bee cults /Aldrya ?

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

So you are telling me that there was no need for Aether to ejaculate (through) Lodril deep into the Broad Earth (Gata) to sire Umath? Next thing will be that calves are grown in meadows, and have no need for milk? Sorry to have to tell you this,  but we are not in the Green Age any more since there is a sky to look up to.

seems to me that you merge different levels:

gods are not made like living.  They are not created with the same process. They even don't need parents of the same "specie" (if specie makes senses for a god) or any seed. I m not sure that any mortal semen is sentient, worthy enough to be worshipped and able to provide magic 🙂

as Ernalda defines that mothers take care and feed their children, I totally accept that species following that calves need for milk

that's right we are not in green age, but does that mean that anything created before or during the green age must be altered to fit irl processes ?
 

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Ever since the start of the Golden Age, people need to spread the seeds of the grains (and pseudocereals) of the Land Goddesses to be able to have a harvest. Ever since the dismemberment of Yelm, magic has been required, too.

I agree, but that doesn't demonstrate anything about bees 🙂

Is my option less valid ?

Land goddesses offer seeds to their worshippers. They teach people how to use them correctly and how to celebrate the Land. During the day/week/... of celebration, a part of the worship is sacrifice magic and mundane resources, a part is dance and song, a part is sensual encounters, a part is to spreed the seeds of the grains, etc... When the worship is well done (so among the rest, if the spread is well done ), the new cycle will provide a better harvest than if people do it with few caution and respect of the Earth.

But that doesn't change anything about plants in the wild.

 

Note that I m not saying that applying / explaining Glorantha with IRL reference is against "canon", but for me it is an option, one choice among others to enrich the background.

After all if horses are birds.. Does that mean the foel comes from the egg ? Sounds more "magical", at least 🙂

Or does that mean the myth is false and horses are mammals ? Then are they winds heirs ?  (after all they galop like the wind, when not domesticated, they are free like the wind and struggle to not be tamed ! ) Or is there another reason ?

 

What is not said by the canon is a side of "our glorantha may vary" (the other side being what people change/remove from the canon)

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Or women men! 😉

Heler, maybe Mastakos, would say there are always another way 😛

[mfbrandi]

On 9/1/2023 at 1:19 PM, Akhôrahil said:

It does fell slightly odd, at least to me, that bees are creatures of Darkness. They are diurnal and associated with flowers and golden honey.

And honey bees don’t fly when it is cold and navigate by the sun° — surely, there is a honey bee cult with the heliotropic sunflower as its emblem, which is not to say that there are not other bee cults (with other affiliations).

—————————————————————————————————————
° See also https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2013.0037

[Malin]

My sincere apologies. At this point I had to.
 

Spoiler

 

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

seems to me that you merge different levels:

Didn't feel like that to me, but I take your point.

So were you speaking about the divine ancestors of ordinary plants, or do you want your ordinary plants to follow these Green Age rules despite all the detrimential influence of several cataclysms, and Time in general?

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

gods are not made like living.  They are not created with the same process. They even don't need parents of the same "specie" (if specie makes senses for a god) or any seed.

Gods as well as mortals were created through a variety of processes. The three fiery sons of Aether were thought into existence, as was Dayzatar's offspring. The first mortal humans spring from a variety of origins, including being made of clay with various magical additions, being the lesser children of deities or runes, or resulting from often weird matings, or from parthenogenetic births. Durev (a common ancestor of many Orlanthi) was carved out of a tree by Orstan the Elder.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I m not sure that any mortal semen is sentient, worthy enough to be worshipped and able to provide magic 🙂

Emperors often beg to differ. While talking about different effluvia of Moonson, the two MOB stories about the Red Emperor's chamber in the Rough Guide to Glamour do indeed assign divinity to the profane.

Properly administered, it may trigger the magic of creating a new life.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

as Ernalda defines that mothers take care and feed their children, I totally accept that species following that calves need for milk

Plants do thrive on nutrients - Pamaltelan lineage plants for instance thrive on the graves of the Doraddi ancestors and their descendants.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

that's right we are not in green age, but does that mean that anything created before or during the green age must be altered to fit irl processes ?

