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I personally love Elmal and Yelmalio as an example of how the the gods – all gods – are weird, fundamentally unknowable entities that humans only every perceive tiny fragments of. Like elephants being described by blind men. That being said, I don't like Yelmalio overtaking Elmal among the Orlanthi, largely because there's very little done to justify it from a narrative standpoint. A bunch of horse-loving, fire-welding, loyalty-valuing Orlanthi near-universally decide to abandon their identity to become a bunch of isolated mormon notSpartans? That's potentially an interesting story, reminiscent of fundamentalist movements IRL. But you're gonna need to sell me on it, which Chaosium hasn't. I also have personal theory that Jeff Richards can't handle that Robin Laws is a much better writer of Glorantha than he is, and sidelines Elmal out of pure awkward provincialism. Haystack fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 03:34
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I mean, the real problem with "Elmal is just Yelmalio" is that from an in-character perspective, announcing that Elmal is just Yelmalio doesn't actually resolve anything.
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Sep 1, 2023 03:53
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It's deeply ironic how similar the whole metatextual situation regarding the Yelmalio vs. Elmal thing is to the Goddess Switch. Yelmalio and Elmal are both the same kind of god, and also can't really fulfill each other's roles within their respective cultures/pantheons. This brings up the grim question of who's trying to subsume Elmal to Yelmalio, and what sort of devious God-Learner Heroquesting they're using to do such a thing.
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Sep 1, 2023 04:07
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There's no reason why Elmal has be be Yelmalio, either. When the sun beats down on you with merciless and uncaring heat, that's Yelm. When it warms you in the winter or ripens your crops, that's Elmal. Both things can be true, and in fact, in Glorantha, just two things being true is a pretty small number. "Elmal joined the Storm Tribe after Chalana Arroy healed his blindness and showed him the corruption in the court of Yelm" is a mythical explanation for why Elmal is part of the Storm Tribe. The interaction of two culture heroes, one an Elmali clan leader, and one a gifted Ernaldan healer of the line of Vingkot, which lead to the integration of the Berentheli as an Orlanthi clan after their migration from the collapsing city of Nivorah is also true. It's a materialist explanation of Elmal's presence in the Storm Tribe. It's just that the guy currently at the helm at Chaosium doesn't like a body of work that he wasn't involved in, so he's done a hackjob of removing it. wiegieman fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 04:07
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Yelmalio does have self-resurrection, so that’s something. Yet another way of considering the situation: the Hill of Gold heroquest is central and important to multiple pantheons, and a locus for questers. When Yelmalio went there, Zorak Zoran bushwacked him and took his fire powers, and bad things happened to him in multiple other encounters, but the world itself would not let him die. When Elmal went there, he fought off most of those encounters and didn’t die or lose his fire powers. A possibility is that either a powerful heroquester tried to save Yelmalio’s powers by winning all the fights and accidentally created a new sun god, OR a powerful heroquester wanted to weaken Elmal or prevent his joining the Storm clan and ended up creating Yelmalio. Another possibility is that this is a Yelm/Orlanth issue. Both stories illustrate things central to the Sun and Storm tribes; from Yelm’s perspective, no son of his could possibly have done what Elmal did, so Elmal is a false god, while from Orlanth’s perspective, the story of Elmal makes perfect sense and even explains how his people survived when he was on the Lightbringer’s quest. The issue here is that the Orlanthi would have no objection to the Yelmalio story either, so both cults can exist in Orlanthi culture while Elmal has no place in Solar worship. That provides a wedge case, and the Lunars would be expected to push Yelmalio worship over Elmal worship because that strengthens them and weakens their enemies. In fiction, then, the Elmal cult should be embattled and the Yelmalians ascendent during the Lunar high tide.
