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edenfallingI worked a little on "Harvest" tonight. Lya-Lya is explaining Hlaenor spirituality to Ekanu, so Ekanu will know what to watch for while accompanying Denifar on his vision quest. This is important because Denifar doesn't give a damn, not thinking any of this is real. And you know, maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but Ekanu believes in spirits and gods, so she is going to make him at least pay lip service to the right forms.
It's kind of interesting to write this section, because it means I have to sit down and actually think Hlaenor religion through in a much more interconnected and in-depth fashion than I have previously. I mean, I know they're monotheists of sorts (they worship Gwylach, the Goddess or Holy Queen), but they're also bitheists (Gwylach has a husband/son/brother, Gwylos), and animists/pantheists with a whole menageries of nature spirits and also a bunch of semi-mythic culture heroes. And then their religion was originally developed in a hilly inland forest region, after which they moved wholesale to a temperate volcanic archipelago and absorbed some of the religion/mythology of the islands' previous inhabitants, which has thrown a lot of kinks into their mythology and spiritual practices.
And then, you know, because this story is set on Na'eraelu, which is one of the two islands that the Hlaenor ceded to the Estarin Empire for centuries, the Church of Three also has a strong local influence. So it's an interesting tangle to unravel, but I can't go too overboard. This is meant to be a general overview of local powers Ekanu should be aware of, not an academic paper on comparative fictional religions and their related cultural history. *grin*
Anyway, what I have learned so far is that apparently Pyraelach does not live on Na'eraelu anymore, and so has no say in what goes on there. Once vulcanism stops, she is said to have, I dunno, turned her cauldron upside down and let the fires smother in the stones she has made. Then she unlocks her house and leaves. This allows the spirit of the central mountain to step into the light and call her children home, until such time as Ulolach claims the island and sinks it beneath the sea.
*ponders* I am iffy about the exact terminology, but I like that basic formulation. Yeah. Mountain spirits are good; we'll do that. (Now I must name the mountain. And decide how many volcanic craters Na'eraelu has, anyway. *sigh* I think it has at least two, since it's one of the largest islands in the chain.)
Weather spirits are also worth paying attention to, and maybe the local valley spirits of both Gohril Wyefuelo (site of the diverted stream) and whatever valley/plain is on the other side of the ridge in question. The spirits of place won't be able to reach Denifar directly on the vision islet, but they can get other spirits to convey messages... and the form of those messages will be determined by the originating spirit? I think that will work.
Now I just need to figure out what signs are favorable and what signs are unfavorable. And I need to decide whether any of them occur, and to make sure they are explainable by perfectly natural causes as well, since I am trying very hard to keep the objective reality of Firsthome's gods as ambiguous as the objective reality of Earth's gods. (In other words, maybe they're real, maybe they're not, but in either case, they are real to their believers and anything from useful stories to arrant nonsense to non-believers. I think religion is much more interesting when it's unprovable, probably because unprovable religions are so much more likely to change over time. And change is the lifeblood of stories. *grin*)
It's kind of interesting to write this section, because it means I have to sit down and actually think Hlaenor religion through in a much more interconnected and in-depth fashion than I have previously. I mean, I know they're monotheists of sorts (they worship Gwylach, the Goddess or Holy Queen), but they're also bitheists (Gwylach has a husband/son/brother, Gwylos), and animists/pantheists with a whole menageries of nature spirits and also a bunch of semi-mythic culture heroes. And then their religion was originally developed in a hilly inland forest region, after which they moved wholesale to a temperate volcanic archipelago and absorbed some of the religion/mythology of the islands' previous inhabitants, which has thrown a lot of kinks into their mythology and spiritual practices.
And then, you know, because this story is set on Na'eraelu, which is one of the two islands that the Hlaenor ceded to the Estarin Empire for centuries, the Church of Three also has a strong local influence. So it's an interesting tangle to unravel, but I can't go too overboard. This is meant to be a general overview of local powers Ekanu should be aware of, not an academic paper on comparative fictional religions and their related cultural history. *grin*
Anyway, what I have learned so far is that apparently Pyraelach does not live on Na'eraelu anymore, and so has no say in what goes on there. Once vulcanism stops, she is said to have, I dunno, turned her cauldron upside down and let the fires smother in the stones she has made. Then she unlocks her house and leaves. This allows the spirit of the central mountain to step into the light and call her children home, until such time as Ulolach claims the island and sinks it beneath the sea.
*ponders* I am iffy about the exact terminology, but I like that basic formulation. Yeah. Mountain spirits are good; we'll do that. (Now I must name the mountain. And decide how many volcanic craters Na'eraelu has, anyway. *sigh* I think it has at least two, since it's one of the largest islands in the chain.)
Weather spirits are also worth paying attention to, and maybe the local valley spirits of both Gohril Wyefuelo (site of the diverted stream) and whatever valley/plain is on the other side of the ridge in question. The spirits of place won't be able to reach Denifar directly on the vision islet, but they can get other spirits to convey messages... and the form of those messages will be determined by the originating spirit? I think that will work.
Now I just need to figure out what signs are favorable and what signs are unfavorable. And I need to decide whether any of them occur, and to make sure they are explainable by perfectly natural causes as well, since I am trying very hard to keep the objective reality of Firsthome's gods as ambiguous as the objective reality of Earth's gods. (In other words, maybe they're real, maybe they're not, but in either case, they are real to their believers and anything from useful stories to arrant nonsense to non-believers. I think religion is much more interesting when it's unprovable, probably because unprovable religions are so much more likely to change over time. And change is the lifeblood of stories. *grin*)