Not necessarily IRL processes, but personally I find eliminating the concept of pollination quite drastic - effectively, it removes all male plants or plant components except male elves, and it makes flowers or pre-seed plant organs unnecessary. It is possible to design such a world, but IMO Glorantha is not that.

 

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I agree, but that doesn't demonstrate anything about bees 🙂

IMO it does, elevating the work of bees that may originally only have been a convenience to the planta ss receiving that attention into a vitally important one.

Troll Pak has a scenario set on the edge of the Valley of Flowers, in the Bee Tribe of Dagori Inkarth, where various outputs of their giant bees are discussed, including:

Spoiler

The elves refrain from raiding the farm because they fear that if the trolls were forced to abandon the farm, the giant bees would perish or migrate, and an important source of pollination for giant flowers would be lost.

(Into Uzdom p.31)

YGMV, of course, but at least for giant flowers in Dagori Inkarth pollination by giant bees is an established fact.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Is my option less valid ?

Applied with all the consequences, your Gloranthan flora would barely resemble that we are familiar with.  An interesting assumption for a different world, sure, but not applicable to my personal understanding of Glorantha. (Which is far from a knock-out criterion.) 

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Land goddesses offer seeds to their worshippers. They teach people how to use them correctly and how to celebrate the Land. During the day/week/... of celebration, a part of the worship is sacrifice magic and mundane resources, a part is dance and song, a part is sensual encounters, a part is to spreed the seeds of the grains, etc... When the worship is well done (so among the rest, if the spread is well done ), the new cycle will provide a better harvest than if people do it with few caution and respect of the Earth.

But that doesn't change anything about plants in the wild.

Hunter-Gatherers annd their harvesting have been impacted by these ecological changes just as much as agricultural crops and their tenders. The rites at Wild Temple are just what you described above.

 

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Note that I m not saying that applying / explaining Glorantha with IRL reference is against "canon", but for me it is an option, one choice among others to enrich the background.

After all if horses are birds..

Only in the sense that all sky creatures are birds. A bit like saying that jellyfish and shellfish are part of the genus of vertebrates inhabiting water that we commonly call fish, like e.g. sharks, herrings, flounders, or even lampreys.

All horses are creatures of Fire by descent. Hatching from eggs? I'll have to check Pegasus Plateau for the information of the early life cycle of hippogriffs, and Griffin Mountain for that of griffins, but I don't recall any egg shards as potential loot.

On the other hand, in Greek mythology Leda having intercourse with Zeus in swan shape resulted in her laying two eggs with twins in each.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Does that mean the foel comes from the egg ?

Neither the Grazers nor those crazy Char-un have yet produced an egg-laying mare, at least according to official publications. Horses lactate (in Glorantha, too), not so sure about hippogriffs though.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Sounds more "magical", at least 🙂

Weird pipe dreams are always an option in Glorantha.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Or does that mean the myth is false and horses are mammals ? Then are they winds heirs ?  (after all they galop like the wind, when not domesticated, they are free like the wind and struggle to not be tamed ! ) Or is there another reason ?

Each damaging of Hippogriff may have come with a gift, possibly an unintentional one, for the broken creature called Hippoi. Horses certainly breathe air. Whether centaurs do (and how they do it for their huge horse bodies with those tiny respiratory holes in their human portions) can be a matter of debate.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

What is not said by the canon is a side of "our glorantha may vary" (the other side being what people change/remove from the canon)

There is something to be said in favor of player characters encountering plants that behave in the magical or archetypical ways you describe. In my games, I would reserve such encounters for areas within the Proximate Holy Realm or outright on the hero planes or Godplane. Such specimen would be powerful artifacs if retrieved and introduced in Surface World Glorantha, but compare the one known introduction of a new agricultural plant to Glorantha, maize, and the harvest sacrifices required to grow it.

You could create a flower that provides the equivalent of sunlight in underground caves, enabling an entire photosynthetic ecology in its wake, whether you sell that as bioluminescence or as tapping directly into the Source of All Energies far above the Sky Dome, but there are other underground biomes we might construct, like e.g. a colonoy of fire elves (originally from the top of the Spike) inhabiting a scorched portion of Wonderhome, surviving in the glowing ashes of Bijiif.

