The Blue Wizard speaks out...

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From: Peter Metcalfe, CAPE Canty (CHEN190@csc.canterbury.ac.nz)
Date: Mon 05 Sep 1994 - 06:41:39 EEST

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Oh god. A very big post from friday full of my favourite speculative topics. you have been warned!

Joerg

>Right Air: ths title might apply to any Earth deity which succeeds to
>tame a Storm god, and the "Right" might be verbal tense. Earth wins over
>Storm, right?

Given that Yelm originally tried to name Umatum by this name, I belive that Entenkos is and was a Storm Diety.

>The symbols around GW II-1's legs could symbolize air. My new
>interpretation would be plants: Entekos is the deity under whose
>feet plants sprout.

Plants IMO also. I am still believing that II-1 is Dendara, with the following places on the Gods Wall her cult stations (similar to Yelm the Youth, Elder the Archer, Sun Lord, Yelm Imperator and so on)

>II-2 to II-5 are the four aspects of womanhood, with Naveria and Lesilla
>somewhat overlapping.

>If Naveria is the goddess of wives, whose wife was she? (The Dara Happan
>emperor's in the story Greg read at Convulsions?)

I think Naveria is actually the wife of Yelm. Given that Dendara is the bright face of the Earth brightened by Yelm (and Gorgorma is the dark face - look at the moon for what I describing), Dendara would be the daughter of Yelm and when Yelm married her in Naveria (IMO this explains why the land goddess Naveria is seen as the marriage aspect of Dendara) this would fit the myth.

>Ditto for Lesilla, goddess of mothers. Whose mother was she?

Presumably Lesilla was the place where Dendara had her children.

>Lesilla's rune reminds very strongly of Moon: both the half and the
>quarter moon. Plentonius fails to make the Lunar connection.

Mr P. failed to make the Lunar connection because he didn't know of one! No red moon in 244 ST and the Blue Moon is secret! It wasn't until Thorloss the scribbler made a study that we even knew of a moon rune.

>[Description about the Entekosiad]

>Possibly
>they are a mixture of both pre-Dara Happan and Flood-time myths, confused
>by later oral tradition.

My feelings on the matter.

> If this is the
> case, does she exist before Aether exists? If she does, she can't be
> an entity of air.

>Only a mother of air (gods) (as well as a mother of moons, which are
>unlikely to have existed before there was a sky, too).

If my theory on Dendara being II-1 is correct, then were is Entekos? I place her as I-12. This gives Umatum and Entekos *transparent clothing* which nobody else haves thus indicating that they are air gods.

>DHBE p.45 has the Red Goddess as a granddaughter of Dayzatar, but gives
>no name. Plentonius doesn't give other descendants from Dayzatar than
>Ourania, her daughters, and (perhaps) Pole Star.

>Strange enough that the arch-chauvinist Plentonius admits a mistress...

Perhaps it is an hint of what the original dara happan society was like. The Ourania is a vigin mistress could indicate that the woman originally had a role in the bureacracy of Anaxial Dara Happa. Another hint of this kind is the Imperial Assembly which is based on the Aetheric Assembly of Dayzatar. Not something we would expect from the Divine Authority of Yelm...

>When Plentonius recounts the fall of Mernita, he mentions a "false sun"
>Sedenya, who crushes down onto her city. Mernita is marked with the old
>(or Pelorian) form of the Moon Rune (according to "The Perfect Sky").

What does this look like to all those who do not have 'The perfect sky'?. Also Nick identified Naveria as Sedenya.

>We know that a moon crushed down onto northern Peloria - the Blue Moon,
>whose ruins formed the Blue Moon Plateau.

Part of a moon, to be more precise.

>Could this be Plentonius'
>version of this event?

Perhaps. Sedenya has some connotations of fiery powers (P. referes to her as the sun that comes and goes) which modern annilla does not have.

>Ashrill, the land of Verapur, is shown in the DHBE
>maps as the east shore of the Thunder Delta, southwest of the Blue Moon
>Plateau. Dosvolos, the original land of Mernita, could be covered by
>the remains of the Blue Moon...

The Crown of Mernita was found in Elz Ast!

>> It seems to me that the rune may
>> equally have an origin in the mix of light and earth (afterall, we have
>> Moon Rocks, not Moon Water).

>The same would apply to the planetary deities, the children of Yelm
>and Dendara. Still we have no incling what makes a stellar body a moon.
>Is it the "glow that is not light"?

I think before the Red Moon arose, the word moon was largely a convention and depended from culture to culture. The blue moon was so known because she was a moon that was blue and the queen of a very important empire. It is only with the identification of the Moon Rune that we have gone to thinking that all moons have the Lunar Rune.

>I doubt that the Red Goddess has water connections other than Annilla or
>the Young Elementals, or later marriages into local pantheons. Annilla's
>Blue Moon is the moon of water, as its colour indicates, too.