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Sep 1, 2023 05:13
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Honestly, I don't even think it's about Six Ages so much as just the fact that Yelmalio existed in the 80s when Jeff has his biggest nostalgia for Glorantha while Elmal didn't exist till later. Also honestly, Yelmalio's myth is actually pretty cool, it's too bad the Sun Domers are all so uncool though. Gorelab fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 06:40
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wiegieman posted:Elmal mostly comes up in A-Sharp's work on KoDP, Six Ages, and Six Ages 2. In case you didn't pick up on it, I'm an Elmal supporter who thinks that homogenizing the Orlanthi sun god into the Solar frontier god is lame (especially if you're doing it because you think computer games are Not Invented Here.) Elmal being the Orlanthi sun god does then raise the question of what the Lightbringer Quest was for, was it just to get Yelm to give up some of his power to make Elmal strong enough to fill in his father's role as the sun? If so it doesn't seem like he's making amends for his wrongs or compromising since he's giving his subordinate more power which means making himself more powerful. I've read a bit about the theory that the Lightbringer Quest was originally the Lifebringer Quest intended to resurrect Ernalda but that it supposedly got hijacked to bring back Yelm or something. Nanomashoes posted:Yelmalio also loving sucks mechanically in Runequest. His biggest spells are catseye and light wall, which are only really useful for fighting trolls. He doesn't even get Shield, despite being famed for his endurance. If you want a formation fighting god, Polestar is way better. That's why I was curious about how the two god have evolved mechanically. Discussions about them often bring up which is better mechanically as to why Elmal is better, which strikes me as rather irrelevant to the truth of the matter. I read something about how Yelmalio was weaker in the current Runequest rules than previously, he didn't have Shield and couldn't summon Fire Elementals like he used to &c. Someone also brought up Elmal not being able to summon Fire Elementals and being extremely hostile to the Sky pantheon because of his adoption into the Storm but I don't know if those were actual rules or just some head canon. wiegieman posted:There's no reason why Elmal has be be Yelmalio, either. Isn't the issue though that there's only one sun in the sky? There are lots of different wind patterns which move around, which is where all the different Storm gods who embody various winds come from but there's one atmosphere which is Umath. Do the Orlanthi or Dara Happans distinguish between when the sun is their sun helping them out and when it's the other guys's sun screwing them over as part of the normal environmental cycle?
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Sep 1, 2023 07:14
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I will dissent and say I think Yelmalio is both cool and interesting. The only path to Dayzatar, he who owns Truth? Rule! Keeper of the truth a rekindling, the truth so hard to 'get' without walking it that many of his followers become grade-A assholes? Respectable. Restoring the truth of being the Loyal Thane, but also having mercenary followers who betray the three empires they've historically served to end the civil war between Orlanthi and Lunar (Y)Elmalions? Owns. reignonyourparade posted:If nothing else I feel like his "it's definitely 100% the yelmalions that are right" really goes against the spirit of the setting Again, I feel like this is done kinda as an in-game point at well, to make sure there's some continuity (we are also told that the Elmal and Yelmalio cults are culturally different), but it's for sure also Jeff not liking him. Narsham posted:Yelmalio does have self-resurrection, so that’s something. Ormi explained it to me like this: These secrets are those of the Young God, but unlike the other Young Gods (say, Orlanth, or Yelm), Yelmalio does not overthrow the Old and take their place, but continues upon the path. And for this, he reaches Youth again, and becomes renewed, completing the circuit. Thus... if one ever truly accomplishes the feat of the Hill of Gold, surviving the entire time no matter the onslaught, one becomes physically immortal and incorruptible. Which is a lot to take in, but very cool. E: \/ I just don't see it. Stuff changes every edition, and in reality there's just more versions of (Y)Elmal(io) out there than there was before. Different things to different tribes, all at the same time. We can do it like we want to. Tias fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 07:19
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I think Jeff made things worse by also just tying himself into knots to justify it and just making it dumber. Especially when apparently all the Heroquest Elmal stuff is apparently wrong but also written to get to this point.
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Sep 1, 2023 07:25
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13th Age Glorantha had, I think, a mention in the Hill of Gold heroquest that a Yelmalio worshipper who completes it without losing all their stuff gets to wear the color red afterwards, an otherwise forbidden color. I'v been planning on writing a Sir Talor worshipping Laughing/Crying knight class for that game, if I ever have the time. I always liked that concept and story.
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Sep 1, 2023 09:13
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How strong are Elmal's fire powers? It'd seem weird if the Storm Tribe has access to more powerful fire magic than the Solar Tribe's frontier areas.
