Prosopaedia

This prosopaedia provides an objective view of the major deities of Glorantha. The objective here is to give an overview of many different deities drawn from across the world of Glorantha, not to be an exhaustive listing of Gloranthan deities.

Gloranthan Pantheons

Glorathan religions tend to worship groups of gods or pantheons, venerating a number of different deities or spirits. We can generally group them into a number of pantheons with overlapping members.

The primary pantheons in Glorantha include:

Just click on a pantheon for a list of deities associated with that pantheon.

Expanation of Entries

Each entry first gives the most common spelling of the deity’s name, immediately followed by a commonly accepted pronunciation of that name. Remember that people from different lands may have an entirely different name for the deity and certainly will pronounce these names somewhat differently.

The next line lists the pantheon or pantheons in which that deity is found and then the deity’s title or function within that pantheon. There may also be a line which directs you to another entry, which commonly provides a listing of other gods and goddesses who are closely related to the deity, and whose stories may provide additional pertinent information for the reader.

Following this information is a short paragraph which further explains the deities position in the world, and which often contains tidbits drawn from the deity’s mythology. Also, the manner(s) in which the deity is portrayed or illustrated to his or her worshipers is given in native form. Thus is provided an image of each Doraddi deity as woven into baskets or drawn into sand; of Western heroes as portrayed in illuminated manuscripts; of Uz deities as rendered in chewed-rock carvings; and of most other deities as represented in temple sculptures. Mermen are iconoclastic, and never picture their deities. Some gods, especially chaos gods, receive little formal worship but may appear as foes in the rituals of other religions. We give the forms they take in such rituals. Occasionally the source for a deity’s form is other than the imagination of its normal worshipers, and in these cases we have so stated. Also, a god’s description may seem to be a symbol, rather than an image, such as in the case of the Basket of Aleshmara. We have not tried to distinguish between the symbols and illustrations.

Pronunciation of Gloranthan Names

  • Stressed syllables are capitalized.
  • Consonants are always hard, and pronounced only one way.
  • All S’s are sibilant.
  • All Z-sounds are written with Z.
  • RR is rolled R.
  • The soft J is written ZH.
  • short-O is written O;
  • broad-O is written AU;
  • long-O is written OE.
  • short-A is written A;
  • broad-A is written AH;
  • long-A is written AE.
  • short-E is written E or HE;
  • long-E is written EE.
  • short-I is written I or IH;
  • long-I is written IGH.
  • short-U is written U or UH;
  • long-U is written OO.
  • The letter Y is always pronounced as it is in “yawn”.
  • OI as in “coin” is written for pronunciation as OY.
  • An apostrophe indicates an extremely compressed short-I sound.

Entries

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