mfbrandi

3 hours ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

All he wants, if he could be said to want anything, is for you to ask questions about the universe and find their answers, a process which naturally leads to Illumination.

But we all want that, don’t we? Not necessarily at all costs, but certainly at high cost: if there are truths to be discovered, we want them to be discovered — and by preference, we would grasp them ourselves (although none of us will ever know everything). If as a bonus, we are freed from our obsessions to destroy, or lose the hate which had ruled our lives, all the better.

Now illumination — or just plain ordinary knowledge — will sometimes allow us to do things we couldn’t do before. Some mean, destructive people will take their immunity to spirits of reprisal, or their knowledge of how to work iron, or how to build nuclear weapons and use them to do wicked things. Gosh, who knew? But did illumination make them do it, or did it just put a tool in their hand?

So do we leave the fruit on the tree and never step out of the Garden of Eden? Do we accuse Socrates of impiety and of corrupting the youth of Athens? Rhetorical questions both, so put you foot on the path to illumination — we may never get there, but what other path is there?

3 hours ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

You know what, that's great for you, it's great to see someone working through their issues and really growing. We're all just here to find [our] own meaning, man.

That sort of Me Generation claptrap is probably exactly the target of the dark side stuff. I probably hate it as much as anyone. It didn’t fade away with the 1970s. It is surely as bad now as at any time — “my truth” indeed! However, these two things are not the same:

• illumination doesn’t come with a moral lecture, a set of values, it is neutral;
• whatever you want, whatever you believe, it is right for you, and I approve.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

Mostal the Maker

Well, I would say that my dumb theory was that Mostal was not the Maker but the World Machine — and that the World Machine was not made but there from the beginning. All talk of making is unwarranted anthropomorphism. In this way of looking at things, the key Mostali concept is not the design or the blueprint but efficient causation or (differently) the world as mathematically describable. This calls the concept of repair into serious question.

I would say this was my dumb theory, but wasn’t it an RQ3 orthodoxy? (Gods as people was just a fable for the dim and the ignorant. There are no gods. There are no people. There is only the World Machine.)

9 hours ago, John Biles said:

I'm pretty sure the main goal of the Arkat cult is to ensure no more Arkats.

Sure: we only have nuclear weapons to prevent nuclear war.

9 hours ago, John Biles said:

Arkat's war on Nysalor/Gbaji started because Nysalor's followers were spreading diseases and then 'curing' them to win people over to their cult.

And we can agree that those Nysalor prophets succumbed to — what we are told is — the all-too-human temptation of the dark side. But it is explicit that Chaos and the dark side are not the same thing.

The collapse of the difference between Chaos and Law is said not to legitimize the collapse of personal ethics and personal desire (i.e. if I want it, it is right for me to have it) — it is a false parallel. As far as I can see, the sin of the Dark Siders (very Jack Kirby) is non-cooperation, which is said to imply non-creativity. But it is allowed that Chaos can create — else no Glorantha — so Chaos does not imply the dark side … and we are told Law does not exclude it.

(Because it is a false parallel — a bad argument — it is utterly unclear what Chaos, Law, and illumination have to do with the dark side. One might just as well say that because there is no final difference between Lemons and Oranges, I can do whatever I like and it is OK. Cue demented cultists setting fire to all the lemon trees to prevent my lousy behaviour.)

Anyway, now we feel fully justified in our war on the dark side — on the non-cooperative, non-creative free riders. Yay us! Go team! But:

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[the Arkat cult’s] great duty is to maintain order and stamp out Chaos … they aim only to destroy Chaos, and will not rest till they have done so. — also CoT, p. 87

Am I alone in wondering how we get there from objecting to spreading diseases to spread the Good News?

This is why I asked earlier in the thread whether illumination was a form of Chaos magic (and it does seem to be magic). If it is, then illumination is not the only route to the dark side (because “fully Lawful beings” can get there) — and anyway, Chaos doesn’t imply illumination. And if it is not, then even if we have to stamp out illumination lest it lead — in some mysterious fashion — to the dark side, that is not really a war on Chaos. Although, if “there is no final difference between Chaos and Law” (presumably the stance of the Arkati illuminates), what would a war on Chaos even look like?

I cannot shake the feeling that I have been making a schoolboy error for the last 40-odd years, but as is the way of such things, I cannot think what that error might be.

8 hours ago, metcalph said:

I don't see the text as requiring that the Arkati set a public example, and to infer that from epitome seems to me a stretch.

Fair enough, and not from “epitome” alone; we also have “exemplars” and “taking great pains to perform good deeds in the world and protect the good name of their hero” [emphases mine]. It all seems to me to tend in the direction of showing virtue and setting an example — public things.

