mfbrandi

The way of the Gloranthan hero seems to be to bend the gods to their will in order to carry out the hero’s psycho master plan, no? Even to the extent that Arkat “invents” Zorak Zoran as a stick maul with which to beat Nysalor. So … it may be true that the hero’s will is the god’s will, but the tail is doing the wagging. Is there some level of self-deception in this? If there is, I think I would rather throw my lot in with the Jrusteli (who at least know the responsibility is theirs to take) than a “theist” hero — someone so nuts, so driven, that the insight that there is no other side in the conflict, no cosmic bad guy, doesn’t even slow them down, is just viewed as one more weapon in the fight. “It is not my fault. I am merely an instrument of the god’s will.” But … clear-eyed pragmatist is just one take on the Jrusteli, no? This being Glorantha, there must be a take on them in which they are psycho fanatics, too — just the Puritan version? But I like to think we can embrace the hardcore deist take: the cosmic clockwork is set ticking and all else is NatSci: there is no interaction with the truly divine for the godlearners, as the Invisible God has been unreachable since before there was anyone to even think about reaching. (And to the extent that this plays to the Westerner–Mostali parallels and embodies a philosophy Greg would probably think deserves squishing, it is maybe not an unfaithful take.) Krishna isn’t the angel on Arjuna’s shoulder but the devil, and he is pulling out all the stops to get one person to bin their scruples. (Devils always play to our vanity — “you are special; I must persuade you” — when it would seem they could corrupt dozens with less effort … or a spambot.) So taken at face value — Krishna/Vishnu is a real presence talking to Arjuna — this seems like the opposite of the Gloranthan case where “illuminated” heroes are manipulating gods and cults to get their killing done (presumably still on Highway 61). [Dilute to taste.]

I can picture it now: Orlanth legs it pushing his honeywagon surrounded by giant flies and with a gang of angry Uz in pursuit. But what is troll shit good for? I am guessing it is not good fertiliser. There are easier ways to make wattle and daub. Must be something magical …

Intriguing. Care to say more? As a detective odd couple, or as perpetrators of heists?

Just so.

He is doing that but clearly the appeal isn’t working, so K resorts to: you may as well kill them as they are dead already look at me, I am the supergod … which go beyond that and are very poor reasons for Arjuna to change his mind. (Which is not to say the appeal to Varna is not also … unpersuasive.) And after all, Gbaji was “Humakt’s son”. 😉

In the second edition? Yes, mine, too. It is missing from the first edition — the conceit is that it is a recently discovered “lost” chapter (i.e. making KoS align better with scenarios published after 1992). But … aren’t “Ernalda is dead”, “Ernalda is sleeping”, and “it is winter” all pretty much equivalent? And isn’t the lost chapter some kind of Lunar propaganda? Rather than giving us information about literal location of gods in the mundane world, isn’t the idea — more or less — that taking Whitewall is part of some fancy ritual by Tatius to “kill” Orlanth? The severing is the connection between god and worshipper, not god and god’s body, unless the worshippers are the god’s body in the mundane world, which is maybe not completely mad. All the stuff about squishing hearts and strangling goddesses is just gobbledegook for the marks, the “magically significant act” is taking Whitewall, no? [I am, of course, just making this up as I go along, so …]

Sweet Mistress Mallia looks forward to the return of the good times: “[A]bout 1.3 billion years from now. Long after animals have wandered the earth, and even after the dramatic microcosm of the eukaryotic microbe universe is gone, bacteria will inherit the planet for a few hundred million years more, just as it was in the beginning.” — Peter Brannen, The Ends of the World

Can a Humakti and a Lanbril ever be mates? Sure. Not only is Humakt guilty of handling stolen goods, he had the cheek to go on to claim that he was the very thing stolen. That is an act of misdirection of Lanbrilian audacity and — it must be said — effectiveness.

Relocating Prax to the Home Counties The Rothschilds had their share of eccentrics, and for that we give thanks. Now: Walter Rothschild … the man behind the spectacular collection of specimens housed in the Natural History Museum at Tring … There are three things that people tend to know about Walter Rothschild — that he trained three zebras to pull a carriage, that he was obsessed with the classification of cassowaries and that he was once photographed sat upon a giant tortoise. — Waddesdon, A Rothschild House & Gardens Pavis Wood is an area of woodland on a hill located near Hastoe in Tring, north-western Hertfordshire, England. — Pavis Wood So, which hellhole of the Wastes do we equate with Grays in Essex? No? Well, it was worth a try.

