Tell me of Sheng Seleris

[scott-martin]

12 hours ago, scott-martin said:

One combines all the best parts within himself and becomes an Orlanth.

There's that weird page of penciled notes on "A Westerner's View of the Lightbringer's Quest" that ends with the birth of a synthetic culture hero, called "zzabur" there, with five daddies and two mommies. This is how you forge a "we" from scattered selves. But in that scenario, it's possible that an archaic LBQ created a corporate "orlanth" to give all participants a stake in the shared enterprise. 

Take local forms -- a worlath and a humkt and an elmal and a hurumal or an orlantio -- season with desperation and stir. In the primeval west, a zzabur came out. In what becomes Dragon Pass, you now have an orlanth. They go different directions. Eventually a similar rite in Torang would give birth to a goddess later theologians would see scattered in various prefigurations across the past. In the far south, you have two necklaces, one that makes cities and one that doesn't scale that way. 

Harmast re-creates the orlanth cult and the parameters change. He's focused on the reconstruction of the fables (hi, rick, thanks as always) and not so much forging a new "us." As far as I know IFWW is not his concern. He knows who his We are. He has a ginna jar already in mind. What he wants is to emulate the part of the rite that is about the resurrection of the dead.

What he gets is an expanded Us, an entity new to him to change the game. From one perspective, this is a reconstruction or a resurrection of the hero who had already torn his way through Ralios. But then from one perspective, every LBQ is all about renewing the sun. Maybe it's originally an elf rite similar to what they have where HKE kisses the dryads and tickles every runner, rite of spring. Harmast was fighting a bright god and his intent brought back a dark one. Argrath is fighting an empire and brings back Sheng. 

I don't know how Sheng spends his Sacred Time. But I wonder now if that first "sun" the lightbringers preached in the dawn days was named orlanth, the new bright god and new generation to come. Some people accepted different parts of that revelation -- storm and sky and dark and earth and water circulated across first clans and then the continent, so you have pockets of what we'd now call "elmalites" and "orlanthites" across the pagan landscape. Some people were given a zzabur instead and followed that trajectory. 

"Monster" is a funny word. In the Holy Country it's just another I to help us Win. In the West it's krjalk, the devil. In the solar bowl it's the rustic uncle whose antics impede our career. In the East the hsunchen tribes seem to be the shock troops for the nefarious huan to scheming to bring down cosmic order. Nature itself. When Sheng comes back it's as the emperor of the "monsters." A classical orlanthite writer would just say "chaos." 

The shock of the new. This might be one of the deepest arcana of the Hero Wars period, or at least one of its gamier masks. You all are rocking. And around the time King of Sartar was new and melting fan minds, I had a great mormon friend who loved Joy Division and the Smiths, we would constantly mishear the word "mothers" in "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" as "ovens." It's a little biologically reductionist but hard truth: some girls' ovens are indeed bigger than other girl's mother's ovens.

Maybe Sheng is a woman.

[jeffjerwin]

47 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

I don't know how Sheng spends his Sacred Time. But I wonder now if that first "sun" the lightbringers preached in the dawn days was named orlanth, the new bright god and new generation to come. Some people accepted different parts of that revelation -- storm and sky and dark and earth and water circulated across first clans and then the continent, so you have pockets of what we'd now call "elmalites" and "orlanthites" across the pagan landscape. Some people were given a zzabur instead and followed that trajectory. 

Well there is the Solar Storm revelation, the god with the blinded third eye from Chen Durel.

He becomes enlightened and calms down, of course.

I wonder if Sheng's Pain Star in the sky was meant to become a 'fixed sun', an anti-Sun or reborn Yelm, with Yelm himself trapped in Hell forever? Or does Sheng's star move?

I suspect Sheng descends into Hell every Sacred Time.

