The Blood Sun

[davecake]

Almost nothing has been written about the Blood Sun, just three paragraphs in the Prosopaedia and a little bit more in the Black Sun writeup in Troll Gods.

But the deity is known (via Greg) to be a significant part of the once planned Hero Wars story, the Blood Sun Epic, for Pent, and to a lesser extent the Lunar Empire, Kralorela and Ignorance, and the East Isles. The major NPCs that are central to this plot are all noted in the Guide, and include Alanthore in the Lunar Empire, An Lin Chao of Kralorela, Denker of Chern Durel, and Livia Tarinda of the East Isles. The Blood Sun is supposed to be linked to chaos cults in the West, and antigod cults in the East, and to have effectively infiltrated the cult of Hon-Eel, and is worshipped by some Pentan Solar Tribes. And the Cryptic Verses of the Yellow Calendar section of the Guide has the Blood Sun playing a significant role in the prophecies of the Hero Wars in the East, and there are significant appearances in the Black Dragon Pictoglyphs that contain the Uz prophecies about the Hero Wars as well. 

Does anyone know more about it, particularly its planned role in the Hero Wars? 

[scott-martin]

20 minutes ago, davecake said:

The Blood Sun is supposed to be linked to chaos cults in the West, and antigod cults in the East, and to have effectively infiltrated the cult of Hon-Eel, and is worshipped by some Pentan Solar Tribes.

I get the feeling that while this whole "4 worlds of kaos krossover" plot initially looked attractive on paper behind the scenes it became clear that setting the stage would be a little too ambitious. The action is too far from most players to see or interact with in any way. The explanations are even farther removed, so whatever actually gets to the players would just look incomprehensibly weird . . . maybe even to the game master who needs to deliver the right information to maintain the illusion of coherent complexity. We would need to be able to understand deep Pent, the deep East (machinations among the Ignorant and the Exarchs alike) and the deep terminal empire and while we've come a long way, there is still a staggering amount of work left to do.

What we can do is continue to lay the foundation while the introductory Hero Wars setting format gestates, which is what you have been doing in the East. I personally know almost nothing about this whole Blood Sun beyond the plot hook. It's a Blank Land. What do you know about it? That might be all we have right now.

[Eff]

I strongly doubt there is much to know about the Blood Sun, beyond those few paragraphs and that prospective hook that was likely never followed up on while Stafford was still actively working on Glorantha. But if there is, perhaps it can come to light. 

So let's spin up some interpretation. 

"Alanthore", in 2001, was the name of the Blood Sun somewhere, and was a publicly "worshiped" but petty god who was secretly also many other gods, and also the Blood Sun of Bliss-in-Ignorance.

( https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/GloranthaDigest/vol08/1835.html )

The Guide makes Alanthore an individual who is preaching about the Blood Sun in the Lunar Empire, and maybe that's a transmutation and maybe that's from the notes, and maybe this guy is taking on the name of his god. 

Regardless, we have a well-established blood-red solar figure, who has different names in different parts of Glorantha, has some Chaotic connections, and came between the reign of an enlightened but blinded figure and the empty shell of nothingness and fraud. But even if it makes sense for Tolat to be the Blood Sun with the information we have, why, that's not satisfying, because we'd have to confound our expectations no matter whether we decide Tolat the Blood Sun is good, bad, weird, or ugly. 

But I think it is worth asking- what is going on with the Hon-eel cult? What kind of changes are the Blood Sun's agents trying to inflict on it from the outside? Are they simply trying to revise its tentative gender-reversals to fit within the "perennial" philosophy, or is there something less tedious and roman-a-clef going on? 

 

[scott-martin]

Okay, I will burn the precious point of Traded blue divination:

What's [a] shepelkirt really.
Versus [a] jagekriand.

 

[davecake]

57 minutes ago, Eff said:

ut I think it is worth asking- what is going on with the Hon-eel cult? What kind of changes are the Blood Sun's agents trying to inflict on it from the outside?

Use it to replace benevolent Earth worship with a transactional version that involves human sacrifice, and as the Hero Wars crank up and things such as the giant winter raise the threat of mass starvation, human sacrifice on an increasingly wholesale level. From which Bova Mada Kelen Nomada the head of the cult, and presumably some of his power shared wth lesser leaders such as Alanthore (and, of great relevance to me, Livia Tarinda in the East Isles), command over a host of tormented ghosts, the sacrifice victims 'drowned in the blessings of the Blood Sun'. 

