Lunar Hell -Underworld

[Martin]

would anyone care to speculate on what happens when a follower of a Lunar (or Dara Happan) entity dies?

who is the Lunar psychopomp?

Where do the dead travel to?  do they go right to the deep underworld?

who is the judge of the dead?

 

Edited November 8, 2018 by Martin

[metcalph]

The Lunar Pyschopomp is Danfive Xaron (I think)

There's two theories about what happens to the Pelorians after they die.

The older version (found in the Glorious ReAscent) is that the deceased splits into his consituent souls (Shadow goes to the Underworld, the Intellect to the Sky etc).  Look at the death of Murharzarm for an explanation of what happens.

A more modern version (found in the RuneQuest Companion) is that good Pelorians are reincarnated into more exalted social statues after they die (Lodril->Yelm->Dayzatar->retirement beyond the Sky).

The Lunars seek to short-circuit this cycle of reincarnation by becoming Sevened. From there, most go beyond this world. A lunar that is unsevened goes through the normal motions (courts of silence, breif stay in underworld before being reincarnated).

Yelm is the Judge of the Dead.  

[EricW]

There is an interesting reference in King of Sartar;

Quote

 

Argrath and his companions set off over the broken realm of myth. The bad rain swept across Dragon Pass when he left. Vilgars pursued him, and were killed over the Precious pool. They went to Ygg's Isles, and the people there called upon their god to help Argrath. When Argrath could tell Ygg's genealogy correction, the god agreed to fly him to the West. All went well after that until they saw the Blue-like-a-corpse Woman, who sent decayed vulgars at him, armed with Argrath's own weakness. He was wounded to death, but the love which his wife sent to him in a feather sustained him. And then his tribes folk rose up to fight off the vulgars, and the black spear slew them. In such a manner Argrath and his companions fulfilled the twelve steps necessary to reach the Court of Judgement.

In the Court of Judgement, where the Lightbringers receive the gifts of their labor, Argrath passed the purification test of the Flame of Ehilm. The assembled gods agree to give him the gift of liberating the god of his choice.

The treasures of heaven were available to him: peace, food for his people forever, personal immortality, friendship with demigods, a homestead in heaven, his own star.

But al the gods were shocked when he asked for Sheng Seleris, an ancient enemy who had chased the Emperor off the earth, and had even scarred the celestial face of the Red Goddess when he was alive. But that demigod was beyond their reach, quarantined in a Hell which was made by the Red Goddess outside of their cosmos. The ancient gods could not do what they had said they would do, and as a result the whole of Genertela shuddered, and the earth grandmother groaned, as if her bones were bending. The stars were afraid.

At the centre of the world Argrath compromised. He extracted some new promises from the gods who ere unable to fulfil those which they had just made. And so it was done differently, and instead of following his liberated guests to the world again [as required by the Lightbringers' Quest], Argrath went on another, deeper quest, into the darkest parts of the underworld where torture is like breath, and pain like clothing, and where suffering is like food. Argrath helped his countrymen there, and gave hands to Hofstaring Treeleaper, who in turn helped Argrath inside the forge. And at last, with much loss, Argrath found the prisoner, and broken the chains which held him. Chalana Arroy healed the pulped soul and spirit. The ruins of Sheng Seleris rose, chanted three things, and then raised himself up once again. He took two steps, and was back in the world of the living. Argrath followed him from the underworld, and Sheng went to his own people in the Redlands and established himself among them as leader once again.

 

Obviously the Goddess might have built a special hell just for Sheng Seleris, so maybe Seleris' personal hell has nothing to do with the fate of dead Lunars in good standing with the Goddess. But Sheng's Lunar Hell can be reached by a very difficult deeper quest associated with the Lightbringer's Quest, so Lunar realms of the dead are at least tenuously connected to the Gloranthan underworld (maybe).

Edited November 8, 2018 by EricW

[Joerg]

16 minutes ago, Martin said:

would anyone care to speculate on what happens when a follower of a Lunar (or Dara Happan) entity dies?

