The Esrolian Six Sisters

[Gallowglass]

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Nochet: City of Queens, and I’m considering setting my next game there. I’m wondering if the upcoming Earth Goddesses book will have any info or rules for some of the goddesses referenced within? I’m particularly interested in three of the “Six Sisters,” Delaina, Delaeo, and Orana. Does anyone with an early copy know?

[M Helsdon]

2 hours ago, Gallowglass said:

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Nochet: City of Queens, and I’m considering setting my next game there. I’m wondering if the upcoming Earth Goddesses book will have any info or rules for some of the goddesses referenced within? I’m particularly interested in three of the “Six Sisters,” Delaina, Delaeo, and Orana. Does anyone with an early copy know?

The best source, so far as I am aware, is the Glorantha Sourcebook. I don't believe the other Sisters feature in the Earth Goddess book.

https://www.chaosium.com/the-glorantha-sourcebook-pdf/

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, Gallowglass said:

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Nochet: City of Queens, and I’m considering setting my next game there. I’m wondering if the upcoming Earth Goddesses book will have any info or rules for some of the goddesses referenced within? I’m particularly interested in three of the “Six Sisters,” Delaina, Delaeo, and Orana. Does anyone with an early copy know?

Glad to hear you're enjoying the Nochet book! There's definitely a lot of opportunity for play there of all styles.

Delaina, Delaeo, and Orana are referenced in the Prosopaedia, but I do not believe you'll see reference in the Earth Goddesses book except perhaps in passing.

Orana is a fertility goddess and functions similarly to Uleria (though at a more localized level). I believe Uleria will appear in the Earth Goddesses book, and you could use that as a foundation probably including spells for Bless Pregnancy, Reproduce, and something like Bless Marriage (the first two in Red Book of Magic).

Delaeo is a goddess of Beauty and Good Fortune (Earth and Fate Runes). I'd give her Charisma (or an appearance related spell). Good Fortune/Luck can be trickier to capture in a magic spell. 

Delaina is an interesting goddess: the goddess of wisdom, music, and magic and also the tutelary goddess of heroes (i.e. she pushes adventurers onto the path of Heroes). You probably saw my Delaina myths and these emphasize common heroic motifs (and definitely distinguish wisdom from the knowledge of sages). In her aspect as goddess of music, Charisma might be one option, or she might provide a spell related to enhancing musical performance. But otherwise she is a deity of experiential learning - i.e. learn wisdom through your mistakes and choices.

 

[Agentorange]

14 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Delaina is an interesting goddess: the goddess of wisdom, music, and magic and also the tutelary goddess of heroes (i.e. she pushes adventurers onto the path of Heroes). You probably saw my Delaina myths and these emphasize common heroic motifs (and definitely distinguish wisdom from the knowledge of sages). In her aspect as goddess of music, Charisma might be one option, or she might provide a spell related to enhancing musical performance. But otherwise she is a deity of experiential learning - i.e. learn wisdom through your mistakes and choices.

 

What about Delaina in her role as goddess of magic ? What sort of spells would you envisage her having ?

[AlexS]

19 hours ago, Gallowglass said:

I’m particularly interested in three of the “Six Sisters,” Delaina, Delaeo, and Orana

In the Esrolian character creation material on which I'm working with a couple of co-authors we're planning to include cult writeups for these three of the Six Sisters (as well as for some Kethaelan Hero Cults / Subcults like the Noble Brothers, Vogarth, Sestarto and Panaxles) – but we're also waiting for the Earth Goddesses book to come out so we don't include any who are already in there (we're assuming that Esrola will be in there as well as Maran and Ernalda, but not sure about Delaeo, Delaina or Orana).

Our cult writeups aren't quite ready yet, but I'd be happy to share them as soon as we feel we have a good enough draft. In the mean time, I can share the cultural tradition summaries we have done for informing the backgrounds of adventurers from Houses that venerate these three Sisters:

As you can see, these summaries are simplified (not to say simplistic) compared to the subtleties of the treatment of different Houses' cultural traditions and relationships with patron goddesses in @jajagappa's Nochet material. We opted for this approach because they're designed to slot easily into the RQG character creation process, which means bring driven at least in part by the distribution of Occupations.

