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The price of change — of anything happening, at all — is mortality. The world comes from the Void and to the Void it will return. If it loops exactly, who can tell? If a new and different world arises, that is the gift of Chaos. At least, that is what the bald levitator with the tail told me. 😉

I should have really used a term other than destruction 😅 I guess my idea was that chaos is a force that wants to turn glorantha into itself, and so it wants to destroy it.

Here is the correct table - note that it does not contain the duration (see the appropriate section)

[B]oth Law and Chaos create in different ways, and all creativity rests upon co-operation between elements of existence. He who operates solely from personal desire will not cooperate … Without co-operation and creativity, the being is a parasite … Nothing he can do or make can add to the sum of his species or culture. In this sense, fully Lawful beings can be as much agents of the dark side as was the worst Gbaji prophet. — Cults of Terror: Nysalor (Classic PDF, p. 87) According to this, Chaos can create — and isn’t that change worthy of the name? The selfish, childish, and uncooperative are called out as lacking the capacity to create — and that lack, we are told, doesn’t require a dash of Chaos. I don’t say you have to buy into the CoT view of how the world works, but creative Chaos hasn’t always been alien to the party line.

Everything in Glorantha comes from the Void. See? And yet one of the hallmarks of Chaos is mutation, which is a form of change. In fact, all change is both destruction and creation- one must destroy what existed before to make what will exist now. (Source and Creative Commons license.) Now, Umath had to destroy the connection between Sky and Earth in order to have his own realm of Air. Magasta had to destroy the perfect Earth Cube for rivers and seas and bays and harbors to exist. Xentha destroyed the golden color of the night sky, and Yelorna broke the Sky Dome to lead out the stars. One of Kyger Litor's large adult sons destroyed the inviolability of Aldrya's beloved trees with the Tree Chopping Song to make axes. All that destruction... but now we can feel the breeze as we sit on the dock of the bay and lean back and look up at the night sky and count the stars. Destruction, for lack of a better word, is good. Destruction is right. Destruction works. Destruction clarifies, cuts through, and if you listen to the Malkioni, it captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit, though they'd say "devolutionary", because they're all Devo over there. But... destruction is generally best accompanied by creation. The destruction of ignorance clarifies by creating knowledge. The destruction of a barrier creates a doorway, a window, a path. So there is destruction which is unaccompanied by creation, and creation which is unaccompanied by destruction, and the two are hard to distinguish from another when they start up.

It's funny you say that because I'm more of a lunar person too 😄I just have a diferent view on these things

Kinda-sorta. The Lightbringers’s quest is the just-so story for the year as well as the day (and the grand cosmic cycle — great year?), so: The Earth Queen followed Orlanth and Yelm to Rebirth in Time with the Dawn. Even before she appeared, her daughter Voria went about the world with the promise of life, leaving a trail of flowers behind her. — Prosopaedia: Ernalda (PDF, p. 35) Voria/Spring/young Ernalda precedes bounteous matron Ernalda and is the earth returning to life after the death of the Darkness/Gods War/Winter. Possibly this has become a little obscured with all the cruft the LBQ has accumulated over the decades.

And here we see some of the irreconcilable differences between the Orlanthi and Lunar worldviews. Is Chaos a part of the world machine, or an outsider trying to wreck it? Mostal probably knew, but he's no longer answering my calls.

From memory: The Red Vexillum, Indissoluble Union, Men of Furthest and Hon-eel’s Song (“Ever Lunar”), but not (alas!) Marching Through Sartar.

