mfbrandi

He is pretty much the definition of what Storm Bull and company are against: [I]f some [anti-Chaos] cultists recognize, suspect, or receive reports of people asking odd questions or acting in a Socratic manner, they may strike out-of-hand to destroy the incipient Chaos before it spreads. — Cults of Terror (Classic), p. 86 [emphasis mine] If we have to choose between eccentric old guys who generate aporia in the agora and the thugs who have taken it upon themselves to murder them, I side with the philosophers every time. And if this hastens the end of the world, the unexamined life was not worth living, anyway. Do we side with the Arkati or Gully Foyle?

I was merely commenting on your use of one of his slogans to characterise the Godlearners. “Sex magick,” “erotocomatose lucidity,” and all that jazz didn’t sound very GL to me. They are surely much more buttoned-up — like AC’s parents. The Great Beast was surely an influence on RQ and on everybody’s favourite JC author, ALM. Me? I am just waiting for the Jack Parsons rocket cult.

I always imagined the Godlearners to be the sort of uptight protestant imperialists that Crowley was reacting against. I get that there is a lot to hate about the Godlearners — I did compare the empire they served to the British Empire, after all — but what I don’t buy is that divine will is correct moral thinking backed up with nukes. If we buy Arachne Solara as a personality — not just a face we have painted on an impersonal universe (which theory I think also has legs) — then I will grant her the nukes, but why the ethics, the unqualified good will (of the cruel, hungry spider–god)? Can we not see reasons for AS to have beef with the Godlearners without bringing morality into it? Of course, there is the whole “hubris clobbered by Nemesis” thing going on — but arrogance before the gods is practically compulsory, right? Who do these deities think they are? Real-life religions can support traditions of arguing with God, and the game can, too. (I believe it already does.)

[T]he immense mismatch between … fragile, mortal lives and their huge and ancient surroundings also inspires feelings of awe and grandeur: the aesthetic which used to be known as ‘the sublime.’ A man bleeding to death in a gutter is pathetic. A man bleeding to death in a gutter in the middle of a pre-human city of mile-high spires combines pathos with sublimity … [I]f the premise of your set-up is ‘something huge once happened here,’ then why isn’t that the focus of the scenario? Why not … make the PCs as the equals of the world they encounter, … rather than dwarfish outsiders creeping fearfully through its wreckage? … If PCs can run around the inside of a giant machine pulling levers to see what happens … then that implies the absence of any kind of overarching authority able to control [their] movements … Well-maintained social order is the enemy of free-wheeling adventure, and so the more ruined everything is, the more freedom PCs will have to run around inside it. — Against the Wicked City, OSR Aesthetics of Ruin —————————————————————————————— Back when the old school was in no need of reviving, we might have been scufflers in the ruins — of a city built from the remains of a giant magical robot, say — but pace Damon Knight, we were not all In Search of Wonder. It doesn’t do to mistake a venue for an affective response. So the OSR can have their pathetic bleed-outs among the ruins they like to “gosh! wow!” at, but the venues providing their freedom don’t require those feelings, that aesthetic. But what has this to do with the price of Gloranthan cabbages? Make-believe encounters with the sublime are sometimes dangled in front of the players: you can play a part in causing/averting an Age-ending catastrophe; you can witness the powers of gods; hell, you can even manifest the power of your god in the world — divine power will flow through you. Frankly, it sounds exhausting … if you insist on feeling all that power, gasping at all that spectacle. You are a hyena waiting for the flesh of a freshly-killed god you’ve just stumbled upon to ripen. Godskin can be tough. You give no thought to horror, pathos, or the sublime. The hyena is a good Brechtian: Paradise or Hell — it is just a matter of perspective … and the right dentition.

The god may have an opinion — and enforce it with a big stick — but why suppose that the god’s opinion is correct? Asking the youth of Athens to think about the nature of the world and the good — that is “corrupting” them.

Which is as it should be: what your cult rules tell you you must do and what you actually do should often come apart. This — I reckon — is good for “story” and for player autonomy. If we have too much of “if you step out of line, then cult, spirits, middle-sized gods, or Cosmos personified her-own-bad-self will slap you down,” then PCs will become automata endlessly repeating cult-approved action for fear of becoming an embarrassing stain on the kilim. We can have myths saying it will happen — and ruins in the desert to point the lesson — but it shouldn’t actually happen in play every time there is an “infringement.” But who was to say the world was right? If the Spider has the power, the morality of the matter doesn’t come into it. (Obviously, it sounds better in German.) Arachne can be cruel … and hungry. She is not righteousness personified. The world gives and the world takes away. Who can demand a reason and expect to get one? 😉

