Note, though, that Shannon's history is a politically motivated Gloranthan inside source rather than an objective history. I'll try to provide additional descriptions from other points of view over time.
Also note that the Holy Country likely will be a subject of future
Glorantha publications. I will try to stick as close to the official descriptions
as possible, and provide additional information rather than a homebrew
alternate Glorantha version.
This part of the land shared the history of all of the surface of the earth - it was covered with water at first, later broke through the surface of the sea, and then was exposed to the young sky.
The God Learners claim that Sky came before Air, but the Pelandans tell that Sky is the child of Entekos, a goddess of earth, but more prominently of Air, Virtue, and mother of the sky. I regard neither myth as accurate...
Anyway, there was a period in Creation when the hard and cold earth was exposed not only to moisture, but also to the warmth of the Sky (as opposed to the distant void of pre-Creation). Through this contact, the upper surface of the Earth came alife (as the lower sides of the cube may already have done within the Sea). Where Hard and Cold Earth had been, now fertile Earth lay, and spawned life over and over, starting with the plants. This era is called the Green Age.
Right at the start of the Green Age, or perhaps even slightly before the plants became dominant, the two eldest races of Glorantha's surface became active. A race of giants, children of the land, awoke and separated from their mother, wandering about and settling among themselves. And from outside of Creation, there came the dragons, children of the self-dismembering of the Primal Dragon, looking for a place to breed their race.
Both races were able to form bodies from or blend with the surface earth, and form mountains. The races warred, and the giants' ancestor was slain by the dragons. Their ancestress devoured his dead body and begat a soulless child out of this, which she herself occupied as her new body. This way the original moon was created, renewed life through a cycle of death (or rather destruction).
There is little information on this period, but certain scholars say that this first war was in fact a war of lands and mountain ranges pushing against each other, raising themselves from the flat surface of the Earth. Other myths say that Larnste, the Soul Arranger, planted the seeds for the mountains. If this is so, he might be the ancestor of the giants, who transformed through being slain by the dragons, changing himself to a greater existence among the Powers of the Celestial Court. The Good Giants of the Eastern Rockwood Mountains are the descendants of these early giants. Most of them have become undistinguishable from the surrounding mountains, but a few remain active. Best known among these were Paragua, Thog, and Gonn Orta.
From the dragons which mated in the Dragon Nest came the race of the dragonewts whenever neotenic dragons mated. These beings are a lesser form of the True Dragons, which can achieve dragonhood through long cycles of rebirth and slow progress.
Kero Fin, Esrola's mountain sister to the north, is the great mother
to the descendants of both races.
Probably after the conflict between giants and dragons, the Cosmic Mountain rose through the core of the Earth into the Sky, and the Celestial Court took it as their home. On the slopes of the Spike and around it the Primal Forest grew, marking the era of the Green Age.
Two major forces, Growth and Making, emerged from the earth. The Growers
or Mothers gave birth to all new things they conceived, whereas the Makers
took the raw or unrefined matter from Growth or Raw Creation and transformed
it. This is the time of the Elder Races, but also of the first humans who
followed the same patterns.
The identification of Ernalda with this land may be a later identification, although probably even predating the Dawn. Kethaa has become very obscure, the main trace of her being the (politically neutral) name of the land, Kethaela. Esrola was the active goddess of the land, and will be the name I use in this history for the land goddess.
Esrola was of the Mothers, and was quite capable of giving birth to life without any husband, but whenever she united with a husband something new and greater came into being.
Esrola had concourse with Flamal, and begat the plants of the land. She is still worshipped as the Grain Goddess of the lands surrounding her own.
Esrola's first husband was the Maker. The humans remember this as the marriage of Kethaa and Entru, mother-gatherer and hunter-shaper, the protecting and the destroying (and rebuilding) ancestors. Some sources say that the name of this husband was Mostal. As usual with all these most ancient myths, all hold facets of the Truth.
The Entruli people were hunters, whose songs returned the slain beasts to the earth mother for instant rebirth, and gatherers, harvesting the bounty of the earth, both above and below ground. For most of the earliest time, they lived in a blissful half-awareness, like many of the pure Earth peoples.
This early bliss of existance changed when the Sky sent down his children to take control of the world.
The sons of the sky divided the Upper World among themselves, and Ladril the Feathered Sky Spear was given the Lower Sky for his domain. Ladril circled over the lands, and observed a creature squirming in the land, with the land. He dived down to wrestle the creature and thus push it from his realm.
The squirming creature was the husband of Esrola, making love to her. The Feathered Sky Spear, who had sprung pure from his father's division into his essential parts, had no idea what the creature did, and regarded it as a challenge for control.
Ladril dived down and engaged the Cold Earth (Maker) in a contest of Strength, a wrestling match within the realm of earth. Counting on his usually abundant warmth, Ladril spent much of it on his opponent, burning and even melting him badly. However, having entered the earth, he discovered that he was disclosed from his fire, and weakened. He had fought his opponent to a near destruction, but had paid for that with his own near destruction. Finally the two opponents recognized that they would not continue their existence apart, and so they merged. Ca-Ladril emerged, God of molten rock and volcanoes, of brute strength and cunning artifice. Caladril married Esrola, and their fiery children dotted the heart of her land. Caladril himself raised his fiery tower in the centre of the land.
Caladril also begat his first humans on the goddess and her daughters, and then formed them into the proper shape with his tools. His Caladrian children still worship him as Creator and Ancestor, as father and spirit of the volcanoes and as defender against outside foes.