The usual seven-day path to the Court of the Dead. Yelm's descent made Grandfather Mortal's path a rule.

16 minutes ago, Martin said:

who is the Lunar psychopomp?

Whichever regional deity is tasked with this. In Saird and Sylila this is likely Jajagappa. There might be an aspect of Lodril involved somewhere, after all there are a couple of myths with Lodril descending into the otherworld.

The Lunar Way has the Red Goddess leading the way into the Underworld, starting with the sacrifice of Teelo Norri. Of the Seven Mothers, only Irrippi Ontor and Deezola are fairly free of obvious Underworld activities (unless you count Deezola's resurrection magic). It is unclear to me whether Etyries inherits the Issaries duties.

16 minutes ago, Martin said:

Where do the dead travel to?  do they go right to the deep underworld?

Down the Sunpath - on the trail of Grandpa Mortal and Yelm.

16 minutes ago, Martin said:

who is the judge of the dead?

If not Grandfather Mortal, then possibly another appointee of Bijiif.Direct judgement by dead Yelm would be reserved for the select few high in Dara Happan hierarchy.

[Joerg]

6 minutes ago, EricW said:

There is an interesting reference in King of Sartar;

Obviously the Goddess might have built a special hell just for Sheng Seleris, so maybe Seleris' personal hell has nothing to do with the fate of dead Lunars in good standing with the Goddess. But Sheng's Lunar Hell can be reached by a very difficult deeper quest associated with the Lightbringer's Quest, so Lunar realms of the dead are at least tenuously connected to the Gloranthan underworld (maybe).

Yes, this is a mystical (Outer Realm) hell rather than the land of the dead. And it is obviously one not previously conquered by Sheng during his Kralori-imposed austerities, or it would have been like handing Sheng the key to his cell.

Three places on the Red Goddess' journey come to my mind - her encounter with Gbaji, her Oneness with Blaskarth/the Devil/the (underworld) Ultimate, or the place where she liberated the Bat sent down by Arkat. The Blaskarth encounter is shared with Yanafal Tarnils, which would be well-known to Fazzur, and it makes a suitably awful place to be in.

By extension, it also means that Argrath, in order to return to the Surface World, had to undergo the same experiences as either Yanafal (self-sacrifice in exchange for the Goddess, requiring someone else to undergo the Red Goddess Trial) or the Red Goddess herself (another form of self-sacrifice). I think that Argrath would become the Yanafal to Sheng's Red Goddess in this quest, if that is how Argrath continued the quest..

[jeffjerwin]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Yes, this is a mystical (Outer Realm) hell rather than the land of the dead. And it is obviously one not previously conquered by Sheng during his Kralori-imposed austerities, or it would have been like handing Sheng the key to his cell.

Three places on the Red Goddess' journey come to my mind - her encounter with Gbaji, her Oneness with Blaskarth/the Devil/the (underworld) Ultimate, or the place where she liberated the Bat sent down by Arkat. The Blaskarth encounter is shared with Yanafal Tarnils, which would be well-known to Fazzur, and it makes a suitably awful place to be in.

By extension, it also means that Argrath, in order to return to the Surface World, had to undergo the same experiences as either Yanafal (self-sacrifice in exchange for the Goddess, requiring someone else to undergo the Red Goddess Trial) or the Red Goddess herself (another form of self-sacrifice). I think that Argrath would become the Yanafal to Sheng's Red Goddess in this quest, if that is how Argrath continued the quest..

The problem is that the RG manifested/united with Taraltara after Yanafal Tarnils' intervention. Surely since Sheng is occluded he can't really be "We are All Us" in order to escape? Of course, maybe that is why only Argrath escaped (to my recollection): Sheng was offered the chance to take one person back, and he of course treated the question transactionally.

[The God Learner]

1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

The problem is that the RG manifested/united with Taraltara after Yanafal Tarnils' intervention.

We should also note that the insight that Wakboth = Arachne Solara (Taraltara) probably had all sorts of effects on the fresh goddess, including a grim sort of Illumination that does explain a lot about the Lunars. 