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Sep 1, 2023 09:44
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Herman Merman posted:How strong are Elmal's fire powers? It'd seem weird if the Storm Tribe has access to more powerful fire magic than the Solar Tribe's frontier areas. Pretty strong, really. Though mind you, powerful fire magic is... kind of an odd spot for solar pantheons. Because you see, the most powerful fire combat magic around? It's actually Oakfed, a praxian spirit society, although it is powerful in a different way. Because solar cults generally focus on how the sun is not on the earth, they do not generally do stuff like dropping the sun's flames directly on people. I mean, they can still do that, but it's not the focus. But, Oakfed is one of the lowfires, the fires of earth and humanity. Specifically, the wildfire. The problem with oakfed isn't him not being powerful enough, it's that he is too powerful. Once he's summoned, he is very, very hard to stop burning. He will burn and consume everything until you contain him or until there is nothing left to burn. NewMars fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 12:26
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Herman Merman posted:How strong are Elmal's fire powers? It'd seem weird if the Storm Tribe has access to more powerful fire magic than the Solar Tribe's frontier areas. Thats’s the thing about Elmal; if he ever stops being Orlanth’s loyal thane, then his followers stop being part of the storm tribe. Instead you would have a situation like the Grazelands, where a minority of mounted flame archers rule a larger group of mostly-disarmed Vendrefi. Or whatever the Pentan Yelmic horse warriors were up to that made the Lunars think it would be a good idea to take up worship of a six-armed horse eating demon. And the thing is, the mythic progression of the Greater Darkness did actually have Elmal take over when Orlanth left on the LightBringers Quest. You don’t marry your bosses wife (I.e. Ernalda) if you expect him to come back.
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Sep 1, 2023 15:45
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To be fair, almost everyone who is anyone has married Ernalda at one point or another.
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Sep 1, 2023 16:31
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White Coke posted:Elmal being the Orlanthi sun god does then raise the question of what the Lightbringer Quest was for, was it just to get Yelm to give up some of his power to make Elmal strong enough to fill in his father's role as the sun? If so it doesn't seem like he's making amends for his wrongs or compromising since he's giving his subordinate more power which means making himself more powerful. I've read a bit about the theory that the Lightbringer Quest was originally the Lifebringer Quest intended to resurrect Ernalda but that it supposedly got hijacked to bring back Yelm or something. The simple answer is that there have always been many suns, but Yelm is The Sun whose presence is necessary for cosmic order. Many of the Lesser Suns stepped in to try to do his job during the Darkness, but none of them were up to the task. Even Elmal could only protect his people with Orlanth's help, Yelmalio tried to be his father and failed.
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Sep 1, 2023 17:48
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I think the Sun Dragon could do it. I just need to figure out what it is.
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Sep 1, 2023 18:24
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White Coke posted:Elmal being the Orlanthi sun god does then raise the question of what the Lightbringer Quest was for, was it just to get Yelm to give up some of his power to make Elmal strong enough to fill in his father's role as the sun? If so it doesn't seem like he's making amends for his wrongs or compromising since he's giving his subordinate more power which means making himself more powerful. I've read a bit about the theory that the Lightbringer Quest was originally the Lifebringer Quest intended to resurrect Ernalda but that it supposedly got hijacked to bring back Yelm or something. By my understanding this is not a theory so much as "historical reality" as much as anything gets to be historical reality in Glorantha, the discovering of the Lightbringer's variation of the Lifebringer's quest and subsequently completely subsuming the Lifebringer's quest is something that happened inside of time and if you go to the right places you can find historical records of it having happened, people know who did it, when it happened, and why (Harmast Barefoot, During the Gbaji wars, to rescue Arkat from death).
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Sep 1, 2023 20:57
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Nanomashoes posted:I think the Sun Dragon could do it. I just need to figure out what it is. Funnily, the Sun Dragon cult actually has a full writeup in the cult compendium for Runequest. There's one initiate to it left and he's a wyrm that lives in Pavis.
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Sep 1, 2023 21:47
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Is this Lifebringer quest the secret mysterious quest that brought the Red Moon back to life?
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Sep 1, 2023 22:00
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Kanthulhu posted:Is this Lifebringer quest the secret mysterious quest that brought the Red Moon back to life? No, it's just what they did before someone thought up the Lightbringer Quest. It wasn't as good.
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Sep 1, 2023 22:26
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So, the Lightbringers' journey got added into God Time after God Time became a thing? That sounds weird.
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Sep 1, 2023 22:29
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Rand Brittain posted:So, the Lightbringers' journey got added into God Time after God Time became a thing? That sounds weird. The lifebringer's quest is "Orlanth went down to the underworld to rescue Ernalda and I guess he ran into The Bad Emperor along the way and went 'eh i guess having the sun around was actually kinda nice too' also." The Lightbringer's quest is "After Ernalda died Orlanth decided the killing yelm was kind of a fuckup and went down to fix it which would also involve bringing Ernalda back to life." The actual events were functionally the same, the only difference was motives and intentionality, and given that the Lightbringer's quest basically ended up being better than the Lifebringer's quest in every way, hence completely supplanting the Lifebringer's quest, it seems extremely likely that the Lightbringer's quest was in fact MORE accurately describing the motives and intentionality of what actually happened in the god time. That being said, "Getting added into the god time after the god time became a thing" isn't really that unusual though. People in Glorantha seem to grab myths from similar gods and smash them onto their own god all the time, and not ALL of those cases were actually different facets of the same god.
