Where did Thed come from?

[MagikarpHunter]

Looking at the divine genealogy of the Lords of Terror in the Mythology book, I find it curious that Thed is the only Chaos god on the diagram without a parent. Where do we suppose Thed's parentage comes from? I'd be inclined to say some kind of Earth deity, or maybe an animal deity. Perhaps some sort of tie to Ernalda or Eiritha? I'm not sold on the idea though, and I wondered if she may be some sort of more distant relative of the gods like how Lanbril is described as a "near-human". 

[David Scott]

26 minutes ago, MagikarpHunter said:

Looking at the divine genealogy of the Lords of Terror in the Mythology book, I find it curious that Thed is the only Chaos god on the diagram without a parent. Where do we suppose Thed's parentage comes from? I'd be inclined to say some kind of Earth deity, or maybe an animal deity. Perhaps some sort of tie to Ernalda or Eiritha? I'm not sold on the idea though, and I wondered if she may be some sort of more distant relative of the gods like how Lanbril is described as a "near-human". 

I like to think that Thed was the mother of Uryarda who escaped the chaos changing effects that altered Thed and her other children, the broos. Uryarda's children are likely Mirapora and Sidar / caroni (or is a mask of them). So Early Thed was likely a daughter of Ernalda or Eiritha (I'm more inclined to say Ernalda), and maybe a daughter of Storm Bull. Thed has now lost all of those connections, just being a chaos spirit, so most people wouldn't think of it.

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

It makes thematic sense for her to be a relative of Ernalda; Ragnaglar and Thed show us what the marriage of Orlanth and Ernalda is not. 
 

But take what I say with a grain of salt; I speak the gospel of “Thed was a grain goddess once, and Raggy’s the one with all the goat associations.”

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

It makes thematic sense for her to be a relative of Ernalda; Ragnaglar and Thed show us what the marriage of Orlanth and Ernalda is not. 
 

But take what I say with a grain of salt; I speak the gospel of “Thed was a grain goddess once, and Raggy’s the one with all the goat associations.”

Logically, Thed would be a sister and/or daughter of Eiritha, one of the herd mothers, in her case of goats (who aren't that different from antelopes, really - read up on this on the Synapsidae blog by long time Glorantha contributor Jamie Revell, e.g. on goats, or on how to tell goats and sheep apart, and the family relations between bovines, antelopes and goats and sheep).

We have other goat goddesses - Carona as ancestress of the goat hsunchen of the Mislari, and the Pelorian (and especially Arcos Valley and Kostaddi) goat mother Uryarda (a passenger on Anaxial's Ark), or possibly Miapora worshipped at Sidara (which may have been used as her name, too - inhabiting land never flooded). No origin is given for the goats kept in Fonrit, apparently present already when Garangordos conquered the land. Those Vadrudi who practice pastoralism herd goats, too.

There is a Chaos Goat, too.

The broo (her earlier offspring with Ragnaglar) used to be little different from the minotaurs, offspring of Storm Bull and the children of Eiritha, or the beast-headed Founders of the Praxians.

 

Eiritha is not a grain goddess, and neither are any of the other herd mothers, which is why I have a lot against classifying Thed as a grain goddess. No idea whether the early broo were pastoralists, herding goats, and whether Thed actually had been a herd mother or Protectress, or whether there had been Storm-descended human pastoralists herding her goats descended from her as herd mother.

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

But that’s the thing, right? (Apologies for the tangent in advance.) As far as I can tell in my own studies, the linking of Thed to goats is tautological: the Broo are often caprine, Thed is the Mother of the Broo, Thed is linked to goats. But children have two parents, and Rag’s the one who’s repeatedly called a goat in the Book of Heortling Mythology. (As well as Eurmal, but that’s another digression entirely.) Certainly, she gives birth to the Black Goat, but Wakboth had two parents, too (insofar as something like him can have anything).

Similarly, in the same source it is at one point said that Ragnaglar “raped one of Ernalda’s daughters,” then came back to claim Thed; the language is ambiguous as to whether this was Thed, so let us take it or leave it as it lies.

This leaves Thed herself as a lacuna: born of a game about spirits, incorporated into the death of the world to be reborn, and a struggling single mother these days, to boot. For if she is not the goat goddess, what else are we to do with her, standing accusatory before Orlanth’s throne? Crimes against the sacrosanct, perhaps.

