Mining Your God

[Joerg]

Griffin Mountain (Classics) p.206
Sa Mita is a local giantess who claims descent from the mountains Fork, Borg, Mok, and Ilfagor (from a different group). She firmly believes that the mountains are her sleeping ancestors. She has heard rumors that the local trolls are cruelly digging through them. This worries her, but she does not normally speak of it.

This nice passage in Griffin Mountain illustrates a dilemma  Gloranthan miners may face when digging into mountains with actively worshipped deities, elder giants or even dragons associated. Are they digging through merre mineral cover of those entities, or are they cutting their way into the vitals of said entities?

We have hardly any information on the anatomy of Elder Giants, or dragons, and even less on that of mountain or volcano gods. The closest thing to information we have are the Big Rubble quarries into the remains of the Faceless Statue, with special minerals like the organstones showing that Mostali construction of Jolanti of any size does recreate the overall building plan of the Man Rune in those constructs.

It also tells us that the fossilized body of an Elder Giant like Paragua or Thog would likely have special regions of minerals with similar magical functions.

On the other hand, I think that True Dragons like Krisa Yar (the Red Dragon who presumably caused Ormsgone Valley in one of his awakenings) take on an possibly also shed any available local matter to manifest their bodies. Elder Giants like the four ancestors listed for Sa Mita possibly do the same, whereas a just past juveile Elder Giant like Gonn Orta might forget about his current body if resting for long, and forming whatever body he needs when rising again. His appearance at the Battle of Gargantuans may very well be a lot taller than the sitting Pass Giant described in Griffin Mountain.

What would a miner find inside the living body of a mountain entity, and what could he take out? And will those entities even registier that small ebies are digging into their body?

Can such miners encounter a brass bone of some volcano god and harvest it for the local smithy? And will they dind the wound they caused on that bone healed over when they return after some absence delivering the metal bounty they took?

Edited October 30, 2018 by Joerg
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[scott-martin]

Bulk mining might be another reason dwarves are such cosmic assholes. God diggers down there worming through the graveyards of the world, a little like krarsht. (Hey, can someone remind me what iron is, really? Which gods died there?)

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Bulk mining might be another reason dwarves are such cosmic assholes. God diggers down there worming through the graveyards of the world, a little like krarsht.

Maggots in the flesh of the original giant, as in the Edda?

In case of living mountain deities, the dwarves would be some kind of vivisectionists.

Quote

(Hey, can someone remind me what iron is, really? Which gods died there?)

There is a decent chance that dwarves produce iron from training dropouts among the Iron Mostali. That would mean that all Iron Mostali (no idea whether there are Iron dwarves, as the Iron Mostali aren't quite true Mostali but already a mass-produced later variant) would be the survivors of a massive Darwinian selection of the fittest.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Joerg
grammar

[M Helsdon]

4 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Bulk mining might be another reason dwarves are such cosmic assholes. God diggers down there worming through the graveyards of the world, a little like krarsht. (Hey, can someone remind me what iron is, really? Which gods died there?)

Many Iron Dwarves and iron constructs died in the Gods War. Their mass remains probably constitute the deposits of iron that are mined by humans. Dwarves, of course, either recycle or manufacture iron.

[jajagappa]

6 hours ago, scott-martin said:

what iron is, really?

It's hu-metal, IIRC, which means it is the metal of Death.  Possibly that means that it occurs in some location where Humakt specifically cut down a deity with the First Sword and some part of that being turned to iron.  Then again, it could be something transformed and created from certain cauldrons by Mostal.

[Sir_Godspeed]

It was my impression from the Guide that the Mostali just straight up invented iron, and create it much like we would create a synthetic substance IRL (well, not the same methods, but you know). "Natural" veins around the world might be God Time deposits lost by the dwarves, I don't know.

It status as the metal of death is interesting when combined with the idea of it as a synthetic substance and the story of death as a late Golden age innovation.

[jeffjerwin]

21 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

It was my impression from the Guide that the Mostali just straight up invented iron, and create it much like we would create a synthetic substance IRL (well, not the same methods, but you know). "Natural" veins around the world might be God Time deposits lost by the dwarves, I don't know.

It status as the metal of death is interesting when combined with the idea of it as a synthetic substance and the story of death as a late Golden age innovation.

Mostal himself is a dead god. They may be mining ('recycling') *him*. Of course there's nothing very different in that from how dwarves treat their dead worker units.

[Sir_Godspeed]

2 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Mostal himself is a dead god. They may be mining ('recycling') *him*. Of course there's nothing very different in that from how dwarves treat their dead worker units.

The Death of Stone was instrumental in making the invention of iron possible? We might've stumbled over a dwarven secret here. Everyone hide from the gremlins!