 

Removing bees from the reproductive cycle of plant life leaves us with a couple of problems. Starting with the euphemisms about flowers and bees when teaching the presumed innocent about sex becoming irrelevant.

[ZedAlpha]

y'know I'm actually having a conversation with a possible player right now who's super dissatisfied about all bugs just being Goraikki's kids (they're very interested in entomology), and this thread is making me realize that if they're dissatisfied with Gloranthan canon, we can just make better canon.

Time to make some honeybee and butterfly myths! And a story about cicadas!

[Joerg]

16 minutes ago, ZedAlpha said:

y'know I'm actually having a conversation with a possible player right now who's super dissatisfied about all bugs just being Goraikki's kids (they're very interested in entomology), and this thread is making me realize that if they're dissatisfied with Gloranthan canon, we can just make better canon.

Time to make some honeybee and butterfly myths! And a story about cicadas!

How Gorakiki Bee lost Darkness? How Gorakiki Bee collected Sunlight, and was changed by that?

Hoy exposure to Aether caused Gorakiki to grow hymenoptera wings? (She, or her mother, may have mixed in to the Three Curious Spirits encounter with fetal Aether, and may have been impregnated with light?)

And that's just using Gorakiki.

Verithurusa's dip into the Underworld following the encounter with Umath in the sky might have spawned (some, or possibly most) moths, for instance.

Another approach might be the life cycles of higher insects, with a Darkness stage (the maggot/larva), an Earth stage (the pupa) and a Sky/Fire/Air stage (the imago), plus whatever rune you might wish to assign to the egg stage. Certain types of insect like dragonflies or great diving beetles might use Water for the larval stage (although the hunger drive is important there, too, as anybody who has witnessed a great diving beetle larva among tadpoles will be able to attest - with a nod towards Giger's xenomorphs).

Another thing for your friend to explore could be the various timinits of Jrustela and Umathela, currently only described in the Guide p.503, although there were some stats for Myrmidons and Lucans in the RQ3 Gloranthan Bestiary, and a few more in the Jrustela books for MRQ 1 and 2 and the associated bestiary books. There are no known ancestral ties to Gorakiki or Aranea.

[Akhôrahil]

"Do you know how wasps came into being? They were bees once, taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life."

Edited September 2, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[ZedAlpha]

hm. According to Kolating shamanic traditions, wasps hate Broos, and wasp spirits can help shamans find and kill chaos monsters. Maybe they're just (mythologically speaking) Uroxi bees?!

 

 

 

 

 

....STORM BEE

Edited September 2, 2023 by ZedAlpha

[Leingod]

14 hours ago, ZedAlpha said:

y'know I'm actually having a conversation with a possible player right now who's super dissatisfied about all bugs just being Goraikki's kids

Well, depending on what's meant by "bugs," it can be a little more complicated than that in Gloranthan canon. To really get into the weeds of the divine mythology, the child of all "Beasts of Darkness" is called Sokazub, a child of Dame Darkness (i.e. the Primal Darkness), perhaps by Hikym/Mikyh (though I think I've also seen Hikym/Mikyh be listed as fathering Sokazub's kids, but either way works).

Sokazub was the mother of Kropa (ancestress of all arthropods), Molokka (ancestress of mollusks), and Swems (ancestress of worms). Kropa's children were Gorakiki and Aranea (who I would personally say is probably the ancestress of all arachnids, not just spiders, and the focus on spiders when she's brought up is just due to the importance of Arachne Solara in particular). If you want, you could easily add other branches on this family tree; maybe a much-reduced sister to Gorakiki and Aranea to represent the order Xiphosura, who lost all her children in the Great Darkness except for one lone holdout - the horseshoe crab - as just one example.

[mfbrandi]

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

Another thing for your friend to explore could be the various timinits of Jrustela and Umathela … There are no known ancestral ties to Gorakiki or Aranea.

Is that a retcon? Doesn’t RQ3 Troll Gods have Gorakiki as ancestor of the Timinits?

