I’m going through some files and found some of Greg’s oldest notes on Orlanth (from about 1977):
The council of gods in Dragon Pass is made of several major deities. Orlanth is foremost among them, for he enforces the cosmic order. Others on the council include Humakt, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy.
The primary purpose of the Orlanth cult is the maintenance of the Cosmic Order which he helped establish.
And as those earliest notes make clear – Orlanth CANNOT compromise with Chaos or with the Red Goddess, who is allied with it. His very purpose is to stop them. Now I think I did a pretty good job of making that point in the Lightbringers book, but Greg’s earliest notes are even more direct and to the point.
The primary purpose of the Orlanth cult – in Greg’s notes – is to maintain the cosmic order established with the Compromise. Part of that means fighting against any new intrusions of Chaos into that cosmic order. He’s locked into that role by the Compromise – the gods have no free will.
The Red Goddess achieved goddess-hood by making a new intrusion of Chaos into the cosmic order. She cannot help but destabilise that order. And as the Red Moon, she is also locked into her role.
Yelm upholds the social order by Being. His presence alone is sufficient to maintain the order; his absence dooms the order.
Orlanth upholds the social order by Doing. He quested to save and re-establish the Cosmic Order, and he maintains it by his deeds. Yelm on the other hand sat in the Underworld dead, and waited for Orlanth to show up and make peace. Orlanth’s approach to things is a little more dynamic than Yelm.
The Red Goddess creates a crisis in the cosmos, deliberately bringing Chaos within, and forcing a collapse of the cosmic order. This will force mortals to establish a new cosmic order, one less defined by the Gods War conflicts and offering liberation to mortals. Ponder that carefully to get a change for Illumination.
Yelm’s cult believes that Yelm is so indispensable that he could restore the Cosmic Order by doing nothing until the rebel gods came to him to make amends. And from his vantage he’s right – but of course the rebels gods needed to do a lot of things to get there.