mfbrandi

Or after Tom Disch, the syphilis is the source of inspiration. The ‘quicksilver’ is just the dwarves’ attempt to keep the unwanted effects at bay.

I say, that’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? Are they any worse than parasitoid wasps or fungi? Than humans who eat their herd beasts? (I have always assumed that they gained their life cycle via retcon after the RQ authors (Sandy?) had seen Alien, but that is just an assumption — was it there in the really early, pre-Alien material?)

A lightbulb goes on above your head and you’re three feet high and rising. Storm Bullys may fight with monsters — becoming monsters if they weren’t already — but I wonder how much time they spend staring into the abyss and letting the abyss stare into them. That’s a hobby for the more reflective of the Humakti, no?

What is wrong with Molluca?

Hmm, OK … but does this mean that the dragonewts will eat Godunya, or that the broos will give up all their malarkey and get brollies, bowlers, and jobs in the City?

He has some reason, else he could not beg. In the last night's storm I such a fellow saw; Which made me think a man a worm: my son Came then into my mind; and yet my mind Was then scarce friends with him: I have heard more since. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport. — Gloucester Join the cult of Gorakiki. She is the only one on our side.

Interesting as an observation, but how does it work as an argument? If you find something in Glorantha that lacks its earthly origin or explanation, retcon it away? I have a horrible feeling that would thin the setting quicker than Argrath crashing the moon. 😉 (No, I don’t say this to argue for spuds in Peloria.)

I am sure it all means something to Jeff, but if I were to play the game of “rank the following gods in order of cosmological importance”, I think: (a) I would fail — loops, gods left over, who knows what other mess; (b) I wouldn’t have any clear idea of what I was even trying to do. Don’t be fooled by the fact that you are sure you can rank Yelm above the patron deity of of unreturned library books. Gods of Glorantha Top Trumps will clear it all up, I am sure. And if a god were of “great cosmological importance” but not “universally acknowledged” (by Gloranthans, presumably, not players or game designers), then I guess they wouldn’t make the cut. If I were the Invisible God, I would feel offended that I had to slum it with all the other bozos while “Korgatsu (aka Hykim and Mikyh) was too abstract to add.”

More misdirection, another POV trick: are you truly holding the thing to which your hand is glued? Still, she looks like a fairly substantial spider snack. The move from Ernalda the Naked Lunch to Ernalda the Weaver is a reversal of perspective characteristic of mortals’ refusal of “the frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” Given that we are all spider food, one can have a little sympathy for the Ernaldans — but only a little — and it is not as if the Krarsht cultists are any less self-deceptive.

Because none of us met and lived to tell the tale, so we assumed she looked like her daughters. The Great Compromise is not “Cosmos eats Chaos” but “Chaos eats Cosmos … but she promises to do so slowly.” : for every arm an equal and opposite arm — cancel to zero. is unbalanced and represents the spontaneous generation of something from nothing/the void/primal chaos. Once Cosmos has been consumed, Luck may restart the cycle. The Devil: speak his name and he will appear. That just shows what a low-grade, illusory fellow he is — all smoke and mirrors. He is our fear and our willful misunderstanding of what is really going on. He is not there; he never was; poof! And we come to, caught in the web of fate. Arachne puppeteers the gods onto her web, trusses them up — they are not holding the web, the web is holding them: that is how it is with fate — but generously agrees not to eat them all right now. That is Time, the Great Compromise. And if that is not the story the Lightbringer priests tell, well, what kind of a god would say “worship me, o mortals, for I am … cosmic snack food”? Not the big blue blowhard. Arachne Solara’s web holds us all. The gods have but a short time left. Then it is our hour in the sun. But sooner or later, our threads will be reeled in and we will feed our Mother. So we could see Arachne as Cosmos and Krarsht as Chaos, but Billy Ockham says that is one Devouring Mother too many.

Yeah, but if it works, instant insight into the true nature of the Big O. — and an illumination check. 😉

When I am in my Happy Place™, if the Big Bat is banished, each of the Little Bats grows to the size of the banished Bat.

