From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@sartar.toppoint.de)
Date: Sat 06 Aug 1994 - 16:03:20 EEST
Peter Metcalfe in X-RQ-ID: 5449
> I think you are wrong. Worlath is worshipped in Fonrit as a associated cult of
> Tondiji in Gods of Glorantha (Pantheon locations) and in the same sentence it
> mentions Yelm. If Worlath were simply a bad pronouciation then I would have
> thought it said Ehilm.
Not necessarily. The God Learners of Umathela just chose a number of false gods and imposed them on an unsuspecting populace. They chose Worlath even though some variation of Orlanth was worshipped elsewhere in Umathela (although the name indicates that the name of the storm god worshipped by the "Orlanthi" ferried there might have been Umath; this whole incident _might_ have made Orlanth the universal name for the ruling storm god).
> Furthermore it is stated in the Western soldiers world
> view in the Players book of G:CotHW that the False Gods were Ice Age westerners
> which would be news to Orlanth (born in Kerofinela) and Yelm (born in heaven).
One important quest for herodom and/or godhood was to attain divine birth. At least some of these quests were made retrospectively; or they identified two different myths as "being one, really".
> Furthermore in Trollpak, it talks about the Galalinni (ralian Horse Folk) as
> being a diffirent culture than the Horse nomads of Dara Happa which allowed the
> Second Council to recruit them as trustworthy mercenaries. In Bertalors
> document (elder secrets), it is stated that the Galaninni worshipped Ehilm.
Yes. IMO the Ralian god of the sun, the fiery orb of the sky, and not at any time the emperor of the world. Those who attended at Greg's reading at Convulsion might have registered the suggestion that everything Plentonius said might have been a construct. Maybe Ehilm of East Ralios was the fiery orb.
Then there was a wizard of one of the elemental schools of sorcery of the Brithini (still active e.g. at Sog City, I was told, although not part of the University hierarchy except maybe within the Faculty of Alchemy) who got so enmeshed in his studies of fire magics that he finally identified himself with the fiery orb and its entity, and took its name and character traits. (This is a theist view; the Brithini would say that all impersonifications of natural forces originally were sorcerers of their race. For all we know, they might be correct, and be the diminished descendants of the divine race who forgot about their origin. But that's a theist view, again.)
> Lastly a distinction is made between the Stutifying magic of the False gods and
> ineffectual magic of the the Pagan Gods in the Western Soldiers outlook. (this
> implies that the false gods teach some type of sorcery but i'm not sure)
Possibly the False Gods allowed their worshippers to use sorcery as personal magic, although the magic systems fail to classify Gloranthan magic exactly. (I would prefer if the magic of Glorantha was a continuous spectrum of magics between a few extremes or defined states, three of which are the magic systems of the RuneQuest Sight.) However, the Umathela write-up (from Breakout 34) states that in the False Gods revolt, the priests of Worlath, Ehilm and Jogrampur displayed effective magic and destroyed the universty of Yoranday (which had conducted the experiment). The fact that this came as a surprise shows that they had no effective magic before (not that effective, it is). I'd say they employed not Jrusteli sorcery, but something closer to divine magic.
> The Jrusteli in my view began to systematically explore the False Gods and made
> the mistake that False Gods were actually part of the pagans. The end
> result being that their worship survives in Umathela and Fonrit. Zrethus in my
> view is no longer worshipped the RuneQuest Sight is now lost if my assumption
> about Zrethus teaching the RuneQuest Sight is correct. I even thought of a
> False God counterpart to Issaries: His name was Mammon.
I like the way you produce another False God from the Bertalor texts. This gives us quite a number of False Gods or Western mispronunciations:
The Nine:
Urtiam (->Mostal, maybe rather Acos) Nakala (->Dame Darkness) Sramak (->Zaramaka rather than Sramak?)Gata (->Empress Earth)
Plus the False Gods from Umathela and mentioned in the Prosopaedia:
Worlath
Humct
Jogrampur
There are the represenatatives of the elements, with air doubly and fire/light triply represented (Worlath/Umath, Zrethus/Ehilm/Lodril), and only a few powers (Urtiam: Stasis; Uleria: Fertility, Humct: Death; Zrethus: Truth; missing are Disorder, Harmony, Moblity and Illusion, although Jogrampur is a candidate for the latter).
Did the Westerners have a whole Celestial Court of False Gods?
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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