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Magnusth posted:Note also that this part - Yelmalio worshippers being extremely misogynistic conservative puritan assholes - is part of what makes people really frustrated when grogs go "oh actually, in modern times your favorite guys are all Yelmalions" Yelmalians in Dragon Pass are Heortlings, and so follow the same Six Paths gender system as any of Ernalda’s other husbands. If you want to make them patriarchal assholes, then that a case of your Glorantha varying. I suppose it is plausible enough that some particular High Priest could decide that what everyone was doing was Wrong and must be Stopped. The main difference from Orlanthi is they are more egalitarian, relying on a massed militia rather than a heroic warrior aristocracy.
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Sep 20, 2023 15:07
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Yeah, the corrupt patriarchal guys are the ones who live in the Prax dome, right?radmonger posted:If your PC comes from the Sun Dome branch of the cult, then he was probably born on temple lands, initiated direct to Yelmalio, and trained to fight on foot as part of a military unit in defence of his farmlands. This owns, thank you!
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Sep 20, 2023 17:03
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wiegieman posted:The art is great though, if there's one thing Jeff Richard can do it's get good art. Ah, yeah, these books are certainly extremely-professional productions.
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Sep 20, 2023 18:14
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nuChaosium's production quality has been excellent across the board.
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Sep 20, 2023 19:00
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wiegieman posted:There's a lot of copying and pasting on glorantha products. Even the new cult books, while they have great art, use a lot of copy verbatim from old cult writeups in previous editions. The issue is how many of the current line of books would have identical, or nearly so, entries published. Ernalda isn't in the Lightbringer's book even though she's important to the Orlanthi pantheon. Likewise there'd be Elmal or Yelmalio in the Lightbringers, Yelmalio in the Solar book, and maybe Yelmalio in the Earth and Lunar books too. Magnusth posted:The lightfore is a separate celestial body, which aahas a different function and role. That said, I don't mind Elmal having lightfore associations, of it isn't in the service of just turning him into Yelmalio. But Elmal is also very strongly associated with the sun as it rises at dawn. The exact role of the Yellow Planet is mysterious, what it does varies by culture, and isn't entirely clear in or out of universe. My issue with the Lightbringer's Quest regarding Elmal being the true sun is that it means Orlanth doesn't have to give anything up for the Great Compromise beyond what all the gods did by segregating themselves in the God Time. He kills Yelm and gets to remain king of the world without having to unhappily share dominion of it with Yelm. Magnusth posted:Sure, I'm just saying, this is one of the reasons people consider Elmal to be the proverbial Chad compared to Yelmalio. That, and a lot of people consider Elmal guards the stead a much cooler myth than Yelmalio and the hill of gold. The Sun Domes are all autonomous from each other and they don't have the exact same cultures or rites. If all the Sun Domes in Dragon Pass are misogynistic assholes then it's because the Elmali were misogynistic assholes before they converted, either due to northern solar worshipping influence or by being less egalitarian than non-Elmali Orlanthi because of their solar heritage. I think Jeff Richard said that the Praxian Sun Dome is particularly bad but isn't normative, and that Dragon Pass Sun Domes would be written in such a way to clarify that. Do Elmali tribes lynch more tricksters on average than other tribes because they don't have as many Orlanth initiates to protect the tricksters? Do they cause more damage to the homes and crops of those they raid with their fire weapons? Magnusth posted:I don't really see why I, or anyone else should care about space battle level rankings of gods. Greg Stafford literally said that Mongrogh proved Yelmalio was more powerful than Elmal and then confirmed that proof by subjugating the Kitori. Not that Yelmalio's cult was more powerful than Elmal's. If anything his cult would probably have been weaker since it took some time for the majority of Elmali to convert. It's not just a frivolous question, like who would win in a fight between Anne Frank and Lizzie Borden, but what statements from the creator of the setting you think should be regarded as canon forming. And if it is frivolous why defend the honor and integrity of Elmal in such a silly contest where he stand to gain nothing by winning? Magnusth posted:No one is claiming this? But also, "what magic you can draw from a cult as a worshipper" and " how strong the god is in some objective way" are at best indirectly linked. So Yelmalio could be stronger than Elmal as Greg Stafford said, but could still provide weaker magic to his worshippers than Elmal does. Although I would dispute that given how Yelmalio's greater strength is directly correlated to defeating the Kitori. Magnusth posted:I'll comment on the Elmali clan stuff below, but if you think something is gained, go ahead - what is gained by insisting that Elmal is Yelmalio at a 100% objective, uncomplicated fact? Elmal, and Elmali clans are still around in the canon and even the present time of the setting. Elmal's myths are still true to an extent and can be heroquested. Elmal's worshippers didn't lose all access to their magic after Monrogh's revelation. You can play an Elmali who rejects the fact that Elmal is Yelmalio a go on all sorts of adventures based on that belief, but still receive spells and recover rune points because your character's understanding of their god is still kind of right. Magnusth posted:Let's quote the man himself. That's rather venomous, but he seems to have changed his mind since he's going to make Elmali playable. Magnusth posted:The quote simply says that Monrogh offered his conquest as proof, and I'm happy to accept that at that time, for Monrogh, Yelmalio was a stronger god than Elmal. But "this one guy once conqoured some people" is hardly compelling evidence that Yelmalio is, always and as an objective fact stronger than Elmal. But you're the one insisting on a hard, objective hierarchy of gods that doesn't exist or need to. Greg Stafford said he was stronger not some in-universe, limited perspective, highly biased source. The guy who made up Elmal, Yelmalio, and lot of other stuff. In fact was there ever a point when Stafford said Elmal and Yelmalio were wholly different gods without any connection? I was trying to find that out the other night and what I found said that Elmal first appeared in King of Sartar but that so did Monrogh's revelation. I have the revised edition so I can't verify if that's true but if it is then from the very beginning of his creation he was tied to Yelmalio. Magnusth posted:Again, what is gained by this specific change? Elmal's light or fire rune isn't an incidental versioning difference, it's a part of a push for a specific, simplified, and boring version of glorantha. There's something to be said for creating specific, simplified, and boring versions of things to get new people involved by making it more friendly and accessible. And just in general trying to clean things up and clarify them is good. Magnusth posted:He needs fire because he is mythologically the sun god and his major myths include him burning and cleansing things. His fire and brightness is a part of his main mythology and iconography. He is the friendly sun, the warrior sun, and that's an important part of his mythology. He's the sun god, but he isn't the solar disk right? Yelmalio is known as "the Winter Sun" and "the Cold Sun" but he isn't literally the sun. Yelmalio can get Sunspear from associating with Yelm so maybe Elmal got fire powers from other associated cults. Or maybe he used to have fire powers but lost them after the Sunstop or some other sun based magical experimentation gone wrong (or right).
