mfbrandi

Or … “El mal sol” = “the bad sun”, right? (Spanish speakers: please correct if necessary.) So of course Elmal is broken and cannot provide all the magic one might expect.

I am now picturing the dragons as Naomi Campbell: they won’t get out of bed for less than n thousand tasty snacks.

Perhaps like Job they are being tested — Thed has a bet on with Wakboth, and if all the broos defect to Mallia, Thed loses. But if Thed loses, perhaps her children will never be restored to their prelapsarian state and it’ll be the worse for everyone.

I am afraid I don’t have a definitive answer for you, but maybe there are some ways to damp down the cognitive dissonance: Where the Orlanthi live, it is not that warm — a ‘northern sun’ as is not weird. (I cannot remember who deserves credit for that one, but it is not me. It is, anyway, too good to be one of mine). IRL what does the sun send us? . And our sun is a lot further away than Glorantha’s. suffices. The sun of Time is a feeble thing compared to the original and that is how Old Windybreeks likes it. Only a lunatic would yearn for the OG sun and the apocalypse that would bring. is what generates the sun’s , but it is that makes the crops grow. The sun is a thing of parts — Yelm disintegrates and all that. The Solar Mystery™ is that any isolated part is truly and fully the sun, the whole. The sun resents the Orlanthi, because of their god’s well-documented stabbiness, and won’t grant full solar powers. Invent the magnifying glass, converting to and become your own anti/quasi-Monrogh. We will call you Marilyn. What do a bunch of hillbilly barbarians really know about the Dawn Age? Elmal is the sun: is that Dawn Age belief or just Issaries Inc’s Hero Wars propaganda, since fixed by modern sages? I bet you can come up with a dozen better ones yourself.

Mallia: valued provider of ecosystem services (like Mee Vorala). Thed: blamed victim.

Hmm … or “Wakboth is rising” is just another way of saying “our leaders are making ever more horrific decisions” or even “we are making ever more horrific decisions.” I mean, being unmarried is not really a symptom of being a bachelor — not if you are a pathologist.

We are all Genert’s bones. So is nuking Yasgur’s farm the @soltakss-style method of bringing back the OG Sun?

Isn’t that just the way with Godtime? Does a prank that got out of hand explain Death, or does Death explain Trickster (Madman aspect)? Was Old Chucklebonce driven mad by his own suicide? What do we know about Flesh Man? And he is — of course — quite, quite mad. And about Glorantha we know: Three — generations, inter alia — collapse into one easily Don’t bother counting the bodies in the room — it will only mislead you Creation and Destruction are one, and the best person to strike the blow is one’s worst enemy — oneself It is all a bit the father, the son, and the holy fool, isn’t it? That suits Karl Glogauer just fine. Basically, Glorantha is a Heinleinian/Gerroldian solipsist’s wet dream. We will get back to the wetness, I promise. Death, we are told, starts with the murder of Grandfather Mortal, but the dismemberment of the Cosmic Dragon looks like a precedent. An error? Not if we use our patented (doubtless in India) amazing kaleidoscopic polytheism collapsing device: Humakt = Yomat = Grandfather Mortal = Flesh Man = Malkion = Eurmal = the Cosmic Dragon. Do we have to call it the Invisible Cosmic Fleshy Dragon, now? In identities, no one term wears the trousers: We Are One, One, All in One, Mr. Hardin assures me. Doubtless, we could expand the list of equivalences — look for self-inflicted wounds, especially in the forehead. The spurious notion of death as separation came from the identification of the third eye with the pineal gland — Descartes was likely a tuatara. This gives us an immortal creator who is also fully mortal and self-sacrificing for the benefit of their creation. What did you say Greg’s religious background was? A bit like Aleister’s? But madness, murderousness, and wetness — in the form of water’s pet “phylum”/totem animal — come together in one clown, our Lord and Saviour, the Joker. Did you ever get the feeling there was something a bit off about the cosmos? Forget HPL — that is cosmic horror. I never forgave Alan Moore for shooting Babs. [Rambleathon terminates … without cohering.]

The sea of the unconscious, presumably.

But play fair: the spell only works if you bind someone with the entrails of their dead child (possibly slain by a sibling), only then do the entrails turn to iron. You cannot just go around killing people and transmuting them to iron — necro-alchemy’s not that easy — you need their family, too. And maybe their parent has to be a god. A god of escapology, even. It is a hard spell. It is an evil spell. Nice chains, but it is shame about all that blood on your hands.

Probably not a case of Wiki being wrong, but possibly this only applies to Marvel Loki. I think Gaiman had the scene in Sandman, too, but I don’t know whether he named the snake. Everyone — he said, rashly — agrees on the venom bit, though.

You two can come to an amicable dis/agreement. I am easy on the matter — as are we all?