[scott-martin]

46 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Solar Storm

Lots of weird elemental rough drafts up there in the unenlightened country, would not be surprised. Closer to home, something's got to be driving Storm Pent. Coincidence or sinister Hero Wars arcanum? I imagine the ultimate Monster Empire as the perennialist's worst nightmare . . . elements out of control, decadent cosmopolitism, the perversion of everything that made the Country Holy. Koyaanisqatsi.

The ultimate end of the Pain Star might indeed have been to replace Yelm forever, maybe something like how Shargash got up there. In that scenario someone like a Bijiif would have ascended on the last morning (I like your Kazkurtum reading for Sheng but don't know where that god lives during the day) and once again all the hells would empty out. 

[jeffjerwin]

As an aside I was re-reading the Perlesvaus for my KAP work and noted the use of the name "Widow's Son" for Perceval himself. There's some disagreement about Perceval's relationship to the Maimed King - sometimes, as in the Livre d'Artus, that Maimed King is his own father, Pellinor, who has been demoted from the status of father because of his 'living death' (subsisting like the Graal king/Roi Pescheur on the graal's 'food') and castration. Perceval's achievement of the Graal of course kills the Maimed and Graal Kings, or subsumes them into himself.

In the Perlesvaus the chief villains are the Black Hermit (an inverted, headhunting, diabolical ascetic) of the Waste Land and the King of Castle Mortel, the sinister brother of the Graal king himself, a wizard and usurper.

I cannot but help wonder if Greg found the term from his Arthurian studies.

[scott-martin]

25 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Perlesvaus for my KAP work

That's going to be amazing. My 90-year-old-lady mentor is absolutely in love with the fatherless boy and has been eagerly awaiting the Annotated Arthur a few years now. Still hoping she gets her copy. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

9 hours ago, scott-martin said:

There must therefore be a possibility of transforming group psychology into individual psychology; a condition must be discovered under which such a transformation is easily accomplished

Isn't that specifically one of the steps of creation in Draconic ontology?

[davecake]

On 10/13/2018 at 7:26 PM, scott-martin said:

There's that weird page of penciled notes on "A Westerner's View of the Lightbringer's Quest"

Where?

[scott-martin]

18 minutes ago, davecake said:

Where?

It's in the "Mortal Lords" playtest compendium  . . . obviously paracanonical at best now but I'll put the relevant bits together, buzz me if you don't hear back relatively soon. 

[jeffjerwin]

On a practical note, since I have to keep track of Lunar Cycles and the like for my game, when would have Sheng Seleris invaded the Moon in 1449? I presume it was either an auspicious date for himself or an inauspicious date for the Moon.

I am using the para-canonical Lunar Calendar from Under the Red Moon.

For inauspicious there is the final month of Moonset (Storm Season). For the majority of Sheng's host the act was a restoration of Yu-kargzant's domination over the Middle Air and Moon, which might suggest a Yelmic holy day.

Any ideas?

 

Edit: I think a possible day might be Week 34 of the Month of Suffering, on Nathaday/Fireday, which is a Yelmic holiday. It may denote the day Yelm was slain (it's a day after Humakt's High Holy Day, Deathday). This would be a dangerous day to fight SS for the Emperor (or call on the Bat)...

Edited October 20, 2018 by jeffjerwin

[Darius West]

Where do people stand on the issue that Sheng Seleris and Jaldon Toothmaker might both be the children of Androgeus?

[jajagappa]

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

Where do people stand on the issue that Sheng Seleris and Jaldon Toothmaker might both be the children of Androgeus?

1) never heard the suggestion made before.

2) don't believe either would be (or any reason they should be).

[Sir_Godspeed]

I'm woefully under-read on Androgeus, pretty much the only thing I know is that it's a hermaphroditic (or sex-fluid?) Hero who is also supposedly distrusted by many.

Any particular reason why the could be the parent of either or both of these nomad leaders?

[davecake]

4 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Any particular reason why the could be the parent of either or both of these nomad leaders?

In the Guide, it says about Androgeus

Quote

Her children are too many to name, but five are well-known: The Preserver, the Twisted Horse, Goldtooth, Wily Joker, and Yellow Bear.

and the coincidence of Goldtooth and Goldentooth seems suggestive, and of course Jaldon Goldentooth is otherwise weird  and has unknown origins. 