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Sep 1, 2023 22:38
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wiegieman posted:The simple answer is that there have always been many suns, but Yelm is The Sun whose presence is necessary for cosmic order. Many of the Lesser Suns stepped in to try to do his job during the Darkness, but none of them were up to the task. Even Elmal could only protect his people with Orlanth's help, Yelmalio tried to be his father and failed. There were many suns in the God Time but in Solar Time there's only one while the other gods who were suns are other celestial bodies. Shargash served as the sun for a while but he's a planet now, Elmal/Yelmalio/Kargzant/Antirius are Lightfore. Also Shargash was totally up to the task, he managed to protect everyone and everything that was left after the other inferior suns failed. Do any of the cultures in ST think of the sun as being totally different gods based on the season or weather or whatever? Sky gods seem to have the hardest time being culturally relative because while an earth, storm, or water god can embody a specific local feature or area everyone looks up at the same sun and sky.
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Sep 1, 2023 23:53
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reignonyourparade posted:The lifebringer's quest is "Orlanth went down to the underworld to rescue Ernalda and I guess he ran into The Bad Emperor along the way and went 'eh i guess having the sun around was actually kinda nice too' also." Or from another perspective, Ernalda went down to Hell to fix everything in the World. In the Lifebringer's Quest, Orlanth stumbled into the middle of things and made her job harder because he didn't really want to admit he was wrong or that Yelm was a necessary part of the fix, plus he keeps getting in Ernalda's way. In the Lightbringer's Quest, Orlanth is focused on Yelm and thus doesn't interfere with all the things Ernalda is doing with other goddesses that actually fix everything, plus his encounter with Yelm goes more smoothly and both of them can safely pretend they saved the world. As for the god time stuff, since it all happened before Time existed, it isn't really fixed in the same way as events within Time.
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Sep 2, 2023 00:52
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Guys I’m pretty sure Zzabur squashed the devil and that allowed the firetender of Hagu to reignite the spark of the world. Not sure what this barbarian crap you’re spewing is.
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Sep 2, 2023 01:00
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Wrong, just like all barbarian natterings. We here in
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Sep 2, 2023 03:00
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What is Yelm from the perspective of a Yelmalio worshipper? Is he Yelmalio's father, or is Yelmalio a human-accessible aspect of a more abstract, distant sun god? Should Yelm also be honored, or do the Yelmalioans think that Yelm worship is somehow misguided (too holy, too abstract, too useless)? What's their relationship to Yelm worshippers, are they somehow subordinate to them in theory?
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Sep 2, 2023 11:29
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Herman Merman posted:What is Yelm from the perspective of a Yelmalio worshipper? Is he Yelmalio's father, or is Yelmalio a human-accessible aspect of a more abstract, distant sun god? Should Yelm also be honored, or do the Yelmalioans think that Yelm worship is somehow misguided (too holy, too abstract, too useless)? What's their relationship to Yelm worshippers, are they somehow subordinate to them in theory? I think Yelm generally comes under ‘too abstract and difficult for ordinary people to worship’. One way around that is to retire to a tower and stare at the Sun all day. The other is to come from the right Imperial bloodlines, and keeping a shaman on staff who lets you tap into the collective knowledge of all those ancestors.
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Sep 2, 2023 13:37
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White Coke posted:Elmal being the Orlanthi sun god does then raise the question of what the Lightbringer Quest was for, was it just to get Yelm to give up some of his power to make Elmal strong enough to fill in his father's role as the sun? If so it doesn't seem like he's making amends for his wrongs or compromising since he's giving his subordinate more power which means making himself more powerful. I've read a bit about the theory that the Lightbringer Quest was originally the Lifebringer Quest intended to resurrect Ernalda but that it supposedly got hijacked to bring back Yelm or something. Concider the end of Elmal Guards the Stead as told in Storm Tribe and Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, where orlanth brings a torch which revitalizes Elmal. I seem to remember there's also a version with a horse he rides instead, but i can't find it. I think it's reasonable to concider Elmal a part of the sun which survived and joined orlanth, and then reunited with yelm, probably as a torch-bearer or as a thane of Orlanth which accompanies him. HQvoices also includes the line "Elmal follows his path, unwilling to break it" which i think fits.
