What's the Story of Elmal in Dragon Pass

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

The shrine to Hyalor, which most af the actual Sun Dome temples do not seem to have, is a likely candidate.

Yes, that was my thought, and a significant shrine in the temple to Kuschile.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

If only Argrath changed his mind from wiping out the Telmori, and wiped out the Elmali instead.  Then I'd never have to read page upon page of pointless speculation about Elmal any more. 

It would make me a huge fan of Argrath.

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

If only Argrath changed his mind from wiping out the Telmori, and wiped out the Elmali instead

"Violence against Solars is always an option."  "There is always another w--"  "Not so much."

[ViktorD100]

3 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

If only Argrath changed his mind from wiping out the Telmori, and wiped out the Elmali instead.  Then I'd never have to read page upon page of pointless speculation about Elmal any more. 

It would make me a huge fan of Argrath.

You take that back! Elmal heretics forever! Praise the Loyal Sun that guards Orlanthstead!

[Alex]

26 minutes ago, ViktorD100 said:

You take that back! Elmal heretics forever! Praise the Loyal Sun that guards Orlanthstead!

OK, we're reasonable.  Kill all the Solars except for the Elmali!  (Them we just rough up quite a lot.)

[Darius West]

There is a lot to cover on the issue of Elmal.

The first thing is the whole "Masks of Yelmalio" problem.  Yelmalio has a lot of names, not just Elmal.  There's Antirius, Khim, Balazar, Tharkantus, Khelmal, Lightfore etc.  This is due to the nature of the fact that if there IS NO central deity to the cult, and Monrogh was wrong.  They are part of a Solar regiment with a lineage traceable Before Time, or are heroes within Time who are part of that regiment's survival and ongoing legacy.

That is why you can have Yelmalio hero quests where he steals fire secrets from Elmal.  They are in fact similar but separate deities, not the same deity.

Furthermore, there are actually quite separate roles being portrayed for this allegedly uniform deity, for example, the phalangite, the peltast/skirmisher, the horse archer, and the bird rider (avialtry instead of cavalry).  They "Yelmalio" followed by the Ostrich Riders is not the same as Tharkantus "Yelmalio", as worshipped by the hoplites of Mo Baustra.

Actually following the Monrogh "party line" that Elmal is just Yelmalio is a crime against the lore and MGF imo.  We are enriched by details like the "Many faces of Yelmalio", not impoverished by it.

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

Furthermore, there are actually quite separate roles being portrayed for this allegedly uniform deity, for example, the phalangite, the peltast/skirmisher, the horse archer, and the bird rider (avialtry instead of cavalry). The “Yelmalio” followed by the Ostrich Riders is not the same as Tharkantus “Yelmalio”, as worshipped by the hoplites of Mo Baustra. [Emphasis mine]

On the question of how many little suns there are I am easy. Have as many or as few as you like. I have no dog in that fight.

But are you saying that if we have two groups of people — the As and the Bs — with different lifestyles, skills, and magics, and different stories about their respective gods, that the god of the As != the god of the Bs? Must we say that? Do we want to say that? And if the Cs tell both sets of stories (A + B) about what they claim is one god, what then? Perhaps I misunderstand you, anyway.

We don’t say that the various sects of Christian all worship different gods. We don’t say that the Jews, Muslims, and Christians worship different gods. But there is a fair range of opinion between them as to what their god is like, no?

Spoiler

😉

• We can dump on the God Learners that the idea that divine identities are to be determined empirically, by experiment.
• Maybe we can foist on Monrogh the notion that divine identities can be revealed via religious experience (visions, mouldy bread, and all that).
• The third idea would be what, we do a survey — “which of the following roles does your god play?” — and allocate a god to each unique set of answers? If someone is re-surveyed and answers differently, we allocate them a new god?

😉

[Techpriest]

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

There is a lot to cover on the issue of Elmal.

The first thing is the whole "Masks of Yelmalio" problem.  Yelmalio has a lot of names, not just Elmal.  There's Antirius, Khim, Balazar, Tharkantus, Khelmal, Lightfore etc.  This is due to the nature of the fact that if there IS NO central deity to the cult, and Monrogh was wrong.  They are part of a Solar regiment with a lineage traceable Before Time, or are heroes within Time who are part of that regiment's survival and ongoing legacy.

That is why you can have Yelmalio hero quests where he steals fire secrets from Elmal.  They are in fact similar but separate deities, not the same deity.