To circle back around to the serious: wherever she has come from, and wherever she is going, it cannot be denied that a familial tie to Ernalda, in some degree, accentuates the familial drama of the Storm Age, and casts Ragnaglar and Thed as the shadows of Orlanth and Ernalda, showing us what our Great Gods are not. For Orlanth knows that real men take no for an answer, and Ernalda loves her children, and they held each other’s hands, not in the formal manner by the wrists, but instead holding in what we call the two grip, that’s used in flirting.

[EricW]

Thed could have been Ragnaglar's daughter by Ernalda - that would make the whole devil conspiracy especially yucky. 

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

But that’s the thing, right? (Apologies for the tangent in advance.) As far as I can tell in my own studies, the linking of Thed to goats is tautological: the Broo are often caprine, Thed is the Mother of the Broo, Thed is linked to goats. But children have two parents, and Rag’s the one who’s repeatedly called a goat in the Book of Heortling Mythology. (As well as Eurmal, but that’s another digression entirely.) Certainly, she gives birth to the Black Goat, but Wakboth had two parents, too (insofar as something like him can have anything).

Ragnaglar is as much a goat as Orlanth is a sheep or Vadrus is a goat (or a rhino if you look at Anaxial's Roster). Storm Bull is the child of Umath and Mikyh. There is no indication that Raggie was his full sibling.

Pastoralist founders have the Minotaur body plan, and there might be Sable or even Impala minotaurs somewhere in Prax or beyond. There certainly are Bison ones.

Wakboth has three parents (and a midwife helping Primal Chaos to enter Thed's womb?), and no discernible goat features.

5 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

Similarly, in the same source it is at one point said that Ragnaglar “raped one of Ernalda’s daughters,” then came back to claim Thed; the language is ambiguous as to whether this was Thed, so let us take it or leave it as it lies.

I always took that as referring to Thed - after all it was Thed who appeared before Orlanth and demanded a justice which Orlanth's law could not grant, leading to the self-inflicted exile of Orlanth (and Vingkot becoming king).

6 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

This leaves Thed herself as a lacuna: born of a game about spirits, incorporated into the death of the world to be reborn, and a struggling single mother these days, to boot. For if she is not the goat goddess, what else are we to do with her, standing accusatory before Orlanth’s throne? Crimes against the sacrosanct, perhaps.

I always suspected the case of Thed as the precedence case for the Vadrudi "brides", with extra injuries.

6 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

To circle back around to the serious: wherever she has come from, and wherever she is going, it cannot be denied that a familial tie to Ernalda, in some degree, accentuates the familial drama of the Storm Age, and casts Ragnaglar and Thed as the shadows of Orlanth and Ernalda, showing us what our Great Gods are not. For Orlanth knows that real men take no for an answer, and Ernalda loves her children, and they held each other’s hands, not in the formal manner by the wrists, but instead holding in what we call the two grip, that’s used in flirting.

The Orlanthi have a "Bad King Urgrain" as the antithesis to Orlanth's virtues.

Orlanth himself is a fringe case. We have the tales of Tat and Tol, juveniles seeking and finding intercourse with adult women (something not really condoned by Ernaldan mores, except when it comes to Great Ernalda herself playing the femme fatale with naive Orlanth. Orlanth flew with the Vadrudi, a venture that led to the birth of the air-breathing Triolini. (Kahar and Harantara is a special case, more a parallel to Orlanth and Ernalda, and Aerlit and Warera is an undecided case.) Much of his youth is a sex pit, and then he falls prey to the old manipulatress.

Does Orlanth take a no? Ask Heler at the Aroka episode. (Although Heler might not have dared to say no after experiencing Vadrus forcibly separating them from the river dragon/dragon river.)

 

[Darius West]

I would suggest that Thed is Eiritha's sister, and thus is a child of Ernalda and Hykim, like Eiritha.

[Malin]

This discussion really made me wonder what the Babeester Gor cultist in my campaign would ever make of Thed, and whether it could ever be technically proven that she had been "of the earth."

[Darius West]

Just now, Malin said:

This discussion really made me wonder what the Babeester Gor cultist in my campaign would ever make of Thed, and whether it could ever be technically proven that she had been "of the earth."

