Enerali, Pendali, Seshnegi and horses

[Joerg]

  

10 hours ago, scott-martin said:

This gives me flashbacks to the days of trying to figure out the propagation of "Ehilm" in the prehistoric west and in particular the route the Eneralites (presumably another vector of the diaspora from Nivorah) took on the way to lower Ralios and the Tanier valley in time to give Hrestol a horse. 

Frankly, I don''t see any need to tie the Galanini horses to Nivorah. Nivorah is a place that was nurtured by the Fallen Horse Goddess (locally called Gamara) during the Anaxial Dynasty. It was the home city of Reladivus already under Murharzarm's Decapolis, but there doesn't seem to have been any horse connection yet.

Reladivus was sent wandering by Umath's invasion of the sky, which happened around 70,000 YS, or 30,000 years YS before the Dismemberment of Yelm. This is practically the start of the Storm Brothers (Vadrus, Storm Bull, Ragnaglar, Huma(k)t(h) and Orlanth/Erlandus) becoming active on their own. Storm Bull was instrumental in the Fall of Hippogriff, the steed of Yamsur, the local sun of Genert's Garden, alongside Maran Gor and Zorak Zoran. Hyalor Horsebreaker tamed the wounded creature and became the first rider of horses, and his riders spread around, ultimately reaching Nivorah at some undisclosed point in the Late Golden Age or the early (pre-flood) Storm Age, as the re-founded post-flood city of Anaxial had Gamara as its nurturer.

The Enerali know Galin as the birthplace of Galanin, the Sun Horse, child of Ehilm. Still a sky creature, but no hint of carnivorous tendencies or wings. Galanin fathered Eneral on the Green Lady, the founder of the four tribes of the Enerali formed by his sons, and possibly of the nomadic Galaninae led by a daughter/priestess of his separately from those four agriculture/pastoral tribes. It isn't clear whether the Enerali started out as riders, or whether that was reserved to the Galanini (who seem to be related to Yelorna and might also have had some unicorns among their priestessly nobility). At some point in the Storm Age, the secrets of Hyalor Horsebreaker seem to have reached the Enerali, as King Dan apparently already had horse riders in his kingdom in the Gray Age/at the Dawn.

Galin probably has Hippoi as the horse mother, or maybe it is the Green Lady who serves as his mother (or wife, or both - deities, you know...).

We don't know whether Galin also has a claim to the planet Lightfore, or whether he is solely associated with the Daystar elsewhere known as Yelm, whether as its steed or its motion through the sky. His role will have changed somehow with the Dawn, much like for the rest of the obscure Ralian pantheon.

 

10 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Sad that Monrogh never went there. We can go. But by definition things over there are not necessarily like what we have over here around Dragon Pass . . . otherwise, nobody would ever need to travel or learn anything new if they did. Who would like to go for me and report back?

I wonder what Monrogh would have made of Reladivus Kargzant. He seems to have dealt with the Hyalor Horsebreaker folk from south of the Crossline (who had settle what had become Sartar),  but that cult came with Beren and probably Ulanin, both with the epithet "the Rider". (Which might be pronounced "Hyalor"...)

[Ormi Phengaria]

Given Hippogriff's flight (and the continued existence of Hippogriffs through Time!), we could expect a much wider dispersion of her descendants than just Nivorah. There's the Enerali, mostly, which is the lead-in to this mystery. If we take Anaxial's Roster to still have some truth in it, then the earliest horses are the eki of the Shan Shan and Mislari foothills.

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The eki were made when a pregnant mare was cursed for refusing to serve Kargzant. Instead of giving birth to a single foal, she gave birth to a litter of eki (although they, like other horses, bear single foals now).

Further down, we have unicorns, which may not be originally horse-like; they are all male, and the Roster states they reproduce with horses and deer, which has changed them from what they once were.

Deeper still, centaurs. While the other people around Beast Valley say that it is directly a product of EWF, there's a strong intuition that's not the whole story. Beastmen seem to have a different relationship to Time. The power of centaurs in Beast Valley, their relationship to Arachne Solara, and Ironhoof's transformation of the Pain Centaurs into the Grazers presumably all have real meaning. I am drawn to a possible etymological explication of "centuar", here: bull-wounder. Reclaiming sky lordship from the despoiler-beast? There are stories here, but the beastfolk can scantly tell them; they are only lived. We can live them too... waiting in the web at the Wild Temple.

Riding is associated with Hyalor, Yamsur, and Praxians. I know that dragonewts also have something of a riding tradition, but grant me the mercy of excluding them for now. When "Yamsur loses his mount", the relationship between beast and man entered into disarray, and this plays out differently across the continent. In Prax and Dragon Pass, we can feel out the scars of that conflict, see it in the icons of Ragnaglar and Wakboth. The Pelorian and Pentan horse peoples made relationships between themselves and their beasts different to the one between Waha and Eiritha. Maybe those relationships were less complete. But some retained the more direct ancestral connection.

Back to the Enerali. Like the Pure Horse Tribe, they seem to have kept (or at least rediscovered) a strong ancestral connection to the Sun Horse, to the extent that the later Galanini chieftains were said to be able to become horses. To me, this implies a horse culture of greater antiquity than the Hyalorings. It's also obvious that this culture had transformed a great deal between the Gods War and the Dawn Age. It wouldn't surprise me if a western branch of Hyalorings contacted this older culture and was absorbed into it so thoroughly that even Hyalor's separate existence had vanished by the Dawn, nonetheless leaving them the secret of riding.

[Ormi Phengaria]

Further observations mostly pulling from Safelster in the First Age: Vustr was the youngest son of Eneral, and Vustria was adjacent to the pass into Dorastor. Vustr sides with Erulat the Storm in the Battle of Battles. During the Darkness, all of the people of Eneral seem to lose their intermediate lineages. The Vustri pantheon at the Dawn features Eneral and his wife Doska, and the hero-queen Nusa who led them into the forest to survive the Darkness, but not Vustr. Their mythology is said to be already very close to the Theyalan stories in distinction to the other Enerali, particularly in the competition of Ehilm and Erulat over the Green Lady, which may imply a connection to Saird.

Interestingly, while the Enerali are stated to already be horse-riders at the Dawn, they limit this skill to hunting, and use their ponies to fight only from chariots until they encounter Seshnegi cavalry.