(If pushed, I will happily concede that ancestors specified in myth are not real ancestors.)

Spoiler

The Timinits, insect people of Jrustela and Pamaltela, also worship Gorakiki, but in a totally different manner — as an ancestral being, and they learn different skills. — RQ3 Troll Gods: Troll Cults Book, p.37

[my edit above: “an ancestral beings” —> “an ancestral being”]

[mfbrandi]

13 hours ago, ZedAlpha said:

According to Kolating shamanic traditions, wasps hate Broos

I wonder whether that is just parasitoid wasps who think that the broos are muscling in on their territory: “Go get your own shtick, goat boy!”

[Akhôrahil]

Bees being children of both light and dark would explain why they have yellow/black striping, just sayin'.

[French Desperate WindChild]

On 9/2/2023 at 7:16 PM, Joerg said:

but personally I find eliminating the concept of pollination quite drastic - effectively, it removes all male plants or plant components except male elves, and it makes flowers or pre-seed plant organs unnecessary. It is possible to design such a world, but IMO Glorantha is not that.

unnecessary if you consider flowers are pollen recipients etc... what  if you consider flower as flower, and nothing more, nothing related to pollination ?

Or if you consider flowers as a gift of the goddesses, to feed people, to feed beast, or just to be beautiful, we need them 🙂

Our ancestors saw flowers before someone understood the role of pollen. I imagine they did not say that flowers were unnecessary.

As anything people don't understand, they probably saw behind it the "magic" (and the "proof" of existence ) of any entity (call it gods, spirits, alien, giants, elves, magicians...)

I imagine they did worship (propitiatory or with devotion) to see flowers (and the rest) every springs. After all if anything is explaned by universal mindless laws, there is no reason to worship anything/anyone.

 

On 9/2/2023 at 7:16 PM, Joerg said:

enabling an entire photosynthetic ecology

as i don't need pollination (even if i need flowers 😛 ) i don't need photosynthesis too (even if i need plants). Our needs/tastes/explanation of glorantha are so different ! (and both respectable, I think)

 

 In fact, for me, if there are pollination, photosynthesis, etc.. the gods are  😉 ...

On 9/2/2023 at 7:16 PM, Joerg said:

 unnecessary. It is possible to design such a world, but IMO Glorantha is not that.

 

 

[Joerg]

Looks like you, @French Desperate WindChild, are about as dogmatic about this as I am. Which is unnecessary.

14 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

unnecessary if you consider flowers are pollen recipients etc... what  if you consider flower as flower, and nothing more, nothing related to pollination ?

Flowers are the sexual organs of plants. Mythologically as well, btw. There is a reason why lifebringers like Voria make the ground bloom. And why Voria adorns hersefl with mutilated sexual organs (flowers) like her slightly older sister Babeester.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Or if you consider flowers as a gift of the goddesses, to feed people, to feed beast, or just to be beautiful, we need them 🙂

Flowers as food are a great exception. Flowers as source of  flavours or of colour are known, but like every grower of buckwheat or sunflowers knows the seed follows a stage as flowers, and there are bees or other such agents involved. That's both the science and the myth about bees. Take away one, and you lose the other.

Unless you think of Lotus Eating, which is a thing in Ignorance, and a potential export good if you ask Can Shu, Glory of Ignorance.

Hazia is a case of flower stamen used as drugs. Saffron is a case of flower stemen used as (food) dye and/or spice.

(Admittedly, there are Real World flowers which grow fruit but not seeds thanks to human interference, like the industrial banana of the western world, or like seedless grapes. These are aberrations, the kind of stuff that caused the downfall of the God Learners.)

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Our ancestors saw flowers before someone understood the role of pollen. I imagine they did not say that flowers were unnecessary.

Our ancestors saw flowers before they had the capacity to think about them. But our ancestors also began to cultivate pseudocereals like buckwheat, or actual flower seeds like sunflowers, and they could observe how many berries or similar edible parts like strawberries retain the outer leaves of the flower.