I don't hnik this is going anywhere, but the last thing I think I'll say is that glorantha already changed out of chaos, it formed barriers out of primitive chaos-stuff. Chaotic forces destroying those barriers is really just a restoration of an earlier state. many things(glorantha)--->chaos--->one thing(primordial chaos) one thing(primordial chaos)--->gloranthan cosmic forces--->many things(glorantha)

Perhaps, and you're entitled to have your own interpretation of events. I dare say your interpretation is the more popular one. Certainly among the Orlanthi at any rate. It's not how I see things, but then again I do like my Nysalorian riddles. Change often looks like destruction if we were fond of the thing that is being changed, and don't like what it is being changed into. Umath did destroy things. He destroyed the harmony that had existed in the world before his creation. He destroyed the unison between Sky and Earth. He wrought great destruction upon primitive Glorantha in his creation of a space for himself. Is that not a form of creation? Where once there were two things, now stands one thing that is something new. The unison of England and Scotland creates the United Kingdom. The unison of beans and toast creates Beans on Toast. The unison of tin and copper creates bronze. Was it? Do we know the Invisible God's intentions (if it was even them who did it!)? Do we even know what exists in the void beyond the Sky Dome? The Dragons do, but anyone who finds the answer to that question goes to join them before telling anyone else...

Glorantha was made from chaos, but it was made to be different from it. Chaos doesn't mean to change glorantha, but turn it back into chaos, by breaking down distinctions between the various things in it(runes) and turning it into indistinct stuff, and then turning that into nothingness. Chaos isn't change, it's destruction. Umath didn't destroy anything, he made somthing new(air), chaos doesn't make new things as much as it destroys barriers between things. Undead creatures are the result of the difference between life and death being destroyed, not really something new.

Is it though? Is not the Chaosium the fundamental well from which Glorantha springs? I think these things are not so different once you peer past the masks they wear... This does not necessarily make it true, simply a thing that people believe to be true. And yet, the sun shines to make crops grow (as it does in our world). The wind blows and brings the rain (as it does in our world). Why not have change that leads to ultimate stasis? Whether the mechanism is physical or mythic is neither here nor there. Having Chaos embody both is myth enough perhaps...

This I like. Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Would the Heroquest be impossible because the god is dead, or is the god dead because no-one remembers how to heroquest for them?

I'm pretty sure the whole yelm-orlanth story is based on egyptean mythology, where set kill osiris and then allies with him to kill chaos. Chaos is explicitely different from gloranthan things, which includes air even in it's inception. Plus I don't think the concept of heat death(or many real life science things) apply to glorantha. Things happen due to myths in most cases Thought vithelans or pelorians might not consiider orlanth that different from a chaos diety, but they are different, chaos came from outside glorantha, umath was born from earth and sky.

I did have the opportunity to play in this, and had a fantastic time! I'm sure the folks down at the bar were wondering what we were singing though!

One thing you often find in scenarios is an old temple that is mythically intact and functional, but has no congregation. In fact, I can't think offhand if any scenarios were there is an old temple that is magically inert. There is also the example of the Maran Gor Shaker Temple near Wintertop that is the bastion of the Tarsh Exiles. And so holding out against the Lunar occupation of Tarsh for decades. I think Old Wind in Sartar was similar. This all suggests that deconsecrating a major or great temple is seriously difficult, even if you have complete military control of the surrounding lands. One way of expressing that level of difficulty it to have it require success at a major heroquest, defeating an opposition with a POW in the hundreds. It seems plausible that that was the Lunar goal, taking down not just King Broyan, but his magical backing in the form of the Whitewall temple wyter. They Lunars could have plausibly expected this to only take down Orlanth Adventerous, the spirit of rebellion, raiding and murder. Instead, they got Orlanth Thunderous , who is not only a weather god, but Ernalda's husband. And the one who resurrects her each Sacred Time. So all the Orlanth and Ernalda temples across Dragon Pass stop working. If you conduct a worship ceremony there, your Worship roll automatically fails, As far as you are concerned, Orlanth and Ernalda are dead. Reactivating any given temple by rebuilding, resurrecting or finding an alternative to the dead wyter are all achievable heroquests. And ones that PCs of that ere canonically did achieve. For truly dead God, such a heroquest would be impossible, as would founding a new temple.