The Yellow Bear is presumed to be the same Yellow Bear that lives in the Yellow Bear Hills in Fronela, a petty god from the First Age, which has no connection, but Androgeus has lived since long before the dawn and wandered all over Glorantha. I have no idea who the other three are. I also have no idea why Androgeus would be linked to Sheng Seleris. 

Edited January 3, 2019 by davecake

[Darius West]

4 hours ago, davecake said:

In the Guide, it says about Androgeus

and the coincidence of Goldtooth and Goldentooth seems suggestive, and of course Jaldon Goldentooth is otherwise weird  and has unknown origins. 

The Yellow Bear is presumed to be the same Yellow Bear that lives in the Yellow Bear Hills in Fronela, a petty god from the First Age, which has no connection, but Androgeus has lived since long before the dawn and wandered all over Glorantha. I have no idea who the other three are. I also have no idea why Androgeus would be linked to Sheng Seleris. 

It has been suggested that Twisted Horse is Sheng Seleris.

[Steve]

Thread about Androgeous, including the suggestion about Sheng Seleris being Twisted Horse, at 

 

 

[Darius West]

6 hours ago, Steve said:

Thread about Androgeous, including the suggestion about Sheng Seleris being Twisted Horse, at 

 

 

Thanks for finding the post Steve.  Do we have any idea who Sheng Seleris' parents were?

[Joerg]

23 hours ago, Darius West said:

Thanks for finding the post Steve.  Do we have any idea who Sheng Seleris' parents were?

Not any more than we know the parents of Teelo Norri (who admittedly is a little over a dozen years older at the Birth of the Goddess than the child that did become Sheng). Conspiracy theorists might claim that Teelo and Sheng share a Pentan father, and/or possibly a Rinliddi mother who took up exile with or was caught as a slave by the Pentans the year before Sheng's birth, conveniently leaving Teelo as a street waif still sufficiently innocent despite that destitute way of life in time to be picked up by Deezola's cotery (though in that case maybe not quite as randomly as the story I have seen until now suggests).

But then, Nysalor was hatched from a magical egg while Arkat's mother was a Horal's daughter hiding in an elf forest when delivering the child during Sunstop. Shared parents or even ancestry never was part of becoming the opposite's shadow.

[jajagappa]

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

who admittedly is a little over a dozen years older at the Birth of the Goddess than the child that did become Sheng

Not just Sheng born at the same time as the Red Goddess (Teelo Norri notwithstanding), but also Jannisor.  Common parentage not required as you note to be Shadows (or False Shadows).  Many folk claimed Jannisor as their own in my mythic stories.  Whether the same is true or not for Sheng, I don't know.

[Sir_Godspeed]

When looking into the parentage of characters in shared fictional universes, I'm always a bit wary of what I like to call Skywalker-syndrome. That is, the tendency of wanting to link a lot of prominent characters together by family bonds because family bonds seem real, close and inherently dramatic to us. Star Wars had a good deal of this, hence my personal monicker - but you also see it in a lot of actual, real life mythology (the Romans linking Romulus and Remus to the Trojan royal house, for example, or choose from any of a number of bizarre nationalist myths, like the British being one of the Thirteen tribes of Israel, or the Greeks claiming the Persian descended from Perseus seemingly because of an incidental name similarity).

Anyway, in my personal opinion - and I fully realize others don't feel this way - linking lots of prominent characters together that were hitherto not known to be so can make the world feel smaller, and in way, less inclusive. Frankly, I actually really like the idea that some nobody nomad on the Pentan steppe decided to straight up lay siege to a celestial body... and then did it (I realize that he probably was never a "nobody" - seems likely he was a tribal noble or somesuch, but you catch my point. At least avoiding the trope of having every single goddamn notable person being descended from a god or demigod).