It doesn't matter because Thed foresook her loyalty to the Earth and sinned against it monstrously.  Thed is a traitor to the earth, and deserves a traitor's fate, says BBG.

[Malin]

47 minutes ago, Darius West said:

It doesn't matter because Thed foresook her loyalty to the Earth and sinned against it monstrously.  Thed is a traitor to the earth, and deserves a traitor's fate, says BBG.

Very true that! I just look forward to seeing her wrestling with these facts, an illuminated Babeester Gor can get very interesting at times. She might come to the conclusion that she needs to hear Thed's side of the story first and not rely on the word of the violators... which will be an interesting heroquest, to say the least.

Edited March 20 by Malin

[mfbrandi]

• Siblings are sometimes the same god.
• Parent and child are sometimes the same god.
• Perhaps we can think of the various storm “brothers” as paralleling the fragments of Yelm (who at bottom is one god).
• In Glorantha, the greatest battles are with oneself — and so always lost?
• We know Storm “let Chaos into the world”.
• “Thed was wounded by Urox in the Storm Age, but turned to chaos to gain revenge on the entire world instead of just her enemy.” — Lords of Terror, p. 7

Storm-as-murder (Orlanth) sees some kind of resolution at the Compromise, but other matters remain unresolved and so the world of time must incorporate the Devil (“The Wind from Outside”) — Wakboth’s evil and not merely Kajabor’s entropy. Holding Thed accountable for this is cheap victim blaming. We might say that Thed is Eiritha when she says “no”. Tada arranges a literal cover-up by having her buried, never to walk Prax again to bear witness, and Waha enforces the ban and substitutes the Herd Protectresses. Kyger Litor wielded the skinning knife? When there was a butcher on hand? The darkest stories happen inside the family.

Edited March 21 by mfbrandi
missing full stop

[Ynneadwraith]

16 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

• Siblings are sometimes the same god.
• Parent and child are sometimes the same god.
• Perhaps we can think of the various storm “brothers” as paralleling the fragments of Yelm (who at bottom is one god).

This. Perhaps its my love of cosmic horror, but I think people over-anthropomorphise Gloranthan gods (easy to do). Gods are not people, and do not behave as such. They are a halfway-house between a human and an abstract Rune. Incomprehensible (but not impersonal) forces interpreted by inadequate mortal minds as people with families and relationships, because they are not capable of understanding their true natures.

Not that I dislike the highly personal take on Gloranthan gods. It's one of the main draws of the setting! But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the relationships between different gods isn't like the fixed biological relationship between a father and a son. It's more like a Lamarckian thematic relationship between phenomena. It's less a family tree and more a culturally variable venn diagram.

That's not even considering the tampering conducted by the God Learners (and to a lesser extent Theyalans and Monrogh).

Not that it isn't fun to fathom out these sorts of relationships 🙂

32 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Holding Thed accountable for this is cheap victim blaming.

True dat. Though cheap victim-blaming seems to be a popular pastime of our favourite windy hill barbarians.

2 hours ago, Malin said:

Very true that! I just look forward to seeing her wrestling with these facts, an illuminated Babeester Gor can get very interesting at times. She might come to the conclusion that she needs to hear Thed's side of the story first and not rely on the word of the violators... which will be an interesting heroquest, to say the least.

Reminds me of a thread/blog post I read somewhere about a gaming group who decided their campaign should be about redeeming Thed. Massive Heroquest into basal Orlanthi Godtime to act as Thed's representative in the trial. I seem to remember it gaming out as having something to do with the genesis of Argrath, which I thought wasn't a satisfying thematic ending to the saga (though I've never liked Argrath as a historic development). Would rather have seen it having a significant effect on the Broo, or something like that (or perhaps being the genesis of that Chalona Arroyan Broo healer).

[Joerg]

It would be interesting to learn when Ragnaglar, Thed and Malia received Illumination from Rashoran. If it was before the rape complaint, the entire set-up would have been premeditated. If Rashoran offered therapy to the traumatized couple, then it backfired mightily.

[Ynneadwraith]

31 minutes ago, Joerg said:

It would be interesting to learn when Ragnaglar, Thed and Malia received Illumination from Rashoran. If it was before the rape complaint, the entire set-up would have been premeditated. If Rashoran offered therapy to the traumatized couple, then it backfired mightily.

