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And the one time Trickster let go the net and Wakboth swallowed the gods, Argrath — the perfect Orlanthi hero/follower of Seth? — had to cut the snake’s belly open, but all the gods were dead. Still, the cosmos may have been saved, anyway. Who was it who said that these days Yelm is more sun and less god? (It wasn’t me, I promise.) The world is saved by naturalising it, burning off all the fairy dust. Orlanth killed the sun/god and so trashed the proto-universe (the bad trip of the Gods War); the trick was to bring back the sun but not the god, yielding the real world (when we have all come down); that is the LBQ. Or that is the grumpy nihilist’s view.

This seems preferable, agree.

It’s quite possible that not only is there one, but that it actually preceded Harmast’s progressive revelation of the grand Lightbringer’s Quest. Call it the Lifebringer’s Quest, perhaps. Set is a loyalist; it’s just that he’s Ra’s man through and through. Osiris’s wife, Isis, manipulates her husband onto the throne in the place of radiant solar Ra, and Set (tumultuous, violent, the god of the wilderness and the foreigner) overthrows the usurper by force. But he is still necessary to defend Ra’s sun barque as it travels through the underworld, and the one time he took a day off was the day that the monstrous serpent Apep managed to devour the barque, and so Set had to cut the snake’s belly open at the eleventh hour to save the cosmos. Elsewhere on these forums I have likened Orlanth to Set, and it’s very apt, but Shargash similarly shares many interesting traits with the god of the Red Land. Before heaven, Before earth, Before the waters, Before the dark, Nothing moved on nothing, Nothing entered into nothing. Before the gods, Before the runes, Before me, Before you, Nothing moved on nothing, Nothing entered into nothing. Look into my hand. What, do you not know that Death is in Life?

Does that also apply to a QW clean-sheet genre-pack for Glorantha? Or specifically to the idea of a "HQG retrofit"?

I think there's a bit of nuance missing from that last bit... The whole "HQW" product line never really seemed to gain all that much traction, even when it was the only Gloranthan game in print. Maybe that was "the market" telling us; but maybe it was (the perennial accusation) just not supported/marketed as it deserved. Issaries was never but a very-tiny company, after all, though Greg licensed to Moon Design (and others) in an effort to get more resources for the line(s). Maybe "the market" has spoken... but maybe the market was never adequately engaged... I'd love to ask the question in relative terms: what percent of all RQ titles on the JC go to Electrum or better? And what percent of QW titles do so? Perhaps the singular datum that is Valley of Plenty renders such a query statistically invalid. But we're deep into the Black Arts of market-analysis here.

Interesting. Was Grandfather Mortal murdered, or was he just fed up of Yelm's unchanging world and just wanted something interesting to happen for a change? Nah, I think destruction is a good way to describe it. We're just wannabe Nysaloreans 😄 You could claim that 'destruction' just means 'change', but that doesn't mean you're suddenly happy that someone has stamped on your sandcastle. Whether the new thing is better or worse than the old thing is a valid consideration (that I'm sure many riddlers dismiss as a prosaic practicality unworthy of serious consideration by enlightened minds). This, again, is a point I see Orlanthi and Lunars (the fanatical ones) disagreeing on. Lunars claiming that change is inevitable and thus a good thing, and Orlanthi saying 'but what you're changing things into is worse'. I quite like the idea of a Lunar who doesn't ascribe to the idea that Chaos is an innate part of the world to be welcomed. Perhaps, in conversation with the Orlanthi, they acknowledge that it's a purely destructive force, but argue that as it's here anyway we might as well use it. Sounds like a Tarshite way of thinking to me, intermediate between the two camps. I also quite like the idea that the Lunars are absolutely right about Chaos simply being the force of creation...but not really considering that what it's creating might be not be in their own best interests. A real 'Finally we've done it!........Oh god, what have we done' moment. Or even that the Lunars think they're right, but in reality they've colossaly misjudged things and Chaos does mean the destruction of everything without the creation of anything new. The whole Lunar conflict really thrives when no-one really knows quite what they're doing or how things actually work.

I think that those are great adventures, and there is no reason that they can't work in the Borderlands. You can add more desolate little villages (like Weis) to the Raus domain without causing any problems. My only note is that they are relatively 'low-level" adventures for purposes of RQG.

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.