From: David Gadbois (gadbois@cs.utexas.edu)
Date: Fri 10 Dec 1993 - 10:12:46 EET
From: carlsonp@wdni.com (Carlson, Pam)
Date: 8 Dec 93 20:49:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 2592
As an old time RQ'er new to Glorantha, please excuse my ignorance, but this repeating your god's failures stuff confuses me. Does the Yelmalian in the above example HAVE to lose? Is he possibly capable of defeating the Wind Lord? Does he simply choose to loose? Is it considered bad form to win, thereby succeeding where one's god failed? If he does win, may he keep his weapons and armor and use them against the Death Lord?
As I understand it, the heroquest at the Hill of Gold where the quester: (1) gets armed by the Olanthi representative instead of being disarmed; (2) beats up the Zorak Zorani (thus retaining fire instead of losing it); and (3) does the fertility thing with Inora instead of getting the cold shoulder; is an Elmal heroquest.
The hypothesis I had last year was that Yelmalio was created (or, at least, linked into the Hill of Gold metamorphosized from something he wasn't "before") by an Sartarite Elmalian hero who purposefully "lost" the quest. This was done in response to the Lunar invasion in order to align themselves with the Solar elements of the the Lunar culture perhaps so as to lessen Lunar aggressiveness. (As you will see in Home of the Bold, the presence of more tractable Solar types in Sartar has allowed the Lunars to seek a diplomatic solution rather than pursuing a scorched-earth policy as they have in the past.)
If this indeed the God-Learner explanation of the quest, then it would do well to see what else Yelmalio (formerly an Elven diety, I think) is doing around the Hill of Gold for some clues to what things were like "before."
Mind you, this does not explain how the Yelmalians were around several hundred years before Dragon Pass was a gleam in the Red Emperor's eye, but, hey, that's Glorantha for you.
The Yelmalian quest being the way it is seems to be central to the nature of the cult. I am not sure if it would be even conceivable for an Yelmalian good enough to be a hero to even try to win the quest. This argument does not hold the other way around -- the Hill of Gold seems fairly minor in Elmalian mythology compared to his role as the servant of Orlanth. So it is presumably easy (and the course of least resistance) for an Elmalian to lose the quest, though perhaps it required some effort to screw up so completely.
I also caught a glimpse of some Yelmic references to the Hill of Gold in a draft of Greg's new book (I don't remember the particulars; wish I had paid more attention to that bit), so expect for things to get stirred up even more.
--David Gadbois
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