On the other hand, I understand that some people like the intricate family dramas this create - or they enjoy the theme of divine parentage shaping mortal history.

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

When looking into the parentage of characters in shared fictional universes, I'm always a bit wary of what I like to call Skywalker-syndrome. That is, the tendency of wanting to link a lot of prominent characters together by family bonds because family bonds seem real, close and inherently dramatic to us. Star Wars had a good deal of this, hence my personal monicker - but you also see it in a lot of actual, real life mythology (the Romans linking Romulus and Remus to the Trojan royal house, for example, or choose from any of a number of bizarre nationalist myths, like the British being one of the Thirteen tribes of Israel, or the Greeks claiming the Persian descended from Perseus seemingly because of an incidental name similarity).

When the myth explains the origin of the world, and is accepted by the "scientists" of the time, then the place where a people fit into that origin has to be found. After all, there are bottleneck points in the mythology these people had at their hands, like everybody has to be a descendant of Noah, as the flood myth was supposed to be universal. Adam and Eve, too, but...

4 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Anyway, in my personal opinion - and I fully realize others don't feel this way - linking lots of prominent characters together that were hitherto not known to be so can make the world feel smaller, and in way, less inclusive. Frankly, I actually really like the idea that some nobody nomad on the Pentan steppe decided to straight up lay siege to a celestial body... and then did it (I realize that he probably was never a "nobody" - seems likely he was a tribal noble or somesuch, but you catch my point. At least avoiding the trope of having every single goddamn notable person being descended from a god or demigod).

This is a place which was f***ed all over by the gods, you know...

King David was a shepherd nobody before he rose to become the heir of Saul, but even so, he was a descendant of Jacob and thereby Abraham. You cannot be "one of us" and not be in some divine lineage. Maybe not the most reputable ones - the weeders look back to the stilt-legged goddesses - but that disrepute now follows a (Godtime) history of defamation and demotion. To her descendants, she still is the most radiant and perfect entity, and they'll bear the scorn of other Dara Happans for their style of life and their goddess, knowing better.

 

Everyone is entitled to greatness. The myths praise those who undergo the efforts to reach what they are entitled to.

The myth of our egalitarian society goes quite a bit contrary to it, and it is at times hard to reconcile with the more archaic and tribal structure that we inherited as our biological definition of us and them.

4 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

On the other hand, I understand that some people like the intricate family dramas this create - or they enjoy the theme of divine parentage shaping mortal history.

Yet if you look at the offspring of Sartar, FHQ 1 and the various forms of the Red Emperor (including Hon-eel and Jar-eel), and you get exactly this tangle of many main characters of the Orlanthi-Lunar conflict being blood-related.

Which is the way most myths go. With almost all the Greek nobility descended from Olympians (there may be some leftover Titans in some divine ancestry), the Greek myths are mainly all in the family. Germanic myth has the same premise for its kings, documented when the (very christian) King of Mercia had do fake a line of descent from Woden to be taken seriously by his fellow Christian kings in Britain.

That is part of the appeal of the myths - the gods were more human, and the humans more divine.

You can be a nobody of divine ancestry. Face it, everybody has it somewhere, or at least one of the ancestors was directly created by a god (next best thing, like the Promethean creation of people). Grandfather Mortal was a deity in his own right, and he bled his powers of life, reproduction and everyday pursuits into all of his offspring.

The Pentans are such a case, too - a race of former emperors of Dara Happa. You will be very hard put to find a Pentan not descended from Jenarong, Vuranostum or one of the other Jenarong dynasty emperors. Every man carries a piece of the sun within him, and probably also pieces from dark stars that led the tribes through the Greater Darkness, entities later partially suppressed when their folk ruled over the sedentary farmers of the river valleys. Their great priestesses did their own to renew the influx of divine celestial blood (both light and occasionally dark).

Which reminds me that Golden Bow is suspiciously absent from that little sun discussion, yet he figures greatly in Hon-eel's motherhood contest with Great Reverend Mother following the demise of the Seleric Empire.

