How was born Gonn Orta's baby ?

[Zit]

Or more generally, how were born the big giants babies who travelled Zola Fel ? If Gonn Orta is the father of the last babiy, who was the mother ?

[Joerg]

The birth would have been in the way of the bearers of the Man Rune, so possibly from an egg, possibly from a womb.

The mother: possibly an Elder Giantess, possibly the Broad Earth (onthe Other Side), with the father carrying the baby back into the mundane world.

We know some of the peaks in the eastern Rockwood by name, but far from all.

[Kloster]

Parthenogenesis, maybe.

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

so possibly from an egg … We know some of the peaks in the eastern Rockwood by name

Born from an egg on a mountain top? You are just trying to get those Ohrwürmer wriggling.

[Jens]

I always thought the beings on the Cradle weren't giant babies, but giant baby fetuses. They pass through the Zola Fel birth canal before being born through Magasta's Pool.

Edited May 31 by Jens

[Harry the Dirty Dog]

4 hours ago, Jens said:

I always thought the beings on the Cradle weren't giant babies, but giant baby fetuses. They pass through the Zola Fell birth canal before being born through Magasta's Pool.

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing.
I remember Greg writing somewhere that the Zola Fel is the birth canal.  

I'm hazier on this, but I thought the Earth was the mother in some way.  I don't think there was an actual female Giant.  Happy to stand corrected on this, though

[jajagappa]

44 minutes ago, Harry the Dirty Dog said:

but I thought the Earth was the mother in some way.  I don't think there was an actual female Giant.

What is a mountain but an Earth giantess?? And there are plenty in the Rockwoods near and around Gonn Orta.

In the scenario, it is a giant-sized baby girl so I don't think premature sounds correct even if the Zola Fel is effectively a "birth canal" to carry her into Hell where she can growup.

[Jens]

2 hours ago, Harry the Dirty Dog said:

I remember Greg writing somewhere that the Zola Fel is the birth canal.  

Here’s what Greg had to say-

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/greg-sez/why-do-the-giants-use-the-river-of-cradles/

Edited May 31 by Jens

[Erol of Backford]

From what Mr. Rowe wrote in the digest, a long time ago, it looked like there was a giant stairwell that the dragon destroyed, which was used long before the river of cradles and boat house was established.

Though the idea of the river being the birth canal sounds good it doesn’t fit with earlier postings unless the items that Mr. Rowe wrote were not accepted at the time?

I posted some questions under Sunbelt ruins…

One thing I don’t get is the dragons cursed the Giants, and somehow the gold wheel dancers were needed to complete a giant baby spiritually after the curse, and since the gold wheeled dancers became inanimate, no more giant babies could be completed?

[soltakss]

On 5/30/2024 at 5:36 PM, Zit said:

Or more generally, how were born the big giants babies who travelled Zola Fel ?

When a mummy giant and a daddy giant love each other ...

For me, giants are big humanoids so they reproduce in the same way that other humanoids do.

 

[Zit]

On 6/1/2024 at 8:14 PM, soltakss said:

For me, giants are big humanoids so they reproduce in the same way that other humanoids do

So in this case who and where is Mrs. Orta ? Or may be the gestation is so long for giants that by the time the baby was born, she had turned into a mountain ?

[Erol of Backford]

Mr. Rowe:

https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/HenkDaily/v941110p1

When Talallia arrived at the wall of giants he sat in council with the
greatest of the giants and explained his emptiness. Hatada, the wisest
of the Giants realized the truth, for his wife had just given birth.
He knew that Talallia held part of the soul of his newborn son. After
the council ended Talallia agreed to travel with the baby to the
underworld to attempt to raise it properly. While the Giants trained
Talallia in their ways, our people constructed for them a great
magical craft.

Talallia was a Sun Wheel Dancer, held part of Hatada's baby's soul and "the greatest of the giants" for me would have to have included Gonn Orta. 

[RicKaySi]

On 6/2/2024 at 10:41 PM, Zit said:

Or may be the gestation is so long for giants that by the time the baby was born, she had turned into a mountain ?

Elder Giants have been alternately referred to as being cursed to become stone or having voluntarily becoming stone (sometimes so they can trap something underneath them, like dragons and chaotic dogs). It is ambiguous if they are still alive or not. I think Gonn Orta himself went looking for the answer to "are they still alive" and it might be why he smashed dwarfen mines built into mountains and freed the Jolanti (giant stone-men). Maybe he found a living giant inside a mountain or found the "living" soul of a giant-mountain. There's a lot of references to these kinds of giants existing as both bodies and souls, maybe they only need a soul to make a baby out of Earth?

On 6/4/2024 at 4:09 AM, Erol of Backford said:

When Talallia arrived at the wall of giants he sat in council with the
greatest of the giants and explained his emptiness. Hatada, the wisest
of the Giants realized the truth, for his wife had just given birth.
He knew that Talallia held part of the soul of his newborn son.

Amazing source! Pinchining, the protector of the Cradle that evaded Lunar capture, may have been a Sun Wheel Dancer too (or maybe is Talallia?). I can't find the source but I think Pinchining came into being, and so exists to help the Giant Baby get to the creche in Hell safely, because Blorn the Statue Uurgh the Ugly (thank you @metcalph) worshipped a pile of Wheels (the gold coins). There is an indirect reference to this in the Cradle scenario: 

"If asked what Pinchining is, Garrath will confess ignorance. “I am told it is a creature from ages gone past; his kind are no more. It came to life in the underworld because an ignorant creature worshipped what everyone thought was dead. When reborn, Pinchining brought its worshiper on its ancient pathways and went to the land of giants. Once there the giants could fashion another child and send it downriver. Such a wonder may never happen again.”