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Sep 20, 2023 21:42
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Having Yelmalio and also Elmal is not remotely inaccessible though.
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Sep 20, 2023 22:23
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White Coke posted:Elmal, and Elmali clans are still around in the canon and even the present time of the setting. Elmal's myths are still true to an extent and can be heroquested. Elmal's worshippers didn't lose all access to their magic after Monrogh's revelation. You can play an Elmali who rejects the fact that Elmal is Yelmalio a go on all sorts of adventures based on that belief, but still receive spells and recover rune points because your character's understanding of their god is still kind of right. That sounds incredibly patronizing.
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Sep 20, 2023 22:27
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I still love the way Six Ages portrays Yelmalio from the perspective of the riders.
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Sep 21, 2023 01:11
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Glorantha gaming: War of the many suns itt
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Sep 21, 2023 02:38
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Carry On Wayward Sun
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Sep 21, 2023 03:41
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On a solar note, here's a list of suns in six ages: Elmal the Loyal Sun. Shargash the Demon Sun The Water Sun (Probably the blue moon.) Yonesh the Cold Sun Yatelo the Hungry Sun (Becomes Krasht in Lights Going Out) The Eggshell Sun (Might be the dome over Dara Happa) The Golden Men (Might be stars) Vrimak the Bird Sun The Ghost Sun Little Yelm/Yelmalio
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Sep 21, 2023 04:14
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Looks like I made the right call with Humakt
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Sep 21, 2023 04:40
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Nessus posted:Looks like I made the right call with Humakt He always stays true to himself.
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Sep 21, 2023 05:26
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NewMars posted:On a solar note, here's a list of suns in six ages: Specifically, it seems that the Hyalorings in Six Ages predate the idea of 'planets' and refer to as any celestial object as a 'sun'. So Elmal is Lightfore, the loyal sun that remained in the sky after Yelm fell but things like moons are also suns, since they live in the sky and provide light. But they also seem to divide the Sun worship into the different roles that it plays in their life, especially now that Yelm the sun-in-itself is dead. Yatelo is the sun that dries the ground and withers crops and is a great patron to bandits, Shargash is the Red Planet but also the sun that destroys and burns so that new things can be regrown but they think that he (and Alkoth) have gone insane since Yelm died. Interestingly, in Six Ages 2, the Berenthelli (Hyalorings who have become Orlanthi) have changed in their estimation of Shargash, since their myths now list him as a part of dead Yelm who escaped from the underworld when the line between death and life was broken by Chaos. Yelmalio/Antirius is *also* Lightfore but unlike Elmal, who was the patron god of Nivorah and married to the Golden City's tutelary goddess before Nivorah fell, Yelmalio is the patron god of some losers in the old empire who the Hyalorings hate, so 'Little Yelm' shows up occasionally in their myths as a symbol of slavery, antiquated ways and impotence and his main role is to get owned because he's an enemy god in someone else's mythology. Despite this Hyaloring hostility, some Dara Happans in Six Ages 2 are already equating Elmal and Antirius as just being two different facets of the Lightfore God and invite you to do the same. There's also sort of an explanation for this in one of your clan's main myths, the Tablets of Hyalor, which details how the Hyalorings and Samnalings rebelled from the Dara Happans empire and split away. quote:Elmal's wife, Nivorah, had finally died. The walls and streets of what had once been a living city were now her mausoleum. Elmal was gone, off on a quest to restore the sun's warmth, when bells rang and drums boomed. A procession entered the city, sent by the throne of Dara Happa. As always the legates of the ineffective Emperor came to us when we were starving, and offered to feed us only nonsense. Elmal might have once been more widely worshipped in the Empire but his worship may have been banned or subsumed into Yelmalio after Manarlavus cursed Elmal to irrelevance. This would explain why the Hyalorings and Samnalings are Elmali but nobody else from the Empire is. And indeed, considering the current state of Elmal that everyone is discoursing about, it seems like the Emperor's curse was wholly effective in the end. It's interesting to me (and probably only to me) that by Six Ages 2, we have three very distinct strains of Elmal worship present in the valley. The Hyalorings worship Elmal as an extremely reluctant king and their main heroquest about him is 'Elmal Guards the Sunpath', which is about Elmal not wishing to be the Sun or to rule but has to, in order to preserve light and the heavens for everybody. The Hyalorings don't like kings or emperors so they've clearly gone to some lengths to make Elmal sympathetic to their views despite being the king of their pantheon. It's extremely easy to see how this Elmal carries into the way the Orlanthi see him, after some of the Hyalorings become Orlanthi and join the tribe. Through this, Elmal becomes not a reluctant king but a loyal thane who steps up when needed but would never rule. And of course, his main heroquest is still all about him persevering and preserving the world against destruction. But not only are the Orlanthi Elmal worshippers (Elmal becomes the main god of the Berenthelli since Orlanth is dead) and the original Hyalorings co-existing, the Samnalings are also still there. We don't get a whole lot of information about how the Samnalings worship Elmal but their myths would probably be the closest to how Elmal was originally worshipped in Nivorah, with him as a just but strict and patriarchal king, who rules over the slaves and the lower classes of people as he is meant to do. None of that hippy hyaloring bullshit, none of that Raven Trickster nonsense, no elevation of goddesses (The Samnalings worship male deities of healing and trade as opposed to the Hyalorings, view the Hyaloring forage goddess as merely Elmal's slave and Ernalda/Nyalda as Elmal's subservient wife) and certainly no recognition of the Storm Tribe. Their Elmal also wouldn't have any horse association at all, which is wild to think about. By the the time of Six Ages 2, there are a lot of different Elmals roaming about! I wish we got to see more of the Wheel religion. Probably the funniest part of my Six Ages 2 playthrough was hearing that one of their clans had cleansed a Chaos infestation by invoking 'a dubious god they call Sun Bull'. That the Samnalings have hastily found a way to syncretize Urox as some sort of Sun God so they can take advantage of him and the Uroxi while still claiming to be untainted by Storm is hysterical. Oh and while Yonesh the Cold Sun has the same title as Yelmalio would later have, I don't think they're supposed to be read as the same thing. In Elmal Guards the