From: Andrew Joelson (joelsona@cpdmfg.cig.mot.com)
Date: Mon 21 Jul 1997 - 16:18:38 EEST
Nick sez:
>it's well known that Pelorian myth was "virgin territory", untouched by
>the God Learners to any significant extent; and that the ritual of the
>Seven Mothers was a dire magical conspiracy.
clay@Incite.com
> Surely the God Learners entered Peloria. They spread like the plague.
The GodLearners didn't spread 'like the plague', it took time
and effort to learn the ways of the people they encountered, you know,
the 'learning' phase of GodLearning.
Nor did the GL's enter Peloria in any significant manor. The GL's
drove Syranthir ForeFront out of Fronela, via Charg/Rathorela. Syranthir
took his Ten Thousand (?) and entered what is now Carmania via Brolia/Spol.
He beat up the locals and founded Carmania, named after his son Karmanos.
No way Carmanians were letting ancestral enemies anywhere near without a
knock'em down, drag'em out fight.
On the southern front, the Empire of the Wyrm's Friends was
bottling up Dragon Pass, and opposing the GLs in the Shadowlands. So
how were the GLs supposed to get into Peloria?
> The Seven Mothers are all flawed (flawed Lightbringers?). The Seven
> Mothers attempt a Light Bringer quest, which allows them, among other
> things, to bring a god back with them.....
SIGH, not again. I'm sorry if I appear to be snapping at you,
but I guess you weren't on this digest when the big debate over this
issue went on. After the dust cleared, the consensus was that there
were similarities between the rites used to restore the Red Goddess
to her mortal form (Rufelza). (Brief summary to follow.) But the
RMG rites were not exclusively LBQ, it was only a major part. The
burden of proof was not met to say that the RMG ritual was a 'twisted
LBQ', though there are many people on this list that still think so.
A brief and hopefully accurate summary, from memory. Irripi
Ontor brought considerable Orlanthi Lore to the conspiracy, and the
Seven Mothers would have been fools to ignore the strong material in
the LBQ. But the 7Ms weren't trying to restore a dead goddess; the
RMG was shattered, not slain. The 7Ms collected the pieces (one of
which was still alive), and re-integrated her. So the end goal was
not the same. The 7Ms drew on lots of Perlorian myths; some Solar/DH
stuff, some Darkness stuff from Spoll (Jakaleel was a Darkness-type,
and possibly a troll), and a bunch of who-knows-what.
And that was just the start. All this effort only produced
the spirit of the Goddess in a mortal shell. She had to perform ex-
tensive questing on the GodPlane to re-attain her Divine Stature.
(But the mortal shell was sufficient to drive back the Carmanians.)
There is a lot of pro-Orlanthi bias in the game, what with
the 'freedom loving' Orlanthi rebelling vs the Lunars, but the Orlanthi
are not the center of the world, and everything that happens doesn't
revolve around them or their myths.
> In the end, if KoS is to be believed, wasn't the creation of the RG
> an evil on the same order and with as dire consequences as loosing
> Nysalor/Gbaji into the world?
KoS is to be taken figuretively, not literally. It is heavily
biased and self-contradictory. Greg Stafford wrote it that way on
purpose. It is history written by the winning side, in some cases
generations after the events occured.
> ...would there be a Red Goddess if there had been no God Learners?
> If there had been no Gbaji?
A two part question. Okay.
A) If there had been no GodLearners, there would have been no Carmania,
see above. Centuries later the Carmanians were gobbling up all of
Peloria, and deposing local rulers. Two of them were Queen Deezola
and Duke Yanafal Tar'nils. These are two of the Seven Mothers. The
whole goal of re-storing the RMG was to find a way to fight off the
Carmanians. This is a long term politico/cultural chain of events.
Without the GLs, no RMG, but without the GLs, history in at least
half of Glorantha would be different. No direct GL -> RMG connection.
Please note that I am talking about the efforts to re-assemble the
RMG. She existed (Veritherusa?) during the Golden Age.
B) The creation of Nysalor and the war with Arkat occured even before
the GLs (who copied Arkat's techniques in many ways). No direct
connection, though the RMG met Nysalor on the GodPlane and learned
Illumination from him, or beat it out of him, (depending on the source
you are refering to).
GC V in less than a week! yeah!
Andrew
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