There are ecstatic — apocalyptic? — western sects who claim that the truth is more like this: ()= ()= And I believe they generalize this to the origin and destruction of every individual of every form and to every element. The Invisible God, they say, is slowly transforming/absorbing the substance of the world back into Herself. I am not sure that I prefer this to feeding Cosmos into the maw of Chaos. Some days, Krarsht whispers to me that there is no difference. My false beard itches all the time, now.

I have been hanging out and shooting the breeze (that phrase makes them chuckle a little too much) with the scholars at the Malkioni medical colleges. It soon became clear that their doctors and biologists turn green at the very thought of Ulerian rites. Perhaps it is only coincidence, but they are skeptical of the traditional opposition of Death–Separation and well, what exactly, Life–Union? , they say, is just separation caught in the act, and their textbooks concur: They are prepared to entertain rival “barbarian” (their word, not mine) theories about the origin of humans “and other beasts” (don’t shoot the messenger), but are firm in their view that returns us to our origins, that it results in a renewed union: So there you have it. Odd coves. And like all those concerned with the eternal verities, they will probably change their minds tomorrow. I must go stroke my false beard and think this through.

And it just had to be called “Theya”, didn’t it?

We scholars of the present enlightened age — Hail Harshax! — are familiar with the idea that at the end of the so-called “Hero Wars” (preposterous notion!), there was a “Pelorian Apocalypse” and civilizational collapse marking the end of the Genertelan Late Bronze Age. Robert Drews was a noted popularizer of this “theory” … You are, of course, familiar with the hypothesis that the tale Argrath & the Devil records not a so-called “heroquest” (an “otherworld” shenanigan — all haziahead talk!) but the mass execution of cult leaders by a petulant tyrant — Hail Harshax, most reasonable of rulers! — supposedly allied to most of them. Still, something happened in Peloria. Was there ever a red moon? If so, just how big was it? If it fell to earth, our presence to ponder the problem suggests it was of insignificant mass. A notion I have toyed with is that the boundaries of the postulated “Lunar Empire” were marked with large hydrogen-filled barrage balloons or observation dirigibles. (My colleagues say that I am fanciful to attribute such sophistication to little more than savages.) Anyway, Harshax U. is mounting an expedition, so interested post-docs and ambitious graduate students should sign up below. Mules, tents, and archaeological tools will be provided. Bring own walking boots. No Lunies. [Yes, this is 4th Age Glorantha as Call of Cthulhu Wakboth.]

It is OK, I will take it on trust. I was very conscious of handwaving just how “troll climbs out of the Underworld.” The post was just a bit of RuneFun™. Although … until we invent one-way fire, isn’t that a barrier to getting into Wonderhome, too?

Ethilrist: Black Horse Troop: Kyger Litor: Argan Argar: (and in a past life: ) ———————————————————————— One would guess that AA was born more than once: once in the Dark/Underworld before the birth of Aether and then again to Xentha on the Surface. The deprecation of the Issaries rune is a shame, as it suggests: [a] AA as a reverse psychopomp, leading souls out of Hell; [b] if you want to get out of the Underworld, there is always a deal to be done. Troll dies. Troll gets buried, burned, or eaten. Troll climbs out of the Underworld. Would any non-Uz notice that it was the same troll returned? It happens, but the racists cannot see it — and the funeral feast is a fine bit of misdirection. Ethilrist is such a crashing bore that Uz have beaten his snout flat in a vain attempt to shut him up. Consequently, his features are so distinctive that: [a] his return from Hell is noticed; [b] he is often mistaken for a non-Uz with “special powers”.

Apologies for my ignorance, but I don’t know this word. Four Es in a row makes me think it is a slang term. From context, it doesn’t seem quite to mean “not kosher” or “haram.” The sound of fingernails on a blackboard — so, “jarring”?

Wherever he goes, he has to lug around an unwieldy collection of hat boxes. It is hell getting in and out of cabs. That is why he looks so angry. I first read that as Carmenized.

I always had a soft spot for the sufis, so I would say it was all that qawwali rubbing off on me, save for the fact that we all think that radical notions of free will are nonsense, right? (Or maybe the analytical philosophy rubbed off on me, too.)