 

[davecake]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I get the feeling that while this whole "4 worlds of kaos krossover" plot initially looked attractive on paper behind the scenes it became clear that setting the stage would be a little too ambitious. The action is too far from most players to see or interact with in any way.

I think you could make a great lozenge trotting campaign in the style of a classic Call of Cthulhu campaign. Keep getting clues that, once you have defeated one villain, lead you to the next, until your inevitable confrontation with the heart of the conspiracy in mysterious Chern Durel!

 

[scott-martin]

31 minutes ago, davecake said:

in the style of a classic Call of Cthulhu campaign

Yeah! I was thinking "Masks of Yog Sothoth box." And under those parameters, somebody can write it after all!

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

What's [a] shepelkirt really.
Versus [a] jagekriand.

At what point does the Rising Sun come up Red and stay Red?

At what point does the inherent contradiction of Moonson and Yelm Imperator merge?

At what point do the Rising Red Moon and the Rising Blood Sun come together? Or do they? Or is Tolat/Shargash the messenger between the two?

[mfbrandi]

20 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

At what point do the Rising Red Moon and the Rising Blood Sun come together?

That looks like the obvious direction to go. Lunarism as solar religion. Sedenya as a wannabe or “evil” sun (and a rebel son). Finally it is achieved, and then Argrath as a good Orlanthi has to murder the sun/moon. The perils of the monomyth: squeeze everything into the same template (both sides are guilty) — like Procrustes — and the end of the world threatens. But simplistic soul that I am, I trample the detail, and doubtless it was important.

28 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Or is Tolat/Shargash the messenger between the two?

Not sure about this. If in the “Shargash is a lot like ZeeZee” camp — and I am sure we have been told not to be (I will slap my wrist later) — then maybe Tolat/Shargash bridges not sun and moon but sun/moon and the enemy of light and warmth, winter . ZeeZee — after a fashion — both eats the sun and is the sun (you are what you eat). Or maybe the volcano gods square the circle. I don’t know. I never do.

[Eff]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Use it to replace benevolent Earth worship with a transactional version that involves human sacrifice, and as the Hero Wars crank up and things such as the giant winter raise the threat of mass starvation, human sacrifice on an increasingly wholesale level. From which Bova Mada Kelen Nomada the head of the cult, and presumably some of his power shared wth lesser leaders such as Alanthore (and, of great relevance to me, Livia Tarinda in the East Isles), command over a host of tormented ghosts, the sacrifice victims 'drowned in the blessings of the Blood Sun'. 

 

Of course, "benevolent earth worship" already involves human sacrifice- the Hon-eel cult's mythology is different because the human sacrifice is a reenactment of a mortal dismembering and killing a god to rescue another mortal, and the sacrifice is explicitly framed in moral terms- a criminal is executed to reenact the time the Artess ripped the Blood Sun's arms off and beat him to death with them. 

So one could imagine Hon-eel as a threat to the sacred or divine order, and the Blood Sun as attempting to set things right and perhaps transform the cult into one in which it is its founder who is symbolically tortured and brutalized, rendered a completely passive victim. (If so, his aim would seem to be terrible, he hit the wrong Lunar Immortal entirely).

But setting that possibility aside, I'm not sure why the Blood Sun's agents would want to bring about this world. Are they meant to be human beings, or (symbolically and literally) demons, like Greg's c. 1998 ideas about the Kingdom of War? 

[Nick Brooke]

Ahem, Sister Effy: I’m sure you meant to say “the entirely symbolic sacrifice of the corn doll is a reenactment” (etc.).

We don’t want to get in any more trouble with Her Father, do we?

[metcalph]

IMO I'm inclined to sever the blood earth from the Blood Sun as that's now firmly within the domain of the non-Blood Sunny Hon-eel (yes, I know the linkage was once there - I wrote it but Greg backpedalled on the idea).  Instead I'll place it within the purview of Jar-eel who actually has a legion of followers known as the Bloodspillers.  

So in addition to the known spell of False Healing, the Blod Sun also has the spell of Bleeding Edge (causes an edge weapon to inflict bleeding damage or Hong-Kong style bloodspray ) and Bloodbath (in which the caster uses dance or acrobatics in the presence of a bleeding wound to obtain magic points or hitpoints).  If and when Jar-eel apotheosizes, she will create a rune lord position and the new runespell of Dance Trance (like sword trance except yer dance moves are boosted) and bring a long of host of lunar associates.