Furthermore, there are actually quite separate roles being portrayed for this allegedly uniform deity, for example, the phalangite, the peltast/skirmisher, the horse archer, and the bird rider (avialtry instead of cavalry).  They "Yelmalio" followed by the Ostrich Riders is not the same as Tharkantus "Yelmalio", as worshipped by the hoplites of Mo Baustra.

Actually following the Monrogh "party line" that Elmal is just Yelmalio is a crime against the lore and MGF imo.  We are enriched by details like the "Many faces of Yelmalio", not impoverished by it.

You're getting caught up in the 'The Cult is the God' idea and fallacy here. Consider this. Orlanth has two cults. Orlanth is worshiped as the great Storm God who brings wrath to his enemies and is the hero of stories and legends who strikes down his foes with lightning and gathers many weapons in his travels. That's Orlanth Adventurous. Plenty of cultures have this cult. This cult concretely gives magic we can see, and his followers value martial ability and the sword, and it is a warrior's cult. There is also the Orlanth that is the god of rains and thunder, the Stormbringer, the one who nurtures the crops and the earth, blesses harvests and the great bounty of the earth, loves the Earth Goddesses deeply and is master of the winds. That's Orlanth Thunderous. His cult values oration, dance, singing, and is not what most would consider a warrior cult. But both cults are worshiping the same god.

What your logic here is says that Orlanth is not one deity, because we know that one of these cults is often found in places the other isn't. There is no one Orlanth, but a bunch of smaller Orlanths who are related deities but not the same.

This is not the case. This has been stated plenty of times by Jeff in the well. Cults change over time. They might have been worshiped as not the same, had different names sometimes, different cults and traditions, sometimes considered by outsiders to be different deities even, or reject the other cult. They still worship the same god.

This also gets into the thorny issue of 'Sub Cults'. Once you get enough worshipers in distinct enough locations, you get different names, traditions, cult rituals, prayers, magic, etc. etc. These are subcults. All cults start as these cults, then absorb other aspects and associated worship. For game purposes, and categorization, we get a 'main' cult, and sub cults for most dieties, but Orlanth's cult is more thematic in universe as an example of what I'm saying. Adventurous is a Subcult. Thunderous is a subcult. Rex is a subcult. These are all Orlanth cults, but not one of them is the Orlanth cult. Ask a Pentan, he'll say his version (Adventurous) is the main one who brings destruction and change and that guy praying for rain for his crops is a weirdo subversion of the West Wind King. Ask an Esrolian and they'll say 'Oh that's Ernalda's favorite boytoy' and wonder why there's some weird variation who don't do rain dances. 

But, as the God Learners and the cultists themselves discovered, they both walk the same path. 

Elmal and Yelmalio, Antirius and Kargzant, Khelmal and whatever his name is in Teshnos which I forget, all of them are the same god, viewed from different perspectives and needs, who had different interactions with that god in the God Time. Elmal and Yelmalio are broadly similar, but Elmal gets associated with the Sun more as he's a friendly Sky God you can worship without worshipping Yelm who's not the friendly one to Orlanth. Yelmalio is closer to Yelm, firmly his son and the protector of the people, a guardian god who looks over farmers and helps them fight off raiders and trolls. Antirius is the sponsor of the Emperor of Dara Happa, the one who gave the entire empire its laws and structure, and defended it from outsiders. Kargzant taught the horse riding people secrets of Yelm and how to survive in a hostile world, and rallied the forces of the Sky against their enemies. All these cults worship a deity that protected humans in the darkness, fought many foes, wasn't always victorious but never died for good despite losing some of their magic and power. There is a firm through line from cult to cult, aspects mirrored between one another. 

It's the same god. They might not all share the same rune spells or associations, but neither do Orlanth's cults. They might argue, they might deny this, but they're all worshiping the same divine figure, that Lesser Sun after Yelm died that kept the world alive. 

Edited November 21 by Techpriest

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Techpriest said:

You're getting caught up in the 'The Cult is the God' idea and fallacy here. Consider this. Orlanth has two cults. Orlanth is worshiped as the great Storm God who brings wrath to his enemies and is the hero of stories and legends who strikes down his foes with lightning and gathers many weapons in his travels. That's Orlanth Adventurous. Plenty of cultures have this cult. This cult concretely gives magic we can see, and his followers value martial ability and the sword, and it is a warrior's cult. There is also the Orlanth that is the god of rains and thunder, the Stormbringer, the one who nurtures the crops and the earth, blesses harvests and the great bounty of the earth, loves the Earth Goddesses deeply and is master of the winds. That's Orlanth Thunderous. His cult values oration, dance, singing, and is not what most would consider a warrior cult. But both cults are worshiping the same god.