(Assuming that Life of Sedenya has not been discarded.)

[The God Learner]

And speaking of Life of Sedenya, have any of the Hero-level Lhankor Mhy around here translated the following?

[Joerg]

 

2 hours ago, The God Learner said:

And speaking of Life of Sedenya, have any of the Hero-level Lhankor Mhy around here translated the following?

Yes, it is rather plain English. A few of the runes stand for interpunctation rather than letters, and capitals may be different from minuscules. It also has a typo in the last line, a missing letter.

Edited November 8, 2018 by Joerg

[soltakss]

On 11/8/2018 at 4:57 PM, The God Learner said:

And speaking of Life of Sedenya, have any of the Hero-level Lhankor Mhy around here translated the following?

If you have any of those supplements as PDFs, all you need to do is copy the text and paste into a text Editor and the translation appears, as if by magic.

[davecake]

On 11/10/2018 at 3:44 AM, soltakss said:

If you have any of those supplements as PDFs, all you need to do is copy the text and paste into a text Editor and the translation appears, as if by magic.

Yes - but I think that is from Life of Sedenya, which I think only appeared on the web, so it was a Gif requiring manual translation.

[The God Learner]

13 hours ago, davecake said:

requiring manual translation

Thanks, I have actually already received a translation by a kind member of this forum and hence, happily, won't have to try my hand at it. 

I'm looking through the various early Lunar histories and myths to see what a close reading can yield. (I hope to extract some heroquests, artifacts, powers and suchlike.) The main blank spot at this point appears to be the Seven Mothers and what they really did in the planning and execution stages. (And of course many details, such as who was She Who Waits? Who was the "horse tribe shaman" that wounded Humakt? What was the crime of Irrippi Ontor? and more, and more.) 

[EricW]

Just speculating, but I always figured the seven mother’s hero quest was a twisted lightbringer quest.

What happens if lightbringers (including a darkness cultist!!) make it to the court of justice, and ask for the return of a chaos god? 

Perhaps they receive a goddess who is a confusing mixture of light and dark, who plans to heal the world with chaos.

[Sir_Godspeed]

2 hours ago, EricW said:

Just speculating, but I always figured the seven mother’s hero quest was a twisted lightbringer quest.

What happens if lightbringers (including a darkness cultist!!) make it to the court of justice, and ask for the return of a chaos god? 

Perhaps they receive a goddess who is a confusing mixture of light and dark, who plans to heal the world with chaos.

I've always assumed there was something to do with the Osentalka ritual in there too, although evidently no Sunstop (unless you count the raising of the Red Moon to be a kind of warped version of it).

[Charles]

5 hours ago, EricW said:

Just speculating, but I always figured the seven mother’s hero quest was a twisted lightbringer quest.

I think that it the 7M goddess quest taps the same underlying truth as the lightbringer quest without directly re-using any of the actual ritual elements. My guess is that it’s something like ‘if you can assemble and bind a team into something like a clan, at least some of whom will risk complete and permanent destruction in proofs of their rights to pass, then there is the possibility of bringing back a world renewing change’

[The God Learner]

I had some thoughts about lightbringers as well, but, as described in Life of Sedenya, what the construct Teelo Estara does is really a replay of, and improvement on, the Godtime of the RG. 

After being rescued by Yanafal Tarnils, the RG is still not finished. (As an aside, it looks like she fails an appalling number of heroquests through her career, actually.) I haven't found the deeper details on the subsequent apotheosis at Castle Blue yet, but they seem to be available in Fortunate Succession and elsewhere. 

Entirely undescribed, to my knowledge, is how the original myth of the RG was stitched together and planted in the Godtime. I don't really like overusing this one myth, but conceivably there is a Lightbringer Quest with a divine resurrection in there. 