At some point, humans understood that following their sexual urges would result in babies. And as hunters, they observed this in their prey as well as in their carnivorous rivals. And as gatherers, they observed how pollination resulted in fruits forming, and how lack of pollination left the flowers barren. Our ancestors were not idiots, but keen observers. Whether they knew exactly what pollen or stemen were for or not, they easily observed a connection. And for the steps they did not understand, they found spirits etc. as explanations. So maybe pollen was some kind of fairy dust to them? Regardless, it had to do with carrying fruit, and fruit had to do with seeds which in turn often resulted in plants growing.

From such observations our neolithic ancestors in many parts of the world cultivated certain grasses or flowers to provide them with more and bigger and better accessible seeds by processes of selection, long before a monk by the name of Mendel set out to do some math about that.

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

As anything people don't understand, they probably saw behind it the "magic" (and the "proof" of existence ) of any entity (call it gods, spirits, alien, giants, elves, magicians...)

I imagine they did worship (propitiatory or with devotion) to see flowers (and the rest) every springs. After all if anything is explaned by universal mindless laws, there is no reason to worship anything/anyone.

Divinity can be mindless, too. Like volcano gods receiving food sacrifices on Java, with the people sacrificing the food not minding that there are poor people in the inside slopes of the crater catching and consuming their sacrifices, as long as these sacrifices have been properly offered.

Is there reason behind worship and sacrifice? Is it some form of social ostentation - both among the people performing it and towards the divine? How much of that is identary (creating the in-group) rather than aiming to reassert  reality? Do sun worshippers perform mourning rites each sunset? If not, why not?

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

as i don't need pollination (even if i need flowers 😛 ) i don't need photosynthesis too (even if i need plants).

Read photosynthesis as creating fertility from sunlight or lesser sunlight, something mythically required by modern Gloranthan plants since the birth of Aether fairly early in the Green Age. Plants crave and require Sunlight, whether you call it photosynthesis (literally "making something out of light (and used-up or "stagnant" air, and water)" said with Greek syllables, without any reference to chlorophyll or osmosis or anything molecular) or "showering plants with life- and growth-enhancing light".

So, yes, if you have plants that like Yelm (like Aldrya's), you have and need photosynthesis in the literal sense. We also have stygosynthesis by Mee Vorala, turning rot into growth. Fire elves and their habitat in southernmost Pamaltela probably has pyrosynthesis instead. You might also have aeolosynthesis, plants making stuff and harvesting energy from moving air, if you want.

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

 In fact, for me, if there are pollination, photosynthesis, etc.. the gods are  😉 ...

On 9/2/2023 at 7:16 PM, Joerg said:

 unnecessary. It is possible to design such a world, but IMO Glorantha is not that.

Pollination can be a divine or spirit act, but its presence in Glorantha has been documented. The gods have plenty justification for making such things happen now that they have ruined the Green Age when it may have been superfluous. It is their fault that this is necessary, and it is their responsibility to make it happen.

Pollination seems to be part of the power of Flamal (fathering seeds). Shedding light so growth can happen used to be Aether's job but was inherited by Yelm. The gods, or at least the runes wielded by them, are required - even your most materialist and atheist sorcerer will corroborate that.

 

So, again (and again and again): Glorantha is not a world without "spreading growth-enabling dust from blossoms" or "making stuff out of light". These myths are foundational, and removing them will crash the world. They have deities associated with this whose very being is to enable such stuff. You don't empower these deities by taking away stuff that results in bees being useful to flowering plants, you castrate them and the meaning behind them, making them cartoon versions of themselves.

Do you want Yelm Squarepants?

[ZedAlpha]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Do you want Yelm Squarepants?

ah yes, Yelm Earth-Trousers, a Ralian hillfolk myth abut how Yelm The Bad Emperor declared women unnecessary. He then tried to steal Ernalda's clothes to claim power over the Earth Rune, and ended up just looking silly in the doing of it. A popular supporting character in the myth is the dim-witted Star Captain Padraig, who eggs Yelm on, before the two of them are given a swift lesson in how to respect women by the squirrelfolk warrior-hero Sand-Hair, so called because white-blonde hair is almost unheard of in Ralios and the Ralians had to think of a metaphor for what her fur looked like.