What your logic here is says that Orlanth is not one deity, because we know that one of these cults is often found in places the other isn't. There is no one Orlanth, but a bunch of smaller Orlanths who are related deities but not the same.

Both cults worship an entity with the same name, just with two different titles attached, and share the same mythological context, where stories are of Orlanth and not his epithets. That's not all that similar to the situation we're talking about with these assorted deities, where they have distinct mythological contexts and names, and two of them are even mythological enemies of each other.

You're begging the question, to be frank: you're taking the conclusion and using it to argue the premise. That's fine, since this is a casual conversation, but it's not particularly persuasive.

[Alex]

22 minutes ago, Techpriest said:

It's the same god.

"But how many gods are there really, O sagacious saddhu?"

I think it's pretty clear from Greg's work that he didn't think there was always a cut-and-dried answer to such questions.  Albeit he was even more adamant against any suggestion it was some sort of postmodernist nothing-is-real solopsistic dealio.  But he had and now Jeff et al also have a RPG to punt, and that needs pragmatic takes.  How do my initiation, RPP, worship skill rolls, etc work.  Tastes are inevitably going to vary on which of those is the more fundamental and work in either direction as they prefer.

[Techpriest]

19 minutes ago, Eff said:

Both cults worship an entity with the same name, just with two different titles attached, and share the same mythological context, where stories are of Orlanth and not his epithets. That's not all that similar to the situation we're talking about with these assorted deities, where they have distinct mythological contexts and names, and two of them are even mythological enemies of each other.

You're begging the question, to be frank: you're taking the conclusion and using it to argue the premise. That's fine, since this is a casual conversation, but it's not particularly persuasive.

Are they mythological enemies, or are their cults enemies due to history? The Cold Sun was worshiped one way by the people of Dara Happa. He's worshiped another way by the people who would become the Pentans. The future Pentans were able to use their horse magic and connection to Yu-Kargzant (Yelm) through the teachings of Kargzant to take the cities of Dara Happa over in the Grey Age, returning to where they'd first come from. Through Antirius, the Dara Happans were able to finally reach Yelm (Yu-Kargzant) themselves and rebel properly.

They both took the same path to Yelm, through Kargzant/Antirius. 

Kargzant is Antirius is Elmal is Yelmalio. They all share a mythological context, they all share aspects, they all have different stories from different people across Genertela because that's how they experienced him. The Heortlings experienced him as a protector and a friend of Orlanth, the Sairdites as a guardian protector, the Elves as the last light who fought against the darkness and Chaos alongside the High King Elf, the Pentans as the one who guided them to where they came first from and taught them and protected them, the Dara Happans as an emperor who protected them and taught them how to live. That's all common experiences. The details of the stories of the cults, how they view this god and interact with him are different. But they're the same deity - otherwise, how was Montrogh able to walk the path as an Elmali that the Yelmalio follower did, or the Antirius follower? If they're different, then they're so close that the difference doesn't matter.

It's the same with Orlanth. How a member of the Adventurous subcult interacts with Orlanth is different from that of Thunderous subcult members. Over time, the two cults have come together to give a more balanced understanding of Orlanth in central Genertela. Meanwhile, the cults of the Cold Sun has always been more scattered and less common - he's not a major god. It's scattered over a wide area of Genertela with geographic barriers, distance, and very different cultures following him. He's only the primary god of one of them. The rest? He's associated with other figures in other ways. 

 

[Eff]

15 minutes ago, Techpriest said:

Are they mythological enemies, or are their cults enemies due to history? The Cold Sun was worshiped one way by the people of Dara Happa. He's worshiped another way by the people who would become the Pentans. The future Pentans were able to use their horse magic and connection to Yu-Kargzant (Yelm) through the teachings of Kargzant to take the cities of Dara Happa over in the Grey Age, returning to where they'd first come from. Through Antirius, the Dara Happans were able to finally reach Yelm (Yu-Kargzant) themselves and rebel properly.