Sunpath, Elmal rebukes Yonesh by saying that he is 'studded with Storm runes' and is unclean as a result. And the myth art also gives Yonesh the swirl markings it denotes all Storm Gods with. A storm-aspected sun? He is described as a 'chill pale orb that hurls snow, hail and sleet', so in keeping with them worshipping the Sun in its different aspects and roles, he might simply be how the sun appears when it is hidden by storm, just like how Shargash is the sun that burns. Yonesh might also simply be a Storm God of some sort that the Hyalorings have misidentified, possibly Valind, since the Hyalorings blame Yonesh for the creation of Valind's Glacier. According to some advisors, it is unclear whether Yonesh was ever actually a Dara Happan god at all, which points to him being Valind. Alternatively, Yonesh might be Yavor, the Fire Tribe god who snuffed his own fire out to help him fight Umath and then took some of Umath's lightning from his corpse afterwards. This would explain a Cold Sun who has the Storm Rune. He also gets killed by Orlanth during the Storm Age so that would also explain why Yonesh is present in Six Ages 1 but doesn't show up at all by Six Ages 2 (though this absence can also be explained by the SA2 viewpoint being Orlanthi, who 'know' that Yonesh is simply Valind) ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 05:48
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ZeroCount posted:Specifically, it seems that the Hyalorings in Six Ages predate the idea of 'planets' and refer to as any celestial object as a 'sun'. So Elmal is Lightfore, the loyal sun that remained in the sky after Yelm fell but things like moons are also suns, since they live in the sky and provide light. But they also seem to divide the Sun worship into the different roles that it plays in their life, especially now that Yelm the sun-in-itself is dead. Yatelo is the sun that dries the ground and withers crops and is a great patron to bandits, Shargash is the Red Planet but also the sun that destroys and burns so that new things can be regrown but they think that he (and Alkoth) have gone insane since Yelm died. Interestingly, in Six Ages 2, the Berenthelli (Hyalorings who have become Orlanthi) have changed in their estimation of Shargash, since their myths now list him as a part of dead Yelm who escaped from the underworld when the line between death and life was broken by Chaos. Shargash takes the mantle of the sun during the great darkness, and burns the world of chaos. It's then taken by Kargzant. This is according to the Glorious re-ascent. You may be right about the planet thing, but Shargash literally is the sun at some point. It's not crazy to think that he was contesting that position in the storm age.
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Sep 21, 2023 06:42
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Sun, planet, and moon are all sort of interchangeable terms for beings who are embodied in the sky dome. Planet is the term used for male lesser suns (so, greater than stars, but not the sun) and moon is feminine. So, Lesilla is the Water Sun, the Blue Moon, and sometimes the Blue Planet if the speaker doesn't care about using the gendered term. And each culture has their own names for these sky dome objects, and different gods. Sometimes these gods are similar, sometimes very different. Shargash is generally acknowledged to also be Tolat, the far ranging war god of the red planet with power over water, but Dara Happan myth doesn't mention Tolat at all.
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Sep 21, 2023 06:51
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ZeroCount posted:
Does this mean someone at least thought Elmal and Yelmalio were different? I had no idea Elmal ruled in Nivorah, but I never got far in Six Ages, so perhaps I'll pick it up again.
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Sep 21, 2023 06:52
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Nanomashoes posted:Shargash takes the mantle of the sun during the great darkness, and burns the world of chaos. It's then taken by Kargzant. This is according to the Glorious re-ascent. You may be right about the planet thing, but Shargash literally is the sun at some point. It's not crazy to think that he was contesting that position in the storm age. Fair point. The meaning of 'sun' is certainly very fluid at this point. Tias posted:Does this mean someone at least thought Elmal and Yelmalio were different? I had no idea Elmal ruled in Nivorah, but I never got far in Six Ages, so perhaps I'll pick it up again. At the very least, the Elmali descendants of Nivorah some generations after the fact claim that Elmal ruled in Nivorah. I think what's probably the most important thing here is that after the people of Nivorah declare rebellion against the Emperor, Manarlavus decrees that the god of the rebels will be cursed and doomed to never be spoken of again. This explains the lack of Elmal worship in the rest of the Empire and, in my mind at least, posts two possible things: 1) Elmal and Yelmalio were both once worshipped by different parts of the Empire at roughly the same time and for roughly the same purpose, as the surviving light in a Yelmless world, but an Elmali rebellion made Elmal worship illegal and it was all syncretized into Yelmalio, leaving only the descendants of Nivorah as the last Elmal worshippers who would eventually introduce it to the Orlanthi. or 2) At one point before this Elmal and Yelmalo *were* the same but the splitting of Nivorah from the Empire and the Emperor's condemnation of them caused a split, that the sun god of the Empire and the sun god of the rebels must be different. The Empire decreed that the god of the rebels was nothing but dust and the Hyaloring rebels also participated in this split, by having Elmal symbolize *their* sun worship (good, cool, cock is huge) and made Yelmalio in their myths be a separate figure to symbolize the sun worship of the old Empire (bad, old and stupid, cock is small) Regardless, the Hyalorings did feature both Yelmalio and Elmal in their myths and as separate beings. Yelmalio isn't very important to them, mind you, and he certainly isn't worshipped but he shows up and every now and then to be bested by Elmal. In their actual myths, he is most present in Elmal Guards the Sunpath, where he makes a brief attempt on the Sunpath but is immediately shamed by Elmal's virtue: quote:Upon this path pretenders prowled. They tore up the golden paving stones, sutffing them in stacks, devouring them, seeking to usurp not only Yelm's throne but his rune of power. and in Nyalda's Bride Price, the myth about Nyalda seeking out Elmal to be her husband, where he is her first suitor: quote:With Yelm dead, his sons and vassals leapt enthusiastically to war. After fighting each other for a while they remembered that soldiers have to eat. Each commander came to Nyalda to make an offer. Nyalda knew this would happen and sent Ekarna to gain the Negotiation Rune. Ekarna spoke for her, and Busenari gave practical counsel. EDIT: Interesting little SA detail is Reladivus, who is regarded these days as a son of Yelm, is mentioned in SA1 Hyaloring myth as a son of Elmal and Nivorah and thus Yelm's grandson instead of son. This, IMO, speaks to the idea that there was a huge purge of all things Elmal from the Empire during the Storm Age, to the point of loving up genealogy a little bit and promoting his son into his place. ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 07:40
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I do prefer the six ages version of all of this.