After Caladril had entered the earth, his fiery brother had taken possession of the Lower Sky, or the Air. When Aether, Father Sky had fathered Umath, Primal Storm. upon Gata, Mother Earth, the new god challenged his brother for the Lower Sky. The Sun Emperor denied this, and Umath was forced to fight for his place in the world. Umath pushed the Upper Sky and the Earth apart to make room for his own realm, one of many such acts of destruction initiated by the Sun and executed by the Storm.
As a result, the Seas re-entered the surface of the Earth, and marched inland. Blue Dragon River crept into Esrola's land, and through it, past Kero Fin, and north into the Sun Lands, where only Storm could tame it after Sun had evaded it upwards.
As Storm and Sun continued their strife for the Lower Regions, the Seas invaded in force. Raging Sea, son of Togaro Ocean of Terror, swiped along the Path of the pacified Blue Dragon River, but on a wide front, washing away all resistance, and forcing many peoples - like the sons of the Bull and their peoples, both two-legged and four-legged - away from the Cosmic Mountain, into the north.Raging Sea came upon Caladril, and filled his tower, and forced his underground, to sleep. His spear remained lying in the land.
In the wake of Raging Sea had come Faralinthor, a more gentle spirit of the sea. He saw Esrola under the tearing grip of Raging Sea, and interposed himself between his violent kinsfolk and the partially drowned Goddess of Bounty. They became lovers.
The constant rivalries between Umath Storm and Yelm the Sun culminated when both Yelm and Umath decided to claim husbandless Esrola for themselves. They thought up, and fought out, many tests of their worthiness, never once considering to step down from their quarrel and ask fair Esrola. Finally, exhausted from their contests and each with a list of achievements over his half-brother, the quarreling gods approached Esrola to state their claims. Both Yelm and Umath were enraged when they encountered her in the arms of Faralinthor. Yelm spoke his terrible justice and condemned her and her lover to destruction, while Umath raged in anger and slew the lovers, driving Esrola deep underground into a fitful unconsciousness.
Umath then gathered his offspring and fought the Seas, overcoming some of them but being bested by others. The Triolini Races stem from these conflicts. Yelm's false justice finally was brought to the day by Umath's youngest son, begotten on Kero Fin. Orlanth stated his claim over and over again, even agreeing to contests to replace his uncle the emperor, until in a final contest he slew him with the newly discovered Power of Death - Separation from Life.
Before Orlanth slew the Evil Emperor, he liberated Esrola (whom he knew as Ernalda) from the prison his father's wrath and the False Justice of the Emperor had sent her into, by awakening her sleeping garden with his life-bringing winds and rains. He returned her from the prison in the palace of the Evil Emperor to his mother's lands. However, like his father Orlanth got caught up in the conflict with the Emperor and devoted all of his attention to this greatest injustice, and finally sentenced him with his brother's new Power, stolen for him by Eurmal.
The Death Emperor fled to Hell, before his arrival still the womb of Wonderhome to the trolls, and even to Grandfather Mortal who was the first to have suffered Death. His Injustice and his fire burnt the trolls, and forced them to flee. It took Argan Argar's pre-birth experiences with Aether to save part of his people from the burning Death-God the Evil Emperor had become in punishment for his abuse of Power.
Argan Argar led his people up the path formed by his mother, Xentha Goddess of Night, to the surface. On his way up he encountered Caladril still embracing and warming Esrola left in the cold below the corpse of her lover Faralinthor. Argan Argar saw the terrible heat of imprisoned Caladril and defended the badly burned Esrola from her former husband's searing heat. Argan Argar married Esrola, and with her he took up residence in a great castle built by Caladril.
Actually, it was his second abode on the surface world. When he first arrived on the surface, Argan Argar saw the squirming Pre-Dark thing in Larnste's footprint, and picked up Caladril's feathered spear left lying about after his defeat against Raging Sea. Argan Argar pierced the thing, and thereby released Caladril from his prison. Caladril broke forth in a great gush of molten rock and ashes, sending up a vast cloud polluting the air (though no more than the presence of the Predark had done before). Still, Kolat Windgod took offense at the intrusion to his realm, and blew the entire pall onto the remains of the Pre-Dark thing. Then he breathed a song of power onto the dust and solidified it never again to enter his realm, calling upon the powers of his grandmother. The dust petrified all life not too putrefacted by the Pre-Dark's poison in Larnste's ichor.
The liberated Caladril sent his children up, but he himself took revenge for his defeat by the hands of Argan Argar, and exploded below the camp of the Son of Night, destroying it while he raised a high mountain for himself. Argan Argar could not tolerate this, though, and wielding Caladril's spear against his former owner, he shore off the top of that mountain, shattering the black obsidian to dust, and then chained Caladril and forced him to form the shattered remains into a castle of great art. This was the Obsidian Castle, aka Palace of Black Glass. There the Only Old One was born to Esrola, and given stewardship over the land while Argan Argar walked the world to aid the peoples against the forces from beyond Creation which had wormed their way into the world.
Orlanth returned to his wife after having slain the Evil Emperor, and he taught his offspring of lesser wives the ways of justice. His favourite tribe were the Vingkotlings. Their founder Vingkot first fought back the trolls when they threatened to overrun the human lands, and then fought against the heirs of the Evil Emperor. He finally fought the Monster from Beyond, and was destroyed, though not killed. His children became the leaders of the human peoples north and even into Esrola's lands. They held the Chaos forces of the Greater Darkness in check for some time before not even King Storm could hold them back.