Why do you think the Midgard Serpent is the snake that drips its venom onto Loki’s face? I agree that all the wolves and snakes get confusing and one would like to apply Occam’s razor.

Prometheus was bound and tortured via reptile, too, of course. In my ignorance, I get the feeling that the Norse myths as we know them are rather late, written down by those well-versed in Christian and Classical myths.

But you searched and found it was his “brother.” Dunno the snake’s name, but it is no ouroboros. Trickster “escaping” from Sinjota is a whole other picture — and this is a family show.

Hmm … “gives birth to”? How about: she swallows Trickster and shits out Yomat? (He would be available for the rest of the quest a lot quicker.) FreeAssociativeRambling™ begins: IIRC, Yomat is “friend to man”, and “Yomat” sounds a bit like “Humakt” (an observation owed to @scott-martin, I think). One might add (although it seems very unGloranthan) that Y = and t = . Trickster Deathbringer — death serves life? the sword broo denies it — and Firebringer (Prometheus and likely others). one might say is considered as a power, rather than a form. let in; ain’t that the ? (At least) the old Gloranthan conception of was temporary reality, but teaches us that all reality is temporary — “This too shall pass” (این نیز بگذرد) — that in sorting the temporary/illusory from the true/constant, one finds that is just another sign for the empty set, {}, Ø (my personal glyph, the HW chaos rune seen askew, LRT on a really bad day), the Void. Death, Chaos, and Disorder are tightly bound. Truth and Illusion (in their Gloranthan senses) are one idea — like North and South, or true and false — and in a world of time (inevitable given Death and Chaos), all is Illusion. Truth collapses into Chaos — “nothing is true; everything is permitted” — and Humakt is the greatest Lord of Terror (see this and following). All in an acidic, opiated, amphetamine-drenched variant Glorantha, of course! (But if you think that an anthropology seminar sounds like more fun, you have probably never been to one. The hairy chests and sharktooth necklaces are still burned into my retinas.) So do we say that Humakt = Yomat = Trickster? Death is Trickster at his most deadpan and Squeak the Mouse to the clowns’ Tom & Jerry? What would that tell us about Orlanth and his supposed binding of Trickster? You cannot bind Death? The Truth shall set you free? Truth is the Father of Lies? Don’t ask me, I know nothing. Ø, I tell you.

What if the gods are real but they are not much like people, and they would no more sit in judgement on mortals than a hurricane or an earthquake would? What if the Praxians think they will be punished tomorrow but the battle needing broo allies is today? What if the Praxians attribute their own mortal morals to their gods as a way of adding a bit of weight to their pronouncements? (“Eat your greens or Jesus will be cross” — or whatever.) We don’t always live up to our own standards, and we have a million excuses as to why in this case, we haven’t broken any rules, anyway. IRL — I reckon — there are millions of people (maybe more) who believe in divine punishment but break what they believe to be their god’s or gods’ laws. It happens all the time. IRL believers are not a second-rate lot who believe in their gods less wholeheartedly than Gloranthans do. Finally, think of Faust. Is it the story of: a man who foolishly didn’t believe in divine punishment? a man who did believe in divine punishment but foolishly made a deal with the devil, anyway? Doubtless versions vary, but doesn’t option 2 make for a better story?

Well, my rash question had two bits: illumination of the Humakti broos in Dorastor exploitation of illumination as a power play by those broos or their bosses Is this a fannish invention or did it come from a legit Chaosium source (albeit one that may be long outdated, not truly describable using the ‘c’ word)? First part first: it is I hope uncontroversial that Ralzakark and some of his underlings (e.g. Shrike) are Nysalor illuminates. But what about the footsoldiers, are they illuminates, too, or just well disciplined? There is this: It says “typical”, not “every”, and I would welcome some Humakti broo who have discipline — possibly through H. cult exercises — but not illumination. Second part: Is illumination in Dorastor a power play, or at least, ruthlessly exploited to gain power by those who happened to be illuminated? I think it is part of the common culture (i.e. fans and Chaosium) that this sometimes happens. I am quite happy to go with the idea that Nysalorean illumination is one of the marks of civilization, so of course Ralzakark and many of his followers are illuminated — he is a refined and cultured fellow. Maybe he is not big on any of the following: Realpolitik (“Massing on the border? We should do what? No, no no! Fetch my lute: I have an opera to compose.”); succumbing to the Dark Side (“Boring and rather vulgar.”); Arkati paranoia (“What is wrong with these people?”). I would like that. There is this: That seems quite sensible to me, as IMHO, Humakt is death, all death, in whatever flavour and no matter who is doing the killing. Orlanth and company wouldn’t disagree that death let Chaos in. Does that mean Humakt has the Chaos rune, if only from the perspective of the broo Humakti (as with broo worshippers of Mallia)? I am not a big fan of hanging a Chaos rune on every deity with chaotic worshippers? What does it mean? What is it for a god to be “associated” with a rune, anyway? Of course, if one takes the view that Death and Chaos are both about endings, that they are maybe the same thing or at least overlap … So my having Humakt ask whether he was Chaos was not rhetorical in the sense of assuming an answer. (It was, of course, an afterthought.)

