Vingkot the Defender of Esrolia

[Martin]

We know form the GtG that Before the Rastagar, Vingkot Orlanthsson and his descendants defended Nochet and Esrolia many times..

Does anyone know any examples of who he or his descendants defeated in defending the Holy Country?

Edited June 15, 2018 by Martin

[jajagappa]

30 minutes ago, Martin said:

Does anyone know any examples of who he or his descendants defeated in defending the Holy Country?

The Sea Gods are the most obvious, including Heler.  Consider Umath/Orlanth and the slaying of Faralinthor & Esrola.  Also the Blue Hill story of Esrola and Uroth.  (see Heortling Myths p.66, and the Flood Age map on p.74)

The Serpentbeast Brotherhood seems likely.

The Mostali, and also Zzabur.  (see Heortling Myths p.76-77 re: Seravus the Enchanter who steals the animals)

Lodril/Veskarthan.  See reference to the Kitchen (Esrolia p.20), between the halves of the hill that Veskarthan broke.

Veshkorgos took away the house of Lerena, and She Devourer ate the old Rolling Ground (Esrolia p.20) - the former could be Deshkorgos, or could be Veskarthan, but likely a Hell God of some type.  She Devourer sounds like Kyger Litor, or some other Hell Goddess.

Other Storm Gods.  (Esrolia p.22) we have the Three Bad Men.  One is Kodig, who would be the Vingkotling.  But we don't know Herkool or Elaliol.  And the next page adds the Axe Man, who sounds like an Earth deity.  Also Voriof and Uroth, the Ram Gods, who get castrated, after which Nevela is tamed.  All that sounds like struggles between various Storm tribes.  (p.23) "Now there were four Bad Men, and they began fighting." 

The Axe Man (per footnote on p.23) might be Tereen (champion of Ter), or Terliol (blessed of Ter).  We don't know who Ter is, but suggests it could be a rival Earth/Land Goddess.

 

 

[Joerg]

6 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

The Sea Gods are the most obvious, including Heler.  Consider Umath/Orlanth and the slaying of Faralinthor & Esrola.  Also the Blue Hill story of Esrola and Uroth.  (see Heortling Myths p.66, and the Flood Age map on p.74)

 

It appears that Vingkot is born during the Flood era, well after the homecoming of Ernalda and the wedding between Barntar and Mahome. Other offspring of Orlanth pops up now, too, although quite a few may be blamed on the tales of Tat and Tol in the Golden Age.

The big victory over the seas is the defeat of Worcha, despite that deity bearing the energies of several seas to battle against the dry lands of Orlanth and Ernalda.

 

There aren't that many myths that single out Esrolia as being defended - most affect the entirety of Orlanth's peoples.

 

The Guide names Vadrus as slayer of Faralinthor, eliminating the one appearance of Umath that may have been taken as evidence for his survival after the encounter with the underworld god Shargash.

(I used to associate Faralinthor with an earlier invasion of the waters - that of the rivers - because of the Umath interaction, but with the re-allocation of Vadrus rather than Umath, its existance following the Flood makes sense.)

There are no serious attacks on the land from Faralinthor, so nothing to protect Esrolia from from this direction.

I wonder about the Coming of Death (the parallel to the Tada buries Eiritha myth) in Esrolia. Is it all Nontraya, or is there a period where Esrolia receives protection from the Sword Story (including a chaining of Eurmal)?

 

6 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Other Storm Gods.  (Esrolia p.22) we have the Three Bad Men.  One is Kodig, who would be the Vingkotling.  But we don't know Herkool or Elaliol.  And the next page adds the Axe Man, who sounds like an Earth deity. 

The Kodig of the Three Bad Men almost appears to predate Vingkot. This stuff reminds me of Entekosiad's Vogmaradan and the sufferings of Entekos myths, and it may very well fall into the period of Ernalda's servitude as a concubine of the Emperor, away from her people.

Herkool sounds to me like Hercules, the step-child of the jealous Earth (Imarja for Esrolia) who gets impossible tasks meant to make him fail but who angers the task-giver by solving the tasks. The Greek version of the name, Herakles, appears to mean "slave of Hera".

Elaliol starts on "El", which is a syllable I associate with fire in Glorantha. (Y)(u)e(hi)lm... or El(mal), Elmalio.

If Kodig is associated with the ram, than possibly Herkool might be associated with the bull (or the boar) and Elaliol with the horse. Axe Man could be a pretty name for Zorak Zoran in the Sword Story, providing a Darkness ot the Storm(s) and Sun themes.

 

6 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Also Voriof and Uroth, the Ram Gods, who get castrated, after which Nevela is tamed.  All that sounds like struggles between various Storm tribes.  (p.23) "Now there were four Bad Men, and they began fighting." 

I read this as men from all the other elements stepping up and doing bad things, and only female earth being sensible, castrating the male upstarts one way or the other. In other words, a misandristic Imarjan tale not worthy of Great Ernalda, and probably playing out in Ernalda's absence.

 

 

[Jeff]

Gang - the Vingkotlings were some 5000 years before the present. They are as far removed from the present age as Catalhuyuk was from the time of Alexander the Great. There is never going to be consistent detail about them.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

Gang - the Vingkotlings were some 5000 years before the present. They are as far removed from the present age as Catalhuyuk was from the time of Alexander the Great. There is never going to be consistent detail about them.

The Vingkotlings were less than 20 generations from Heort. Those ancestral lifetimes (and memories) resemble those of the biblical fathers upon which Creationist "history" of the Earth is based.

(We also have Wendarian tales from the earliest humans in the Entekosiad. Those tales have astonishing amounts of detail, and are older by one or two orders of magnitude.)

And you can visit them in the hero planes, even though the Heisenberg principle applies that you alter an object by having an interaction with it (even just observation). These event left echoes that are available now.

Then there is debate what exactly Vingkot, Kodig etc. defended in their battles. I guess that there were few, if any, cases where the Vingkotlings manned the wall of Nochet in defense, and many cases where the Vingkotlings would meet enemies in the field. King Rastagar defended Nochet a bit too far away for the tastes of his queen, which led to the Sword and Helm Saga.

The Nochet sources have the equivalent of cuneiform clay tablets - lots of documentation. After all, the Compact of Nochet was written down by Lhankor Mhy. And at least the surviving Houses of Nochet are likely to keep those old murals and inscriptions in the Antones Estates in working order, including honor lists of the dead inhabitants, and the Sages will have transcripts of those, which may well mention sons lost in battles led by those Vingkotling kings..

 

Sure, there were a few cataclysms and memory removals in the meantime, but overall there is a better availability of sources between the Vingkotling era and the Hero Wars than between Catalhuyuk and the Hittite empire - the continuity of an active cult of the dead, with the dead regularly having their say in the matter.