Is it, perhaps, time to steer the battleship back to the declared topic? I am sure we can find connections between that and what we have innocently drifted into. Presumably, the Storm Bull cult is one of Glorantha’s tools for reasserting the “agreed” — by an “Orlanthi all”? — way of doing things: (poly)theism; no chaos; no thoroughgoing application of means–ends rationality; no quibbling. (Adjust/correct the list to taste.) I am guessing that the Storm Bulls would not have been a threat to the Godlearners, but you get the idea. The Godlearners fall into the quibbling, rule-bending, and rule-breaking camp along with the Chaos fiends and the illuminates — let’s just call them collectively the dissidents. The dissidents periodically get squished, and we are to understand that many PC groups approve of the squishing, but what are we, the players, supposed to make of it? Surely, we are not supposed swallow “there are things mortals were not meant to know” hook, line, and sinker — to accept it without question. Do the Godlearners stand for the wrong-but-tempting (as one might think power gaming is, in some small way), the right-but-dangerous, or something else? That is my “straight man” duty done: the dull feed line fed. Now you lot can dazzle with your punchlines.

Oh. Oh no. This is the part where you cross the line Perhaps, I should have said, “With a little bad luck, I might have been as bad as them. (Perhaps I am, but just cannot see it.)” I may be a pompous arse, but I don’t have it in me to insist that I am one of the good guys.

These things are always complicated. If some idiot member of the British royal family wants to dress as a Nazi, he doubtless has very bad reasons for doing it. If it is Bruno Ganz or Charlie Chaplin, it is probably fine. I was in high school/secondary education in the late 1970s and early 1980s. My school had the misfortune to have the youth leader of the National Front and some kids in the British Movement. Some years after I had left, I paid a visit to one of my old teachers — a really lovely, gentle guy. We talked about how, although he wasn’t religious, he would still light Yahrzeit candles for his parents. To my surprise, he then spoke of his sympathy for one of the BM boys — the kid had had a hard time, was still capable of showing sensitivity, and was definitely redeemable, in my teacher’s estimation. This has always stuck with me as a reminder of how it doesn’t do for us to other the “champion otherers” we so easily write off. Call them monsters, if you like, but remember that the worst monsters are fully human — and with a little bad luck, we might have been as bad as them. (Perhaps we are, but just cannot see it.) “There but for the grace of God go I,” no?

There goes my plan to play an odious tech bro Tongue of Krarsht with his human sacrifice-powered internet! 😉

This is the dilemma as I see it: we have Gloranthan groups — possible PCs — who think even peaceful Chaos/illuminates must die we don’t want PCs to be evil So we could try to make all the Chaotics and illuminates so shockingly bad that wiping them out seems justified, something we might even glory in. We tell a story about the out group that justifies our violence against them — just the sort of thing that the real-world bigots we all agree we dislike (and would like to see reformed) might try. Our excuse is that the Gloranthan out groups aren’t real, so we don’t have to feel bad about it: it is OK to invent monsters for the purpose of hating and slaughtering them. How convincing is that? And what about the poor old GM? If we say that the person playing the bad guys must not enjoy it — else they are a crypto-fascist or worse — then they are going to have a miserable time. Now I am not against Zorak Zoran opening an antique shop with Yelmalio and the Storm Bulls starting a quilting circle with the broos, but I don’t think I am going to talk everybody else around to that. Think about the Iliad. Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, Paris — they are all complete jerks, but do we think they are unplayable? If we are going to play games of bloodshed — which is absolutely not compulsory — then we should accept that PCs will commit acts of awful, unjustified, and even evil violence. I suspect that if evil is always the other, we will learn nothing. I am not convinced that pushing all the unjustified violence onto the NPCs achieves anything. And giving the PCs poor excuses for their unjustified violence seems worse: “they are bad, but at least they can tell themselves that they are not” (Shooty & Bang Bang). Of course, personally, I would rather play a pacifist Nysalorean or a cowardly scout dragonewt than a psychotic Storm Bull, but it wasn’t always so. On the other hand, these things don’t always go very deep. I am pretty sure that it is not the case that players of WWII wargames are 50% Axis sympathisers. I do appreciate your concern, though. In the first draft, the Storm Bulls were a biker gang, but that one seemed absolutely done to death … and a bit mean to bikers. I look forward to your post on how to make Storm Bulls non-evil. I know you think I am joking, but I am not. All the best, m

I do like your Arkati better than what I take to be the official version, but they put me in mind of The Worm Ouroboros, which was probably not your intention. The Arkati — like Eddison’s “Demons” — if ever they triumph over their enemy, cry, “Rewind Selector — come again!” The cosmic cycle is driven by the struggle and if justified, it is only by the joy of the struggle. Badges of Cosmos and Chaos are picked blind from the bowl, like car keys. The important thing is to have at it.