 

[David Scott]

5 hours ago, Charles said:

I think that it the 7M goddess quest taps the same underlying truth as the lightbringer quest without directly re-using any of the actual ritual elements. My guess is that it’s something like ‘if you can assemble and bind a team into something like a clan, at least some of whom will risk complete and permanent destruction in proofs of their rights to pass, then there is the possibility of bringing back a world renewing change’

I think you're right about this Charles, but I'd go further:

Team heroquesting allows a group of individuals to have a greater effect that the sum of the whole. after individual ordeals where success maybe failure and vice-versa (including death). The group may collect boons that as a whole may bringing back a world renewing change.

I'd tried to phrase that so the Godlearners fitted as well as Harmast, Arkat, etc

[Sir_Godspeed]

I've become more skeptical to "frivolous" use of the Lightbringer quest as a narrative tool. A lot of the time it seems to be treated as "that resurrection ritual", whereas if you look at the context of the story itself, it is as much about recognizing one's own wrongs as well as putting nature back into balance.

I guess this highlights something: how much can you really change about any heroquest before it ceases to be that heroquest, is there a fundamental essence to heroquests that cannot be altered, or is everything fair game? It sorta becomes a bit of a narrativistic "Ship of Theseus", how many details can you change before nothing is left of the original story? Does it still count? Is it simply enough to go into the underworld and resurrect someone?

This issue can of course be applied to heroquests in general.

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Charles said:

I think that it the 7M goddess quest taps the same underlying truth as the lightbringer quest without directly re-using any of the actual ritual elements. My guess is that it’s something like ‘if you can assemble and bind a team into something like a clan, at least some of whom will risk complete and permanent destruction in proofs of their rights to pass, then there is the possibility of bringing back a world renewing change’

The sacrifice of Teelo Norri apparently on the onset of the quest makes the Seven Mothers quest a bit different from Orlanth's departure at the Hill of Orlanth Victorious and slowly gathering up his companions.

This "meeting the Lightbringers on the way" does contradict lots of myths that have all four of them firmly established as members of his ring when ruling from his hall, but then we know that Harmast used a composite myth with a good amount of guesstimating and improvisation, and doing it twice within less than twenty years, probably injecting other myths on his second run, stuff learned in Ralios.

Deezola grants Resurrection, which is basically a "go to the gates of the Court of the Dead and bring back a soul before it arrives there" type of ritual quest. If this is based on the Chalana Arroy portion of the LBQ, then the similarities are not surprising.

[jeffjerwin]

3 hours ago, The God Learner said:

I had some thoughts about lightbringers as well, but, as described in Life of Sedenya, what the construct Teelo Estara does is really a replay of, and improvement on, the Godtime of the RG. 

After being rescued by Yanafal Tarnils, the RG is still not finished. (As an aside, it looks like she fails an appalling number of heroquests through her career, actually.) I haven't found the deeper details on the subsequent apotheosis at Castle Blue yet, but they seem to be available in Fortunate Succession and elsewhere. 

Entirely undescribed, to my knowledge, is how the original myth of the RG was stitched together and planted in the Godtime. I don't really like overusing this one myth, but conceivably there is a Lightbringer Quest with a divine resurrection in there. 

 

There are cognate features in the Entekosiad myths, which also involve "failures" and recoveries from those failures. Orlanth also fails a large number of times, but those failures are in the Godtime.

The Red Goddess is a composite of various Moon and planetary deities, all interrelated, and all stretching back to the primeval White Goddess that illuminated the world (and rose and set) before Brightface-Yelm-the Emperor usurped the Sky and Air. The Moon is continually reborn, more or less matrilineally, before she is broken during the Great Darkness. Finally the last remaining sentient moon divine fragment is Ulurda, 'moving blue' - really a small sky-beast spirit (who takes the form of a fox or a mouse) (and possibly Orogeria, the blue huntress who followed Ulurda in the sky)... Ulurda is the immediate predecessor to Teelo Norri, whose body is also inhabited by the other seven parts of the forgotten or minor goddesses as they are found and identified. To 'be' these goddesses means embracing their defeats and even their destruction. But Sedenya the Turner shows how one can be dead and alive at the same time.