[Darius West]

10 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

When looking into the parentage of characters in shared fictional universes, I'm always a bit wary of what I like to call Skywalker-syndrome. That is, the tendency of wanting to link a lot of prominent characters together by family bonds because family bonds seem real, close and inherently dramatic to us. 

I totally agree.  It seems that people are more frequently linked by their horoscopes in Glorantha, for want of a better description... Karma perhaps?

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Which reminds me that Golden Bow is suspiciously absent from that little sun discussion, yet he figures greatly in Hon-eel's motherhood contest with Great Reverend Mother following the demise of the Seleric Empire.

My thoughts ran the same way.

[jeffjerwin]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

Which is the way most myths go. With almost all the Greek nobility descended from Olympians (there may be some leftover Titans in some divine ancestry), the Greek myths are mainly all in the family. Germanic myth has the same premise for its kings, documented when the (very christian) King of Mercia had do fake a line of descent from Woden to be taken seriously by his fellow Christian kings in Britain.

King Penda of the Mercians was kind of a hold-out, really. His death in battle allowed for the conversion of the Midlands. All descents from Wodan are contrived, though the Skjoldungs and Ynglings have at least the weight of tradition. So actual pagan belief among the Anglo-Saxons had only a frayed connection to descent claims. In Glorantha, the only plausible way to make artificial descent claims that will stand up to a divination is by hero questing or getting a relevant ancestor/ghost to claim the person as a descendant (as with a wyter).

Edited January 5, 2019 by jeffjerwin

[Julian Lord]

On 10/2/2018 at 7:04 AM, jeffjerwin said:

You have described a monstrous perversion of asceticism.

I fear you are right. It means, however, that the torments of Sheng Seleris in the Lunar Hell have only made him stronger. His release was the worst of all Argrath's actions.

He's a very powerful but failed Mystic, so that he would be difficult to portray in RQG (under current rules) if you're using that game.

I'd probably portray him as an absolutist fanatic, as most charismatic failed mystics are in the RW. Take your pick from examples in History, I really do want to avoid getting political.

But Anakin's chilling "you're either with me, or you're against me" to Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith is well indicative of what failed mysticism does to a person.

[Julian Lord]

On 1/2/2019 at 4:35 PM, Darius West said:

Where do people stand on the issue that Sheng Seleris and Jaldon Toothmaker might both be the children of Androgeus?

I stand afar from it.

[davecake]

On 1/6/2019 at 12:30 AM, Julian Lord said:

He's a very powerful but failed Mystic, so that he would be difficult to portray in RQG (under current rules) if you're using that game.

Above a certain level of power, basically around the Hero level, RQG is going to break down simply because we don't have the heroquesting (and more importantly, rewards of heroquesting) rules. So Sheng, as likely super-hero level, is well beyond that that. He has dozens of huge heroquest powers, a looted collection of magical artifacts, spirits at his command that are essentially minor gods in power, and is surrounded by companions that are experienced heroquesters themselves. 

But mysticism doesn't complicate that too much. Consider Sheng (or at least his dedicated followers, who are essentially mini Sheng's) as Illuminated fanatics who have access to a very wide range of Solar powers from all the solar Pentan, and optionally Pelorian, deities (are Rune Lord/Priests of multiple Solar religions), are quite likely powerful shamans too, and then beef them up with as many shamanic powers and the equivalent of Gifts (including big attribute boosts) as you want - and then assume that for expert mystics/Illuminates, breaking Geases and Taboos represents only a minor inconvenience for them, so their big collection of enhancements is effectively free. 

Of course, in theory all that geas and taboo breaking hinders their spiritual progress, but if they don't care, what does it matter? 

I've recently faced a similar issue, as Jar-Eel has turned up in my game. Though so far all she has done has played a tune on her harp, causing an Illumination chance for all listeners, and given most of them a Devotion (or similar) passion for her. The question of what else she might do should anyone be silly enough to attack her is unlikely to arise, but I want to be prepared when it happens.