Journal of the Plague Year: On the Lightbringers' Quest

I'm going to cross my streams a bit here, incorporating some stuff from my other blog that reviews and discusses tabletop role playing games, my hobbyist passion.  More specifically, I want to talk about Glorantha, one of the most interesting and compelling fantasy worlds that I have encountered.  Glorantha was the creation of Greg Stafford (1948-2018), though Stafford preferred to say that he "discovered" Glorantha.  The best way to get a handle on Glorantha is to compare it with Tolkien's Middle Earth.  Tolkien's world is marked by the fact that Tolkien was a linguistics scholar, a product of upper-class English education, and a devout Roman Catholic.  By contrast, Stafford's world is marked by the fact that he was a mythology scholar, a product of the 1960s and 1970s Bay Area American counter-culture, and a practitioner of various Native American religious practices (he died while in a sweat lodge, to put perhaps too fine a point on it).  Glorantha is a predominantly Bronze Age setting (more or less), and is defined by its deep and comprehensive mythology.

It is this mythology that continues to draw me in.  The long-promised compendium of most of the key deities and their myths is supposed to arrive some time in 2021, and I will be the first in line to buy it (if for nothing else, the art in the recent Glorantha books is absolutely spectacular--here is an example).  But among the myths that have been published, the one that has stuck with me the most is perhaps the most foundational one, the story of "Orlanth and the Lightbringers' Quest."  It goes something like this:  

In the Golden Age, the world was ruled by Yelm, the One Sun and the Lord of the Sky.  Yelm's domain was one of unchanging order, as everything was perfect, or so Yelm said.  Everyone had a place, and there was a place for everyone.

Into Yelm's court came Orlanth, son of Umath.  Orlanth was the Lord of Air and Storm and, like the wind, he blew where he wished.  He came to Yelm's court seeking his place in the world that Yelm ruled, having already accomplished many mighty deeds that proved his fitness, or at least so he thought.  To prove his place, Orlanth challenged Yelm to The Contests of Orlanth, the winner of which would rule the world unchallenged.  The first contest was the Contest of Dance--Yelm performed a ballet, flawless in its execution, while Orlanth performed a spirited war dance.  The second was the Contest of Music.  When Yelm performed his traditional tune, Orlanth displayed a wholly original instrument, the bagpipes.  In the third contest, the Contest of Magic, Yelm's magic of Being was countered by Orlanth's magic of Becoming.

After the three Contests were over, Yelm declared that Orlanth had lost, as the bagpipe was something new, and thus by definition not perfect and inferior to Yelm's performance.  In his anger, Orlanth challenged Yelm to a fourth Contest, that of Weapons.  When Yelm drew his bow and arrows, Orlanth revealed the gift he had stolen from his brother Humakt--the dread sword known as Death.  With it, Orlanth slew Yelm, and thus took control of the world.

Orlanth and his Storm Tribe thus ruled the world, while Yelm descended into the underworld.  While Orlanth rejoiced in his victory, Orlanth's actions weakened the fabric of the world, allowed the entropic forces of Chaos to enter.  These forces gained strength during the Storm Age, finally giving birth to Chaos's champion, Wakboth the Devil.  Wakboth and his forces routed the members of the Storm Tribe, destroying the Spike at the center of the world, upon which the gods lived.

For Orlanth, all seemed to be lost, and the world seemed to be on the brink of total annihilation.  But, in the moment of total despair, Orlanth left Elmal the Loyal Thane to watch over his people and set off on a great quest.  He traveled the world gathering together companions along the way--Chalana Arroy the Healer, Lhankor Mhy the Scholar, Issaries the Trader, Eurmal the Trickster, the crazed Flesh Man, and the mysterious spirit Ginna Jar.  Orlanth and his companions traveled to the underworld, overcoming horrendous challenges and following the trail of blood left by the wounded Yelm.  In time, Orlanth and his companions arrived where Yelm and the other dead gods resided.  Yelm issued the Demand for Atonement, and Orlanth complied.  

In turn, Orlanth issued the Bid for Friendship.  Yelm was hesitant, but eventually he was won over by the other gods.  Together, along with a mysterious goddess called Arachne Solara, the assembled deities pledged to the Great Compromise.  They forged a great net that trapped Wakboth, and Arachne Solara consumed the foul Chaos champion.  In its place, the spider goddess gave birth to Time.  The gods left the underworld, and Yelm rose into the sky (though he would spend half of each day, now known as night, in the underworld).

Thus did Orlanth and the Lightbringers save the world from Wakboth the Devil and the forces of Chaos.  In its place, a new world was created.  Time reigned.  History began.

As I write this, there are only a few hours left in our annus horribilis, 2020.  On a macro level, it certainly feels like the Spike is cracking, if it hasn't already shattered.  While I have more-or-less weathered 2020 OK in a personal sense, I know that for many people their Spike has broken.

The question that the story of the Lightbringers' Quest raises is a simple one, but one that I think it of great importance--what do you do when everything has fallen apart?  And, maybe more specifically, what do you do when everything has fallen apart and you think it might be, at least in part, your fault?  In such a circumstance, there is a normal human tendency to dig in, to refuse to admit that you have made a mistake.  Far more than we want to admit, we often find it easier to go down with the ship, it ride the train of our own circumstances all the way to the bottom.

Orlanth, though, models a different way.  It is a way that involves admitting that you are wrong, but also committing to doing something about it.  That "something" is going to make us very uncomfortable; it is going to involve personal sacrifices.  It very well may require us to ask for forgiveness from people that we have wronged, or at least from people that believe that we have wronged them.  That, more than anything else, is something we don't want to do.  I get the sense in the accounts of the story that Orlanth was less than fully convinced that he was in the wrong when he overthrew Yelm (Yelm is, pretty clearly, a bit of an arch-conservative dick).  And, yet, Orlanth sought Yelm's forgiveness anyway, in order to bury the hatchet and save the world.

I don't know what sort of Lightbringers' Quest you need to undertake.  Heck, I have no idea what my Lightbringers' Quest is or should be.  But I have a feeling, in the waning minutes of this year of trial, that we need a Lightbringers' Quest, and several of them.  Hatchets need to be buried; peace needs to be made, even in places where it is most improbable.  I feel that too many have already decided to ride this ship to the bottom.  

But, the hope found in the story of Orlanth and his Lightbringers is that it is never too late to try something new.  It's never too late to set off, to find companions, to make our way to the underworld to seek out a peace with Yelm.  It is never too late to change the world.  Let's all hope, in 2021, that we can all do that, together.