But maybe that is just me. And anyway, maybe things have changed — been retconned — since CoT.

“Epitome” can be slippery: we might say of a fictional character that they are the epitome of the secret agent (George Smiley, maybe — I dunno), and in the fiction they may be completely anonymous, but to us up here in Metaland, the character functions as an example, is well known. But the Arkati see themselves as examples, as models to be emulated. What is it all the cool kids say these days, “you can’t be what you can’t see”?

2 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

3 hours ago, Jeff said:

It is perhaps worth pointing out that the Arkat cult largely has to exist as a secret society in most human societies

I agree that this is reasonable and probably how it should be.  This is definitely not the impression I get

And in 1981, you may have been right:

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The cultists of Arkat consider themselves the epitome of the Light Side of Nysalor, and condemn without hesitation he who is prey to the Dark Side. As exemplars, they pride themselves in their steadfastness, taking great pains to perform good deeds in the world and protect the good name of their hero god, who suffered so much and who paid the ultimate price for his inner knowledge. — CoT, p. 87

It does have an unfortunate whiff of Star Wars about it, but the Jedi Arkati would have a hard time setting an example (etc.) if they were completely hidden. (I mean, I guess you could, but it seems an against the grain reading, motivated retrospectively.)

So a society with secrets — a freemasonry? — but not a secret society in a “no one must know you are a member and anyway we don’t exist” way. But that was then, and this is post-Dan Brown?

But canon is only for Chaosium writers and do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law — just don’t tell any Arkati assassins that I said so.

12 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

This seems central to the Arkat story, which is really only marginally interesting IMG but matters a whole lot to other people.

I think it is the apparently unmotivated hatred for Chaos — as opposed to having enemies who happen to be chaotic — that is the hook. Unfortunately, that there seems really to be no motivation, however occult, makes the interest marginal, the hook likely to snap (leaving an irritating remnant in the roof of one’s mouth). However, that is not solely an Arkat problem.

And there is something going for the Arkati: if they “consider themselves the epitome of the Light Side of Nysalor”, they are initiates of a dead chaos god — killed by their own founder/hero — dedicated to wiping out chaos. I mean that is a bit odd. In a good way. Presumably, they cannot finish up by eradicating themselves — in case chaos makes a comeback after they are gone. So they have to stick around. Although they might go bad at any time. It is a tale from the Cold War, after all.

3 hours ago, radmonger said:

Unlike theist rune magic, the one learning the spell doesn't have any deep mystical experience causing them to identify with the original source of the spell. They are merely present when it is cast.

Hmmm … I wonder. We are told that the god is fully present in the caster — if a trickster Swallows something, then capital-T Trickster swallows it — but does that imply a moment of bliss for the caster? Maybe it is exactly the other way around: the deity gets to experience being a temporal entity for a moment … and the mortal is temporarily extinguished? Oh, but, hang on … 😉

(Now, do we add 1% to chance of illumination at Sacred Time for every rune spell cast? No? Well, it was worth a try.)

53 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Of course this is MGF for the CA player who wants to keep her hands clean and still maintain a big stick to threaten people with.

You mean MGH, of course.

10 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

There is a strong post-kierkegaardian strain here + a few other places that I find personally wicked delightful but tends to run aground on the game as it tends to be played … They … have their organic connection to their perennial wisdom and so on. That's how we know they're "Gloranthans."

I think there is a danger to making dissidence a modern thing and conformity an ancient thing. The ancient world produced the Analects, but it produced the Zhuangzi, too — and the legalists were radical in their way (whatever we think of their political conclusions — and Plato was doubtless no “snowflake” either). The Nysaloreans are explicitly compared to Socrates — and it is not as if he were the only troublemaker in Classical Greece. But on the other hand, I grew up in a country where religious education and acts of Christian worship were compulsory in schools … in the late 20th Century.

If we all were radical free thinkers and we wanted to try on traditionalism (hyper- or otherwise) as light relief or an exercise in empathy, that would be one thing, but I fear we all carry our own “dark age” around with us and construct our “elf games” to let our ids off the leash. Whereas Homer and the tragedians held their heroes up to scrutiny and found them wanting.

So we can make up stories where every barbarism is excused and justified — and unlike IRL, no pesky facts can get in the way — but is that a fun thing to do?

(Oh, and I don’t think the Arkati are justified because they assert themselves against a potentially meaningless world. I like to think that even if a degree of fear and trembling is involved, they know when their spades have turned, but they must act even though justifications have run out. I feel for their predicament. This is all just idle fancy, of course. And from a known ZZ sympathizer, at that.)

