Where did Thed come from?

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

If that is not the case, I would be very interested in seeing this myth sourced.

I suppose that you are correct in sourcing the "Thed intends to assault Orlanth" myth, but unlike you I think that it fits well into the narrative space.

Both Ragnaglar and Thed are victims who then become villains. Maybe they were destined to be (or become, Godtime isn't exactly sequential) villains, maybe the lesson they took from Rashoran was that Existence needed Liberation, starting with their teacher.

There was a period (in the late Golden Age, after the dismembering of Umath) when Ragnaglar and Thed simply were the ancestors of non-chaotic goat-men, the broos, a hyper-fertile species little different from the minotaurs. (Personally I subscribe to the "broo ovipositor" theory, making all fertile broos female.) There is no indication of rape yet (not any more than for the unicorns, another such hyper-fertile species). Thed and Ragnaglar engage in extreme forms of intercourse, without suffering from the consequences.

As the Golden Age ends with the killing of the Emperor/Dismemberment of Yelm, whichever Golden Age magic repaired the consequences of hyper-fertile fertilization stopped being effective. Thed complains to Orlanth, demands compensation and justice. Compensation (to a degree) can be given by Orlanth, but not justice. But then, none was expected - it simply was an impossible demand to hurt Ernalda's pet hitman.

[scott-martin]

On 3/21/2024 at 2:48 PM, scott-martin said:

Saturday

As Mr Phipp notes, Drastic  doesn't have a lot of Thed content beyond a mechanical amendment that makes it easier for Spirits of Thed to take good people over and a belated credit to Sandy for the original COT version of the cult. But the idea sheds interesting light on aspects of Orlanth as lonely goatherd [sic] so I'd love to explore the details myself. 

Reverting to the COT chassis completely desexualizes her role, leaving an impression like the take on Kali that might show up in a matinee screening of Gunga Din. This is probably close to Sandy's original vision. We can ask him!

But by the time you get to the short GOG writeup in 1985 her role is already changing. Maybe there are two or more Theds knotted together here . . . if modern "Orlanth" is a consolidation of multiple regional precursors then why not her too? A Praxian Thed who interferes with local shamans but is worth an occasional bit of worship, a Heortling Thed, maybe some other entity venerated closer to ancient Tanisor. 

A couple of details drop out. The LOT catechism blames her initial wound and her grudge on Urox. I would not want to slander the Storm Bull in front of his fans but he is not the sort of figure that leads an error-free life . . . as the Ragnaglar entry says, "there are secrets of the Mad God which I will tell you when your soul is strong enough to face the terrible truth." 

I would not be surprised to discover that Urox and the other one were mutually exclusive figures in archaic theyalan religion: a community might know one or the other but never both at once. A little like how someone's dad and evil "stepdad" are rarely in the room at the same time. In the logic of parables, when the good father surfaces, it's because he's defeated the evil father. But when the bad dad rises, the effect is as though he's murdered the good one. All the children of Umath may be like that, wearing each other's clothes when their followers find real identities inconvenient. Greg definitely wrote about this kind of dad business.

I love the sunken Thedela hypothesis but the fact that the Heortlings remember the Trio setting up in the distant "north" leaves me open to the possibility that the first broos were Lokamayadon's people. But maybe brooism is an emergent property, the identity of the real "patient zero" is deliberately ambiguous. The important thing is that a broo or a broomother can erupt at any time. Keep your heart open and your hands steady.

[Ynneadwraith]

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Here is the myth from the Book of Heortling Mythology. I assume that Orlanth's Brother is Ragnaglar.

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Here is the description of Thed from the Book of Heortling Mythology.

Love that these two versions portray the same event from subtly different perspectives. So subtle that if you read them each with a week or two intervening you might not even notice it, but stick them together and it's clear. Textbook unreliable narrator.

I wonder what context each of those was written in. Who is it that was doing the telling in each situation?

More of this please.