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Sep 21, 2023 08:32
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The "they're actually different" one is the most likely thing to be true in Six Ages. Remember that at the time of the war of many suns, there is another god that's often been called (increasingly so in recent years) the same as Yelmalio as the Imperial Sun: Antirius. This is the god who won the war of many suns in Dara Happa and became the patron of emperors. This later comes up in the second age where you can have a group of Dara Happans show up talking about how the two are the same. Strangely, though, there's actually two variants of this scene: one where they, that is, the Dara Happans call Elmal a younger brother of Antirius/Yelmalio, and another where they claim the two are the same. On a related note: the only time the name "Yelmalio" appears in the first six ages game is if you select Dara Happans as your ancient enemy, in which case, it says that your worst enemy in the war of many suns (this is before you left the empire and Elmal's name was cursed, note) was "Yelmalio, the Weak Sun."
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Sep 21, 2023 11:23
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If I recall correctly something from the Six Ages development blog correctly, somewhere between King of Dragon Pass and Six ages all the source code succumbed to bit rot of the obscure tools used to create that game. So Six Ages was a clean rewrite. This would mean that the source code for Ekarna, the Hyaloring god of trade, is not the same as the source code for Issaries, the Heortling one Or maybe I am getting that wrong, and they did find a way to copy and paste that bit. Close textual analysis might even be able to find out. Either way, if you play the game, they give you the Silvertongue blessing.
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Sep 21, 2023 13:22
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radmonger posted:If I recall correctly something from the Six Ages development blog correctly, somewhere between King of Dragon Pass and Six ages all the source code succumbed to bit rot of the obscure tools used to create that game. So Six Ages was a clean rewrite. Gods exist in the code as discrete entities. Note that Chalana Arroy, Ernalda, Uralda and Eurmal are both the same as their Rider counterparts. So is Erkana. They're listed in a "standard deities" part of the code as: quote:-- Standard deities
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Sep 21, 2023 14:10
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Magnusth posted:I don't really see why I, or anyone else should care about space battle level rankings of gods. Something else that occurred to me is that the God Learners were the ones who systematized the runes and spread them around with their empire right? So early Elmal worshippers wouldn't have had a strong understanding of the differences between the Light and Fire runes because those would've been foreign concepts to them until at least the Second Age, if not later given that Dragon Pass was under the control of the EWF. And if Monrogh's proof of Yelmalio's greater power was actually just him being a very strong hero, and that by performing the Hill of Gold 'wrong' a Yelmalian can gain fire powers, and if Elmal Guards the Stead is a variation of the Hill of Gold (as per modern canon) then perhaps the fire magic Elmali had access to is a result of them doing the Hill of Gold 'wrong' institutionally, and since there is such a large body of Elmal worshippers who have access to fire magic they don't realize Elmal lost it. I saw someone mention that the blessings Elmal provides a tribe in KoDP don't have anything to do with heat and from what I can see that seems true. After all the Cold Sun can help crops grow without providing any heat. So while individual Elmali have a standardized way to gain access to fire magic and they tell myths mentioning Elmal's heat it doesn't mean that Elmal has to have the Fire rune in order to explain why his worshippers can shoot fire arrows and use fiery spears. reignonyourparade posted:Having Yelmalio and also Elmal is not remotely inaccessible though. Speaking from my own experience, finding out about the Elmal holdouts was and is a strange experience. If the game's canon was changed to contradict what its creator wrote in order to satisfy the fans with a very strong attachment to a video game, and then new players were to learn about how Elmal was Yelmalio until the game designers catered to a specific group of fans in order to make them happy even though it went against what Greg Stafford wrote I imagine they'd be even more confused. Rand Brittain posted:That sounds incredibly patronizing. What's the alternative? The game saying that Monrogh might have been wrong about proving Elmal is Yelmalio? Or does the game need to say Monrogh is a liar and Lunar puppet who tricked the naive and virtuous Elmali into worshipping a wimp? Or maybe Monrogh's revelation and all of the attendant history and metaphysics need to be removed so that no possibility exists of anyone thinking there's any official sanction to the idea Elmal is Yelmalio? Because this argument isn't about some peoples' home-brew settings. It's about the official game canon which people obviously care about given how much people have argued about how Elmal needs to be a distinct god and have taken issue with the direction Jeff Richard is taking the current version. Since the game's canon is being fought over then of course some people are going to feel offended, ignored, and patronized because their preferences aren't going to be elevated over other peoples' and given official sanction. But you can't just flip a switch and have Elmal no longer be Yelmalio without it creating a host of other issues. Shargash-is-Tolat sounds similar to Elmal-is-Yelmalio. The Friendly Sun is the sun, but The Winter Sun isn't at all. Do Pentans worship Humakt or North War Wind (or Hueymakt)? &c. TGG posted:
Isn't Humakt worshipped in Carmania, and don't the gods the Carmanians worship have Light and Dark aspects? It's funny how both Yelmalio and Humakt are Truth gods whose worshippers serve as mercenaries, seems the only real truth in Glorantha is that only money matters. Josef bugman posted:I do prefer the six ages version of all of this. I do wonder how the game is going to deal with Monrogh's revelation in the Third Age. Hopefully they don't take a cowardly route and end before the timeline gets to that point. Based on what people have said about the depictions of Elmal and Yelmalio they haven't shied away from the conflict but haven't definitively taken a side. My guess is that the player's clan will have the choice of switching over to Yelmalio and that whatever decision they make will be the 'correct' one. What I'm more interested in though is how the First and Second Ages will be depicted. I hope we get to see the Bright Empire and Empire of Wyrm Friends in all their illuminated madness along with how the Elmali deal with the Yelmalios of those periods, Daysenerus and Tharkantus.
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Sep 21, 2023 18:37
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I see all these passionate lore arguments and I love them, but also I feel like the reality of it is that, due to Runequest being a very mid system, its ultimately dueling for whether you get Elmal with four spells (and maybe two of them actually do anything for an adventurer) or Yelmalio with four rune spells. Meanwhile, Orlanth gets a selection of 23 spells if you go with the Adventurous subcult.
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Sep 21, 2023 19:40
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That is a weird thing about RQ:G in particular, Jeff has this view that bigger cults are bigger because they're stronger rather than culturally prevalent, so they get everything while smaller cults have trouble even filling their niche. Like Aran Argar doesn't get trade magic because well that's Issaries thing even though he probably should have some but the biggest deal things like Spell Trading.