This means that there are two Delaina cultural traditions in our Esrolia, because as Harald says she is the deity of both music/the arts and wisdom/magic (as well as the Hero Path) and we wanted players to have a choice between a Bard-type and a Philosopher-type background. In our Esrolia the Bard (Entertainer) aspect is universal while the Philosopher aspect is more regionally focused on Rhigos, the great South Esrolian city where Delaina is the patron goddess and where a long history of connections with the Trader Princes makes the sorcerous side of her magic association more plausible.

We opted to give Orana a Healer aspect because there was no indigenous Kethaelan healing-focused deity (Chalana Arroy is obviously very important in Nochet, thanks to the Great Hospital, but she is not an Earth Goddess) and it looks like Bevara, the 'battlefield healer' aspect of Ernalda, isn't going to make it into the Earth Goddesses book (she isn't mentioned in the Prosopaedia). Although as Harald says Orana is basically an Esrolian version of Uleria and thus primarily a Fertility deity, the Love/Healing connection also felt right to us, even though (to our knowledge) there aren't any Orana myths that define her as a healer (we may include some in the book).

NB: most of our Esrolian Cultural Traditions (there are 20 in all) have Ernalda as the principal deity and include a favoured Husband Protector as part of their tradition. We also apply this to most of those cultural traditions which venerate another Earth Goddess (such as Ketha or Esrola), but not to those associated with Orana or Delaina – the former because she is much more of a 'free love' goddess and the latter because she is supposed to be chaste (which we interpret more as avoiding any Ernalda-style focus on relationships rather than as practicing sexual abstinence per se – which is not necessary for Delaina priestesses, as the Demivierge of Rhigos famously demonstrates).

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, Agentorange said:

What about Delaina in her role as goddess of magic ? What sort of spells would you envisage her having ?

I would actually not provide spells in this regard. She's the one who pushes you onto the Hero's Path and in that way encourages YOU, the hero, to find your own magic (i.e. each heroquest you undertake offers opportunity for your personal magic - that is what Delaina shows you).

[hipsterinspace]

On 7/29/2023 at 9:24 AM, Gallowglass said:

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Nochet: City of Queens, and I’m considering setting my next game there. I’m wondering if the upcoming Earth Goddesses book will have any info or rules for some of the goddesses referenced within? I’m particularly interested in three of the “Six Sisters,” Delaina, Delaeo, and Orana. Does anyone with an early copy know?

Personally, I would cast them as portions/aspects/names of Ernalda and worshipped through the wider Ernalda cult—the Prosopaedia implies as much.

Outside of wisdom, magic, and heroes, Delaina is also the patron goddess of the city of Rhigos. It wouldn’t be a surprise for her to be venerated as a city goddess there, with the current Queen of Rhigos, the Demivierge, as her high priestess.

I would imagine Delaeo receives veneration and offerings regularly by the nobility in Nochet, with Queen Samastina belonging to her namesake Great House.

They all seem to fit within the wider Ernalda complex, similar to Esrola, so I don’t see why they would be split off as separate cults when Ernalda worship is likely to have hundreds of local variants, names, and unique traditions in the land she lives in and calls home.

[jajagappa]

11 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I would actually not provide spells in this regard. She's the one who pushes you onto the Hero's Path and in that way encourages YOU, the hero, to find your own magic

Two thoughts did come to mind later: Discorporation (pushing you to explore the Other World) and possibly some variant of Become (Other) / Become (Shape) which would allow you to experience a different form/appearance (I could see the Demivierge using such to Become (Virgin), but others might change gender or even a beast form). You can think of the latter as the Earth goddess shaping the "clay" of your current form (so not an Illusion based spell, but Earth Rune based).