They're mythological enemies because there are mythological stories that position them as enemies. Now we could assume that those myths are, specifically and unusually for Glorantha, totally false on that account, but there's no particular reason to, outside of simply asserting that they're the same god and offering some ponderous rhetorical gamesmanship to gussy that up. 

Indeed, if we accept the reasoning that people in the time when the gods were walking the earth still had to "reach them", we erode any kind of distinction between godtime and normal time, because instead of Antirius ever having been hanging out wearing flip-flops, board shorts, and a floral shirt, right next to the Footstool of Yelm, he was always like he is in regular time, an ephemeral presence perpetually distant from mortal people. 

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Techpriest said:

If they're different, then they're so close that the difference doesn't matter.

So, much as with the 'canonically distinct' Dendera/Ernalda sitch.

[mfbrandi]

This is so on the nose it borders on genius:

2 hours ago, Techpriest said:

There is also the Orlanth that is the god of rains and thunder, the Stormbringer

… in a Mike Moorcock meets Paul Schrader kinda way. Orlanth thinks he is a paladin, but really he is soul-drinking, taxi-driving, gun-toting Chaos sword–god.° I love it!

• Someday, a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

The Big O is Travis Bickle°°, John Hinckley Jr., and the end of the world. Why did we never see it before? 😉

 

———————————————
° Or — judging by my lame copywriting skills — a fizzy drink.

°° Does this mean we can reframe Dendara–Ernalda as Cybill Shepherd–Jodie Foster?

[Techpriest]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

They're mythological enemies because there are mythological stories that position them as enemies. Now we could assume that those myths are, specifically and unusually for Glorantha, totally false on that account, but there's no particular reason to, outside of simply asserting that they're the same god and offering some ponderous rhetorical gamesmanship to gussy that up. 

Indeed, if we accept the reasoning that people in the time when the gods were walking the earth still had to "reach them", we erode any kind of distinction between godtime and normal time, because instead of Antirius ever having been hanging out wearing flip-flops, board shorts, and a floral shirt, right next to the Footstool of Yelm, he was always like he is in regular time, an ephemeral presence perpetually distant from mortal people. 

The mythological stories that pit them as enemies happen to occur in time. Let's get the timeline out. I'm using the Guide and the Glorious Re-Ascent of Yelm. 

>Antirius makes Emperors of Dara Happa
>Antirius 'dies'
>Shargash takes over, end of emperors of Dara Happa
>Kargzant fights Shargash
>Kargzant 'dies(?)' as does Shargash
>Yelm comes back  to life (Time Starts, Grey Age before the Dawn), Shargash and Kargzant return
>Kargzant takes the people of Jenarong descended from the Starlight People and leads them back to Dara Happa
>Kargzant's champion, Jenarong becomes is able to become the Emperor using the same Ten Tests of Antirius, takes over Dara Happa.
>The Dawn
>'The Bridling', which reads more like a failed hero quest than anything else
>Antirius returns and replaces Kargzant, roughly 100 years after the dawn(*). This is the FIRST TIME Antirius is mentioned as hostile to Kargzant or replacing him, the first time he's active after the dawn
>Another hundred years of anarchy finally culminating in the rise of Khordavu as he overthrows the Horse Lords after the battle of Argentium Thri'ile

Kargzant never appears mentioned as a mythical enemy of Antirius during the God Time. He's called a rebel god exactly once, yes, but keep all this in mind: The Glorious Re-Ascent is also as much a political account as it is a historical and mythical one. It's a justification of the right of Emperor Khordavu to rule over Dara Happa, portraying him as the True Heir of Yelm through the actions of Antirius and of Yelm, calling the Horse Lords illegitimate (despite following the same path to Emperorship) and declaring them awful evil people, and so on. There's plenty of reasons for them to go and say "No, we're totally not following the same god, our god is better and took over their gods place!" 

*I want to note the Guide and the Glorious Re-Ascent differ in the dates by about 9 years or so for certain events, could be because Greg hadn't hammered down completely the timeline yet/editing.

Edited November 21 by Techpriest

[Eff]

33 minutes ago, Techpriest said:

The mythological stories that pit them as enemies happen to occur in time. Let's get the timeline out. I'm using the Guide and the Glorious Re-Ascent of Yelm. 