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Sep 21, 2023 19:50
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Tias posted:I know when I have been outgrog'd, my bad. I can't afford the guide, but I got to BoHM which cleared it up. Depends. A Sun County Yelmalian is going to be very different from a Sun Dome Yelmalian from Sartar, who is different again from a Dara Happan Yelmalian. That's part of why I've been staying out of the debate here ITT, because I think the claims being made (on both sides) are prioritizing things I find mostly unimportant and not considering things I find to be central. A Yelmalian from one culture or location who become such at a specific date is not easily comparable to a Yelmalian from a different culture or location who joined the cult 30 years prior. Fixity is, in theory, a specific characteristics of a small subset of faiths in Glorantha, and frankly, it's largely a falsehood even under those circumstances. The followers of Mostal or of the Invisible God turn out to have splintered into a bunch of different groups with different values and interpretations and practices of their faiths. Heck, a portion of the followers of the Invisible God gave up immortality in favor of a different approach to their lives and faith! Strength, much less "my god can beat up your god," is only important within a narrow subfield of faiths in Glorantha. The idea that Yelmalio can defeat Elmal in battle is weird anyway, given that the Yelmalians are trying to convince the Elmali that the god they worship IS Yelmalio. As for granted powers, multiple cults in the system grant specific powers or rune magics unique to them that are very effective in combat, but despite being important deities and especially significant to adventuring bands, they are generally not as important as other deities. Humakt is vitally important but worshiped by a tiny number of people, while deities like Barntar or Ernalda are going to have a lot more worshipers and are objectively "powerful" culturally even if they aren't granting reusable access to Sever Spirit, or combat-related oaths, or other such goodies. The earth cults are some of the most powerful within most Gloranthan cultures, and they are generally not that interested in combat to begin with. Nessus posted:Looks like I made the right call with Humakt Well, there's one or two sources painting Humakt as a Chaos deity because death opened the wound in Glorantha that allowed Chaos in. Almost certainly, that's both unfair and accurate; Chaos got in partly because of Death, but that doesn't mean Humakt is a massive traitor to the universe, it's a matter of consequences. But don't get fooled: Humakt really depends upon his cult to maintain standards of honor because he's a terrifying monstrosity to most people already, and would be even moreso without that balancing factor in place. Those Chaos cultists who worship Humakt as a Chaos deity and get magic back don't prove Humakt is a Chaos god, but that might be a future risk. ZeroCount posted:Elmal might have once been more widely worshipped in the Empire but his worship may have been banned or subsumed into Yelmalio after Manarlavus cursed Elmal to irrelevance. This would explain why the Hyalorings and Samnalings are Elmali but nobody else from the Empire is. And indeed, considering the current state of Elmal that everyone is discoursing about, it seems like the Emperor's curse was wholly effective in the end. For me, this is the stuff right here. It's not meaningful to stand in the world (or outside of the game system) and say "this deity objectively exists, has these objective strengths, and if you don't believe me you can go to the God Plane to see for yourself" because objectivity is, like the monomyth, untrue in Glorantha. Take a specific deity in a specific culture and location at a specific time and try to prove or disprove objective characteristics of that deity, and what you're really doing is either making poo poo up, or actively changing the deity in question. This is "I set up an objective experiment to try to prove a claim" in a setting where the objectivity is largely an illusion and your results are contingent on what you and the experimenters expect to find, though not entirely determined by that. The Godlearners succeeded for so long because they had ways to push lots of power behind their expectations and force things to work out in the ways they claimed were "objectively true." I suspect the association between Truth cultists and independence from political authority (either as mercenaries or as independent agents like librarians) is tied to the idea that within the realm of politics, the truth is malleable and the politicians are always trying to reshape it. But even within Truth cults, there's going to be disagreement. Unless you're Truth/Stasis, you have to expect that Truths can change, just like the claim "The sun is up" is contingent and therefore changeable, even though at some point in the past the answer was not contingent.
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Sep 21, 2023 20:40
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White Coke posted:Greg Stafford literally said that Mongrogh proved Yelmalio was more powerful than Elmal and then confirmed that proof by subjugating the Kitori. Not that Yelmalio's cult was more powerful than Elmal's. If anything his cult would probably have been weaker since it took some time for the majority of Elmali to convert. It's not just a frivolous question, like who would win in a fight between Anne Frank and Lizzie Borden, but what statements from the creator of the setting you think should be regarded as canon forming. And if it is frivolous why defend the honor and integrity of Elmal in such a silly contest where he stand to gain nothing by winning? Okay, I'm going to deal with this first. You insist on some bizzare space battle ranking, so let's engage. I'm going make two claims here: one, Greg did not say what you're claiming he said, Two, the question is nonsense on the first place. Let's look at the actual quote: quote:In Sartar the great hero Monrogh established the cult. He originally worshipped Elmal, the sun of the Orlanthi pantheon, but followed other lights and entered into doctinal disputes with the Orlanthi priests who normally ranked over the sun. Monrogh was challenged by Prince Tarkalor of Sartar to reveal his god who was stronger than Elmal, and he revealed Yelmalio. As proof, Monrogh led the conquest of the Kitori, and Tarkalor granted him the wide conquered lands to honor and recognize the new god and his worshippers. A few thouand people departed from the worship of Elmal and converted to Yelmalio, then left their homelands and settled in the new grant by the Creekstream River. This isn't a direct statement that Yelmalio is somehow greater than Elmal, it is merely a statement that Monrogh convinced Tarkalor through conquest - conquest of people Tarkalor didn't like, at that. This is only a statement about what Monrogh and Tarkalor believe, and their reasons for that. Now, you could argue that it is a good reason to believe that Yelmalio is stronger, but that's not the same as an objective statement. The question is pointless anyway, though. Because gods don't have agency, and their strength exists primarily in relationship to mortals. You see, I can quote Greg too: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/greg-sez/big-god/ Here Greg lists a few criteria to determine the relative size or strength of a god. Their breadth of manifestation, their ultimate secrets, their depth of magic, and their worship. Now, you could go through and compare Elmal and Yelmalio here, but the important thing is that gods depend on their worshippers for strength. This is not because they don't exist outside of belief or whatever, it's because only mortals have the power to change the world. That is not to say that no god is ever greater than another, but it does mean that you can't use any one hero's power to prove the strength of this or that god. And now that we're quoting Greg anyway, let's bring up what he actually said about Elmal vs Yelmalio. https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/greg-sez/illusion/ quote:A significant part of the entire Hero Wars is going to be whether or not people (both individuals and their societal backers) can convince others that their reality is more truthful than someone else’s. As the Hero wars progress the great and powerful beings will engage each other in Truth Contests, using the HeroQuest Challenge, to