Canonfire! Forums-viewtopic-Hextor, Heironeous, Stern Alia, ??? (Deital Family Reunion)

Hextor and Heironeous are half-brothers. Stern Alia is (dubiously) their mother. Who are their fathers?

Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:16 pm

Wicket the Ewok and Jar-Jar Binks respectively. It was a cross-genre experiment gone bad.

Laughing

Jk, I have no idea really although I think their paternity is intentionally left vague.

Tue Aug 09, 2005 4:48 am

Stern Alia? I'm ashamed to admit that I've never read anything about her. Where can I find a reference to her?

Please, and Thank You.

Tue Aug 09, 2005 8:16 am

C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan has the original info of Stern Alia, she is covered more fully in the stuff put out for the chainmail miniatures game (which was supposedly set on western Oerik)

Tue Aug 09, 2005 8:21 am

who says thier fathers even have to be gods... what if the fathers were a solar and an arch devil respectivly?

Tue Aug 09, 2005 9:32 am

Don't forget their brother (half-brother?) Stratis, neutral deity of war. He was is now dead but also was brought up in the recent Chainmail rules

Wed Aug 10, 2005 2:20 am

From the LG deities list
see http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=lg/welcome for the PDF

"Stern Alia (f)
Demigod of Oeridian Culture, Law, Motherhood
Worshippers: Oeridian
Holy Symbol: An Oeridian woman's face
Alignment: LN (LE)
Domains: Knowledge, Law, Protection
Prestige Domain(s): Community, Creation, Divination, Domination, Mind, Summoning
Weapon(s): Heavy mace
Weapon of the Deity spell: +1 defending heavy mace"

In LG, SA is thought to have been particularly worshiped in Medegia (which was, after all, the cradle of the Great Kingdom).

The fathers of H 'n' H have intentionally been left vague, but there's been speculation on this list and the Wizards GH boards as to who the might be.

Hextor is a no-brainer for me - Erythnul is the obvious paternity candidate.

Heironeous is a more difficult one to pin down. The most obvious candidates are listed below:

Pelor (m) - if you accept Pelor, in his Solan guise, being an Oeridian god, then this is the most obvious candidate - especially with his promotion of Mayaheine in recent times.

Pholtus (m) - a more purely Oeridian choice. The problem is that Pholtus + Stern Alia sounds like a thoroughbred unbending lawful god - so where did Heironeous' interest in justice come from?

St. Cuthbert (m) - He's got the honesty and wisdom thing going on, but he's not explictly Oerid and TBH I loath Cuthbert. Mad

Zilchus (m) - Oerid through and through, but not warlike enough in my book. Besides, what would Sotillion say? Shocked

So it's down to Solan/Pelor or Pholtus in my books and given they're both gods of light/sun etc perhaps it isn't clear which is Heironeous' father in Oeridian myths either. Pelosians obviously will say Pelor and Pholtines will obviously say their guy. You could very easily construct a suitably Greek theogenic myth to account for this. Perhaps Stern Alia was impregnated by a shining bolt of lightning, which both neatly accounts for Heironeous' holy symbol and possible confusion over who his father is among the gods of light (perhaps an old epithet for him is the Son of Light?).
Stern Alia probably knows, but she ain't telling. :)

IMO, Erythnul was the major war god when the Oerids were tribal horselords. Then when they began to become civilised, they had to adopt more disciplined forms of warfare. Enter Hextor and Heironeous - courtesy of Stern Alia, who represents the more civilised strain of Oeridian culture that the horselords would have had to have adopted as soon as they settled down and started to build kingdoms. So Hextor usurped his father, while Heironeous was engendered to provide a balance to Hextor's tyrannical nature (that'd make Hextor the elder brother interestingly...) and strengthen the conquering armies of the Oerids, by providing competition between the followers of the two war gods (a factor in the rapid expansion of the Great Kingdom).

P.

Wed Aug 10, 2005 5:52 am

I kindly point you to the later part of this nice thread on WOTC:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=327729

Talmeta`s excellent runequest gods pdfs has Erythnul and Sotillon as the parents of Heiro and Hex. Eryhtnul forces himself on Sotillon and takes away Hextor unaware that there is a second twin. Sotillon fosters Heironeous with her sister Wenta and her husband Delleb and so Heironeous grows up alongside Pholtus.

This is non-canon though. But i like that Erythnul is the older more primitive war god (Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker like) and the his progeny inherited the war apsect but also the civilization aspect of Allitur/Alia.

Note that there also exists a LN third brother: Stratis
He got introduced in an Dragon article so it's semi-canon. He is tied to the chainmail setting AFAIK.

Velnius could be the father of Heironeous and perhaps Stratis. He fits with Heironeous lightning motif and Stratis 4 Winds sects.