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Sep 2, 2023 14:22
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Herman Merman posted:What is Yelm from the perspective of a Yelmalio worshipper? Is he Yelmalio's father, or is Yelmalio a human-accessible aspect of a more abstract, distant sun god? Should Yelm also be honored, or do the Yelmalioans think that Yelm worship is somehow misguided (too holy, too abstract, too useless)? What's their relationship to Yelm worshippers, are they somehow subordinate to them in theory? He's Yelmalio's dad to them. Yelm should be honoured, of course, as the great sun. But he's also for far-away nobles and emperors, not soldiers and survivors in the lands of the sun domes.
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Sep 2, 2023 15:22
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radmonger posted:I think Yelm generally comes under ‘too abstract and difficult for ordinary people to worship’. One way around that is to retire to a tower and stare at the Sun all day. You're confusing Yelm with Dayzatar in the first bit there. Dayzatar is the high sun beyond the sky and his adherents are mystics who retire to towers to stare at the sun all day. Yelm worship is done by nobles in cities, a surprisingly high amount of the people in Dara Happa: 4% of the overall population. To worship him you must be a full Citizen of an imperial city, and he grants the power of nobility, command, rule and related magics. Having a yelm initiate involved in any project will make it go much smoother, even if, (especially if) they don't actually do anything. Such is the magic of Yelm.
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Sep 2, 2023 15:25
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There are a bunch of Yelm subcults; Yelm the Youth, Yelm the Warrior, Yelm the Emperor, etc.
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Sep 2, 2023 20:54
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I am overyelmed
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Sep 3, 2023 00:04
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Vadun posted:I am overyelmed The I have a Deity for you: Yelmalio. Just like Yelm, except less.
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Sep 3, 2023 01:13
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Has anyone here read Robin Laws' Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha? It came up on Ken & Robin Talk About Stuff this week and I have to admit I'm curious. I tend to run games more like Hite than Laws, but the dude knows Glorantha.
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Sep 3, 2023 05:10
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Can you even get that any longer?
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Sep 3, 2023 05:48
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Rand Brittain posted:Can you even get that any longer? ... Huh! Apparently not, it's been pulled from every official source I can find. It's still readily available via  , which I suppose I don't feel bad about since it's completely impossible to buy as far as I can tell. It's strange, the K&R segment where this came up was Laws saying, "I was commissioned to update this chapbook and make a setting- and system-agnostic version of this, and in the process I discovered I had to completely rewrite it because it was too Glorantha-centric to salvage." And that's, uh, emphatically not the case. Reading through it, there's really nothing but a thin coat of Gloranthan paint over standard Laws advice / structures. Sharper Adventures, for sure, but not Sharper Adventures in Glorantha. Ah well! In an effort to make this more useful for people, maybe we can discuss the best published Gloranthan adventure materials? Are there any really great ones out there that make use of the setting, rather than something that is easily transposed to or from another setting with some serial numbers filed off?
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Sep 3, 2023 06:31
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One strong option for a modern RQ campaign is _six seasons in sartar_, and it’s two sequels. It follows the story beats of a Gloranthan version of the Lord of the Rings. The PCs are the young people of, or regular visitors to, a small backwater farming community. One that has always stayed out of history, to the point where most historical clan lists forget to mention the Haraborn. Then, one day, politics happens to the village.
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Sep 3, 2023 10:59
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radmonger posted:One strong option for a modern RQ campaign is _six seasons in sartar_, and it’s two sequels. It follows the story beats of a Gloranthan version of the Lord of the Rings. The PCs are the young people of, or regular visitors to, a small backwater farming community. One that has always stayed out of history, to the point where most historical clan lists forget to mention the Haraborn. Reading through this tonight and so far it's really good! This is high on the list of "ways to introduce Glorantha" campaign premises now, thanks for the recommendation. Something I'm curious about after reading this, and as a person who has only ever read Gloranthan fiction aside from skimming ancient copies of early RuneQuest: do the modern Glorantha games really not have a subsystem for heroquesting?  I can only assume that's the case, given that Six Seasons has written a whole chapter for it, but that seems like a huge oversight.
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Sep 5, 2023 02:10
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Heroquest specifically is narrativist enough that it doesn't really need TOO much of a separate system for heroquesting, it literally grew out of attempts to write a heroquesting system for runequest.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:59
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