[Glorantha] FP1: The Yelmalians

Part the first...

Yelmalio in the Far Place

Beginnings of a Pantheon Model and History

Working Draft By John Hughes

  'Old religious and social conflict of the traditional and innovative sun worshippers had weakened many kingdoms'.

• Jalk's Book. (KOS 197)

Note: aspects of this document present a 'gods eye' view of events for creators and shapers. No Gloranthan would describe the Yelmalio pantheon in the way this document does. (Well, perhaps a high ranking Lunar Priestess from Barbarian Cultural Engineering...) This is a bare bones draft, providing salient facts from the history of the Far Place. The final will have much more in the way of colourful racing identities, outrageous exposes and salacious gossip.

This document closely follows the major sources, in particular King of Sartar, but by its nature involves a degree of speculation and extrapolation.

It's an anthropological truism that religion, economics and politics all feed each off each other in fundamental and enduring ways. This essay tracks the rise of the Yelmalio cult as a result of such forces in the Far Place.

The barbarian Solar pantheon of the Far Place is vibrant and strong, and has become the major religion of the Aldachuri. It is has undergone several waves of evolutionary transformation in just a few short generations, and is still evolving. The pantheon is not yet fixed, it is an unfinished work. It is messy, contradictory, and rather desperate in its claims for and groupings of seemingly disparate deities. Which is as it should be.

A certain familiarity with the Far Place tribes is assumed. There is much background information at Questlines:

http://mythologic.info/questlines/farpoint.html

I The Yelmalians

The following excerpt from 'Lagerwater tales' is told from the perspective of an Orlanthi living in an upland clan.

I know their stories as I know their spears. Though blood of our blood, they live in their own lodges, their own quarter of the stead - for purity they say!- set apart from the rest of us. As though their cult were more important than their kin! A hateful arrangement, though perhaps we are all the better for it. As they live apart, there is less chance of quarrel.

Yelmalians. Their kind have split our clan, and brought many cruel deaths upon us. The shadow of kinstrife falls upon us all. I curse the day the first of them set forth from the plains below.

They are kin however, and our ways honour them, for all their strangeness. We toast their deeds and their boasts in hall, and they are welcome always at the moot, though usually only their elders attend. Even when they are all present, they'll seldom argue, and leave all the talking to just one or two whitebeards, and vote as one. The women never speak to a man in public, save their husbands, who they pretend to obey. Can you imagine! They act as if a bloodline all their own, ploughing and planning and quarrelling as one.

Only Ernalda in her wisdom holds our clan together, for the Yelmalians honour her as we do, and count her as wife to their god. It way be true, for the Lusty Earth has taken many lovers, from Fire Tribe as well as Storm. Yet even in the Ernalda rites they will sometimes worship apart.

There is no taint to my tongue - they are good farmers and warriors, and stand steadfast in the wall of shields. I should know, for I've faced them down as enemies often enough. Hard workers too - backs to the plough sometimes even on holy days, when they should be with us at the altars. As spearmen, as fine as any Elmali. But they are different, and always seek to keep themselves apart. Their god weakens our clan.

Always they must make a different way. They will not eat risen bread, and they butcher their meat with strange rites and golden blades. Their women are never warriors, and cover their head amongst strangers. The men wear slit capes hemmed with yellow, and coil their beards like a city dweller, and seldom boast or quarrel. And they marry only their own cult, as if the good of the clan counted for nothing! They mock the precedents of Heort, for they have their own strange rules of justice and marriage and burial. They never try to fit in, they think they are a clan apart.

This I do know. Yelmalio was a wounded light that shone through the darkness, a follower of Elmal: in this we honour the god and remake his hero deeds in the rites. And this much is plain. The Thunder Brothers rescued him from the Ravaging Dark, and the women of Thunderhome succoured him until he again stood proud and bright and was counted as one of the fyrd, a spearman of Elmal. He took our bread and salt, but never joined our tribe.

In the days of the Far Walkers, Vantar son of Taros discovered a Yelmalio temple amidst the ruins of Alda Chur, and he made the god his own. Perhaps this was just, for the golden wheat plains of the Sharl belong to the yellow-fire god, and no one doubts his sovereignty there. The plains might be his, but the uplands are a realm of storm. For this our fathers fought.

Vantar quarreled with his father the Ridgeleaper, and wrought a heavy wyrd against his kin, and between the future tribes of plain and height. Peace was made - for was not a Vantaros our first Prince of the Far Place, acclaimed by all the clans? Yet the seeds of strife remained, nurtured deep in fertile ground.

In the time of my grandfather the Alda Churi made war upon Elmal in the name of their own god, and many was the clan - even in the wild gors! - who tore down the altars of the Loyal Spear and erected golden sundisks in their place. Yelmalian missionaries came among us with new ways from the north, from the land of the new-risen moon, and they challenged our own sun warriors in the hero rites. In the Sunspear ritual they showed us all the Yelmal light that the Elmali could not face, the golden light that blinded and burned. So it was that many embraced the power of the bright new god. Then came Harvar Ironfist, and he tore the ancient wounds anew for private purpose, for his enemy is the Storm and he hates the free clans of the high country.

There have always been Yelmalians in our clan: they are my kin, and I embrace them, and honour them, for all their strange ways. But the servants of the demon moon have broken us apart, and made us enemies, and the Orlanthi and Elmali clans of the gors are harried and warred upon by the men of the plain. Even our tribal king has swallowed the lowland sun, and he plots against the free men of the Tresdarnii. Conla Brightshield has broken apart the tribal ring of our ancestors, and he chants new laws and new customs, new ways of making kings and heroes.

I say the reckoning must come.

We in the wild gors defy our king, and keep close watch upon the Yelmalians within our gates. The reckoning must come. Elmal will protect our stead, and will guide our spears in the necessary hour. But can you turn a blade against kin, your own kin? To strike a kinsman is to strike yourself. It cannot, it must not be. But the reckoning will come. Received on Wed 12 Jul 2006 - 07:08:22 EEST