It's a popular children's tale in Ralios, and is the source of many jokes about how squirrels are secretly mighty warriors and should be left alone. As a side effect, Ralios's squirrel population is one of the largest in Genertela, and many Eastern Wilds clans have a few populations of large, treat-seeking squirrels around their Earth temples a la the deer who congregate around that one Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan IRL.

 

[Squaredeal Sten]

So children quiet down, sit quiet in the Yelmlight and I will tell you why we and all of Flamal's brown chidren keep bees.  

One of Flamal's greatest creations is flowering plants, which made the peak of the Green Age.  But when flowering plants spread over the world, they were so successful and so many!  There were so many that not even  Flamal could  care for them all.  First Flamal created Aldrya who created us, whose purpose is to care for the forests.  But as the Green Age reached its peak even we, the mreli. were unable to do it all, and though we cared for the forests who would care for the flowering plants of the meadows?  So the perfection of the Green Age was not quite accomplished.

Then a heroic mrel Gardener named Narlen quested and bested one of the Darkness goddesses, yes Gorakiki, and carried away some of her children to serve us: These are the bees, who have been taken from the Eaters to serve the Grower.  They please the flowering plants' sexual parts, the flowers, and are rewarded with sweetness; as in the rest of the world, this increases Fertility.   This benefits the flowering trees which are our first concern,  but also the smaller flowering plants of the meadows which we mreli usually do not worry about. They do not eat the plants, neither flower nor leaf nor  stem nor root, so are no longer Eaters.  They have been taken from the gods of Darkness and live as we mreii do, sleeping in Dark Season and emerging full of activity in Sea Season.  And because they are our captives we have the right to share their sweet food. honey.  But we don't take too much from their hives because we are not greedy Eaters. so we mreli and the bees and the flowering plants all prosper every year.

And for this Narlen is named Narlen Beekeeper and is worshiped as a hero.  Her cult gives only one rune spell, Calm Bees, which enables moving hives and taking their honey in season.  But it also teaches spirit magic: Control (Bee Swarm), and the craft of Beekeeping.  Narlen Beekeeper's holy days are those of Aldrya.

Rune magic; Calm Bees, 1 point.  Ritual, Ranged.

Renders the bees of one or several hives within 5 meters of the caster, calm and docile to the extent that their hives can be moved and/or robbed of the majority of their honey.

Spirit magic: Control bee Swarm: 1 point, ranged, temporal, active. 

As with all control spells (see RBOM page 111)  except that it enables the control not of just one bee but of a whole swarm of bees from a single hive, through a volume of up to 9 cubic meters.

Cult lay membership is open to any mreli plant tender or priestess-shaman. Vronkali are generally not interested.  Joining requires the sacrifice of 1 MP on a holy day, and allows the member to be taught the craft of Beekeeping for free.

[What's "for free" mean?  Oh it refers to money, which we Aldryami have trouble understanding.  Ask me about it when you are older.] 

Non-Aldryami may be accepted as lay members for unusual service to the Aldryami. but they must pay for training.

Cult initiate membership is open to any Gardener, also to Dryads of course. It allows learning the cult magics.

The cult's highest rank is initiate.

 

Edited September 6, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
Spelling / typing; then added the cult and magics.

[mfbrandi]

14 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Then a heroic mrel Gardener named Narlen quested and bested one of the Darkness goddesses, yes Gorakiki, and carried away some of her children to serve us: these are the bees, who have been taken from the Eaters to serve the Grower. They please the flowering plants’ sexual parts, the flowers, and are rewarded with sweetness; as in the rest of the world, this increases Fertility. This benefits the flowering trees which are our first concern, but also the smaller flowering plants of the meadows which we mreli usually do not worry about. They do not eat the plants, neither flower nor leaf nor stem nor root, so are no longer Eaters.

Hmm … this seems to play to the idea of everyone picks a side — or has one picked for them — and we none of us need those awful people/insects/plants on the other side: if they are pollinators, they can’t be eaters.

