What the Fox Woman Told Me

What My Father Told Me: Peoples of Glorantha is, as we all know, one of the most famous texts unearthed from the Jonstown collection. Without its passages, each stylized as a child asking an authority figure to explain the world to them, we might have much less insight into the nuances of Glorantha's cultures.

However, it is common knowledge in Gloranthan studies that even Peoples of Glorantha does not contain all examples of the form. References and asides in other recovered texts have alluded to other such compilations, and it seems that the Lhankor Mhy cult found it a useful pedagogical tool to quickly convey both facts about different cultures and the internal worldviews of various peoples for the aspiring student.

It appears that Mianmo agreed, as one of the texts recovered from her tomb is in this style. This is another link between Mianmo and the famous Fox House of Nochet. A waystation for the Wandering Beast Circus since the days of the Crossline, the Fox House was kept in good order by a rotating cast of elurae and other Beast Folk willing to slum it in the greatest city in the world. Previous scholarship on Nochet by Dr. Smith has already found evidence of an elura named Samashi in residence there during the Early Hero Wars period, a member of one of the city's cults of Lanbril the Thief. While much of Mianmo's writing is concerned with Kerofinela, this is further evidence that she was no stranger to Kethaela.

From the Cottar: Tales of Light and Darkness

The following stories are both from the journal labeled "From the Cottar," but the subject matter - a myth of the Aldryami and a myth of the Uz - and its position later on in the journal suggests that, frustratingly, Mianmo reused one of her journals to jot down myths from farther-flung climes after filling most of its early pages with wisdom from a salt-of-the-Earth cottar. The alternative is that whoever this cottar was, he was familiar with elf-lore and troll-lore - not impossible, given the cosmopolitan nature of Kerofinela, but certainly a stretch.

"Tree Mother" is an interesting glimpse at a more humanized interpretation of Aldrya. Most Orlanthi stories about her agree that she is an uncaring mother who desires to see trees blanket the world without care for the creatures who live in them, or the peoples who live beside them, beyond the value they can provide for the forest. It is possible that this is not so much a story about Aldrya as a story about Yelmalio-of-the-Wood forming a bond with an unlikely ally, and just as likely that it is an oral history of how some Heortling clans survived the Great Darkness by pursuing the secrets of the Earth.