Or as a metaphor for the British Empire, using empiricism and the industrial revolution to make life miserable for the rest of the world? The Jrusteli just had a magical industrial revolution. There’s still tea drinking and red-coated soldiers in the West, right?

You all know the picture: his club in his right hand; gesturing with his left. Always watch what the left hand is doing. Imagine the lyrics of Cole Porter sung oh-so-sweetly by Uncle ZZ (Lee Wiley, Ella, June Christy, Helen Merrill — you get the idea). I’m very mild, I’m very meek My will is strong, but my won’t is weak So don’t look at me that way When that strange expression of indiscretion Begins to show in your stare There’s a hocus-pocus about your focus That gives me a terrible scare I feel a thrill when you arrive And while you’re near I simply thrive But if you want to get home alive Don’t look at me that way Get out of town Before it’s too late my love Get out of town Be good to me please Why wish me harm Why not retire to a farm And be contented to charm The birds off the trees Just disappear I care for you much too much And when you’re near, close to me dear We touch too much The thrill when we meet is so bittersweet That darling, it’s getting me down So on your mark get set Get out of town “Night and Day,” “All Through the Night,” “Miss Otis Regrets,” “All of You,” … “Easy to Love.” Try it. Shiver. You’ll like it.

So Argrath gets to feed the gods to the Devil — and he then gets worshipped as a god himself? That’s right. But if my character picks up this book … Uh-huh. So can my character just lead the quiet life in a shack in the woods, questioning the nature of reality and raising decorative carp? Oh, no, that is much worse — then she will be lynched by the local Ku Klux Klan Storm Bulls. 😉

Cult strictures are not necessarily right — the spirit of retribution of a morally dubious cult might punish the righteous. It is not as if all the cults — even leaving out the Chaos cults — agree on what constitutes right action. So how sure are we about desert? If you betray the cult, you might have the spirit of retribution sent after you, but surely not every cult will consider power-seeking behaviour beyond the pale. The idea that every cult is both like a super-efficient police state and the upholder of a fine anarchist-egalitarian morality seems to stretch even my credulity … and I am a very gullible person. And if each cult considers its boss Leviathan, don’t we just shift the conflict up from individuals to groups? That organised crime gangs may punish those who betray them probably doesn’t contribute greatly to the peace and harmony of the world. The realities of the world always are in question, and there always are new revelations and perceptions which may alter any being’s outlook on the universe … The cult continues to exist because sapients cannot refrain from asking questions about the nature of existence … Cultists will tend to shrink from performing or advocating extreme actions of any sort … [I]f some cultists recognize, suspect, or receive reports of people asking odd questions or acting in a Socratic manner, they may strike out-of-hand to destroy the incipient Chaos before it spreads. It is very dangerous to exploit this cult’s undetectability by joining many different religions and learning their special cult spells. Members of the religions involved will find it questionable and distasteful, say, for a Fire priest to raise zombies, show vampiric powers, or to use strong Darkness spells. — Cults of Terror, pp. 84–86 The persecutors of Socrates, is that who we want to be? I would rather corrupt the youth of Athens … which is tricky when one is in witness protection. Still, questions must be asked. So if you want the power of commanding fire, darkness, and zombies, probably best to join Zorak Zoran. Maybe you don’t get to add vampire stuff, but you won’t be passed the cup of hemlock either. IIRC, it has been suggested that this was added to the introduction of CoT to placate the Satanic Panic crowd: Player Characters should not join these cults. We recommend that Player Characters who join these religions quickly be put to sacrifice by Non-Player-Character priests, to get them out of play. Although, looking at it again after the passage of decades, suggesting human sacrifice as the solution seems like holding up two fingers to that lot. So let us not have our own moral panic about harmless riddlers — especially not when the in-game charge is led by the most demented of their fellow cultists, “the epitome of the Light Side of Nysalor” (p. 87), they say.

Perhaps a full metal visor — apart from hiding their beauty and getting in the way of tusks and biting — in covering the snout would interfere with darksense/sonar. Maybe?

Or more simply: the Godtime war loop is the problem. Feeding the gods to Chaos isn’t part of beating Chaos, it is part of growing up, accepting linear time, and coasting gracefully toward heat death or whatever cosmological fate awaits us. Clinging to the Gods War is a refusal to accept our own mortality and the mortality of everything we know and love. Everything ends — meets “the second and final death” — and the refusal to accept this causes pain. (I am sure some guy named Gark (or was it Bill) explained this to me much better in the Dog & Duck the other day.) Argrath’s human supremacist rant — if not an invention of a later commentator — speaks for the “he didn’t really understand what he was doing, poor lamb” theory. As heroes on a grand scale reek, let’s go with that.