Well, I guess it did. That people discuss the quality of the translation and attribute to Oppenheimer a Sanskrit teacher suggest that he probably said it or wrote it at some time — but I wasn’t there, and I don’t know. I think I probably picked it up from the Sam Waterston TV series or from an article written in response to it.

If you think of the Hero Wars as like the English Civil War (our bourgeois revolution, perhaps) — The World Turned Upside Down — then even if “normal” Orlanthi society is not agreeable to you, there is surely room for utopian sects and experimental socialist societies amid the chaos of war, the Diggers and all the rest. Make some up.

Well with the Sartarites, we have a slightly lower percentage of society engaged in food production … 15% animal husbandry – main cults Orlanth Adventurous, Ernalda — Jeff Richard —————————————————————————————— His educational career began interestingly enough in agricultural school, where he majored in animal husbandry, until they caught him at it one day. — Tom Lehrer —————————————————————————————— Well, at least we now know why the subcult is called “adventurous”.

Eighth Wane Spiritual Exploration as arms race. When Oppy said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” I don’t think he meant that the Manhattan Project was an example of spiritual exploration. And I like to think that he was not acquiescing to the duty handed him, but expressing horror at what he had done. Call me a sentimental old fool if you must. —————————————————————————————— I AM TIME, DESTROYER OF WORLDS. Even before you act, all these warriors, rank upon rank in the opposing armies, are already dead. I have destroyed them. From the perspective of eternal time, the everlasting present, those men you see lined up, eager for battle, full of the vigour of their youth and strength, are dead already. The bodies which have known cold and heat, pleasure and suffering, already carry death and decomposition in their bones. “The Pandavas will be victorious. Now rise up, hero. Be my instrument!” — Mahabharata, A Modern Retelling, Carole Satyamurti, p. 418 —————————————————————————————— Krishna as Gbaji, and not in a good way.

LUCK - (Chance) - Thought to be both an expression of Chaos, and yet the stamp of approval of the gods. It is little used, except in the Holy Country, where the Masters of Luck and Death proudly display the symbol of the chance they take with every breath. — RQ2 ————————————————————————— In the Chaos-phobic times we are living in, this seems like a tricky concept, but surely gambling is not restricted to cultures where is respectable. Maybe the average Gloranthan gambler thinks gambling depends on skill, cheating, and the favour of their own god, rather than true randomness or other suspect phenomena. Maybe. Is the luck rune ‘little used’ to steer people away from fourth wall breaking, to draw attention to the fourth wall, or both? I like to imagine this patron demigod of gamblers: he lost his child to a pointless war, then left his settled life to wander Genertela gambling away his possessions and trading poems for food. Wears spectacles, looks a bit like a Desi Alf Garnett, and has a knack for baking cakes.

Is that a man on the horse or is it a woman? (I have never been very good at telling them apart.)

It was obviously a typo: he meant “Klansman”.

I have every sympathy. The cynic in me says that these two are related: the elder races and the humans are all people (and all stand for humans) but the humans are the colonisers (or the Aryan Nation, or whatever) and the elder races are the colonised, the first nations, the aboriginals (more generally: the other). We dehumanise some humans, now they are just animals, and we all know that true humans are individuals and have cultures, whereas animals are types and have natures. So distinctions among the elder races cannot be due to culture and subculture, they must be due to pseudo-scientific subspecies (like trollkin) or castes (in the sense that social insects might have castes). Othering complete, cue cannibalism and genocide. It is all in fancy dress, and the “animals” are draped in religion, but this is the armature of the thing, right? I am not blaming the creators of Glorantha for inventing this stuff: it is everywhere. But we can bin the bits we find intolerable and use what’s left to satirise American exceptionalism or the delusions of the British Empire — I had a headmaster who said, “Well, of course, the Chinese don’t get addicted to opium.” — or … take your pick. It seems to me that when someone asks about a design choice — “why are so-and-so so savage?” (meaning “why did the designer make them like that?”) — they might often get a diegetic answer — “they had a rough childhood and they don’t know any better” or “a big god did it and ran away” — which rather misses the point. (Though, yes, design choices can snowball.) I have zero interest in attacking Game Designer X for being a racist or an imperialist or whatever nasty flavour we might from time to time think we detect in any game world, but we shouldn’t let a sensible avoidance of mudslinging inhibit us from discussing settings. So thanks for starting this thread. Right, that is more than enough from me for the day.

