Power of the air gods

[bronze]

Do the air gods possess inherent power over rain and lightening, respectively domains of water and sky deities? 

Edited November 14, 2023 by bronze

[Richard S.]

Those powers are generally associated with Air/Storm, yes, but not all air gods have the same level of influence over it. Orlanth is the primary weather god (or even just the weather itself), and can influence most kinds of wind, precipitation, thunder, lighting, etc. Some of these powers are technically held by other gods, like Heler (rain) and Lightning Boy (lightning), but Orlanth commands when and where they fall. As for his relatives, they're only associated with smaller parts of the atmosphere. Storm Bull is the god of the desert wind, Gagarth is the god of whirlwinds, Valind is the north wind, Inora is the goddess of snow, Molanni/Entekos/Brastalos is the goddess of still air, Daga is the god of drought, and Kolat is the great spirit of all winds. Orlanth can command all of them at need.

[bronze]

16 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Those powers are generally associated with Air/Storm, yes, but not all air gods have the same level of influence over it. Orlanth is the primary weather god (or even just the weather itself), and can influence most kinds of wind, precipitation, thunder, lighting, etc. Some of these powers are technically held by other gods, like Heler (rain) and Lightning Boy (lightning), but Orlanth commands when and where they fall. As for his relatives, they're only associated with smaller parts of the atmosphere. Storm Bull is the god of the desert wind, Gagarth is the god of whirlwinds, Valind is the north wind, Inora is the goddess of snow, Molanni/Entekos/Brastalos is the goddess of still air, Daga is the god of drought, and Kolat is the great spirit of all winds. Orlanth can command all of them at need.

Have wondered Orlanth has taken these powers from other gods, or held immanent power over them.

Edited November 14, 2023 by bronze

[Richard S.]

Orlanth is the greatest of the storm gods, inheritor of most of Umath's power, and owner of the Air rune. He proved that in the godtime through his strength, overcoming the air gods that fought against him and earning the loyalty of those who didn't. Lightning Boy and Heler were originally enemies from different families, but after their defeat they became his friends, and afaik he's the only one who can call on them for rain and lightning. Valind, and Vadrus' other kids, he overcame and forced to submit.

[bronze]

1 hour ago, Richard S. said:

Orlanth is the greatest of the storm gods, inheritor of most of Umath's power, and owner of the Air rune. He proved that in the godtime through his strength, overcoming the air gods that fought against him and earning the loyalty of those who didn't. Lightning Boy and Heler were originally enemies from different families, but after their defeat they became his friends, and afaik he's the only one who can call on them for rain and lightning. Valind, and Vadrus' other kids, he overcame and forced to submit.

Does that mean Umath has power over rain and lightening, too? 

Edited November 15, 2023 by bronze

[Richard S.]

Technically yes, since Umath for all intents and purposes is the Air rune. I think it'd be slightly more accurate though to say that Umath had the potential for those powers. It wasn't until later in creation, after Umath was superceded in importance, that those powers would be discovered.

[jajagappa]

15 minutes ago, bronze said:

Does that mean Umath have power over rain and lightening, too? 

Unclear, but Umath fell in the Gods War and as the story goes, his sons emerged from the pit where he fell carrying his weapons.

There's also the tale that Umath is the storm chained at the center of the world around which the winds pivot, but he is bound there and cannot leave.

The only tales regarding rain and lightning relate to Orlanth gaining them. Did Umath do so previously? If so, then Orlanth not only took the weapons but also the tales of gaining them from his father.

Other storm gods gained powers over the seas (leading to various merfolk), and Valind gained the power of Snow, so clearly has some ability to control cold "rain".  

One that we don't know much of, but likely has rain powers is Keraun in Pamaltela.

[bronze]

It seems only the air gods are gaining power from others. 

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, bronze said:

It seems only the air gods are gaining power from others. 

Fire tends to want to burn off everything else and leave itself pure, so no tendency to take up the mantle of others (except for the Solar Storm, which we know little about).

Zorak Zoran, though, does take Fire from Yelmalio at the Hill of Gold, so he is another.

You could look at Earth and Water and say that one or the other takes up the power of clay to mold or shape or give birth to something else. Or the fire within the earth giving rise to the volcano.

Magasta takes a power from Storm to fashion the whirlpool. 

But there aren't many natural phenomena which you could point to where one element holds the power of another. 

[g33k]

Let us also notice that Moon has gathered a suite of other Elements... all but Air/Storm, in fact!

 

Including, notably, Chaos!

[Malin]

8 hours ago, bronze said:

ave wondered Orlanth has taken these powers from other gods, or held immanent power over them.