Start here? Then, if you are brave, here. I think the idea is that the Gloranthan West has its share of Neoplatonic mystics — as did real-life Abrahamic religions, I believe. I doubt that — for normal gaming purposes — one needs to understand it deeply.

Of course, one could see the Godlearners as good Marxists: The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. ― Eleven Theses on Feuerbach Ah, but the force of reaction is strong with Glorantha!

A bit of Ancestry 101 here. (Adam Rutherford is author of How to Argue with a Racist (which is such a great title, I must round to reading it) and is a well-known media academic here in the UK.)

The stories may not all agree, and that is how it should be. In the story in which the three friends are maybe out and about before the birth of Aether, Aether makes an unlikely literal father for any of them. It might also suggest Fire–Light–Sky enwombed in Darkness. It might — if your imagination runs as mine does — suggest that any manifestation of Darkness is already entangled with its opposite. Each of the three friends embodies a different relationship: XU = amity: “it is friendship from afar” ZZ = agon/y: “it is an enemy, and I shall eat it to hide it away from us” AA = dominance (diminishment, dismissal): “it is just another godling” Three Curious Spirits seems to present the friends’ relationships with as acquired post-natally, not something there from conception, and one might even see Aether as their sibling. However, if the story is not to be taken literally — the point being to contrast the three friends’ attitudes and to underscore the intimate – connection, even in the early universe — then we might say that their connection to is inborn, “in their DNA.” And if Nakala/ is AA’s “first mother,” then who is his father but /Aether, however poorly that fits with this narrative? But equally, we could say that of XU and ZZ, but we don’t.° My personal take: & were always entangled; it is a brute fact of the universe, and “fire genes” were not acquired by Nakala’s marrying out. YG will certainly V. (Hmm … “W V” — are we being sent up, or given even more licence than we thought?) But if we give AA a renaissance — this time with Xentha as mother — we can run some kind of Oedipal story, with the death of the sun (= the forcing of Lodril underground) enabling Darkness’ takeover of the sky and the overrun of the surface by KL’s brood. (Measures of desperation recast as famous victories?) There sits somewhat more happily as a father. I suspect that on Airstrip One, we are more resistant to making everything “about Daddy” — rightly or wrongly, we see that as an American obsession. But these are American myths for an American game. There is an irony to all this: ZZ’s agon/y and XU’s amity seem stable — constant — but Darkness’ dominance as night can only be maintained for a few hours at a time. Of AA’s sets of runes over the years, perhaps these were most appropriate: — Darkness can achieve dominance over Fire, but it cannot hold onto it: it must be exchanged for an equal period of submission (and regular torching of the underworld). — In Times Square, now, people do the polka … — XU and ZZ, rejecting a Top–Bottom relationship for an Inside–Outside conception, have more the measure of the thing (although each handles it differently).°° Perhaps … perhaps … perhaps — interminable waffle terminates. ————————————————— ° Although some might like to see ZZ as introjecting the father. This could be following Freud or subverting him: does it enable superego formation, does it cement his position as the id of Darkness (of us all), or something else? Think of Norman Bates at the end of Psycho. °° The Dead, perhaps, propose a synthesis of AA and XU/ZZ. 😉

If you haven’t already, try browsing the Well of Daliath — that may give you an idea of which topics are going to interest you, then picking the books which are right for you should be easier. And you will learn that there are Theyalan words for ratite (perhaps not so surprising) and prokaryote (which was maybe not so obvious). IMHO, the Guide to Glorantha can be a bit of a slog, so if you are not mad keen on fantasy atlases and money is tight, I wouldn’t make it a priority. It is a useful reference, though. Do you mean things like King of Sartar and The Complete Griselda? KoS is better to have read than it is to read, but it doubtless has loads of nickable ideas. Griselda is fun and a reminder of what RPGs were like back in the day (when one didn’t have to say “TTRPG” to be understood). Enjoy! 😉

But doesn’t it apply to anyone joining — say — Yelmalio for access to Sunspear, not only chaotics or illuminates? (The greed for power bit, that is, not necessarily hastening the end of the world — although Greta Thunberg may think that applies, too. Anti-magic eco-Arkati sound like fun, though, right?)

Off the top of my head, and not to be taken as canon. The zzaburi think: the IG is too far away for your feeble spirits to push POW to it the IG doesn’t need your POW if there is POW on offer, we’ll have that — cheers, mate! — but don’t call it “tapping” (if we’re a non-tapping sect)