Over in the other place, they were discussing the pros and cons of becoming a god because, you know, “in Glorantha the gods are real” and all that. It occurs to me that the reality of the gods and the category of god occurring in respectable Gloranthan natural science are two different things. Prime ministers are real — and prime minister is a real category (legit. predicate, if you like), but it is not a category that natural science has any truck with, and we are not expecting to see a reduction of the category to some complicated nat. sci. gobbledegook. Efficient causation has no truck with prime ministership. So is being a god more like [a] being made of platinum and having nitric acid for blood or is it more like [b] being prime minister? We can imagine that the godlearners started off firmly in the [a] camp but through [ahem!] rigorous application of scientific method moved into the [b] camp: “science has no room for folk concepts like god and worship, and we can exploit the gods without recourse to them.” The gods — being preening narcissists, like most prime ministers — were firmly in the [a] camp: if you want to understand how the gears of the world mesh, you have to understand us as gods. Unfortunately for the MSE, the godlearners were better chemists, physicists, and magicians than psychologists of the gods — they knew how their chariots worked, but not their tender egos — and that is why the godlearners got squished. So the late godlearners got wise, and that was their folly. But post-Middle Sea Empire a crude early-stage godlearnerism — in which theological concepts lay at the heart of Gloranthan natural science, named the gears of the world — was popularised by Gloranthan Jungs, von Dänikens, and like snake-oil salesmen. So now common-sense religion of the “don’t argue with me, Sunny Jim, this hand has shaken the right hand of Orlanth … well, one of his right hands” variety is (in Genertela) dominated by a debased second-hand godlearnerism. That is why the gods haven’t squished them: they lack insight. This seems to suit the boorish mortals and the vain gods just fine. Perhaps in the figure of Argrath, this “just enough to be dangerous” approach will bite the gods — and likely many others — in the arse. Meanwhile, what do the quietly, thoughtfully, sincerely religious think? One strand may be something like this: “The prime minister is one who legitimately holds power; legitimacy is a normative concept. Similarly, a deity is one who is worthy of worship or [insert religious concept here], and worth, or desert, is a normative concept, too. A god ought to be shown respect, but you cannot derive one “ought” from an ocean of purest “is” — recite all the awesome powers and mighty deeds of your putative god, still nothing will close that gap. No array of storms and waterfalls, none of your Mostali telescopes and microscopes, nor even the wing of a butterfly will reveal the divine.” Then she crossed her legs and levitated out of the room, swishing her tail and humming the Ode to Joy.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” — Turns out no revelation was at hand. 😉

Well, there are at least two conceptions of the Compromise (GC, because I am lazy): It is a handshake, an agreement, a contract, an oath — it is broken as easily (adultery is easy) — there may be retribution, but that comes after (alimony is hard and divorce courts are hell) It is a prison, tough but not impregnable — it is hard to break (out of), but not impossible — if you believe in variable natural laws, the GC is a rewrite of them — if you don’t want to go that far, it is a new cosmological stage that only looks like a natural law rewrite from our parochial perspective — “Ye cannae break the laws of physics, Jim!” Don’t ask me, I don’t even work here You can probably combine the ideas: we signed a contract to lock ourselves in this prison, and we took the rest of you with us, but don’t worry, not everyone is in the supermax cells. Assuming the gods agreed not to try to escape, one then has to be clear when talking of a breach of the GC whether this is (a) an escape attempt or (b) a successful escape — not from the whole prison, but from the part of it which is “meant” to contain you. If you go promise-only, then claims that the world will end if the promise is frequently broken are your enforcement mechanism: fear. Of course, the doom sayers may believe everything they say about the dire consequences of breaking this oath. (I am not convinced, but I am often wrong.) If you go prison-only, then claims that there were “mighty oaths sworn” may be face-saving on someone’s part, or they may reflect poor understanding of the situation by mortals and/or idiot gods. If the GC was chosen, it was chosen because the gods (the inside gang, especially Orlanth and his friends and family: Eurmal, Humakt, …, and Ragnaglar) had shown that they “couldn’t be allowed to have nice things” — they kept breaking them till they let the outside in through one of their cracks. I sometimes wonder whether the compromise wasn’t the binding of evil to time … to spread all the killing over a few billion years. And surely one has to wonder whether the real evil wasn’t Wakboth but the inviting of Wakboth in (if W was invited in and not just the world’s biggest, ugliest chaotic feature/tumour/cytokine storm). It was Faust to blame for the whole sorry mess; Mephistopheles was just the duty demon for the day (or a lab accident made flesh). Or you could opt for a third way: there is no escape from the GC, as one cannot break natural laws and Cosmos is our prison — the RG’s ascent to godhood sent her straight to supermax with no possibility of a Mr. Toad-like escape or time off for good behaviour — it is not about lack of power on her part, that is just the way the world is now — gods, corrupted gods, mortals, things that drifted in from the outside are ALL the prisoners of the new reality — the only possible escape is a one-way trip to the Void — if we are patient, the Void will come to claim us all