determine who is [more] right. Which will win? Well, whichever one is more powerful (in your game). In this manner huge portions of the world are essentially going to disappear That's a pretty clear statement that Elmal and Yelmalio do not have absolute strengths that can be easily compared. It is a question of the strengths of their heroes and the conviction and strength of their worshippers. Because fundamentally it is people who have agency, mortals who can win and lose and contest. quote:The exact role of the Yellow Planet is mysterious, what it does varies by culture, and isn't entirely clear in or out of universe. Sure, but it's not the sun. quote:My issue with the Lightbringer's Quest regarding Elmal being the true sun is that it means Orlanth doesn't have to give anything up for the Great Compromise beyond what all the gods did by segregating themselves in the God Time. He kills Yelm and gets to remain king of the world without having to unhappily share dominion of it with Yelm. I mean, he still does? And also, he had to raise from the dead his father's murder and allow his past as glorious emperor of all to be forever true. quote:The Sun Domes are all autonomous from each other and they don't have the exact same cultures or rites. If all the Sun Domes in Dragon Pass are misogynistic assholes then it's because the Elmali were misogynistic assholes before they converted, either due to northern solar worshipping influence or by being less egalitarian than non-Elmali Orlanthi because of their solar heritage. I think Jeff Richard said that the Praxian Sun Dome is particularly bad but isn't normative, and that Dragon Pass Sun Domes would be written in such a way to clarify that. quote:Do Elmali tribes lynch more tricksters on average than other tribes because they don't have as many Orlanth initiates to protect the tricksters? Do they cause more damage to the homes and crops of those they raid with their fire weapons? quote:There's something to be said for creating specific, simplified, and boring versions of things to get new people involved by making it more friendly and accessible. And just in general trying to clean things up and clarify them is good. This is an odd argument on several levels. For one, the most prominent ways to get into Runequest and Glorantha feature Elmal in a big way. For another, forcing Elmal to be Yelmalio invites arguments; keeping things the way they’ve been for 30 years lets everyone be happy. Yelmalio isn’t impacted in any way by Elmal existing independently, but Elmal, his cult, etc is greatly impacted by a very very recent editorial mandate that they must be the same. A lot of people would be less confused if there was simply an Elmal cult in the book. More importantly, taking the game famous for its complexity and depth of culture and history and myth, which people have fallen in love for through a complex and interesting relationship of cults, cultures, and people, and making is ‘streamlined’ is just loving missing the point. What’s even the point without a rich anthropological mythohistory? quote:Elmal, and Elmali clans are still around in the canon and even the present time of the setting. Elmal's myths are still true to an extent and can be heroquested. Elmal's worshippers didn't lose all access to their magic after Monrogh's revelation. You can play an Elmali who rejects the fact that Elmal is Yelmalio a go on all sorts of adventures based on that belief, but still receive spells and recover rune points because your character's understanding of their god is still kind of right. As mentioned, Elmali who reject elmal-as-yelmalio are wierdo perverts according to Jeff. Elmal exists only as an unimportant appendage to Yelmalio in Jeff’s Glorantha, and also don’t bother because they’re all Yelmalions now. White Coke posted:Something else that occurred to me is that the God Learners were the ones who systematized the runes and spread them around with their empire right? So early Elmal worshippers wouldn't have had a strong understanding of the differences between the Light and Fire runes because those would've been foreign concepts to them until at least the Second Age, if not later given that Dragon Pass was under the control of the EWF. And if Monrogh's proof of Yelmalio's greater power was actually just him being a very strong hero, and that by performing the Hill of Gold 'wrong' a Yelmalian can gain fire powers, and if Elmal Guards the Stead is a variation of the Hill of Gold (as per modern canon) then perhaps the fire magic Elmali had access to is a result of them doing the Hill of Gold 'wrong' institutionally, and since there is such a large body of Elmal worshippers who have access to fire magic they don't realize Elmal lost it. I saw someone mention that the blessings Elmal provides a tribe in KoDP don't have anything to do with heat and from what I can see that seems true. After all the Cold Sun can help crops grow without providing any heat. So while individual Elmali have a standardized way to gain access to fire magic and they tell myths mentioning Elmal's heat it doesn't mean that Elmal has to have the Fire rune in order to explain why his worshippers can shoot fire arrows and use fiery spears. "Eventually, if the Yelmalion was able set up his own subcult of Yelmalio to teach this path, then it could become true for all Yelmalions-Yelmalio would not lose his fire powers, Zorak Zoran would not gain them. Myth and history would have been changed." (Arcane Lore, pg 78) (Also, guarding the stead as a hill of gold variant makes no sense, just for the record). White Coke posted:Speaking from my own experience, finding out about the Elmal holdouts was and is a strange experience. If the game's canon was changed to contradict what its creator wrote in order to satisfy the fans with a very strong attachment to a video game, and then new players were to learn about how Elmal was Yelmalio until the game designers catered to a specific group of fans in order to make them happy even though it went against what Greg Stafford wrote I imagine they'd be even more confused. quote:What's the alternative? The game saying that Monrogh might have been wrong about proving Elmal is Yelmalio? Or does the game need to say Monrogh is a liar and Lunar puppet who tricked the naive and virtuous Elmali into worshipping a wimp? Or maybe Monrogh's revelation and all of the attendant history and metaphysics need to be removed so that no possibility exists of anyone thinking there's any official sanction to the idea Elmal is Yelmalio? quote:Because this argument isn't about some peoples' home-brew settings. It's about the official game canon which people obviously care about given how much people have argued about how Elmal needs to be a distinct god and have taken issue with the direction Jeff Richard is taking the current version. Since the game's canon is being fought over then of course some people are going to feel offended, ignored, and patronized because their preferences aren't going to be elevated over other peoples' and given official sanction. But you can't just flip a switch and have Elmal no longer be Yelmalio without it creating a host of other issues. Shargash-is-Tolat sounds similar to Elmal-is-Yelmalio. The Friendly Sun is the sun, but The Winter Sun isn't at all. Do Pentans worship Humakt or North War Wind (or Hueymakt)? &c. What host of other issues? Please, give examples.
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Sep 21, 2023 20:45
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Gorelab posted:That is a weird thing about RQ:G in particular, Jeff has this view that bigger cults are bigger because they're stronger rather than culturally prevalent, so they get everything while smaller cults have trouble even filling their niche. Like Aran Argar doesn't get trade magic because well that's Issaries thing even though he probably should have some but the biggest deal things like Spell Trading. Jeff is unironically a God Learner in mindset and therefore reduces everything to power levels and personal utility. I read his description for why people worship the littler gods instead of just gunning straight for those who hold a rune or one of the lightbringers, and its essentially, "These guys have marginally useful magic that can be handy sometimes in specific scenarios, and also since its tradition people HAVE to worship these gods, I guess." Dude is just one more logical step away from, "So in order to make these gods more useful, I've decided to do a cool experiment where I prove that they're all the same god."