8 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Ethilrist is not Arkati.

But some Gloranthans think he might be, right?

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Some think there are deeper secrets known only to the inner circles of the cult. That Ethilrist worships the Eternal Hero, or even the Anti-Hero or the Hero’s Shadow. Others claim he is a secret Arkat and that his cult is an Arkati fraud. — WoD

So a little confusion is forgivable, no?

7 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

This is definitely not the impression I get from the scenarios: e.g. Duel at Dangerford features an Arkati being, and all the "woo-woo" weird stuff that Argrath is doing.

But Duel at Dangerford is a JC product and so non-canon. So, unfortunately, this doesn’t give us any purchase. But, you know, if we all chant hard enough and gobble all those mushrooms, maybe we can levitate the Pentagon and reveal what is underneath.

4 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Their experience and emotional situation translates into a form of perpetual PTSD ("eternal battle") that can drive them to lash out at innocents … One way communities learn to support the bull is through the CA complex. You can even think of Storm Bull as a kind of auxiliary to the White Lady in more sophisticated lightbringer contexts.

“Hello, my name is Chalana. I am a pacifist and enabler of dangerous sociopaths.” So I am too pure to hit you, but my pet thug will give you a good going over — is that what we mean by “sophisticated” here?

9 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Arkat and those who emulate him are bound by no known social constraints.

And, yet, despite their being secretive, devious, deluded, and mad as a box of frogs, this somehow seems … more honest? They have only their own cracked reasoning to rely on, but at least they are not leaning on society told me it was OK to do it. Does this make them more dangerous? I don’t know. After all, sophisticated, civilized societies can give the nod to dreadful acts of brutality, it is not the prerogative of the loonies who love cell structures and the dark spaces underground.

3 minutes ago, Jeff said:

In general the Orlanthi give the Storm Bulls great leeway because they have proven their capacity regarding fighting Chaos both mythologically and historically.

Sure, that is why I phrased my original comment the way I did: my death squad killed w, x, and y — they were all terrible people, and you were all glad to see the last of them — but now they have killed z, and none of you can see what was wrong with z; everybody loved z and their turnips. So either you are all too trusting and my death squad can get away with unjustified killings so long as we bring in enough broo scalps, or we are going to have to come up with something a bit better than “z just smelled wrong”, no?

Not so much a dumb theory as a dumb question. Given:

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[T]he illuminated one will know as truth that Chaos is, in itself, neither evil nor inimical … It makes the person of Law free from automatic fear of Chaos and the obsession to destroy it. Likewise, it frees creatures of Chaos from their twisted convictions and offers them the chance to rid themselves of the hate which rules their lives.

Illumination will give the realization, but it is not necessary that an individual change his life if he has other, stronger beliefs which intervene. — CoT, p. 86

How does one motivate anti-Chaos fanaticism in an illuminate? Rummage in your bag of possible stronger beliefs.

    Chaos is neither evil nor inimical but I will root it out and destroy it because …

Answers on a post card, please. 25 words or fewer. If your answer is chosen, you win a holiday to sunny Dorastor — spending money included, but travel insurance is extra. The judges’ decision is final.

5 minutes ago, Jeff said:

It is perhaps worth pointing out that the Arkat cult largely has to exist as a secret society in most human societies.

And presumably even if they weren’t persecuted, the Arkati would be temperamentally unsuited to operating in the open, anyway.

And, yes, I was running together the two cases of brazen Storm Bulls (still standing over granny at the allotment when the rest of the community turns up) and furtive Arkati (long gone). What they have in common is a claim to special knowledge about bad stuff the rest of us cannot see.

Should we trust either of them? Even if we should, would we be able to? If I strike you down preemptively because my Spidey sense is tingling, I had better be able to turn up some proof after the fact or I am just some lunatic who has murdered the beloved custodian of Glorantha, no?

7 minutes ago, Eff said:

you can't rely entirely on random Lunar encounters or "wild" Nysalor illuminates

“All the world is queer chaotic save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer chaotic.” — Report of the Arkati Conference on Illumination and Chaos (1617)

I wonder whether it is a matter of ends (supposedly) justifying means or just the utter paranoia brought about by the belief in their own lethality and corruption: “If we’re this awful and we are the good guys, what must everybody else be like?” What if — with the best of intentions — one tells illuminates that they have a dangerous superpower and that turns them into homicidal conspiracy theorists? With great power comes great responsibility membership of a death squad.