I was thinking of Darkness and Light or something like that. Of course the Lunar Rune may not even be a element at all given the association with balnce, time and illusion. It may be that the only reason why the Red Moon is such is that the Orlanth myth of her being a wound in orlanth's body is correct. This of course menas that the original rite of creating the Red Goddess involved a means of wounding Orlanth.

>The identification of Entekos with Molanni was not made by Plentonius,
>but by us. It seems obvious. Is it?

A valid point that even I concede.

>Plentonius painfully fails to mention Vadrus, of whom we are told
>earlier that he was a noted enemy of the Dara Happan Sun Gods.

I think Vadrus is Gods Wall I-13. Given that he was killed before time, P. might have had to name him as Umatum.

>> I concede this as unlikely, but I would ask whether the
>> beastriders might not have reached Dara Happa prior to the battle as
>> mercenaries in the employ of the Theyalans who had been around since the
>> 1st century reawakening old spirits.

>Maybe Molanni was adopted by the Horse Rider Warlords as a weapon against
>the Theyalans.

Perhaps after the war in the sky when Kargzant was weakened.

>> But if
>> the tripolis had a unified mythos already, why would this be needed?

>To ascend to the throne for the first time, Khordavu had had to kick
>out Upon Hilltops aka Eusibus, son of Shargash.

And also note that he had to acknowledge Alkoth as one of the seven Anaxialite cities. Perhaps nobody knew what the cities were before this time? This could mean that P.'s maps of the cities in the first map of Dara Happa (during Murharzarm's reign) is a fake as it does not correspond to the last stable sky.

>> So...my thought is that the tripolis did not have a unified mythos, that
>> each city and its surrounding area had its own unique mythos that
>> Plentonius merged together.

I agree that each city had its own ruling deity, which was the one true Emperor of Dara Happa (unless a Warlord had occupied that position). The names Tripolis, Dekapolis or Septoli indicate a non-centralistic structure rather than one central authority, maybe (like the Celestial Court) a gremium of rulers (not unlike the council of egi which makes up Takenegi, or the Red Emperor).

>> Yelm, therefore, is a manufactured deity!

>Yes, but differently so.

I should really explain my earlier posting and state that my belief is that the Dara happan cult of Yelm is actually worshipping the Sun through the paths of Murharzarm. The nomads of Pent originally worshipped Kargzant who would now appear to be Yelm Kargzant. I am thinking that the Solar Orb is too powerful to be worshipped directly and that all the Sun cults we have are actually worshipping their avatars (Ehilm in KoL, Murharzarm in Dara Happa, Victorious Zenith in Bliss in Ignorance and perhaps Solf in Teshnos - Nils?).

>Even the name Yelm seems to have been adopted from the Theyalans, who
>might have found it elsewhere - did they ever contact Kralorela?

They seem to have done. The Cult of Dendara is found in both places but I'm thinking that there has been sporadic contact between the two civilizations like China went to India for its buddhist texts.

>The
>Waertagi could have transported them after they had settled in the
>Rightarm Islands.

The Waertagi would have mentioned Ehilm.

>Or Yelm was the name of the sun in the drowned Spike
>civilisation somehow surviving into Theyalan myth, possibly via the
>aldryami.

Possible.

>The closest thing to "Yelm" the Dara Happans offer is "Yuthu", meaning
>"god". The first time that the element "elm" appears in the emperors'
>names is with Wanthanelm (epithet "the Cursed", btw), Mahzanelm,
>Erzanelm, Khorzanelm, all of Khordavu's dynasty. It coexists with
>"davu", probably another gentile deity.

BTW Darve seems to mean foe of. We have a general Darvedekorgos who would thus be Foe of Deshkorgos, a fourth row god in the Gods Wall.

>Maybe a linguistical analysis of the emperors' names will yield more
>hints - I feel that ever since KoS Greg pays attention to linguistics.

certainly.

>> and Shargash (or the earlier name Nemarthshar) in the south.

>Good linguistical connection. Shargash's identification with Alkoth seemed
>a bit artificial to me when I first encountered it. He seems too much
>like Orlanth to me...

Shar means Red. We know that much. Any idea on what Gash means? However Shargash appears to have been a mortal human during the reign of Murharzarm.

Nils

>Sandy writes:
>> I suspect giant eagles in the Shan Shan
>> side of the Wastes, since the so-called "Eagle Hsunchen" (i.e., wind
>> children) are known there, so presumably there's eagles, too.

>Am I the only one to find Wind Children suspicious creatures? They
>have feathered wings and are known as eagle hsunchen in Kralorela.
>This would indicate bird/sky connections, but they are in fact air
>related. This is weird.

I think the eagle hsunchen and the Wind children are two different cultures. The Players book in G:CotHW indicates so. The eagle hsuchen might be that of the bird rebels and the worshippers of Veng who were driven from Dara happa by the Jenarong Gamatae.

The Kralori may not notice depending on how interested they are in Hsunchen Lore. Certainly the runespell to get wings would transform the arms into wings. I'm thinking that the Windchildren are the Sky Spears of Genert's army.

--Peter Metcalfe

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