Edited June 8 by RicKaySi

[metcalph]

24 minutes ago, RicKaySi said:

Pinchining, the protector of the Cradle that evaded Lunar capture, may have been a Sun Wheel Dancer too (or maybe is Talallia?). I can't find the source but I think Pinchining came into being, and so exists to help the Giant Baby get to the creche in Hell safely, because Blorn the Statue worshipped a pile of Wheels (the gold coins). There is an indirect reference to this in the Cradle scenario: 

Uurgh the Ugly.  

Quote

Tagging along was Apattar, Orlanth Rune Priest, Madlan, Umath Rune Priest,
Urgrurl, Daka Pal Rune Lord, Genevieve Le Clerecq, Orlanth Adventurous Rune
Priestess, and Ururg, who worshipped his gold coins, and had an IQ of 5, 1 less than
his horse.  Stafford House Campaign p38

One other thing of note was the
time when Ururg prayed as usual to his gold, rolled a 01, and was answered by a
vision by the Wheel of Wheels, Five golden leaves appeared among his hoard (he
carries 7000 wheels with him). Ibid p39

 

[Zit]

9 hours ago, RicKaySi said:

Once there the giants could fashion another child and send it downriver.

Could this mean that giants need Sun Wheel Dancers to "fashion" babies ? Or that giants makes babies only if they find a SWD to acompany it ?

[Erol of Backford]

2 hours ago, Zit said:

Could this mean that giants need Sun Wheel Dancers to "fashion" babies ?

From that old post it made it seem that the SWD was part of the baby giant's soul but I like your idea better that the giants wish the baby protected and tutored as the giant's stairs to the underworld was destroyed by the dragons... YGWV.

So you just need to get the PC's to find the other existing inanimate SWD and then go to the underworld and roll a 01. Unite the spirit of the SWD with its body. (but this belongs in another thread...)

[RicKaySi]

12 hours ago, Zit said:

Could this mean that giants need Sun Wheel Dancers to "fashion" babies ?

9 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

the giants wish the baby protected and tutored as the giant's stairs to the underworld was destroyed by the dragons

If you decide to run with this idea I read about a real world equivalent that could provide inspiration. The Kanda Empat in Balinese Hinduism (and possibly other Balinese/South East Asian traditions) are four guardian spirits that share the womb with a child before its born and are transferred to the family temple after it's born. They are represented physically by the four substances that accompany births: ari-ari (the placenta), yeh nyom (amniotic fluid), rah (blood) and banah (venix caseosa). These physical parts must be disposed of in a ritual that protects them from exploitation or theft by leyak (witches), but once they are transfigured into spirits they will protect their human sibling - even helping them should they become a leyak and prey on the birth-spirits of others.

As this thread pointed out the giants have a broken cycle of birth (the smashed stairwell, the incomplete "rash" giants, the Dragon's curse) and they may not have physical ways of giving birth at all (which leads us back to the issue of who the mother of the giant baby is). Whatever workaround they've found may need them to substitute the physical-turned-spirit siblings with the Sun Wheel Dancers. The SWDs act as guardians superficially similar to the Kanda Empat. They accompany the baby at all stages of the pre-birth:

• during "conception" they can protect the giant babies travelling the birth canal of Zola Fel, the River of Cradles,
• in "gestation" they provide education in the corner of Hell,
• finally, they accompany the "birth" that has the baby ascending to the world above as a complete Elder Giant.

Of course this flips the birth canal analogy, Gonn Orta's seed is travelling upstream into the womb of Hell but downstream in the mundane world. But if Hell is where the baby gestates and matures then maybe the "mother" in this story is actually Hell itself.

It is worth looking at the solar connections of the SWDs. They mirror the myths of Yelm/Ra, descending into the underworld to gain strength and be (re)born. They may even have been made by the giants to mimic/draw on this dying-and-rising power (giants seem adept at giving life to the unliving, like the giant chess pieces that protect the bowels of the Cradle). 

[jajagappa]

15 hours ago, Zit said:

Could this mean that giants need Sun Wheel Dancers to "fashion" babies ? Or that giants makes babies only if they find a SWD to acompany it ?

There was an implication that Pinchining (a Gold Wheel Dancer) was needed to help the giant baby reach the Underworld. 

12 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

From that old post it made it seem that the SWD was part of the baby giant's soul

I don't believe that the post you referenced had any canonical association, and nothing in the Cradle scenario supported that.

That the Gold Wheel Dancer was needed, yes. Pinchining certainly activated the magic of the Cradle, and the Cradle was a learning tool for the giant baby. Perhaps better to consider the GWD as a teacher or mentor through that early stage of life.

[Erol of Backford]

8 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I don't believe that the post you referenced had any canonical association, and nothing in the Cradle scenario supported that.

I agree and didn't feel so, the SWD would be more like a giant's nanny of sorts. Protect and guide them, take them to swim practice and the doctor's appointment while Orta thinks.

Where was the Giant's Stairwell? (Why did the giants and dragons fight?)