Introduction to the Blog: Mianmo Running Alynx

Recent excavation in southwestern Kerofinela has produced a treasure trove of materials from the Late Heortling period. This blog is chiefly concerned with the literary collection of the scribe Mianmo Running Alynx, which was unearthed from one of the White Horse Barrows. There, on the frontier between civilization and barbarism (itself situated within another such frontier), Mianmo curated a collection of texts that are in conversation with other works of her period, such as Dagius Furius’s Orlanthi Book and Usuphus of Jonstown’s Six Seasons in Sartar, but which in many places displays a striking divergence from such classical literature. Her Thedogony, for example, raises many questions about our understanding of the Orlanthi birth-of-evil myth, and The Lost Book of Etyries, Named Goodears might change our understanding of early non-human embracing of the Lunar Way.

Notably, both study of her grave art and analysis of her skeleton suggest that Mianmo was one of the sa-elurae, one of the civilized shapeshifting foxes local to the region (having chosen life in society over the intoxicating freedom of eating weird bugs). These sa-elurae were strongly associated with the Illusion Rune, and this makes Mianmo’s accounts dubious on both sides of the gap called Time. It is possible that she was nothing more than a fabulist, or was perceived as such by her society. If so, her approach to the Thed mythos was exceedingly dangerous, given that it would have opened her up to accusations of being a Chaos sympathizer. (Her other two personal runes were Earth and Life, usually arranged on either side of that suggestively empty triangle.)

Attempting to trace Mianmo through the Hero Wars is difficult. Given the location of her grave and the cultural context of her writings, it is likely that she was associated with the Colymar tribe, a Heortling tribe on the western side of the Kingdom of Sartar. Furthermore, she was in some way connected to the storied Haraborn clan; likely not a member, but a visitor to their tula at the very least, given that multiple of her works concern the beliefs and history of that clan. One may imagine her sitting with Jodi White Hart, tail wrapped around her midriff, Nochet-made spectacles on her nose, ears cocked eagerly as she takes notes in her long, looping scribescript. While her sympathies to the Sartarite cause are evident (and the “later hand” in her list of princes seems to be a thin smokescreen for her own sympathies, which remained steadfastly Kallyrite even after the Starbrow’s death), evidently she had contacts among the Etyries cult which exposed her to Lunar theology and possible Illumination.

Some people may wonder why it is worth platforming Mianmo's writing at all. After all, her self-conscious literary heterodoxy challenges and makes a mess of the classical Theyalan canon, in large ways and small. To that, this translator can offer no rebuttal and can only give one of Mianmo's inscriptions, itself cited to a larger work titled Why Did She Leave The Miniature Garden? (A text which, as far as this translator has been able to tell, came through contemporary Esrolia from Kralorela, and may have been a favorite of hers.)

“You’ve never heard of this story before? Well, you might be right. This whole story might be just a lie that I enjoy telling people. So, you can decide whether to believe it or not. It’s your choice, isn’t it?”

Also, I hear some people enjoy doing "roleplaying" in Kerofinela at the opening of the Hero Wars, or even elsewhere in Glorantha. Given Mianmo's often unique perspective, believing uncritically in anything that is said here, or expecting her work to be backed by other sources, is likely to be as dangerous as it is to be rewarding. But this translator does like to think that perhaps in the midst of all this Illusion there might be, at times, something more valuable than Truth. After all, Illusion was the rune of the professional storyteller, and what is roleplaying but the revival of that tradition?

These translations use the New Myriadist approach to Theyalan pronoun usage, finding the Classical Binarist approach limiting and misleading and the Literalist approach often confusing for the layman (or, in the spirit of Mianmo, laywoman). Here, this translator wishes to thank G. Stafford for his tireless work in Theyalan linguistic studies. We stand on the shoulders of a giant.