I know certain Yelmalians who would swear that Orlanth took the power of lightning from them when he defeated Yelmalio (with unfair means, of course) at the Hill of Gold and took away Yelmalios weapons. And that the spear was lightning. They would also point to Orlanth's shenanigans with the Sandals of Darkness and the Scarf of Mist as proof of how untrustworthy those violent air gods are. Thieves and robbers the lot of them. And can we really trust that the Shield of Arran was freely given?

Of course, this is a very biased way of seeing mythic events, and who can know what the truth really is?

(And the Yelmalion would point that their god holds the Truth rune, and so they should be trusted.)

[French Desperate WindChild]

10 hours ago, bronze said:

Does that mean Umath has power over rain and lightening, too? 

it depends a lot of what you consider Umath, in my opinion :

- Umath as a god seems to me not anymore "present" (don't know any worship, seems to have been defeated). His heir, but especially by his own right and deeds, Orlanth is now the leader of air gods (and by the way, king of the gods since the compromise)

- of course if you consider for any reason that Umath is more or less Orlanth and vice versa, that is different, but then, use the most recent name : 'Vinga' 😜

- Umath as the air rune  exists of course (but the owner is Orlanth). Now is rain part of the air rune ? I would say no. Rain is Heller, once he joined Orlanth. Rain is the merge of water (the drop) and air (between the drops). Same for lightening, the merge between the light (... the light) and the air ("boom").

 

9 hours ago, bronze said:

It seems only the air gods are gaining power from others. 

it depends too.

The two examples you have (rain, lightening) don't follow exactly your definition :

Zorak Zoran gains power of fire  from Yelmalio, defeating him

But Orlanth gains Rain from Heller by friendship, and the same with lightning. (Of course if you don't believe @Malin's yelmalions. Even if they are right, that doesn't matter)

That doesn't mean air gods are good, they are like others: gods with good part and bad part.

[Joerg]

There are stories about Orlanth wresting Lightning from the Fire Deities, up to the HW/HQ1 subcult Yavor Lightning in Thunder Rebels. IMG Lightning is intrinsic to Orlanth and the Thunder Brothers, but not to his brothers. Thunder on the other hand was a native power of Umath, manifesting in the Thunder Stones that can be dug up in Thunder Delta or manufactured by Storm Voices, and might be found with other Storm deities descended from him, as well as with Shargash/Tolat after wrestling Umath down.

[Richard S.]

I wonder what the difference between the Thunderbolt and the Lightning spear is. They both certainly look like similar phenomena, but the former is seemingly intrinsic to Orlanth, and was one of the powers he put into the Thunder Bird, while the latter was stolen from the Sky gods.

[Cassius]

I don't see lightning as something that belongs to the sky because sky is fire. For me, lightning is inherently a storm/air power and phenomenon.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Cassius

[Richard S.]

19 minutes ago, Cassius said:

I don't see lightning as something that belongs to the sky because sky is fire. For me, lightning is inherently a storm/air power and phenomenon.

Personally, I think it's stranger if that sort of bright, burning energy isn't originally a fire power, even if they lost it. The powers of Air largely deal with wind, noise, temperature, and personal strength; I don't think any air gods save for Orlanth have such visual and immediately damaging magic, they prefer worshipers to fight with their own weapons.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Richard S.

[Joerg]

Lightning is Plasma - the violent discharge of light and heat (and electric shock) through the atmosphere. Thunder is the violent expansion or release of air, a sonic boom propagating through the atmosphere - basically the birth of Umath in smaller scale. (Or, as Eurmal would say, a glorious fart.)

[g33k]

10 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Lightning is Plasma - the violent discharge of light and heat (and electric shock) through the atmosphere. Thunder is the violent expansion or release of air, a sonic boom propagating through the atmosphere ...

I'm not (at all) certain that this RW-physics perspective is relevant to Glorantha...
 

11 minutes ago, Joerg said:

... basically the birth of Umath in smaller scale. (Or, as Eurmal would say, a glorious fart.)

This, OTOH, is nicely mythic!

 

1 hour ago, Richard S. said:

Personally, I think it's stranger if that sort of bright, burning energy isn't originally a fire power, even if they lost it...

This too seems very, very mythic.

Lightning -- obviously, anyone can trivially tell by looking at it, by exploring the effects of lightning-strikes -- is raw light and heat.
Light and heat... this *is* the fire rune.

That it comes from the Air simply speaks to it having been won (or stolen) by Air/Storm from Fire/Sky.