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Sep 21, 2023 20:49
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Was he heroquesting in his lodge ?
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Sep 21, 2023 22:23
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Come to think of it how would being a member of the Little Sisters in the Seven Mothers even work in RQ:G? Though the cult is probably less interesting in RQ generally due to dropping stuff like kindling and choosing a specific mother as your main thing for a more generic cult. Gorelab fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 22:50
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I'm reading up on the pamaltan materials by greg and... they're actually really good? And extremely different from the dragon pass and greater genertelan perspective we get. Particularly interesting is that they hate sacrifice to gods, but are fine with a person pursuing absolute dedication to one. They also have a very interesting perspective on spirits. So, pamalta is the big animism continent, right. So you'd expect them to like spirits a lot? Except, no, they hate them. The spirit world is a place of vampiric half-complete beings called spirits. But spirits in the physical world are something different to them, what they call "natural creatures." So spirits with a body are good, without a body are very bad. And their shamans pursue immortality as a goal. See, physical health is a righteous pursuit and you can enhance it by pursuing balance with the natural and the peak of this balance is to integrate as many spirits into your physical body as possible, to give yourself completeness: immortality and wisdom. This is absolutely nothing like how shamans and the like interact with spirits in runequest or heroquest as given or in stuff like six ages, all in the genertelan perspective.
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Sep 22, 2023 01:05
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Magnusth posted:Okay, I'm going to deal with this first. You insist on some bizzare space battle ranking, so let's engage. I'm going make two claims here: one, Greg did not say what you're claiming he said, Two, the question is nonsense on the first place. I keep bringing up the 'bizarre space battle rankings' because I think you keep dismissing what seems to me such a direct statement about not just their relative power but what established the link between Elmal and Yelmalio. I don't care about a grand unified theory of who can beat whom. I first brought up the relative strength of the two because I had seen the opposite argued, that Elmal was stronger than Yelmalio and that that was proof of their difference and then I discovered something from Stafford which said that they were the same because they were unequal. The article you posted was very interesting and had some quotes of particular interest like: quote:Worship is critical because it is the conscious merger of the unchangeable gods and the always-changing mortals. and quote:Orlanth also collects collateral worship through the sacrifices made to Worlath, an inferior manifestation of him. Magnusth posted:And now that we're quoting Greg anyway, let's bring up what he actually said about Elmal vs Yelmalio. What you quoted seems to lean towards soft Elmal-is-Yelmalio-ism since it presents it as an issue yet to be fully resolved which I do find more interesting than just saying "Move along Elmal is Yelmalio nothing to see here". The way he describes the Hero Wars as a conflict between gods via their cults for who gets to be the one true god of this-or-that is a lot more interesting than King of Sartar's "Argrath gets all the gods eaten" ending to the Hero Wars. Magnusth posted:Sure, but it's not the sun. It's the light of the sun that endured after Yelm's death which is why it doesn't go into the Underworld at night, but before Yelm died the sun's light was part of him so during the day Lightfore might still be in the sky but impossible to see because it is out shone by the sun or merges with it at dawn before separating again at dusk. But such a possibility cannot be entertained because of its implications. Magnusth posted:I mean, he still does? And also, he had to raise from the dead his father's murder and allow his past as glorious emperor of all to be forever true. If he raised Yelm from the dead then Yelm is the sun not Elmal. If Elmal isn't the sun then how does he manifest in the world and how does it make him a sun god and not a planetary god? Magnusth posted:I'm not making some definite statement about how the Yelmalions should be. I was just mentioning it as one of the reasons Elmal fans especially dislike the change. What about lynching tricksters? King of Sartar page 218 posted:No one likes or trusts Tricksters. They are regularly lynched, partly because no one trusts them, and partly because murderous idiots, who are normally restrained by law, have no law to restrain them from murdering Tricksters. Thus, Tricksters live utterly outside the law, and can do anything that they want. However, they are not protected by law at all either, and most tribes lynch anyone proven to be a Trickster. As a defender cult are they responsible for rounding up and executing suspected tricksters? The stead must be guarded from internal enemies too. I keep harping on this point because Orlanthi society has its share of unpleasantness and the Elmali must surely participate in it too if they are Orlanthi. If players feel that they have to be a 'Puritanical Mormon Spartan' as I believe someone put it (quite aptly) in order to authentically play a Yelmalian then there are all sorts of unseemly behavior which have uncomfortable parallels with the real world an orthodox Elmali would have to get up to. Magnusth posted:This is an odd argument on several levels. For one, the most prominent ways to get into Runequest and Glorantha feature Elmal in a big way. For another, forcing Elmal to be Yelmalio invites arguments; keeping things the way they’ve been for 30 years lets everyone be happy. Yelmalio isn’t impacted in any way by Elmal existing independently, but Elmal, his cult, etc is greatly impacted by a very very recent editorial mandate that they must be the same. A lot of people would be less confused if there was simply an Elmal cult in the book. KoDP and SA are both set in earlier time periods. Making books to allow people to play in earlier time periods would be great but aside from Elmal there's been a bunch of changes from how things are depicted in KoDP. Should the setting also revert back to them? If you want to preserve the rich anthropological mythohistory, then having Elmal be definitively not Yelmalio would require ignoring or removing any lore from the setting regarding Monrogh's revelation and still require taking a definitive authorial position about the nature of not just Elmal but by extension the gods in general. When people say that Elmal-is-Yelmalio is God Learnerism or Monomythism they're making a statement about the setting as a whole not just this one case. That Greg Sez article I posted was from March 2000. So to say that it'd been settled for 30 years until some grognards came in recently to mess everything up seems inaccurate to me. And wasn't Stafford involved with the early development of Runequest: Glorantha before he died? At the very least there's been ambiguity about the nature of their natures for a long time instead of a definitive separation recently undone. Magnusth posted:As mentioned, Elmali who reject elmal-as-yelmalio are wierdo perverts according to Jeff. Elmal exists only as an unimportant appendage to Yelmalio in Jeff’s Glorantha, and also don’t bother because they’re all Yelmalions now. Well despite his personal feelings he's going to allow them to be playable. If you don't want to play something associated with someone who has insulted the kind of character you want to play then don't, but if he had said Elmali were all well meaning but misguided holdouts would you drop your rejection of Elmal-is-Yelmalio? Magnusth posted:This is a bizzare misreading of how the world works. If the main Elmal cult consistently heroquest a version of Elmal with the fire rune then... Elmal has the fire rune. Like, that's how heroquesting works. If you consistently quest