But aren’t they — yawn! — power gaming illuminates? (Or if they are not power gaming, their boss is.) Maybe they would be expected to have enough relief from torment to maintain discipline. And to be reflective enough not to think that just because they have joined a cult, it or its deity must be chaotic, too. I cannot comment on the soon to be revealed Humakt, but the Humakt of old didn’t seem that arsed about chaos. Possibly, he just isn’t. Possibly, he thinks that the whole sorry mess can be traced back to him, so he should keep quiet and let Eurmal, Orlanth, and Ragnaglar take the flak. “Death” as deportation? I like to think that Humakt tours all the hells and valhallas assuring his customers that he is glad that they chose death by discarding their perforated bodies or jumping down a designated hole, that he is sorry for the wait in the ante-room (there are a lot of customers to process, and each deserves his personal touch), but that he will get around to killing them as soon as he can. Puts the willies right up them, and he doesn’t get a lot of laughs in his line of work, otherwise. (Ethilrist’s trick is always to have his diary to hand. “When did you say, Humakt, old boy? No, sorry can’t make the Twelfth — clashes with a prior commitment. Maybe next time. The exit is this way, yes? Toodle-oo!”) As the owner of , cannot Humakt be presumed to govern death in all its forms, including being killed in hell, and being swallowed by Kajabor, even if there are these half-arsed holiday camp play deaths on the market, too? It is customers’ preference for shoddy alcopop deaths over the aged single malt of /dev/null that makes him so depressed.

I am not saying I like that aspect of how trickster cultists were presented, but I didn’t make it up. A couple of examples from the old days: So it is an early death (crazy, starving, or lynched), bonding (with a safe space to fit), or a prescribed rôle (which seems to involve magical intervention from the deity — but not to cure the unfortunate “patient”). I am happy for all that to be consigned to the dustbin of history — has it been? — and for a wedge to be driven between the character, ethics, and behaviour of worshipper and god. Just because Trickster himself is crazy and has destroyer and murderer aspects is no reason to make his worshippers like that. (Or give them magic like that if people are worried about power gamers.) If modern Eurmali are professional performers, rather than those so damaged that they cannot assume a “normal” rôle in society, are “crazy” people nonetheless still touched by Trickster? What becomes of them, now?

Some “clowns” might want their humour to be subversive, but it isn’t. So if they drink too much, behave anti-socially, and have mental health issues, shouldn’t we have more compassion than to make them outlaws or scapegoats? They are, after all, propping up the O world order — even if they really don’t want to. Is there a Gloranthan Aristophanes? He was surely not himself a trickster — at least, not from the Eurmali crazy clown mould.

They keep ordering the boxes of stickers, but they never open them.

Sure, open is good. It is just that when the objection to Chaos is “but then everything ends”, my knee-jerk response is that an attachment to immortality — for oneself or the cosmos in general — is pathological, so if people want to pin the denial of that on Chaos, fine — let them. ———————— EDIT: I suppose Humakt might say, “I am the end of everything. Am I then Chaos?”

Thought experiment: the Godlearners invent amphetamine or Ritalin and use it on their pet Trickster Academy; is the result realised potential, or — because this is magic, not real ADHD — do the smart ideas dry up and the new spells fizzle out (rather than blowing up in the casters’ faces as in the good old days)? So rather than have the orderly tricksters punished by Trickster — who probably finds them very funny; it is the true tricksters for whom “he” makes sure things go wrong (true tricksters are self-sabotaging, but that is the same thing, right?) — just bump up their runes and have NPCs offer them jobs as accountants. If that doesn’t cripple their magic, it should. I don’t want to increase the presence of slavery in Glorantha (make it something half-remembered from the Godtime or just a story to scare the kids), but it is good to have Ompalam as an idea; it is just a shame that he has ditched his 2014-vintage rune for . Trickster — at least in the guise of Eurmal — represents abject freedom, and one has to wonder whether the scale is marked on a straight line. (Similarly, Gark could do with in place of , IMHO, but we can always have CA stand in as our polar opposite to ZZ on the zombie-god scale.) Eurmali with the discipline to operate in secret? Don’t we call them Arkat Gbaji cultists? (Management consultants?) I suppose that Trickster like Arkat–Nysalor is his own worst enemy. And the Gbaji Wars — what a prank!

“So where is your shrine?” “I swallowed it. Visitors always welcome.” “Is there a rear entrance?” “Let me show you …”