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The First Council

Posted on August 14, 2022

I recently ran across one of the most ancient texts describing the First Council. This was dated to the Dawn Age, when Glorantha’s mythic structure was first being defined and explored:

The First Council was comprised of six members who represented the major powers which had worked together to ensure their survival in Dragon Pass during the Great Darkness. The original six is unique in its inclusion of both mortals and spirits.

In most other places these two types of Being were severely sundered by the birth of Time, and so Dragon Pass was blessed with a high degree of cultural, religious, and magical integration when the rest of the world was still isolated by their own defences. The Council of Six developed a vigorous crusading philosophy of bringing civilization to the shadowed lands of Genertela.

The first six members of the Council were these:

1. Aram-ya-Udram, or Aram-soul of-Udra, (the Founder of the humans of Dragon Pass). Aram was fully mortal, but lived two hundred years. He appears as a civilized statesman, experienced general, and religious adept. Among other (greater) deeds he was the first to tame the giant boars of Dragon Pass to serve as mounts for his elite warriors.

2. The Only Old One. This was a god born of Darkness who protected the beings of Dragon Pass with his outer self and guided them to their secret souls with his inner self.

3. Kyger Litor, the Ancestress of the dark trolls.

4. The Speaking Wheel. This was the spokesperson for the Gold Wheel Dancers, a strange and short-survived race. The whole of the peoples eventually turned themselves into magical talismans. Their place on the council was taken by a golden image of wheel.

5. The Inhuman King, a demigod leader of the Dragonewt races. This was considered a mortal race, although blessed with magical power. The words of the Inhuman King were always counted heavily, for they spoke for the True Dragons.

6. Orlanth, son of Umath, and leader of the Seven Lightbringers. The single most powerful deity in Dragon Pass, Orlanth was noted for his many wives and children of these times.

The core of the First Council’s power was in Dragon Pass itself. Within its first fifty years, called the “Generation and Fusion Period,” the nearby lands of Esrolia, Prax, and Saird had gladly embraced the Councilic philosophies.

As an aside, I think Greg’s original conception of this is still correct. It is just that later scribes referred to it like this:

Among the six were the Only Old One, the Inhuman King, a Mistress Race troll, an Orlanthi, a Gold Wheel Dancer, and Aram ya-Udram, a human.

Jeff Richard

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Aram-ya-Udram, First Council, Inhuman King, Kyger Litor, Only Old One, Orlanth, The Speaking Wheel.

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