From: David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au)
Date: Tue 10 Sep 1996 - 18:24:57 EEST
>Does anyone have any details on the following cults which were mentioned
>recently please?
>Fonrit - Ompalam, Artmal
I don't know much about Ompalam. He is the god of slavery. In some
places he is seen as a destructive and dreadful force, in other places he
is an important god who helps keep civilisation running properly. His cult
accordingly varies. I don't know much about him, but I assume his
worshippers can vary from slavetraders that are paragons of evil and
depravity to well intentioned servants of the state.
Artmal is the old god who used to rule Pamaltela long ago, before
the great darkness. He went to fight chaos, and was beaten by it. He was a
son of the blue moon, and the Veldang were his people. They are still his
only worshippers. Along the costal cities he is a slave god of a slave
people, among the Veldang of inner Pamaltela he is still thought of highly
(but they are a broken people, irrelevent to the world).
The one spell of his that has been written up is called Vesper, and
it casts a glow over a reasonably large area that strengthens all his
worshippers within it (adds an MP, I think). This glow is now bright red,
but Sandy once told me that it used to be blue, and only turned red when
the red moon rose (the only consequence of its rising in Pamaltela I know
of).
IMG Artmal is known to the Doraddi of central Pamaltela, but is not
worshipped. He is an important figure to their myth though, largely as an
object lesson in what was wrong with the world before Pamalt. Artmal is the
bad ruler who thinks only like a warrior. He ruled a great empire, and
loved to conquer. When chaos came, he went to fight it, but he fought it
alone as warriors do, and lost. Pamalt is more than that, he is the true
chief not just a warrior, and knows the warrior skills of fighting and
leadership, but also the womens skills of organisation and coordination and
cooperation. When Pamalt fought, everyone fought with him, and he beat
chaos. Vangono the warrior god is a bit like Artmal, but he is the good
warrior who does what Pamalt says and does not wish to conquer.
To the Doraddi Jraktal is a perfect example of the superiority of
Pamalt as well. Artmal fought him, and failed dreadfully, and his people
became Tappers for while. Pamalt fought him, and beat him, and Tapping is
unknown among the Doraddi. The Six Legged Empire tried to bring Jraktal
back as well, but Hon Hoolbiktu defeated Jraktal again, because he walked
Pamalts Right Footpath.
>Andrew Joelson joelsona@cpdmfg.cig.mot.com -|-
>aka Rupert von Harl; Cults of Seven Mothers, Yanifal Tarnils and Humakt |
> "Contradiction? No, I always did tend to kill chaos creatures anyway" /
This still annoys me - if he was in my campaign he'd be asked to
accompany a three eyed chaos magician retainer to the provincial governor
on a tour of the barbarian tribes. That would make him choose his side of
the fence :-) - or see how he copes when his YT comrades are resurrected.
Why any good Lunar would want to mess with backwards barbarian worship
practices is beyond me anyway :-)
Cheers
David
------------------------------
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #183
*******************************
RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark
of Chaosium. With the exception of previously copyrighted material,
unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the
author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to
excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for
electronic retrieval.
Send electronic mail to Majordomo@hops.wharton.upenn.edu with "help"
in the body of the message for subscription information on this and
other mailing lists.
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 16:52:51 EEST