These notes relate to my attempt to create a mythos for my own game. As such I make a few leaps that out of creative necessity.
Yelorna is Sky Huntress and sister of Lightfore and Yamsur. Enemy of Zorak Zoran [Orak]. She is the starbringer, which was also an action of Ulurda the Blue Fox, aka Orogeria, the Moon/Sky Huntress. Her mother is said to be Ernalda (who is the Pelorian Erlanda). She is in fact a synthetic deity of the Nysalorian period.
Yelorna has a relationship or connection to Ourania, who, however, is a more pacifistic deity, though they share a celestial portfolio. Ourania is the daughter of Dayzatar, and has no mother. The associations of Yelorna with Earth are significant enough to question whether they are properly identical. However we may compare the repeating generations of goddesses who are also partly identical in the Earth tribe.
She witnessed the death of Yamsur at the hands of Zorak Zoran.
Her riding affinity suggests a connection to Kargzant or to Gamara, the steed of Yamsur/Lightfore.
= Verithurusa, Sight-portion of Sedenya? White Moon. Rausa is another ‘daughter of Yelm’, daughter of Yelm and the Styx.
Compare Redaylda, ‘red-haired horse-loving daughter of Orlanth and Ernalda’.
As the virgin daughter of Ernalda, she overlaps with the pacifistic Voria, but she has Babeester Gor’s labrys axe. Her other weapon is the Meteor Bow, which corresponds to the bow and name of Orogeria.
The unicorn women insist that Yelorna is a daughter of Ernalda, the primary Earth goddess of the region (hence her rebellion), though Verithurusa, who may be her Pelorian counterpart, is the child of Entekos or Dendara.
Like the various Lightfores at the Hill of Gold, Yelorna fights Zorak Zoran [alias Orak, the Hell-wind, etc.]. During Arkat’s Stygian Empire her cult was suppressed; ‘exterminated everywhere west of the Rockwoods’. [Drastic: Prax, p.48]
I suspect the hostility (though not usually violent) of the Praxian Yelornans to the Lunar syncretic pantheon is partly rooted in the attempt of the missionaries to merge Yelorna with Orogeria (which was stymied by the virginity dogma among the unicorn riders). Ironically, of course, Yelorna is herself a Nysalorian innovation.
The phoneme Yel- corresponds to Yelm, Yelem, or Ehilm, meaning ‘bright, sun’. –Orna may be connected to the Theyalan [V]Oria, which signifies a girl, or a fertile land. The name means Sun Daughter (see below).
Compare Denegeria, the daughter (of Dendara), who is similar to Voria. She was kidnapped by the Dark God and rescued by Idojartus the Lightbringer = ~ the Imtherian Lagavar, who is the son of Pole Star and the Dancer.
The phenomenon of worshipping a youth/girl aspect of a larger divinity corresponds to the worship of Orlanth Adventurous among the Heortlings; it does not invalidate the later history of this goddess. The Ritual of Purity, in addition, would not exist without a mythical basis: i.e., Yelorna’s antecedent Orogeria’s lover.
Presumably the intent is to sever the Yelorna/Orogeria cult from the male consort figure. If this is Orlantio or Lodril there are probably sociopolitical reasons for this. I also suspect that the assignment of martial aspects to the hunting goddess derives from the desire to create elite military formations. The later obliteration of Yelorna from southern Peloria was probably mythically aided by altering the heroquest of her confrontation with ZZ and recovery of her brother’s weapons, by introducing a modification where she is herself slain by ZZ.
*Khelnorian might be the Imtherian name for Yelorna (which would have existed only during the First Age). See Norian, below.
In modern Imther, it is Khelmal who recovers the torch and shield of Heliakal, not a Yelorna figure.
The Vanchite Yelorna figure may be a daughter of Heliakal/Reladivus (the Sun of Nivorah, who may be = Kargzant) and Reladiva. (Reladiva, in fact may be the prototype of the Earth-mother of Yelorna). Her rebellion against her dead father is in becoming a warrior, and against her (remarried) mother is in remaining a virgin. [At Elampur, the Sun-god was Elmal]
Note that Terarir [including the site of Nivorah and what became Vanch] was ruled by the promiscuous queen Erilindia in the First Age, who appears to have been the sometime consort of Lokomayadon. Her name is clearly connected to Erlendia, ‘the sexual monster of the south’. This was in the First Age the core territory of the Earth cult where it overlapped into Dara Happa.
Sun Daughter is the Praxian Lightfore and overlaps with both Yelorna and the Pelorian Little Suns. She survived the death of Yamsur (who, as Alaramsur was the enemy of the Holayan Orlanthi at the Hill of Gold).
Sun Daughter is worshipped by Praxians, who also reject the Pentan Kargzant or Yu-Kargzant as the sun, in part because of his horse-nature.
She is the sun that rose when [Yelm] died. She was once the Pole Star and made Polaris her successor to take her circular path. The composite Sun Daughter-Yelornan cult was one of the syncretic creations of the Nysalorian Bright Empire. [see Drastic: Prax]
Her path from the Pole Star is similar to the plunge of Verithurusa/Zaytenera across the sky dome after Umath invades the heavens, though this is much earlier, and corresponds to the movement of Yamsur into Genert’s Garden. This may indicate an earlier expulsion of the feminine soul from the six-souled Dara Happan Brightface.
We may reconstruct Sun Daughter retrieving the fallen weapons of Yamsur from his Grave (the Hill of Gold/Earthfall).