[Joerg]

56 minutes ago, g33k said:

I'm not (at all) certain that this RW-physics perspective is relevant to Glorantha...

RW physics would be talking about electrostatic charges and field strengths, about electrons separated from their nuclei.

Plasma is the primal flame of Aether, before it separated into pure light (Dayzatar), general (sun) fire (Yelm) and heat (Lodril). It probably also is the matter of the Sky Domes. Flame or plasma is the lightest of the forms of matter, but still has heaviness. (But then, so does light, or the space that sight traverses, hence the horizon effect.) Umath, Aether's last expression, took the mass of his father's realm and condensed it into Storm, adding to it from the Chaosium.

We don't have a separate greater deity of Lightning any more. While we have Firearrow, there is no Javelin of LIght. We have falling stars leaving behind a trail of plasma - again an interaction of celestial plasma with the atmosphere. (There were no stars before Storm helped birth or manifest them...)

 

The classical elements of Greek natural philosophy (and most magic systems derived from that) are the aggregate states of matter  - solid Earth, liquid Water, gaseous Air, plasma Fire. These have their counterpoints in Glorantha. Darkness might be found in RW physics as the effects of event horizons, or possibly as Dark Matter (if that mythical substance exists). Moonglow is weird. Its visibility (or lack thereof) may be just a side effect like troll rumbling sounds when they employ Darksense.

 

Each Gloranthan element can be transformed into a metal state through aggregation by a sufficiently elementally tied individual or creature, typically as bones, or by powerful transformative magic as in the creation of the Copper Sands.

[scott-martin]

IMG there weren't any tangible elemental manifestations left for Storm so they are all copied or stolen from the ancestral pantheons. This is the esoteric secret of Four Magic Weapons and in the background of the Hero Wars antagonism with Moon.

Air's power is to whisper the rain and trick the lightning, steal death and seduce earth.

[Leingod]

15 hours ago, bronze said:

It seems only the air gods are gaining power from others. 

8 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

IMG there weren't any tangible elemental manifestations left for Storm so they are all copied or stolen from the ancestral pantheons. This is the esoteric secret of Four Magic Weapons and in the background of the Hero Wars antagonism with Moon.

Air's power is to whisper the rain and trick the lightning, steal death and seduce earth.

It goes all the way back to the beginning; Air is the only element born out of the mingling of two others, rather than rising out of the one before it in a generative cycle. It is, in some ways, the bastard child of the elements. There was no place in the world accorded to Air, so space had to be made between Earth and Sky to fit it. The often-violent struggles of Umath and his sons in the God War are all, ultimately, echos of that first struggle, of Air trying to find a place for itself in a world that refuses to give it one as it had the ones that came before.

As a result, many of what we consider innate powers of Air are really things that this or that god of Air claimed through their struggles in the Gods War. Lightning, rain, snow, etc., were all things this or that son of Umath took and mastered and made a part of themselves.

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, Leingod said:

There was no place in the world accorded to Air, so space had to be made between Earth and Sky to fit it.

I wonder why it is always pitched that way. We could have said that before Umath, you were OK if you lived under the earth, deep in the sea, or on the other side of the sky, but that otherwise you were screwed — no place for the bats, the deer, and so on. Air’s separating sky and earth could have been pitched as a great act of altruism (Shu is a god of peace). Has Orlanth — the wet, fiery, blustering, thieving murderer — “infected” Umath (who wanted to be more like Entekos)? Have the Orlanthi made air into storm, the better to suit their own culture? Or … ? 😉

[g33k]

12 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

I wonder why it is always pitched that way. We could have said that before Umath, you were OK if you lived under the earth, deep in the sea, or on the other side of the sky, but that otherwise you were screwed — no place for the bats, the deer, and so on. Air’s separating sky and earth could have been pitched as a great act of altruism (Shu is a god of peace). Has Orlanth — the wet, fiery, blustering, thieving murderer — “infected” Umath (who wanted to be more like Entekos)? Have the Orlanthi made air into storm, the better to suit their own culture? Or … ? 😉

With a last, lingering bit of Rune Magic from when Earth was trying to keep Air a peaceful god (trying to stop the disorder, the chaos that is Storm):  Tame Bull.

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Tame Bull.

I call that the OX but who needs these complications, as it were

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

With a last, lingering bit of Rune Magic from when Earth was trying to keep Air a peaceful god (trying to stop the disorder, the chaos that is Storm):  Tame Bull.

I need to make it very clear - Air is not associated with Chaos. Any more than Fire/Sky or Darkness or Fertility are. The only element that has an intrinsic tie to Chaos is Moon and that is because the Red Goddess is a Chaos deity.