Perhaps, though I'm sure that's what Storm looked like to Earth and Sky when it didn't have a place in the world yet either. The opposite of what Glorantha looked like then, back when it was only Earth and Sky and nothing inbetween. Separation when all Glorantha had ever known is unison. And does not all change eventually lead to nothingness (heat death)? I'll concede that it's not exactly a view that would be popular in-universe (anywhere outside Lunar philosophy that is). Chaos as the ultimate Other is the Orlanthi viewpoint (and they would take that viewpoint wouldn't they, if Chaos is the Zeus to Orlanth's Kronos). Chaos as a fundamental component of the World Machine feels a lot more Lunar (that isn't to say correct, but not necessarily incorrect either).

I don't think that's a good way of looking at chaos in glorantha. You have to remember that the most basic form of chaos is void, nothingness, that is what chaos leads to. Plus, stasis is the oposite of movement, while chaos is the oposite of glorantha in general. Chaotic stasis is a thing that can exist(see Krasht)

Is there already a seasonal fertility myth that involves Orlanth descending into the underworld to resurrect Ernalda - Orpheus and Eurydice style? If not, that would make a great option for a bunch of Orlanthi living in the shadow of Valind's Glacier (or somewhere else suitably tundra-like and inhospitable). Perhaps their version of the myth keeps going wrong, and Orlanth can't resurrect Ernalda, leaving the ground cold and infertile as death. Perhaps they are waiting for a heroquester who is able to walk out of the Underworld without snatching a glance to see if Ernalda is following, and restore the lost life of the land.

In my vision of Gloranthan cosmology I see Chaos more as 'Unfettered Change'. The polar opposite of stasis. The reason people don't really like it is that, by and large, people don't like things suddenly changing into something else (like your arm, for instance). If this is the case, perhaps the reason being killed by Chaos seems to be more final than other forms of god-death is that it's not Death at all. It's Change. Into something wholly spiritually unrecognisable, and irreconcilable with what you were previously (that may also involve you becoming dead as well, but that's more of a side effect). Hence, also, how the Lunars were able to 'reconstruct' the Moon Gooddess (how accurately can be debated). If Chaos is Change, then you can't truly create something new without changing how the world is. Same goes for Nysalor (and, in my estimation, Umath).

I'm sure it was in rpg.net, but I cannot find the posts. So, it can also be "in my head"... 😅

I played Died in the Wool, a scenario by the late Braeden Harpool, GM'ed by @Andrew Cowie, which was good fun, with a splended final trollball scene that Andrew had modified a little bit from the original. The scenario is available on the JC: https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/419385/Died-in-the-Wool?affiliate_id=1107865, and as part of the collection: https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/468235/RPG-Writer-Workshop-RuneQuest-Adventure-Collection?affiliate_id=1107865. I was also in Market Day, GM'ed by Terry Belles, a seemingly simple visit to Jonstown to sell an heirloom and buy trade goods, which was certainly not as simple as it seemed, and was also enjoyable. We were completely fooled by what was going on throughout most of it! My final RQ game was a session of RQ Classic, Family Dinner, run by @RQStaffan. This had a slow and fairly straightforward first half, ramping up into a properly thrilling climax with some very memorable foes. We greatly enjoyed the old-skool feel, especially with the chance to use now-deprecated spells like Harmonise. I was Old Herb in Home of the Bold - I didn't get the chance to tell any of my shaggy dog stories (not even my Shaggy God Story), but had come armed with plenty of bad Gloranthan jokes. It was indeed fairly hectic, with a huge amount going on that any one character (there were 50) could not possibly take in. Tremendous fun all round, tons of memorable moments, and I'm looking forward to hopefully playing it all over again in July at Continuum! As with the others, I'm avoiding saying too much to avoid spoilers. Perhaps @Divadllah will share the group photo and other details here.

There is no value in changing old rules if you dont replace them with something better.