>Antirius makes Emperors of Dara Happa
>Antirius 'dies'
>Shargash takes over, end of emperors of Dara Happa
>Kargzant fights Shargash
>Kargzant 'dies(?)' as does Shargash
>Yelm comes back  to life (Time Starts, Grey Age before the Dawn), Shargash and Kargzant return
>Kargzant takes the people of Jenarong descended from the Starlight People and leads them back to Dara Happa
>Kargzant's champion, Jenarong becomes is able to become the Emperor using the same Ten Tests of Antirius, takes over Dara Happa.
>The Dawn
>'The Bridling', which reads more like a failed hero quest than anything else
>Antirius returns and replaces Kargzant, roughly 100 years after the dawn(*). This is the FIRST TIME Antirius is mentioned as hostile to Kargzant or replacing him, the first time he's active after the dawn
>Another hundred years of anarchy finally culminating in the rise of Khordavu as he overthrows the Horse Lords after the battle of Argentium Thri'ile

Kargzant never appears mentioned as a mythical enemy of Antirius during the God Time. He's called a rebel god exactly once, yes, but keep all this in mind: The Glorious Re-Ascent is also as much a political account as it is a historical and mythical one. It's a justification of the right of Emperor Khordavu to rule over Dara Happa, portraying him as the True Heir of Yelm through the actions of Antirius and of Yelm, calling the Horse Lords illegitimate (despite following the same path to Emperorship) and declaring them awful evil people, and so on. There's plenty of reasons for them to go and say "No, we're totally not following the same god, our god is better and took over their gods place!" 

*I want to note the Guide and the Glorious Re-Ascent differ in the dates by about 9 years or so for certain events, could be because Greg hadn't hammered down completely the timeline yet/editing.

I think it is extremely foolish to read the text as implying that Kargzant just fell into a void between the death of Murharzarm and the destruction of the world. We can look at the Glorious Reascent's text, see the way in which Kargzant is positioned as both a rebel and as an alternate sun, see the way in which Antirius is positioned as both the upholder of order and as the proper sun, and conclude that in the mythology of Dara Happa as presented to us, the two are just as much enemies as we can assume any random member of the Aesir and any random Jotun to be. 

And we can look at Kargzant being a wandering sun, as opposed to Antirius being stable in the middle, and see another clear contrast and opposition between them. All this without digging into the Entekosiad Kargzant material.

[radmonger]

18 minutes ago, Eff said:

And we can look at Kargzant being a wandering sun, as opposed to Antirius being stable in the middle, and see another clear contrast and opposition between them. All this without digging into the Entekosiad Kargzant material.

I suspect the Solar Book will actually agree with this position.

 

Edited November 21 by radmonger

[Techpriest]

15 minutes ago, Eff said:

I think it is extremely foolish to read the text as implying that Kargzant just fell into a void between the death of Murharzarm and the destruction of the world. We can look at the Glorious Reascent's text, see the way in which Kargzant is positioned as both a rebel and as an alternate sun, see the way in which Antirius is positioned as both the upholder of order and as the proper sun, and conclude that in the mythology of Dara Happa as presented to us, the two are just as much enemies as we can assume any random member of the Aesir and any random Jotun to be. 

And we can look at Kargzant being a wandering sun, as opposed to Antirius being stable in the middle, and see another clear contrast and opposition between them. All this without digging into the Entekosiad Kargzant material.

You're missing the point I'm making, which is that a) The Glorious Re-Ascent is the perspective of Dara Happa, and written soon after the ascent of Khordavu. This whole text is written from the Dara Happan perspective. b) These differences of perspective create different cults and cultic interpretations

As for the Entekosiad, it is the Carmanian tradition. The Story of Lendarsh is, and I quote: 

Quote

"The story of Lendarsh is as much a legal document as it is a legend. I have heard part of this tale cited, in more detail, in the courts of Carmania, followed by precise details of the person's legal claim."

This is the Carmanian claim on their lands and on their place in the world. It must be viewed as such, just like the GLorious Re-Ascent must be viewed as the Foundation of Dara Happa, not the absolute truth of everything. For further examples here right out of Jeff's mouth... here, here, and here. 

 

4 minutes ago, radmonger said:

It suspect the Solar Book will actually agree with this position:

 

 

I suspect it won't

 

[Eff]

7 minutes ago, Techpriest said:

You're missing the point I'm making, which is that a) The Glorious Re-Ascent is the perspective of Dara Happa, and written soon after the ascent of Khordavu. This whole text is written from the Dara Happan perspective. b) These differences of perspective create different cults and cultic interpretations

As for the Entekosiad, it is the Carmanian tradition. The Story of Lendarsh is, and I quote: 

This is the Carmanian claim on their lands and on their place in the world. It must be viewed as such, just like the GLorious Re-Ascent must be viewed as the Foundation of Dara Happa, not the absolute truth of everything. For further examples here right out of Jeff's mouth... here, here, and here. 