Rashoran as a marriage counsellor? Terrifying, but possibly still a better option than early-days Orlanth (petulant) or even Yelm (repressive)...

'When' and 'before' might be complex questions when it comes to the world before linear Time. Unless it's something different, when Time has always existed and Arachne Solara actually ejected GodTime outside of it. I wonder, did causality exist before Time? Or because we're children of Time do we find it difficult to conceptualise causality outside of a linear framework (so the question still stands about whether Rashoran was involved as a cause or an effect).

Edited March 20 by Ynneadwraith

[Darius West]

4 hours ago, Malin said:

Very true that! I just look forward to seeing her wrestling with these facts, an illuminated Babeester Gor can get very interesting at times. She might come to the conclusion that she needs to hear Thed's side of the story first and not rely on the word of the violators... which will be an interesting heroquest, to say the least.

Yeah yeah, Thed's not to blame.  She didn't want to be Ragnaglar's girlfriend.  She didn't want to unleash Chaos and destroy countless lives.  She's just a victim in all this.  Chop her head off Erannina Chan, we all know she tried to sexually assault Orlanth.

Edited March 20 by Darius West

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Ragnaglar is as much a goat as Orlanth is a sheep or Vadrus is a goat (or a rhino if you look at Anaxial's Roster). 

Or as much as Heler is a sheep themselves, or Ernalda a sow (or a serpent), or Odayla a bear. And we cannot forget that Orlanth himself has a cat-shadow. What a shameless menagerie! Perhaps what has happened is that these primitive hill barbarians first deified the animals that gave shape to their incurious lives, and only later managed to connect these powers to the Erasanchula. Or perhaps they are atavistic memories of ancient heroes, and it was said of them, “this man, he was like a ram— this woman, she was like a serpent.” But we must not allow that any of these pagan deities have an animal nature in any degree without descent from the appropriate figure, or else the underpinnings of our great genealogy will be undone, and then what of our project and ultimate aim?

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Wakboth has three parents (and a midwife helping Primal Chaos to enter Thed's womb?), and no discernible goat features.

Then come, let us crown him with horns! Let us commit the beautiful sin of giving him signs and signifiers! I have here a plurality of bodies to pass on to Cwim, too, should we please.

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

I always took that as referring to Thed - after all it was Thed who appeared before Orlanth and demanded a justice which Orlanth's law could not grant, leading to the self-inflicted exile of Orlanth (and Vingkot becoming king).

Yes, I agree that makes for the most compelling narrative, and would be the way I tell the story. Yet it is not stated definitively, and I cannot state in confidence that no one has ever told it otherwise. It is in the gaps that interpretation blooms.

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Does Orlanth take a no? Ask Heler at the Aroka episode. (Although Heler might not have dared to say no after experiencing Vadrus forcibly separating them from the river dragon/dragon river.)

When I spoke with a Helering, they indicated that the gods embraced in giddy joy at being alive, and there is a wonderful secret in that, too. Though what precisely the secret was seems to have slipped my memory; they offered to teach me River-shapes-the-Bed afterwards, and that— well. 

7 hours ago, Malin said:

This discussion really made me wonder what the Babeester Gor cultist in my campaign would ever make of Thed, and whether it could ever be technically proven that she had been "of the earth."

I would give at least one arm to be able to tell this sort of story. The very thought is like lightning!

Alternatively: try asking the Axe Daughter what she believes, and explore from there!

4 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

This. Perhaps its my love of cosmic horror, but I think people over-anthropomorphise Gloranthan gods (easy to do). Gods are not people, and do not behave as such. They are a halfway-house between a human and an abstract Rune. Incomprehensible (but not impersonal) forces interpreted by inadequate mortal minds as people with families and relationships, because they are not capable of understanding their true natures.

Not that I dislike the highly personal take on Gloranthan gods. It's one of the main draws of the setting! But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the relationships between different gods isn't like the fixed biological relationship between a father and a son. It's more like a Lamarckian thematic relationship between phenomena. It's less a family tree and more a culturally variable venn diagram.

The gods are the gods, which as a statement is a shining golden ring. It is a shame that we must approach Glorantha through the medium of text, which implies fixity. If we were more familiar with oral storytelling, and its patterns, perhaps it would be simpler to understand the inconsistencies and ambiguities as intentional, and to appreciate the artistry implicit in how we each tell this set of stories in turn, sharing motifs and names and shapes, each turning it to our own purposes—

But I have been reading about the Haida storytellers recently, which colors my thoughts on this myth cycle we share together.

