Phalanx formation, whether they live at the temple, or is a farmer on the farmlands that surround the temple (as seems to be Jeff's interpretation at the moment). Thus, an independent corporate organization, rather than something that is well integrated into the Clan/Tribe.

SDLeary

[hipsterinspace]

10 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

Based on what we know of Yelmalio Cult at the moment, that would mean a Hoplite/Phalangite, or someone that supports a Phalanx formation, whether they live at the temple, or is a farmer on the farmlands that surround the temple (as seems to be Jeff's interpretation at the moment). Thus, an independent corporate organization, rather than something that is well integrated into the Clan/Tribe.

One of the biggest Yelmalio cults among any playable group in the currently available material is in Prax among Impala Tribe, pygmy nomads. They are not hoplites by any stretch, given their stature they would probably struggle if placed in that role, but they clearly worship Yelmalio all the same. In the Lunar Provinces there are said to be Yelmalio clans in Aggar, Imther, Holay, and Vanch from a tradition significantly influenced by their horse-riding ancestors. In the various Sun Domes they might all be hoplites who fight in a pike phalanx, but that is clearly not the only way to worship their god.

[Richard S.]

No cult has a complete monoculture. The same deity might be worshiped by wildly disparate temples while still retaining the same core myths and powers. Yelm is probably the most obvious example, with the differences between the Pentans, Grazers, and Dara Happans, but even the various types of Orlanthi aren't all the same, and the Malkioni warrior societies certainly run themselves differently than their Hsunchen cousins. Lightfore is a god of light, not the phalanx or bow. Those are just tools that help his cult survive, and each Sun Dome will specialize in the ones that help them the most.

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Richard S. said:

No cult has a complete monoculture.

That's an assertion, not a textual statement. I think it's a perfectly reasonable assertion to make, but as things are textually, there are no differences in the Yelmalio cult across the cultures of the core book that are represented in the core book, and the way in which extratextual commentary adjusts them to accommodate people who are pastoral impala and ostrich herders is simply to remove the Pike skill and not replace it with anything, and also to remove Rune Priests from their cult. When Chaosium creative staff talk about Yelmalio, the assumption is that Yelmalio cultist characters, player or otherwise, are people with pikes who stand in a big square block of 16x16 or multiples of such. Indeed, if you assume that cults are the product of interactions with something like a Jungian archetype, they by definition would be universal across cultures, because Jung's hypothesis of archetypes posited them as truly universal to all humans, or else they might exist in degraded and inferior forms from the true awareness of the archetype, like with the Praxian Yelmalio cults that simply have an inferior understanding of the god and a worse connection to him. 

And even if we assume that there are some unexpressed differences, these don't matter enough to interact with player characters in any fashion- by the text, player characters can walk into any Sun Dome anywhere and have no difficulties with participating in ceremonies and rituals, so in practical effect, the cults are homogenous and monocultural if you play by the book.