The first set of Cults books – Mythology, Lightbringers, Earth Goddesses, Lunar Way, Celestial Realm, etc. – largely define the Theyalan-Dara Happan-Praxian-Lunar understanding of the world. There are some exceptions – Darkness, Water, and Lords of Terror are largely nonhuman, and Earth Goddesses presented several nonhuman cults and also introduced us to Pamalt. All of these cults have significant interaction with each other.
The Genertelan worldview presented in these books is bordered in the west by the Malkioni worldview, and in the east by the Kralorelan. Both of these cultures acknowledge the basic structure presented in the other cults books, but interpret it quite differently.
The Malkioni posit the gods as Gnostic archons. They are flawed rulers of the world, emanations of the Invisible God that are trapped in the conflicts of the Gods War. It is possible for mortal sorcerers to duplicate their magics without needing to enslave themselves to their conflicts and demands.
The Kralorelans divide these deities into gods, who inhabit the sky and earth, and anti-gods of below, darkness, and waters. The gods would have been overcome by the anti-gods if it were not for the Dragons, who remained in the world out of compassion for other sentients. They have ringed Kralorela off from the conflicts of the Gods War or perhaps Kralorela is a dragon itself.
So the purpose of this post is to move us away from the idea that the Malkioni or the Kralorelans reject the basic cosmological framework of the Mythology Book. Remember, the main Gloranthan deities have an existence that is more than human experience and interpretation. They ARE. and they did things in the God Time that shaped and formed the world we live in.
Different cultures (different cults) do experience and interpret this differently – but the basic story elements are always there. But the Malkioni and Kralorelans have very different interpretations of those story elements from say the Orlanthi and Solars (who have been in dialogue with each other for centuries).