4 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Reminds me of a thread/blog post I read somewhere about a gaming group who decided their campaign should be about redeeming Thed. Massive Heroquest into basal Orlanthi Godtime to act as Thed's representative in the trial. I seem to remember it gaming out as having something to do with the genesis of Argrath, which I thought wasn't a satisfying thematic ending to the saga (though I've never liked Argrath as a historic development). Would rather have seen it having a significant effect on the Broo, or something like that (or perhaps being the genesis of that Chalona Arroyan Broo healer).

Ron Edwards, I believe. A very helpful read when I started exploring my own Thedogony.

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

Yeah yeah, Thed's not to blame.  She didn't want to be Ragnaglar's girlfriend.  She didn't want to unleash Chaos and destroy countless lives.  She's just a victim in all this.  Chop her head off Erannina Chan, we all know she tried to sexually assault Orlanth.

Not all stories are good; not everything that has been written about Glorantha is worth keeping when we tell it again, tonight and tomorrow and the day after that.

This, for example. Oh, it certainly has value as a story that is told about Thed, but it is one that tells us much more about the person who falls over himself to say that Thed deserved everything she got for being an evil scheming whore. To willingly trap yourself inside this story, just because once it was written down in a place that is lost to us now, is unworthy of us.

So, no. We do not all know this.

[David Scott]

20 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

Via Joerg said

No discernible goat features.

My favourite Thed representation for dropping on the table during broo heroquest fights is:

 

Not only is it huge, but weird too... (note the snake mouth tale)

Edited March 21 by David Scott
corrected image

[Ynneadwraith]

3 minutes ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

Perhaps what has happened is that these primitive hill barbarians first deified the animals that gave shape to their incurious lives, and only later managed to connect these powers to the Erasanchula.

Now that I love, mainly because it hints at the idea of an earlier animal-based mythic complex preserved by relict Hsunchen populations. I don't particularly like the idea that Orlanthi storm-barbarians have always been storm-barbarians from the day dot. I much prefer the more real-world idea of culture layered upon culture layered upon culture, obscuring the history of peoples.

Perhaps what we now know of as 'Orlanthi' peoples originated as a confederacy of various animal-totem people, within which cat-totem people became pre-eminent, before all of that was adapted in response to the new mythic complex of anthropomorphised gods.

Similar to how there's potential evidence of a bull-totem complex stretching stretching from Prax through Carmania into Fronela.

12 minutes ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

The gods are the gods, which as a statement is a shining golden ring. It is a shame that we must approach Glorantha through the medium of text, which implies fixity. If we were more familiar with oral storytelling, and its patterns, perhaps it would be simpler to understand the inconsistencies and ambiguities as intentional, and to appreciate the artistry implicit in how we each tell this set of stories in turn, sharing motifs and names and shapes, each turning it to our own purposes—

But I have been reading about the Haida storytellers recently, which colors my thoughts on this myth cycle we share together.

Oh agreed.

This excellent video gives a wonderful insight into how the oral tradition of the Trojan War we have recorded in the Iliad is likely a snapshot of a point in time of a long and evolving oral storytelling tradition of the falls of a great city (which city varies depending on who is telling the story). It talks a lot about how these stories evolved over time, and were adapted to different audiences. For the Greeks, they wanted to hear about their mighty and warlike heroes triumphing over the Trojans. For the Hittites (who were in the same audience!), they wanted to hear about the tragic interpersonal stories of the last days of the Trojan elite. So we ended up with this beautiful balanced narrative.

On the intentional side of things, the video talks about a particular section of the Iliad in which Aphrodite tries to intervene, gets wounded, and is told 'not for you are these works of warfare...this shall be left for Athena and sudden Ares'. This being an adaptation Greeks made to the earlier Mesopotamian narrative upon which the Iliad is based in which Aphrodite's Mesopotamian equivalent (Inanna) was a martial god. It's a bit of a cheeky Greek in-joke of 'yeah well this is our version of the story and our war gods are Athena and Ares'.

26 minutes ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

The gods are the gods

I'd go further than that, though I acknowledge I might be a bit of a Gloranthan extremist.