in a partcular way, you can (and do) affect the gods, because that's how humans can affect and change the gods. We have a specific quote on this regarding Yelmalio, even! So if consistent heroquesting can change the nature of a god such as giving them a rune they might not have had, then couldn't a single incredibly powerful hero like Monrogh who could almost single handedly defeat an enemy that the kingdom of Sartar was unable to, and used that victory as proof of his revelation about the nature of his god Yelmalio vis Elmal have heroquested in such a way as to turn Elmal into Yelmalio? Magnusth posted:Greg Stafford wrote Elmal, though. Stafford has been writing glorantha for like 30 years with Elmal in it. What's happening is that the canon is being changed now to appeal to grogs from the 80's for some bizzare reason. From what I've been able to find out, Elmal was introduced in King of Sartar which also had material about Monrogh's revelation and how that came about from Elmal worshippers converting to Yelm worship or subordinating themselves to Yelm instead of Orlanth. But my copy is the revised version so I don't know how much of that material is in the original. Magnusth posted:I mean, the setting has worked fine for many years with the answer ultimately dependent on the actions of heroes. Of course, HeroWars and HeroQuest also had the perfectly functional answer that Yelmalio-worship had been incorpoated into Elmal through contact with solar cultures, and Monrogh followed that to its source and revealed Yelmalio. I don't quite follow regarding HeroWars and HeroQuest. Is it that Yelmalio worship was blended with Elmal worship until it was strong enough within Elmali rituals that Monrogh led mass conversions to Yelmalio? If so why did Elmali shift over to Yelmalio according to those books? Magnusth posted:What host of other issues? Please, give examples. To build off of the three I mentioned: 1) If Elmal can't be Yelmalio because Elmal is the sun and Yelmalio is Lightfore, but Shargash is Tolat because they are both the Red Planet then that suggests all gods which share the same celestial body or other embodied physical feature or natural process, like death, are the same god. This would mean Elmal is Yelm, which seems to be what many Elmali were coming around to before Monrogh got them to worship Yelmalio instead. 2) When is a sun the sun? When they have the Fire rune instead of Light? Shargash has the Fire rune and was also a sun during the Greater Darkness but is now a planet. If a planet can have the Fire rune why can't a sun have the Light rune? Must all gods be locked into having specific runes because of the roles they fulfill? Isn't that God Learnerism, to say that gods have to have specific runes in order to fulfill their requisite functions and from there you say that all those gods must be the same because they have the same runes and do the same things? If one rejects the idea that sharing the same runes means that two gods have to be the same, but doesn't also reject the idea that two gods can actually be the same then why do they have to have identical runes? 3) The Guide to Glorantha says that some Pentan tribes worship Storm gods and lists them plus their Orlanthi analogues. This is presented as a recent development. I think it might not just be post Sheng Seleris but within living memory. The Guide mentions a new tribe, the Women Warriors, who reject the traditional gender norms for men and women but does say that the Storm tribes "maintain the ancient social structure derived from Kargzant". The implication is that these are the Orlanthi gods but adapted to local conditions. There isn't any mention of them being Lunar New Gods or recently rediscovered Pentan gods from the God Time. I'm unaware of where it is mentioned that the Pentans used to worship the Storm gods, so they've quite dramatically reinterpreted gods who are foreign to them. There isn't mention of a revelation like Monrogh's but it does show that gods can be rather radically reinterpreted, even renamed, but still be the same, which fits in with at least a soft Elmal-is-Yelmalio interpretation. Is such an interpretation to be thrown out because of its implications?
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Sep 22, 2023 06:18
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Narsham posted:Strength, much less "my god can beat up your god," is only important within a narrow subfield of faiths in Glorantha. The idea that Yelmalio can defeat Elmal in battle is weird anyway, given that the Yelmalians are trying to convince the Elmali that the god they worship IS Yelmalio. As for granted powers, multiple cults in the system grant specific powers or rune magics unique to them that are very effective in combat, but despite being important deities and especially significant to adventuring bands, they are generally not as important as other deities. Humakt is vitally important but worshiped by a tiny number of people, while deities like Barntar or Ernalda are going to have a lot more worshipers and are objectively "powerful" culturally even if they aren't granting reusable access to Sever Spirit, or combat-related oaths, or other such goodies. I suppose. However, direct confrontation between deities in debate has been a thing in the RL world as well. While christianizing Scandinavia, missionaries had to convince the heathens living there that A) Jesus could best Thor in a fight and B) Jesus was a strong, mail-wearing tribal lord, not unlike the visage of Odin. Also, if Humakt is a chaos-god by his actions, Eurmal and Orlanth are too.
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Sep 22, 2023 06:44
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I suspect Runes are far more to do with the worshipper than the worshipped. Go along the the Earth temple with a high Fertility rune, you meet bounteous Ernalda. 40 years later, with death in your bones, it is Ty Kora Tek who greets you. If you showed up at a Wind temple with an active chaos rune, you would almost certainly end up dead. And not because the god struck you down, but because the priest (or temple wyter) knows the story of what happened the last time someone tried that. Rune cults exist largely to place temple defences around.worship sites, to control who gets to meet the gods, so imposing a human moral order on them. Sun Dome temples have especially powerful temple defences, created ages ago. The Yelmalio cult that controls them, following the Monrogh doctrine, chooses to let those initiated at clan shrines to Elmal in through the doors. Of the two remaining tribal temple controlled by the Elmal cult, one admits Yelamians and one does not.
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Sep 22, 2023 09:57
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What temples are those?
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Sep 22, 2023 10:24
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Tias posted:What temples are those? One is in Runegate (as per current canon), the other somewhere down south with the Dundealos or Pol Joni. Though the latter will be as much Praxian nomad Yelmalio (iirc sometimes called Yamsur) as Hyaloring Yelmalio (typically called Elmal).. Sources: a 2021 essay from Jeff [the Sun Dome Temple in Sartar], and the JC publication Valley of Plenty.
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Sep 22, 2023 12:11
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Thanks! Am trying to homebrew a Elmal cult writeup while I wait for the actual one, is there somewhere in the prior editions I could find a good one to convert?
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Sep 22, 2023 12:45
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Tias posted:Thanks! http://www.backtobalazar.com/elmal-runequest-cult-write-up/ Someone made an elmal cult writeup for runequest, if that's what you need?
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Sep 22, 2023 12:56
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Exactly! Thanks a lot.
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Sep 22, 2023 16:23
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What’s a Lightfore?
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Sep 22, 2023 16:37
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