Verithurusa is the Celestial Wanderer, the White Planet, Jernedeus, Jernotia, and the Full Half Moon. She was reincarnated [via Lesilla, ‘descending blue moon’, Gerra, Rashorana] as Orogeria/Ulurda after she died/lost her virginity and passed into the Underworld. Compare ‘–Rausa’ who is also a daughter of the Sun.
She founded Mernita, which was destroyed by the Emperor Lukarius, son of Lesilla, her next incarnation. This land was not drowned during the Flood and is taken to be the Blue Moon Plateau and its surrounds.
She was a rebel against her father, because of her curiosity. Her first lover, who transformed her into Lesilla, the first Blue Moon, is unnamed, but has certain similarities to the Imtherian Orlantio and the Pelorian Lodril. The child of Verithurusa is ‘Little Jewel’, a star god, and the child of Orlantio and Chalana is said to be the Dawn.
The Verithurusa to come is the daughter and transformation of Zaytenara.
The panoply of Verithurusa consists of a (curved) dagger and a mirror.
Verithurusa as Zaytenera is associated with Jarst and Garsting, where the Yelorna cult survived the downfall of the Bright Empire. [Drastic: Prax]
Verithurusa is the moon passing into the West where it enters the Underworld at Mount Jernotius (the Dara Happan boundary of the western horizon); she emerges after her full cycle as Zaytenera in Jarsting or the mountains beyond.
Orogeriais the tamer of the Sky Bear [note that Odayla is the son of Velhara, the Lady of the Wild, in Dragon Pass rather than her companion]. ‘She released the stars’ (GS, p.148), an action essentially identical with Yelorna’s. She lived upon the Earth and is the Lady of the Wilds, the Keeper of Life and Death. She is the Crescent-Come Moon. She protected Ulurda, the vixen, when her lover stalked and cornered her, but could not protect Ulurdum. Ulurda is in fact part of her, her beast soul.
She rose into the sky after the destruction of Kazkurtum, the Shadow of the Sun, who is the embodiment of the Greater Darkness.
Orogeria is best known from Arir and Darsen, where she remains the hunting goddess and is separate from Lunar ritual. Some thereabouts have a similar anger at the Lunars for ‘taking her’ as the Yelornans do concerning ‘silver’.
Orogeria becomes Natha, the Half-Moon, after she enters the Underworld.
Orogeria and Ulurda belong to the Pre-Dawn, the ebb of the Darkness before the Rising of the Lesser Sun.
The panoply of Orogeria is the self-bow.
The name Orogeria is obviously related to the (male) divinity Urengerum, the Archer or bow god, found on the Gods Wall. This indicates her name probably simply means ‘archer’ and may be an epithet (compare the shape of a crescent moon).
Norian is the Imtherian Lady of the Wild. The name element –Oria- is here present. She was the foster mother of Gordio/Gordaval, that is, Foundchild.
Ulurda,the blue vixen (Ul- = ‘blue’, -urda, ‘mover’ (fem.)). Mate of Ulurdum. Associated, possibly erroneously, with Uleria, the blue goddess of love. Curiously the Praxian Lodril is called Baba Ulodra. This name is very suggestive of Ulurdum, the earth-digging male fox god, as being a form of Lodril, but may be a coincidence – Baba Ulodra was brought to Prax by the Agamori. However we may also note that the ‘Big Guy’ who mated with Veruthurusa might be Lodril, who is a cult of sexual initiation throughout Peloria. Lodril, moreover, is the god of hearthfires and furnaces and thus corresponds to the fire-bringing Trickster, which is clearly linked to the fox-god with his burning tail. Compare the Teshnan Calyz the Firebringer. Tunoral the raccoon is the masked follower of Heliakal who takes the sacred mask from the dead Sun, though Khelmal takes the shield and torch. The similarities between raccoon gods (particularly before they are masked) and foxes are probably meaningful.
In Vanch, the fox Yotelap is Heliakal [Lightfore’s] shadow/other and betrays him, but he cannot be really distinguished from the beast soul as well. This corresponds to the Imtherian Yurmalio, who is the betrayer of Khelmal [Lightfore]. I believe that here the original beast-servant god has been differentiated so that the unmasked proto-Tunoral is excused from his misdeed so that he is excused (being the savior of Vanch). In other words, the dog, fox, raccoon god is a single being, wearing different guises.
(Compare Kazkurtum, the Shadow of Yelm, who may be identical to the Black Sun, and/or Shargash and/or Zorak Zoran). The red fox Yotelep/Yurmalio, unlike the blue fox, however, signifies the burning and fire powers of the Little Sun that betrayed him against Zorak Zoran, and were consumed by the troll god.
The white planet is said to have Mahaqata, the Bat, as her shadow, which flew into the face of the Sun so that the Rebel could slay him. There may be a mythical connection between the fox goddess and the bat (viz. flying foxes).
The blue fox, however, is chromatically similar to the White Fox which serves Inora, also a participant in the Hill of Gold story. From a shamanistic standpoint, the fox may be the untrustworthy fetch.
Note the pairing of Orogeria with her beast-shadow, Ulurda, the ‘blue mover’, a quasi-Lunar celestial great spirit.
It was Ulurda who entered the body of Teelo Norri so the goddess could be born. After all, the shadow is the seventh part of a soul which is the hardest to destroy or kill, and often lingers on the surface. Hence when the dead goddesses were drawn out of the Underworld by the Seven Mothers, they were aided by locating her Shadow.
In the synthetic Sun Daughter myth I think [as developed in the Bright Empire], Orogeria/Yelorna retrieves the bow, spear, and shield, confronting or converting the shadow of her brother that guards his grave = the Zorak Zoran of the Yelorna myth. The resurrected body of the brother becomes Tharkantus, the corpse-god of the Cold Sun.