The ultimate, 'healed' apotheosis of the Moon would be as the turning cyclical deity called Zaytenera, or the White Moon, who is the Golden Age, daughter of the White Goddess, and who might orbit the Earth alongside her father (Yelm is both her father and her mother's oppressor).

The myth of the Red Goddess is not an artificial construct. It emerges from the history of the Moon goddesses in Peloria, but the 7M did not know all of her details when they began. Certainly they knew of Lesilla/Anhilla, the Blue Moon, and probably of Gerra and Natha.

To walk the paths of the Red Goddess, you must know failure, defeat, and death. Realize you are one of Us!

[The God Learner]

So far, I have found the following sequence described in Godtime.

Zaytenara - Verithurusa - Lesilla - Demiska - Gerra - Rashorana - Ulurda

There are also Natha and Sedenya. There are apparently one white (Zaytenara), two red (Verithurusa, ?), two blue (Lesilla, Rashorana), one invisible (?) and one black moon (?), along with a future white moon. Some of them are tied together in a rather perfunctory manner, like Lesilla and Demiska.

After the Dawn, the RG was first incarnated as Sethir, Verener, Morga, Sendaranpola, Urstenus, Davu, Nysalor, and Kerestus. Then, in 1220, as Teelo Estara. Though why reincarnate a god? Further stitchwork, one presumes. 

Edited November 14, 2018 by The God Learner

[Sir_Godspeed]

My impression was that Gerra was the Black Moon, but I'll admit that might just because she is associated with sorrow.

 

52 minutes ago, The God Learner said:

After the Dawn, the RG was first incarnated as Sethir, Verener, Morga, Sendaranpola, Urstenus, Davu, Nysalor, and Kerestus. Then, in 1220, as Teelo Estara. Though why reincarnate a god? Further stitchwork, one presumes. 

 

This is news to me. Who are these individuals, aside from Nysalor and Estara?

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

My impression was that Gerra was the Black Moon, but I'll admit that might just because she is associated with sorrow.

There should be at least two black moons, but Gerra is one of them.

 

Quote

2 hours ago, The God Learner said:

After the Dawn, the RG was first incarnated as Sethir, Verener, Morga, Sendaranpola, Urstenus, Davu, Nysalor, and Kerestus. Then, in 1220, as Teelo Estara. Though why reincarnate a god? Further stitchwork, one presumes. 

 This is news to me. Who are these individuals, aside from Nysalor and Estara?

Check the Wikia entries for these individuals:

http://glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/Urstenus

http://glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/Davu

http://glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/Kerestus

The first four sound like pre-Dawn incarnations somewhere west of Dara Happa, and Urstenus definitely is Gray Age. Davu is known from Khordavu in the Dawn Age, and Kerestus actually postdates the rise of the Red Goddess - a contemporary of Sheng Seleris.

 

Of the eight celestial sons of Yelm, only Alkor/Shargash and Reladivus/Kargzant are definitely different from forms of Sedenya (and there is some hope for Reladivus to have Lunar aspects, too). Verithurus/a is the original Red Moon after joining Umath in the Underworld, and the others carry other possible Lunar connotations.

Basically all mystics somehow involved with Illumination are predecessors of the Goddess.

[The God Learner]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

This is news to me. Who are these individuals, aside from Nysalor and Estara?

Ho ho ho, an interesting question but certainly not explained in the text (Life of Sedenya). 

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Basically all mystics somehow involved with Illumination are predecessors of the Goddess.

Heheh, that DOES sound like something the Lunars would say.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

only Alkor/Shargash and Reladivus/Kargzant are definitely different from forms of Sedenya

Woah, this is new. I can see some connection with Shargash, given that he is also identified with Tolat, who is a moon god, but Reladivus/Kargzant, ie. one of the Little Suns?

1 hour ago, The God Learner said:

Ho ho ho, an interesting question but certainly not explained in the text (Life of Sedenya). 

Damn, it, Glorantha, my search for easy answers foiled again! *shakes fist*