Malkioni Caste origins and apocrypha

[Joerg]

Taken over from the slavery thread:

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

The harvest of the Tadeniti falls into the right frame of Godswar events. Mostal had been silenced at the Birth of Umath, as the clockwork was lifted off the axis, and the waters reached to the top side of the Earth, with the rivers invading. Attrition of the demigod Mostali was high, and reproduction or replacement rate was low as Mostal's absence had thrown a spanner into the workings of the crucibles.

I know it's my hobby horse lately but doesn't Lodrilela also die at roughly this moment? They might provide reproductive technology whereas the theoretically immortal in-caste Tadeniti could well have become something else.

If you mean Mt. Ladaral on the edge of Danmalastan, presumably at Sog City, I am not quite sure when this victory of the riverine seas over the fire mountain took place. It certainly repeated itself at Mt. Turos (nowadays Lake Oronin), and probably was Waertagi magic in both cases.

Looking at the geological activity in the region, maybe the explosions of Mt. Ladaral ("Laddy") and Mt. Turos were required for the Mostali raising of the Nidan Range, dividing the Kachisti lands and further thwarting their opposition to the Vadeli slave revolt.

(And writing this, I could have remained over in the slavery thread...)

 

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

I don't get the impression anywhere that the sons of Malkion had any children outside of their own caste. The Dromal caste explicitely is of darker hue due to their earth goddess ancestry. The other four castes descended from Phlia come as tinted pale - yellow, blue (twice, different hues for Zzabur and Menena?) and red.

Ironically the most detailed look at skin color goes with the "small SIZ / little Westerners" material. I'll track it down first chance I get. This is the era when there were "Naga" or "Nogi" in the gene pool as well as blues and "greens" who may or may not be Waertagi and/or Menenites, not part of the formal four-part society but still participating in various iterations of the community of Malkion. 

The Waertagi apparently inherit their green tan from Jeleka, who is (IMO wrongly) described in the Guide (p.465) as a Ludoch mermaid. The father is Malkion the Seer, not the Founder - both evidently Fourth Action aspects of Malkion.

 

The six tribes of Danmalastan named after the sons Kadenit (the builder), Tadenit (the scribe), Waertag (the sailor), Kachast (the speaker), Enroval (the philosopher) and Viymorn (the explorer) don't appear in the Brithos texts, except for the Waertagi.

 

Viymorn is named as father (or at least ancestor or chief) of Vadel.

 

Vadel and Zzabur cooperate at first with the Energy Prison, copied from the Iron Energy Prison Vadel had borrowed/rented from the Mostali of Thakarn.

When the Mostali send an army of constructs to recover all the Energy Prison copies, Horal sets out to clear Danmalastan of these dwarf constructs and their mostali handlers.

 

 

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I really do think colonization of the northern coast went very differently from what we see in the Seshnelan histories, which explains the persistence of local Dronar versus Dromal. Depends on where you put Lodril's mountain, I guess. 

There are two sons of Malkion mentioned in the genealogies in Hrestol's Saga, Horal (ancestor of the people of Horalwal, who also are descendants of Menena and who are the least orthodox of the Brithini) and Holan (ancestor of the Sword-wielder and leader of the Warrior Caste). And Horal is shown as the oldest brother of Talar and Zzabur, while Holan the Sword-wielder is shown as the youngest.

I have seen "Holar" for the warrior caste ancestor, too.

Even more apocryphal from Hrestol's Saga

All male descendants of Horal of Horalwal and Menena are Talar caste members (or ascended demigods): Duke Antalos (father-in-law to Hrestol) and Ordelam (son of Antalos' brother Yingar, who had become Malkion's winged messenger). The Brithos episode of Hrestol's Saga mentions as an aside how Horal had been chained by Zzabur in an earlier dispute, but had been freed by Menena and taken settlement in the northern part of Brithos. Possibly after Horal had cleaned up the Mostali mess that resulted from Zzabur's cooperation with Vadel and the copied Energy Prison artifacts.