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

2. The Orlanthi trust the Storm Bull cultists as the experts on sniffing out Chaos. That being said, something obviously Chaotic is treated as Chaotic. Even if the Storm Bulls are confused that it doesn't seem Chaotic. Everyone knows that Gbaji is the deceiver, after all.

3. The human Arkat cult has ways of sniffing out Illuminates, and unless those Illuminates are Arkati, the Arkati usually try to kill them if possible.

“Look, I was right about that baby-eating broo with three heads that dribbled a trail of radioactive slime, wasn’t I? So you must trust me when you catch me decapitating harmless old people just trying to grow a few turnips — I’m only doing it to save the world. Evidence? Schmevidence!”

1 minute ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

What would you guess - 90% of all RQ PCs are Storm Tribey?

Presumably, it is thought that there is not really a lot of choice. More interesting to know how many are gung-ho, party-line Orlanthi and how many are dissident Orlanthi or Orlanthi with doubts/consciences, no?

And then there is the question of ironic distance between player and character: playing a rocks-for-brains Storm Bully to send up the “must … KILL … chaos!” attitude.

14 hours ago, Darius West said:

Then we find out that Nysalor has a Chaos Rune.  Just because he can hide his chaos taint

Just because self-appointed chaos hunters cannot detect it, one shouldn’t conclude that it is hidden. Maybe their ability to detect chaos isn’t all it is cracked up to be.

9 hours ago, Darius West said:

the straw dogs are venerated for a day and then cast aside as waste

But it would be crazy to continue to venerate straw effigies after the ritual, of course. (I think — but others will have a better grasp of this — that the Zhuangzi has a pop at Confucius by having a foolish fellow do just that.)

And if the sage treats “the people” as straw dogs, to Heaven and Earth, the 10,000 things are as straw dogs.

What does it all mean? I have no idea.

15 minutes ago, soltakss said:

What stunted their growth? Too much smoking or self abuse?

If you want to know why the dwarfs are shorter than the Brithini, then malnutrition:

10 hours ago, radmonger said:

Perhaps more useful is the terminology used by the Mostali:

• working: functions according to its nature without requiring energy inputs
• malfunctioning: requires regular energy inputs from an external source

The more you eat, the more you say “look at me — I am malfunctioning.”

The Brithini are much bigger, but still small:

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Westerners tend to be smaller and slighter than Orlanthi or Hsunchen. Those directly descended from the ancient Brithini average around 5 feet tall — GtG, p. 48

Why in-world? I have no idea. Going meta: they are physically stunted to reflect their supposed psychological/spiritual stuntedness — how absolutely charming. (Next thing we’ll have beastmen who rub shit in their hair and indulge in “unnatural” sexual practices to indicate the depths of their depravity — oh, wait …)

(Why does the setting have dwarves and Brithini? I have a paranoid “theory”, but I don’t want rocks thrown at me, so I am keeping it to myself.)

2 hours ago, svensson said:

That's the cult, not the man. I'm pretty sure that every single Christian denomination does something The Christ would find objectionable.

Although in this case it is Hey Zeus Herbert who may be misbehaving and his followers who would find that objectionable. We do sometimes tell tales of old JC getting up to no good, as in the folk song/carol The Bitter Withy.

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

Needless to say, that Nysalor as a deity created after time was dangerous to the Compromise.

Although Nysalor-as-Rashoran might say that a bunch of other gods got killed in Godtime and came back at the Dawn — he was just a little late to the resurrection party, so exceptional means were necessary.

1 minute ago, radmonger said:

16 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

So how does our sun fit into this categorization?

Currently working,

So an animal is malfunctioning — because if you don’t shovel food into its mouth, it will eventually stop moving — but if we sew up its mouth to prevent refueling (and maybe stamp it “amended design approved” in green ink), we will have upgraded it to working? I don’t know whether I am failing to think like a Mostali or thinking all-too-like a Mostali.

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

• working: functions according to its nature without requiring energy inputs
• malfunctioning: requires regular energy inputs from an external source …
• broken: requires repair or recreation …

For example, the sun is currently working, in that it will shine on worshiper and non-worshiper alike. Before the First Great Repair, this was not the case. Such local sources of light and heat as did exist either required continual sacrifice to maintain, or become degraded over time.

So how does our sun fit into this categorization? It is shining now — without requiring energy inputs — but it will degrade over time, and it is not clear to me that anything can be done about that.

So is something that has a finite useful life and cannot be refueled working (if limited) or broken? It doesn’t seem to be malfunctioning. (You can see why the growers would shake their heads — fronds? — at this way of looking at making.)

Perhaps for the Mostali only a perpetual motion machine is truly working. If so, no wonder the repairs are not going well.