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I don’t say that you are wrong, but why assume this? The wind lord teaches:

• 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

In that version — there are surely others — it seems that Thed turns to Chaos to get revenge after being wounded by Storm Bull. I am not especially arsed about that point of exegesis, but let’s bin all the “marry your rapist”, “willing submission to rape”, and similar crap (for which I am not blaming you, obviously). I won’t say that we are better than that, but can we not all at least pretend that we are?

Now this I am here for.

What if...Ragnaglar isn't guilty. Ragnaglar is the fall guy. A scapegoat. Thrown to the wolves in place of the real culprit, lawless Storm Bull. Convenient, considering he himself is already a traumatised outcast, and it would be easy to convince the rest of the Storm Tribe that he did it.

Would give another dimension to why Thed is all-caps PISSED OFF at Orlanth's 'justice', and willing to go scorched earth on the rest of creation. It would also give a new angle to why Storm Bull is so vehemently anti-chaos. Since the Greater Darkness it's been justified in the eyes of everyone else, but beneath it all is a kernel of rage covering self-loathing. No wonder Storm Bull is suicidal. Either that or he fought on til the bitter end because he knew that Thed was waiting for him afterwards...

I don't even particularly care if this version is true or not (whatever truth means in Glorantha). Just having all these different competing versions of the truth is enough. Mystery is good.

Edited March 23 by Ynneadwraith

[Malin]

And once again, this thread is why I love this forum. Stories are told, but how they are told and what they actually say, tell as much of the teller as the subject.

[Ali the Helering]

58 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Textbook unreliable narrator.

I completely disagree.  Both are myths, and therefore both are absolutely true and reliable!

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

Allow me to clarify my own position on what is and is not in BoDR: Chaos.

The last time that I heard the myth of Thed attempting to rape Orlanth, several months ago, I did what research I could to try to find its provenance. The end of the rabbit hole that I came to back then, somewhere in this forum, pointed towards BoDR as the source, and I had to content myself with that, seeing as that BoDR is effectively a dead link for me, inaccessible. I apologize for being indignant concerning that specifically, although my point as to the accessibility of the myth may yet still stand. We'll see.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Both Ragnaglar and Thed are victims who then become villains. Maybe they were destined to be (or become, Godtime isn't exactly sequential) villains, maybe the lesson they took from Rashoran was that Existence needed Liberation, starting with their teacher.

There was a period (in the late Golden Age, after the dismembering of Umath) when Ragnaglar and Thed simply were the ancestors of non-chaotic goat-men, the broos, a hyper-fertile species little different from the minotaurs. (Personally I subscribe to the "broo ovipositor" theory, making all fertile broos female.) There is no indication of rape yet (not any more than for the unicorns, another such hyper-fertile species). Thed and Ragnaglar engage in extreme forms of intercourse, without suffering from the consequences.

As the Golden Age ends with the killing of the Emperor/Dismemberment of Yelm, whichever Golden Age magic repaired the consequences of hyper-fertile fertilization stopped being effective. Thed complains to Orlanth, demands compensation and justice. Compensation (to a degree) can be given by Orlanth, but not justice. But then, none was expected - it simply was an impossible demand to hurt Ernalda's pet hitman.

When I say that this is characteristic of the way you talk about Glorantha, please understand it as a compliment. This attempt to map out a theory of the Broo is, by turns, methodical and cynical, and I mean that as a compliment as well. A grounded cause-and-effect rooted in a magical biology that cannot be sustained when the world changes, misunderstood by the Heortlings who only go so far back as the accusation in the throne room to understand why their world is haunted by ravenous monsters looking to preserve, through atavistic instinct, their almost-forgotten golden age.

36 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

But by the time you get to the short GOG writeup in 1985 her role is already changing. Maybe there are two or more Theds knotted together here . . . if modern "Orlanth" is a consolidation of multiple regional precursors then why not her too? A Praxian Thed who interferes with local shamans but is worth an occasional bit of worship, a Heortling Thed, maybe some other entity venerated closer to ancient Tanisor. 

