Skip to content
The Well of Daliath
Menu
Menu

How Cults Change

Posted on November 11, 2022

The archetypes and patterns of the God Time are eternal and fixed. But what we in Time experience of the God Time, what we call things, what we offer magic points to and draw upon when we use magic – that changes as we mortals do. “Myths” are the stories we tell about the God Time – we can see the God Time in our rites, our ceremonies, and when the Gods World is close to us. Sometimes we can even interact ourself with the archetypes and patterns of the God Time – that’s what we call Heroquesting.

Yelmalio – Little Sun – is a title. We apply it to the Light in the Darkness, the light remained when the Sun was killed and the light that refused to go out in the Darkness. We have places where we can meeting the Little Sun, where he is so close you can reach out to touch him. We can walk in his path and ascend to the Hill of Gold and try to fight against the Darkness, but we know that our god was defeated by Orlanth and robbed by Zorak Zoran – that’s part of his definition. If we do not experience that, we do not follow in his path. Like a Jesus who is not crucified.

But perhaps something we thought was the Little Sun – his Golden Spear perhaps – is something that we can draw power from directly. We can worship the Golden Spear as a god, separate (but associated) with Yelmalio. Or perhaps we see the time that Yelmalio worked with Orlanth and decide to focus only upon that, and call that subset of Yelmalio with the name Elmal. Or perhaps we experience Yelmalio as merely the light that emanates from Yelm, and worship Yelmalio merely as an attribute of Yelm.

Perhaps on a heroquest, we follow Yelmalio’s path, are extinguished but rekindle ourself with our purity. We bring this back to our temple with a new Rune Spell of one-use Resurrection or maybe just Restart Fire. Perhaps we gain a new gift, not on the list, or take a new geas, not previously seen. In this way, cults may change.

Jeff Richard

Next
Previous
cults, RQG Heroquesting, Yelmalio

Sections

  • Search Tips
  • Current RuneQuest Glorantha Publications
  • RuneQuest Glorantha Corrections and Q&A
  • Catalogue
  • References for Glorantha
    • Gloranthan Canon
  • Gloranthan Documents
  • RPG Systems & Versions
  • Gallery
  • About This Site
  • Get involved!

Latest Posts

  • Sartarite Geography
  • Is the Man Rune always male?
  • The Sun Disk
  • Designing New Cults
  • Common Rune Magic
  • Cult vs. D&D classes
  • RQ Character Creation
  • Caravans II
  • Cult Membership
  • Creating scenarios

Links

  • Chaosium
  • Chaosium’s RuneQuest RPG Wiki
  • Glorantha on BRP Central
  • RuneQuest on BRP Central
  • RuneQuest on Discord
  • Prince of Sartar Webcomic
  • Glorantha G+ Archives on Tapatalk
  • Search mailing list archive

Latest from BRP Central

  • What to do with the Feldichi Device from DLoD
  • House Rules - spirit combat
  • Skills, skills, skills!
  • Table Tales: Coming back to Glorantha
  • Jelmre - Jonstown Compendium
  • Solung Question
  • Journey to Jonstown #77: Nick Brooke's Jonstown Compendium Index 2025
  • Journey to Jonstown #76: Adventure in Dragon Pass
  • Greg Stafford bibliography
  • Initiation without Cult or Temple

Popular Tags

Boldhome (large city) Chaosium Colymar (Sartar tribe) Contents Cult demographics Cults of Runequest (preview) Ernalda FRA Furthest (large city) G+ post GBR Gods Wall Greg Stafford Guide to Glorantha Guide to Glorantha (preview) index Jar-eel Lunar Empire Lunar Pantheon Magazine Malkioni pantheon Map Michael O’Brien Mongoose MRQ1 New Pavis (small city) Old Glorantha Q&A Orlanth Orlanthi pantheon Photo reference Population demographics Prax (homeland) Q&A RQ3 RQG Sandy Petersen Sartar (homeland) Spirit Cult Star Subcult Tarsh (homeland & Lunar province) Yelm Yelmalio Yelm Pantheon Youtube
©2025 The Well of Daliath | Design: Newspaperly WordPress Theme