Well, that is what I thought, too, but it would be refreshing if there were a big reveal and (the god of) something all the players thought was evil turned out not to be chaotic. If every mortal is a slave and ultimately all the chains lead back to Ompalam, one can imagine that forming a perfect triangle of law — giving us @Eff’s collapse of chaos and non-chaos, or . And maybe that’s what we would have gotten if it weren’t for the deprecation of the law rune. But to me that seems to lean into chaos is whatever gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach — and if something functionally identical doesn’t give me that feeling (because I am the one benefiting from it), then it is not chaotic, and it is fine. That probably has sound Gloranthan provenance, but I’d toss it in the bin marked “for satirical use only” or “sarcasm: handle with care.” “Cosmos is inside — is everything good. Chaos is outside — is everything bad.” “But look at this. It is pretty bad, and it definitely comes from the inside.” “Well, OK, I will grant you that: it is rotten. But at least it doesn’t come from the outside.” (Any suggestions that I have been tapping Suella Braverman’s phone …)

I didn’t say slavery was chaotic. I never would. Blaming human evils on something supposedly definitively not us is ridiculous — and possibly some things worse than that. I had never given Ompalam a thought till dumuzid brought the little charmer up. I know you know more Gloranthan lore than I ever will (or would ever care to) and that sometimes some odd runes pop up for a while on the Well of Daliath, but if the official position is now that Ompalam — never mind slavery, let us put that aside — is not chaotic, why is he being trailed as being such in the upcoming prosopædia? Who populates those tables? I could have saved myself the trouble of trying to “rescue” one of my people! 😉

I knew you wouldn’t let me down!

I think mortals are quite capable of dreaming up “every person is a slave, just try to be as near the top of the pyramid as possible” (and variations and addenda) all on their own, so in that respect, it doesn’t really matter whether there ever was an Ompalam — eaten by Wakboth or not. And if the gods due to be fed to Wakboth were to be spared, what would they do to end tyranny, slavery, and the rest? Approximately nothing, one imagines. Those evils are only “chaotic” when the other person or group is indulging in them. Being anti-Ompalam seems too easy: “Slavery? Yes, we’re definitely against that.” But on the other hand, the Godlearner classification — god of degenerative administration, of evil centralization — makes Ompalam seem like the kind of thing the extreme right would rail against when they think that the centre is telling them, the self-defined out group, that they are not allowed to indulge in some unsavoury practice. So we all get to feel queasy, right? I wonder if there is a way to redeem not slavery, but Ompalam. Ompalam as the god who teaches that free will is an illusion (or language gone on holiday)? Ompalam religious communities whose members all declare themselves to be slaves, but it turns out that ownership of each member of the community is equally distributed among the other members? For example, in a community {a, b, c}, a and b each own 50% of c, b and c each own 50% of a, and a and c each own 50% of b. Other patterns are possible. For example, rings: a owns b owns c owns a. No one owns themself. No one owns more slaves than anyone else. No cultist owns a non-cultist in whole or in part. No non-cultist owns a cultist in whole or in part: I mean, what cult would sell its members? Ompalam mathematician–theologians argue over the optimum way to assign ownership — they call this discovering the divine order — but no one ever snarks or comes to blows. No one ever asserts their ownership rights over another, anyway, and often cultists have to consult the latest pamphlet to see just what arcane distribution has been agreed at synod. Whatever they last agreed on, that is the way it has always been and always will be — “We were just a little confused, that’s all. Now, do I own you this week, or is it the other way around? Cup of tea?” One thing is for sure, non-cult “slave owners” are definitely not doing it right, and one never sees them in the sweatier nightclubs. Will something like this do to stay true to , , and without my Glorantha having to have an icky god of slavery in it? It still leaves plenty of room to satirise slavery and even to organise against it in-game. Kinkiness is sure to ensue, and I can easily imagine an Ompalam cell being the Gloranthan equivalent of Chip Delany’s Gorgik the Liberator. Statutory declaration: MGHV.