The gods are what people have made them.

Whatever they were before is mostly lost to thousands of years of deliberate and accidental editing.

The idea being that God Time is edited each and every time a mortal enters it and re-enacts a myth, twisting it ever so slightly to conform to whatever narrative is expected by the mortal doing the re-enacting (and the gods with it). Do this enough times and what becomes the reality of God Time changes, even without all of the deliberate editing by people like the God-Learners and syncretisers like the Theyalans and Monrogh, or the rewriting of mythic narratives to fulfil mortal propaganda needs.

I think that gels pretty well with the evolutionary nature of oral storytelling.

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

let us crown him with horns! Let us commit the beautiful sin of giving him signs and signifiers

OK sassy

Where does Thed come from? Any effort to even ask that question is an effort to rehabilitate her story, what could go wrong there? She was somebody once. She made choices. 

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

1 hour ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Now that I love, mainly because it hints at the idea of an earlier animal-based mythic complex preserved by relict Hsunchen populations. I don't particularly like the idea that Orlanthi storm-barbarians have always been storm-barbarians from the day dot. I much prefer the more real-world idea of culture layered upon culture layered upon culture, obscuring the history of peoples.

[…]

I'd go further than that, though I acknowledge I might be a bit of a Gloranthan extremist.

The gods are what people have made them.

Whatever they were before is mostly lost to thousands of years of deliberate and accidental editing.

The idea being that God Time is edited each and every time a mortal enters it and re-enacts a myth, twisting it ever so slightly to conform to whatever narrative is expected by the mortal doing the re-enacting (and the gods with it). Do this enough times and what becomes the reality of God Time changes, even without all of the deliberate editing by people like the God-Learners and syncretisers like the Theyalans and Monrogh, or the rewriting of mythic narratives to fulfil mortal propaganda needs.

I think that gels pretty well with the evolutionary nature of oral storytelling.

An excellent post in total — thank you for the video link, particularly — but this is what sparked the most thought on this end.

There is an interesting tension in Gloranthan writing between the idea that it is a world that works as the world of our Bronze Age was believed to work, and the traces laid underneath that suggest otherwise. The tantalizing hints that the Great Darkness was actually a mythologized form of our own Year Without A Summer writ large; that Yelm himself is a composite figure made at the Sunstop in order to further Dara Happa’s imperial ambitions, later stitched into Theyalan mythology; that perhaps the Lightbringer’s Quest did not exist until Harmast laid out the way, quest by quest; that Orlanth himself is nothing more than the stories around Vingkot writ large enough to stretch across the sky, binding lesser gods and traditions to himself as plunder; that everything we have received about the Hero Wars is built upon centuries of mythic accretion, and that we can see that process in real time as the Red Goddess builds herself a pantheon.

But I cannot take the final step. I am in love with the numinous; I want to believe that if we try to treat the gods as nothing more than the echoes of human belief, that we shall discover to our dismay that the powers and principalities of the world are not so easily dismissed. It is a mistake to too easily humanize them, but perhaps it is also a mistake to think of them as nothing more than what we have made of them— at least, for as long as we are telling the story.

Setting aside, of course, that none of this is real, and that all are mired within māyā— gods, men, spirits, Broo and players alike. I think that the invocation of Hant, Heort and Hara is the best way to open a session of storytelling in this tradition, but we could just as easily use there was, there was not.

So, to return to the topic at hand, here we have Thed in all of her masks! Lift the first, and behind it is the question: what was her first myth, the reason that she is remembered by the Heortlings? Lift that, and behind it: is Thed simply a just-so story for the existence of the Broo, one that has had meaning attached to it by other storytellers, given awful life inside the Hero Plane by cultural inertia and expectation, or did the myths emerge from a real root of action? Lift another, and the question emerges: does a genealogical chart tell us anything about the gods outside of what it tells us about the beliefs of the genealogist?

And underneath that mask: what did Greg mean when he wrote about Thed, and what figures was he invoking? And underneath that mask: what do we mean when we talk about Thed in the stories that we are telling together, without him to advise us except through what he has left us, and what figures are we invoking?

And underneath that mask is watching a friend break down into tears over a professor’s off-color jokes about the Sabine women, unable to stop seeing herself among them. For my own part, at least.

(Perhaps I should resurrect the thread I made about Thed a few months back; it appears I still feel very strongly about her.)