Isn’t the reality of the relationship between insects and flowering plants more complicated? Bees will take nectar without doing the work of pollination if they can — think of short-tongued bees who punch holes in the sides of flowers to get at the nectar, bypassing the “front entrance” where the pollen-dabbing mechanism is waiting for long-tongued bees. Honeybees steal and eat pollen, and every grain eaten is potentially a fertilisation foregone.

There are conflicts between insects and plants — they are playing on opposing teams — and this is reflected in behaviour and biology. (Which are surely more complicated than anything I understand.) That doesn’t mean they don’t need each other.° We may find we need our enemies (even if we have to trick them sometimes) more than we need our allies, hirelings, and slaves — wouldn’t that be a lesson to learn?

 

° Perhaps this goes for those who eat the whole organism, too: the zebra eaten by the hyena didn’t need that hyena, but perhaps the herd benefits from predation. Perhaps. And if not, think how much darker the Waha–Eiritha relationship looks than it already did.

[Squaredeal Sten]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Hmm … this seems to play to the idea of everyone picks a side — or has one picked for them — and we none of us need those awful people/insects/plants on the other side: if they are pollinators, they can’t be eaters.

Isn’t the reality of the relationship between insects and flowering plants more complicated? Bees will take nectar without doing the work of pollination if they can — think of short-tongued bees who punch holes in the sides of flowers to get at the nectar, bypassing the “front entrance” where the pollen-dabbing mechanism is waiting for long-tongued bees. Honeybees steal and eat pollen, and every grain eaten is potentially a fertilisation foregone.

There are conflicts between insects and plants — they are playing on opposing teams — and this is reflected in behaviour and biology. (Which are surely more complicated than anything I understand.) That doesn’t mean they don’t need each other.° We may find we need our enemies (even if we have to trick them sometimes) more than we need our allies, hirelings, and slaves — wouldn’t that be a lesson to learn?

 

° Perhaps this goes for those who eat the whole organism, too: the zebra eaten by the hyena didn’t need that hyena, but perhaps the herd benefits from predation. Perhaps. And if not, think how much darker the Waha–Eiritha relationship looks than it already did.

The pharase in question is aimed at "these are OUR insects. Not like those pests". Dont overthink it.

Its only a legend. Not a literary interpretation class.

[g33k]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

...

Isn’t the reality of the relationship between insects and flowering plants more complicated?
...

It's a question, I think, of how much we model & map every facet of Earthly knowledge & science onto Gloranthan knowledge & myth.

I suspect there are more such models than there are players -- every player will have a slightly-different preference / model; and the grognards will have several (having tried and moved on from various mental maps over the decades).

My "overthinking it" is someone else's "hah! I have barely even begun to think it!"

Edited September 6, 2023 by g33k

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 9/2/2023 at 10:44 AM, g33k said:

Yes; I know.  The details are unimportant to my point that -- in Glorantha -- the myths override our Earthly/real-world science, our "truths" and our categories.

Want Bees who are Light/Sky/Sun insects, not Darkness-aligned?  Sounds good!  Write a myth for it!
 

Yep.

But don't insist that rule of thumb be universal... or you risk a Glorantha that's all thumbs!  😁

what about Three-Eyed "Dinosaur Shrimp"? they're pure "Heler married Ernalda"

[radmonger]

In the age of darkness, when the world was ending, gods died and magic failed. Our ancestors endured and adapted.

But, in the time where Orlanth was away in hell, there came a change they could not see how to adapt to. No plants would flower, and so no seeds could be made. The stored grain there was was all there ever would be, until the end of the world..

Our ancestors asked Lord Yelmalio[1], who Orlanth had placed in charge, what was to be done.

'if the world is fixed but we are dead, we will have no descendants. What is to be done?

Yelmalio asked the grain what was wrong, but it could not answer. So he traveled to the forest where the talking plants gather. They said the darkness demon Zorak Zoran has slain Flamal. The prayers of the plants for children were going unanswered.

Yelmalio swore a mighty oath of vengeance against Zorak Zoran, and left to hunt him down. In return the elves gifted our ancestors some fruit trees, which would supply fruit without having to be replanted each year. By this means the stored grain would last another few years. 