RipVanWormer writes in this thread:

Wed Aug 10, 2005 7:09 am

Wed Aug 10, 2005 7:38 am

Hah - all of this wrangling over paternity suddenly puts me in mind of a GH version of the Springer show with Stern Alia, Erythnul, Pholtus, Velnius, Pelor (Today's topic: My kids each have a different daddy").

Erythnul would be first out ("He done never got out of bed afore noon. Call yourself a god of war - god of sittin' on his be-hind more like it".).
Then Pholtus appears and moves his chair from beside Ery to the far side of the set. Cue bickering, then Pelor is revealed as another possible daddy (shock horror!) Teary admissions by Stern Alia, more bickering and threats 'n' cussin'. Things really kick off when Hextor and Heironious hit the stage - obligitory chair throwing, fisticuffs and all the rest.
And then the surprise guest - Stratis, with a teary reunion between him and Stern Alia.

Sound like a WoG webcomic? Mortellan?

Take care of yourself, and each other.... Happy

Fri Aug 12, 2005 11:49 am

Great discussions. I prefer to make Velnius the father of Heironeous both to account for the Beloved of the Gods' otherwise obscure symbol and based on a very interesting and detailed treatment of the ancient Oeridian religions of Velnius, which is recorded in a Best of AOL.

I hadn't imagined Erythnul as Hextor's father but see its fit. I had presumed that some arch-devil was the Herald of Hell's progenitor--perhaps Mephistopheles or Mammon (disguised of course).

Stratis is very interesting to me. I imagine his as the eldest of the trio of brothers--perhaps the son of Pholtus or Zilchus (maybe even Procan). Stratis's holy weapon is the spear, which suggests to me both his greater age (because spears are ancient weapons) and his association with tribal hunting. The worship of Stratis may have evolved from that of a hunter-god to that of an organized war god, or the hunter aspect (provider) may have always been secondary to his contrast to Erythnul's barbarity.

Fri Aug 12, 2005 1:46 pm

I will go back and look at the Dragon article. There is mention of Stratis' signature weapon.

Thu Aug 18, 2005 2:12 pm

In my very non-canon Greyhawk, Hextor and Hieroneous are actually the same guy (he's working both angles). I never though much about parentage because most real-world mythogies I have read have all sorts of gods descended from giants and stuff, or deities descended from gods and goddesses not otherwise present in the myths. I just reread some Norse mythology a couple of weeks ago, and I could not tell you who Thor's mother is.

Thu Aug 18, 2005 4:07 pm

Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:25 pm

In one of my campaigns, Nyarlathotep is the father....
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Allan Grohe<br />https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html<br />https://grodog.blogspot.com/

Wed Aug 24, 2005 2:22 am

Wed Aug 24, 2005 12:39 pm

Wed Aug 24, 2005 3:18 pm

Back on topic...
For those who feel Pholtus is to rigid and stern, remember the Pale version of Pholtus "the One True Path" is an extermist puritanical sect of the faith. The more widely accepted pholtus faith "the Blinding Light" version of Pholtus is less rigid and more justice based, which explains the judicial role the priesthood played within the GK.

Mon Sep 19, 2005 12:40 am

Aren't Hextor and Heironeous supposed to be twins though? That means they would have to have been conceived at nearly the same time through double fertilization. Sounds to me like the subject of a bad porno rather than a Springer episode.

Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:10 am

Sat Apr 25, 2009 4:01 pm

I was researching in some old modules today, and noticed that Stern Alia merely appears as "stern Alia" and "Alia" in the original 1979 tourney version of Lost Tamoachan (later published as C1). So, "stern" was merely an adjective vs. a part of the name of the demi-goddess.

For the record, in Myrrha's background "Alia" is mentioned sans "stern" once, and as "stern Alia" twice (but, it's never capitalized).
_________________
Allan Grohe<br />https://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/greyhawk.html<br />https://grodog.blogspot.com/

Sat Apr 25, 2009 9:54 pm

There goes grodog digging up an oldie but goodie! Happy

Another point is that it doesn't take a war god to spawn another war god, so as to the fathers of the three brothers they could be anyone. Likewise, you don't need an evil god to sew the seed of evil in Hextor, nor a good father to sew the seed of goodness in Heironeous.

We aren't mixing genotypes here, so it need not be completely formulaic. Wink

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Sun Apr 26, 2009 2:45 pm

I still think Erythnul is the proud papa of Hextor as for Heironeous; I am still uncertain.

Divine Nucleic Acid test anyone Question

The gods can unravel the mysteries of the universe but can't figure out birth control; lazy divine bastards (literally in most divine births). Wink

Btw; I have placed the ancient oerid homeland within the savannah of Darak Urtag. A humanoid coalition and gnolls drove them the migrate to the east.

Written 2 articles; Feral North: Darak Urtag (Gazeteer) and Darak Urtag Factions and Tribes. (Submitted Soon)

Wed Apr 29, 2009 1:55 pm

Wed Apr 29, 2009 2:42 pm