I mean, if we declare that the sources don't mean anything and convey no information, we certainly can.

[metcalph]

Many years ago I tried to align the various solar gods (Kargzant, Lokarnos etc) with the Ten Planets and track them over time and myth.  Apart from a few obvious ones (Shargash, Blue Moon), the rest are quite murky.  This thread makes me understand where I think I might have gone wrong.

Take, for example, Kargzant.  Widely described as a wandering sun in the old days, he is now associated with Lightfore of the regular movements.  But what if Kargzant was originally associated with another planet (like say Wagon).  Due to the horrors of the Gods War, he fell to earth. lost his special fire powers and ended up as the Last Light, the Cold Sun etc.  When Lightfore (ie not Wagon) returned to the Sky, Kargzant's worshippers took that as a sign of their god returning to strength and worshipped the planet as Kargzant.  And it worked.

Now for the big twist: who's to say Antirius wasn't in the same position - that is, originally the God of another planet but is now the God of the planet Lightfore.  There's an additional wrinkle in that the cult of Antirius was worked over by city-dwelling illuminates and philosophers to be bigger and better than the cult of Kargzant and the nomads didn't like that.

 

[Techpriest]

1 minute ago, Eff said:

I mean, if we declare that the sources don't mean anything and convey no information, we certainly can.

No, you’re still not getting it. The source is great, it’s full of tons of information, but taking it at face value is entirely the wrong way to look at it. You need to look at the context. This isn’t an authoritative outside voice talking here, this is an in universe, in Glorantha text. Perspective matters. When Greg was writing both the Entekosiad and the GRAY he was writing them from the perspectives of people in Glorantha. The GRAY is the text of a scribe of a new regime compiling mythology and doing so to justify the new regime, claiming for instance the return of Yelm came with the new emperor, not with the Dawn. 

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Techpriest said:

The mythological stories that pit them as enemies happen to occur in time.

So we're to read the DHan sources, that have their own very different concept of Time, through the Theyalan framework of it?  That there's a divine-identity version-freeze at the Compromise, before which they can change, and before which they're simple discrete fixed entities?

[Techpriest]

3 minutes ago, Alex said:

So we're to read the DHan sources, that have their own very different concept of Time, through the Theyalan framework of it?  That there's a divine-identity version-freeze at the Compromise, before which they can change, and before which they're simple discrete fixed entities?

Read the timeline. We don’t see Antirius again until well after the Dawn, with the start of trouble inside of the realm of the horse lords. So either Antirius somehow broke the compromise to bring back Yelm and replaced Kargzant, or there’s holes in the story here as presented in GRAY of Kargzant and Antirius as different beings. 

To the Dara Happan mindset, Yelm and Yelmalio (Antirius) are close to one another, you cannot have one without the other and you cannot honor Antirius without also honoring Yelm, as he’s the first heir of Yelm who established the succession. Antirius is the protector and patron of Emperors. So, if you’re saying the Emperor’s before are illegitimate, you’re also running into the quandary that they did the right things to become Emperor. Antirius gave the thumbs up.  However, admitting this is unacceptable politically.  Would you want to say that your chief god (Yelm) was properly contacted by the people you just overthrew and their emperors had legitimate claims through the rites to become Emperor? No! You’d downplay that and claim that they’re different and illegitimate rites. They were given by different gods! Totally!

Funnily enough this makes the answer simple. “No, our Cold Sun is different. I refuse to elaborate further. I have already depicted you and the god of the Horse Lords, as the crying soyjack, and our Cold Sun and our Emperor as the Chad.”

We see this all the time in real world mythology and storytelling, and in how scribes talk when justifying the violent overthrow of previous kings. 

[radmonger]

Anyway I just about managed to complete the thing I was writing before the Solar culsd book came out and obseleted it all.

[Alex]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

Anyway I just about managed to complete the thing I was writing before the Solar culsd book came out and obseleted it all.

I dunno if it's editorial haste or a continuation of a comedy riff, but I think you've at at least one place spelled 'sun' as 'son', and at least one 'son' as 'sun'...