But Orlanth did not return within that time. So the people went to Ernalda, who now ruled directly. They said.

if vengeance strikes true but we are dead, none will be alive to call it justice. what is to be done?

So Ernalda traveled to the land of the dark men, and took one for a lover. In return he told her of the secrets of the dark plants, the mushrooms that grow without light or seed.  By this means the stored grain would last another few years.

But still Orlanth did not return, and now then grain store was all but empty. 

Ernalda's youngest daughter was now the only god left. So when the people asked for her aid, she had none to give. She had no skills to fight, no kin to call on. But she knew what must be done.

i will seek restitution for the death of Flamal, as is custom.

And Narlen[3] went to Zorak Zoran's domain, and made camp outside his fortress. Countless days she waited there, in rags for clothes and wailing her story. Passing troll lords would beat her and laugh at her complaints.

And then one day Zorak Zoran's terrible sister was visiting her kin. She did not beat her; she did not laugh; instead she listened. And so she said:

Zorak Zoran is my brother, but he is an idiot. Once again i must fix what he has broken.

And so Zorak Zoran's sister travelled to hell, where the maggot king Yelm held court. With her she brought three creatures of darkness, kin of Gorakkiki. When she presented these to Yelm, one burst into flames and was consumed entirely, one flew away and was lost. But the third absorbed some of his light. Its dark body became winged with bands of golden yellow.

Dead Flamal was imprisoned far from Yelm's court, in eternal darkness. So when Xiola visited him, she showed him the Yelm-touched creature. He was delighted to see even such light, and in return, he imbued the creature with some small fragment of his magic. And so the honey bee can cause plants to flower that otherwise wouldn't.

With the gift of the honey bee, the grain silos were restored[2]. With the restitution for the death of Flamal, justice was restored.

And so the world was ready for Orlanth to fix it.

[1] this word is smudged, as if overwritten by a later hand.

[2] Gloranthan magic bees can pollinate wheat, or any other plant. Since the Dawn they are no longer the only way to do so so, and so normally are reserved for luxury crops. But some speak of the possibilities of winter wheat...

[3] Narlen is also known to the elves, where she provides the same magic. However, the elven myths do no go into any great detail about how exactly the bees came into their possession; what she does with them is more important

Edited September 7, 2023 by radmonger

[Erol of Backford]

On 9/1/2023 at 5:54 AM, mfbrandi said:

lizards (Earth)

Yesterday I was looking into a Praxian Reptile spirit, if lizards have something to do with pollination I'd like to know more if there is a source? It seems like a stretch to me but I'd like to know more?

On 9/1/2023 at 10:18 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

TheGorakiki bee subcult may have some Aldryami association due to a mythical event. 

Of course it does, the elf Leaftop/Greenslave, p.24 Into Troll Realms, always puzzled me but possibly he's associated with this honeybee subcult. He tends the garden for the trolls at the Grubfarm and might even ride on the bees for fun and or when on missions for the trolls? No it doesn't sound right but why not...

Who doesn't like a elf on a giant bee, right?

Additionally why wouldn't he have some Gorakiki-bee magic about him?

On 9/2/2023 at 2:44 AM, Joerg said:

The entire existence of the "walking aldryami" (elves, runners, pixies) is about independence of the Forest from any animals. While the animals may help with grooming the forests, the forest can do without them.

Surely animals exist in the elven forests but as there are no small animals per say at the Grubfarm, the trolls ate them all, Greenslave and potentially a few runners, pixies, etc. might have joined him there and assist with pollination, YGMV.

This image haunts me from my childhood. Swap the whatever it is, mutant pygmy for an elf and the wasp for a bee?

[mfbrandi]

57 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

Yesterday I was looking into a Praxian Reptile spirit, if lizards have something to do with pollination I'd like to know more if there is a source?

Sure, there is this: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/25/is-it-a-bird-is-it-a-bee-no-its-a-lizard-pollinating-south-africas-hidden-flower-aoe

But just Google (other search engines are available) lizard pollination for more, including these pics: gecko pollination - 2019 - Moldowan.pdf

[Erol of Backford]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

lizard pollination

Never  heard of such a thing.. makes sense, will read, thanks!