A couple of details drop out. The LOT catechism blames her initial wound and her grudge on Urox. I would not want to slander the Storm Bull in front of his fans but he is not the sort of figure that leads an error-free life . . . as the Ragnaglar entry says, "there are secrets of the Mad God which I will tell you when your soul is strong enough to face the terrible truth." 

I would not be surprised to discover that Urox and the other one were mutually exclusive figures in archaic theyalan religion: a community might know one or the other but never both at once. A little like how someone's dad and evil "stepdad" are rarely in the room at the same time. In the logic of parables, when the good father surfaces, it's because he's defeated the evil father. But when the bad dad rises, the effect is as though he's murdered the good one. All the children of Umath may be like that, wearing each other's clothes when their followers find real identities inconvenient. Greg definitely wrote about this kind of dad business.

I love the sunken Thedela hypothesis but the fact that the Heortlings remember the Trio setting up in the distant "north" leaves me open to the possibility that the first broos were Lokamayadon's people. But maybe brooism is an emergent property, the identity of the real "patient zero" is deliberately ambiguous. The important thing is that a broo or a broomother can erupt at any time. Keep your heart open and your hands steady.

These are good thoughts, worth rumination. And I thank you for the compliment.

36 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

What if...Ragnaglar isn't guilty. Ragnaglar is the fall guy. A scapegoat. Thrown to the wolves in place of the real culprit, lawless Storm Bull. Convenient, considering he himself is already a traumatised outcast, and it would be easy to convince the rest of the Storm Tribe that he did it.

Would give another dimension to why Thed is all-caps PISSED OFF at Orlanth's 'justice', and willing to go scorched earth on the rest of creation. It would also give a new angle to why Storm Bull is so vehemently anti-chaos. Since the Greater Darkness it's been justified in the eyes of everyone else, but beneath it all is a kernel of rage covering self-loathing. No wonder Storm Bull is suicidal. Either that or he fought on til the bitter end because he knew that Thed was waiting for him afterwards...

I don't even particularly care if this version is true or not (whatever truth means in Glorantha). Just having all these different competing versions of the truth is enough. Mystery is good.

This I can see as a very controversial play performed in Boldhome after the Storm Bull cult has been all but exterminated in Sartar. Is it a resurfacing truth long suppressed by Uroxian orthodoxy and the threat of retaliation? Or is it an attempt to convince the rebellious Sartarites that the Storm Bullies were, in fact, worshiping a liar and a brute, and therefore should not be inconveniently mourned? So too, it leaves the motives of the Unholy Trio ambiguous, perfect for post-performance discussion. Are there circumstances in which the invocation of Chaos might morally be justified, o Heortlings? And if you will cry over Ragnaglar, who you have so often hated and spat upon, who else might you be willing to reconsider? They say the Seven Mothers' is open all night long, if you want to continue the conversation...

[John Biles]

Someone has to have theorized Nyzsalor used Thed's aid to cause the Curse of Kin as Thed's revenge on Kygor Litor.

And connected, that his previous incarnation as Rashoran was infected with Chaos when the people who opened the way to Chaos murdered him, thus producing Gbaji.

(Perhaps his ritual murder was part of opening the way to Chaos - Illuminating a patch of the world so it no longer resisted Chaos.)

 

[mfbrandi]

22 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

What if...Ragnaglar isn't guilty. Ragnaglar is the fall guy. A scapegoat. Thrown to the wolves in place of the real culprit

Or — see @scott-martin’s comments — maybe Urox is Mr. Hyde to Ragnaglar’s Dr. Jekyll. How innocent did Doctor J ever seem to you?

Or they are all just aspects of Storm — one entity who must carry all cans — fingers on the same glove. “That was me in a bad mood. Practically another person. So you cannot blame me — I am all smiles, today!”