15 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

OK sassy

Guilty as charged.

15 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Where does Thed come from? Any effort to even ask that question is an effort to rehabilitate her story, what could go wrong there? She was somebody once. She made choices. 

And again, guilty as charged.

[Malin]

One of the underlying themes of my main RQ campaign is who tells the stories and what they tell of the ones who tell them. Right now, it is very much concerned with Yelmalio and Sun County, as one of the players is digging deep into heresies and forgotten/suppressed knowledge. But once the campaign moves beyond that, I do feel more strongly than ever that I want to pull Thed into the mix. This thread has given me too many ideas, and we have already sniffed around the Greater Darkness with the White Bull Heroquest.

I do love the way that players can interact with Glorantha in a more tangible way, where there is no single Truth and every story has an origin. My players are already learning how to shape narratives with their choices around growing the White Bull cult, and I can't wait for the penny to drop when they realize that if they are doing this now, what happened back at Dawn with all the other stories they have learned as the Truth?

This forum is so good at giving me ideas, I really love seeing everybody's take on things.

[John Biles]

3 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

An excellent post in total — thank you for the video link, particularly — but this is what sparked the most thought on this end.

There is an interesting tension in Gloranthan writing between the idea that it is a world that works as the world of our Bronze Age was believed to work, and the traces laid underneath that suggest otherwise. The tantalizing hints that the Great Darkness was actually a mythologized form of our own Year Without A Summer writ large; that Yelm himself is a composite figure made at the Sunstop in order to further Dara Happa’s imperial ambitions, later stitched into Theyalan mythology; that perhaps the Lightbringer’s Quest did not exist until Harmast laid out the way, quest by quest; that Orlanth himself is nothing more than the stories around Vingkot writ large enough to stretch across the sky, binding lesser gods and traditions to himself as plunder; that everything we have received about the Hero Wars is built upon centuries of mythic accretion, and that we can see that process in real time as the Red Goddess builds herself a pantheon.

But I cannot take the final step. I am in love with the numinous; I want to believe that if we try to treat the gods as nothing more than the echoes of human belief, that we shall discover to our dismay that the powers and principalities of the world are not so easily dismissed. It is a mistake to too easily humanize them, but perhaps it is also a mistake to think of them as nothing more than what we have made of them— at least, for as long as we are telling the story.

 

The gods being real and the gods being shaped by human belief are not on the same axis.  They can be both. 

My own line of thought is that humanity didn't create the gods; they existed before Time, but without time, they couldn't be the kind of solid, locked down beings that time requires.  And they remain beings who are in a sense, living probabilities rather than living certainties and thus remain subject to change because of the reciprocal interaction between them and believers, whose beliefs lock them down by re-enacting specific versions of the myths in a given location.  Think of it as quantum metaphysics. 

But there are limits to what belief can do without pushing too far, as shown by the Godlearners.  Not every possibility is equally true and some are rare, high energy states and when the state crashes, that energy may well go into you.

One clan sees the Little Sun as Elmal.  Another sees it as Yelmalio, a third thinks they're brothers.  That's not too far.  But the one who says Yelmalio is a potato with delusions of grandeur and that Mostal is Uleria's husband is probably in trouble.

 

[Joerg]

13 hours ago, David Scott said:

My favourite Thed representation for dropping on the table during broo heroquest fights is:
 

Not only is it huge, but weird too... (from https://petersengames.com/the-gods-war/)

Except this is Ragnaglar. Thed is the female goat-legged goat-headed humanoid with the sliced-open womb:

 

[Darius West]

17 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

This, for example. Oh, it certainly has value as a story that is told about Thed, but it is one that tells us much more about the person who falls over himself to say that Thed deserved everything she got for being an evil scheming whore. To willingly trap yourself inside this story, just because once it was written down in a place that is lost to us now, is unworthy of us.

In what way is the world a better place because of the Unholy Trio?  Thed tried to use disguise and subterfuge to obtain sex from Orlanth, and that is sexual assault.  That is a sexual attack on Ernalda's main husband.  Not all of us buy into the illuminated nonsense that up is down, purple is orange, evil is good, and Thed is a victim.  You know a tree by its fruit, and there are exactly 2 broos who deserve to live, and I'm not entirely sure about 1 of them.