Mallia — Mother of Microbes — has many faces (and no masks). For example: Mallia — Who Passes Us By (Mallia of the Wink) Mallia — Eater of the Living (Mother of Disease) Mallia — Eater of the Dead (Parent of Putrefaction) Mallia — Eater of the Sun (St. Mallia of the Chloroplasts) Mallia — Mother of Mitochondria (Mistress of All Tomorrow’s Parties) Mallia — Variegator of Leaves (Mallia Mosaica) She is also a healing goddess: Mallia — Parent of Phages

I am confused: Yes. They are the products of chaos. So in my chaos lab, I feed babies into a magical mincer and I get flying monkeys out the other end: I am certainly harming the innocent probably my act is chaotic (given the usual examples of rape and cannibalism) so I am going to go out on a limb and say my shiny, new flying monkeys are the products of chaos so on the one hand we might want to say that my monkeys are chaos tainted because they are the products of my harming the innocent but on the other hand “nobody in Glorantha will gain a chaos taint owing to other people harming the innocent” So I hope you can see why I am confused. And again, I am not pushing moral relativism, nor the equation of chaos and evil, and I don’t think that one becomes blameless by saying “of course, I don’t think that is forbidden”. But the idea of chaotic action as evil action is surely out there in the sources — unless there is some hidden reason why the tired examples are rape and cannibalism. Not to mention Wakboth as the moral evil of the world: is W’s connection to chaos supposed to be accidental? The game is to explore these ideas, to see where they lead us, even if we end up throwing a bunch of them into the maw of Kajabor.

Putting aside the particular case, why would one say this? One can certainly gain the taint accidentally (“facts” taken from the usual Greg Sez) : Handle chaos tools, etc. 10% Eat something chaotic 5% (cumulative) We are still in the realm of action here, but it can be unwitting action: not everyone will be able to tell — ahead of acting or at all — that the tool or food is chaotic. But the surest way to gain the taint involves no choice or action by the tainted: Be born with it (broos, scorpion men, etc.) 99.99999999999999999999999999999999% So if by inaction I allow millions to die, no taint, but if I eat just one baby (in the “right” context, of course), then … 😉

According to 2007 Greg: “Devouring chaos is a deliberate partaking of chaos. It is using chaos to nurture oneself. Nurturing oneself on chaos is a way to become chaotic.” So I guess then opinions divide: it is the principle of the thing: just as getting married is a way to cease being a bachelor and killing someone is the way to become a murderer, so eating chaos is a way to become chaotic — no demonic superpower can protect you from that, just as none can save you from becoming a goal-scorer if you put the ball in the back of the net; there is a force trying to punch a non-hole in you: if you are tough enough — demon horse superpowers — you can resist this and remain “lawful”, but lesser mortals cannot (the forces released by their action push them over the edge). I guess the problem is that some want to have their cake and eat it: being chaos tainted is something like a moral status (which is the kind of thing that doesn’t show up in natural laws, just as being a bachelor, murderer, or goal-scorer don’t), AND chaos taints are part of the web of cause and effect, the flow of energy in the universe (if you are Quine) (and might even show up in causal laws, like gravity, charge, and all that jazz). The “dodge” — which is completely ineffective, IMHO: we have seen it all before with souls — is to say that the Chaos Taint is real but not physical.