 

Lodril's Mountain should have been at Sog City. If you part the Inner World maps along the diagonals, the Neliomi coast and Sog lie a bit too far to the east, but that may be just a slight distortion. Or there is substance to the story that a chunk of Fronela has remained missing after the Thaw, or possibly after the Great Darkness. (I was told this more than twenty years ago, and it was discussed on the digest. Any hints to this in other sources?)

 

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

My turn for a digression, the Western mockery of "Lammy" as coequal to "Laddy" must really burn the beards, I love it.

Lammy or Lhankor Mhy obviously is known to the Malkioni, and as a False God (or aberrant Erasanchula) rather than as a tribal Founder. Still, the pairings of Tadenit/Lhankor Mhy and Kachast/Issaries are quite persuasive. With Waertag and his people well known and ditto for Viymorn and Vadel, this leaves Kadenit the Builder and Enroval the magician. There is no warrior among these six tribes, though, and while Kachast may be trader as well as speaker (and therefore a talar predecessor), the Kachasti (or at least their magicians) are one of the blue peoples candidates encountered as troublesome by the Pelandans. (The riverine Waertagi have been confirmed, and blue Vadeli are likely after the rising of the Nidan Mountains, and probably behind YarGan. That there were wars between the Blue People may have remained largely unnoticed by the suppressed Pelandans.)

 

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

All I can say is that there has to be something the Malkioni histories are not telling us about how the reproductivity of the caste system worked in Danmalastan. Either because they don't know, or they don't want to tell.

Most Malkioni authors probably don't know because Zzabur doesn't want to tell (or anyone to remember). At the Dawn, Zzabur is the only non-divine child of Malkion in Brithos. A summoning of Menena leads to Zzabur's retreat from all worldly affairs, leaving his only son/child Kaldes in charge of the caste.

 

The context in Hrestol's Saga and its genealogies suggests that most pre-Dawn Malkioni are not direct descendants of the Caste founders, even though they clearly share their hereditary status.

The separate nature of the Providers (Malkion the Founder's dark-skinned children of the land goddess/mountain nymph Kala) suggest an adoption of a numerous folk through this marriage rather than Malkion as the physical ancestor of all of these, and probably likewise with the Six Tribes.

[Sir_Godspeed]

I've read the Guide and Revealed Mythologies, but I'm not familiar with Hrestol's Saga, or a lot of the genealogical stuff here. Where would we find this, the Middle Sea Empire? The Sorcery book?

EDIT: Is Mt. Ladaral the same as Lodril's mountain on the Guide's God-Learner maps? I always thought it go drowned very early on in the Storm Age. Can't say I've thought it felt like it was placed at the mouth of the modern Janube.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Sir_Godspeed

[scott-martin]

"Clean thread, move down," to quote the Mad Hatter.

I am still consolidating your response from the last giddy leap so don't dare to dive headfirst into this one (also the office is likely to get busy) . . . but this rocks. There are occasionally hints that the northwest "adjusted" over Time. I think there's an archival map of roughly Arolanit to the the Winterwood that looks very different and of course Snodal's self-fulfilling vision is all about the horror of seeing a map and the Loskalm he knows isn't there any more. 

We know that the large-scale coastline doesn't move much thanks to the great continental maps in the Guide. The interior between snapshots is still an open question. And even our friend Neliom / Neleos has been known to ebb and flow. 

The more I think about the Horalites the more strongly I suspect two things. First, the blue man's mastery of Demonization makes it difficult now to distinguish between surviving ancestral Enrovalini and dirty modern "vadeli." This puts the burden of resisting his tyranny squarely on the Malestini, children of mixed light, clay and other diverse parts. Second, the independent Horalites (under their "duke") likely accepted the Hrestol doctrine early and en masse, becoming mortal if they weren't already and so vanishing from the story as a separate caste nation. 

I do wonder now where the people of places like Talarwal got their horses. 

56 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I've read the Guide and Revealed Mythologies, but I'm not familiar with Hrestol's Saga, or a lot of the genealogical stuff here. Where would find this, the Middle Sea Empire? The Sorcery book?

The ghost of Hrestol Saga makes it into the Book of Kings (http://www.glorantha.com/docs/the-kings-of-seshnela-part-one/) but you have much of the good stuff already . . . Revealed Mythologies is bottomless. Other bits show up in various obscure contexts. Might be time for a list.