mfbrandi

How Oedipal!

Were Lionel Bart and company trying to tell us something about the multiple Argraths theory?

Or taking a cue from real life (e.g. Sumer), people could have mini-shrines or effigies — “personal gods” — at home to deities that get no representation in places of public worship.

Well, I mean, … you would, wouldn’t you? After all, the only good god is an invisible (intangible, inaudible, …, impotent) god, right? DSIO Hail Harshax!

It is always a good time to ask. (Let us hope everyone says “no” if we are talking Atwood’s Gilead.) But maybe the place to ask is in the spin-off thread Treading on a future we may never get to see.

Here’s a link (legit/official mp3 download) to today’s BBC World Service documentary about you-know-what: The end of civilisation: Bronze Age collapse One of the participants is Eric Cline of 1177 B.C. fame, and he is threatening a sequel to that book (which is still sitting on my shelf saying ‘you cannot be bothered to read me’). Not the deepest or the last word on the topic, but if you like this kind of thing, they have loads more available on diverse topics.

Thanks, Brian, I didn’t know it was mentioned as late as that. But it certainly appears earlier: the idea is laid out in WF #11 (1981), but some of the examples are of the why would you bother sort — “a riverford” [presumably, a river ford], “a Ralios river manor” — though “a horse nomad nation” is intriguing. I mean, one Ralios river manor is going to be much like another, no?

Weren’t we back in pre-history — before Moon Design was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, so we couldn’t hold the present regime to it — (if my memory can be trusted over so many decades) promised ‘blank lands’ that would never be filled in? A temporal version of that would be cool, and easier to implement. The Fourth Age as a temporal ‘blank land’ seems appropriate. And if it is a ‘thinned’ time, it would probably make commercial sense, too: lots of people want big colourful things whacking each other; Chaosium has a dark ages game in Pendragon. And there is always the option of rewinding. I bet people would go for a God Learner — remember your mantra: Mongoose does not exist Mongoose does not exist … — or Nysalor campaign.

With ‘Argrath & the Devil’ being seen as the fall of the GC or as imposing the GC with a very big stick?

I cribbed it from my memory of a piece by Avram Davidson (“The Great Rough Beast”), but on checking, he in turn had nicked it from some unspecified and unspecific source, but Regent Street is certainly “around Piccadilly”: When my mother was very young, she knew a “very ugly old woman with the sweetest nature; we called her ‘Pearly Girl’” who had — she said — known AC and had nothing good to say about him. I wasn’t sure that my mother’s friend really had known Crowley — surely everyone of the right age had a Crowley story — so I was surprised many years later to learn of AC’s “scarlet woman” (Evelyn) Pearl Brooksmith. Seems it was true, after all, but the stories she could have told were presumably deemed unfit for my mother’s young ears. AC seemed a good fit for IO: invisible and the author of rotten poetry. Does that mean we have to audition Yeats as Yelm? Yikes!

From Jeff on Greg’s deep Lunar synthesis: Hmm … IO as the balancer of the mystical and the materialist. Maybe another possible source of @EricW’s proposed Moonproofness. Something to toughen up what may be “only a philosophical/prophetic movement” — I would rather be a gyroscope than a hand grenade.

Or Lunar magic, so there is no shift in relative power. On the other hand, if all the IO cultists are within the Glowline (are they?), is there a cycle to worry about. Most likely — due to my own ignorance — I miss your point. Certainly embrace the complementary power if indeed it is not the same power — perhaps we are better off thinking of a Möbius strip or a Klein bottle than a two-sided coin. As for ends, perhaps they are the cultists’ and not the god’s, possibly making it trickier for the ruling class to manipulate. (And maybe we can nick a cell structure from Mithras, although that was not a subversive cult.) The more, the merrier!

I think one of the arms race theories of LBAC on Wikipedia mentioned mass-produced cast bronze weapons. My guess is that cast bronze is less brittle than cast iron (presumably, a cast iron sword would be suicide), but perhaps there is a metallurgist here who can squeak up. IIRC — and as always with my off-the-top-of-the-head rambling, caveat emptor — reworking iron without completely melting it is one of the ways of getting the all-important small amount of carbon into it. In retrospect one of the oddities of early RQ: unalloyed iron suppressed magic, but who would want to equip themselves with unalloyed iron weapons and armour, anyway?

Around Carmania there are posters bearing the likeness of Aleister Crowley: “Have you seen this magus? Cash reward for information leading to capture”. IO cultists have been scrawling “Every person and every unperson is the Sun” across them. When I saw Aleister, I asked him, and he assured me that he was indeed invisible, straightened his pointy hat, pulled his cloak about him, and swanned off.

Dayzatar–Yelm–Lodril is collapsible or telescopic entity like Humakt–Orlanth–Urox and Ernalda and her sisters, right? All also with the possibility of “really” being the previous generation — if you squint and if there’s an “R” in the month. The binary I have gone for is Yelm is Everything (you don’t have to create the world if you are it, so no demiurge rôle on offer) and Orlanth is Nothing. And Orlanth was always Yelm’s shadow, right? (The Shadow of the Sun is an odd rôle.) And to confront one’s shadow is to confront oneself, no? But who needs to tell this story as a murder and (something of) a reconciliation, again? Hence the two mini-myths telling the same story from the Inside and the Outside and the poaching of bits of Mithras who maybe only looks a bit like Iranian (Carmanian/Malkioni) Mithra but is “really” a Roman invention (Dara Happan–Theyalan mash-up) in a Phrygian cap and a nice frock. Cave–Universe–Underworld, Lightbringer quest (i.e. the solar cycle just-so story), Orlanth–Mithras picnicking with Yelm–Sol–themself — it can all be jiggled into place. This isn’t archaeology or the history of religion, this is making shit up. New religious movements should give the old myths — but not necessarily the old believers — a bit of a shoeing. As for Truth and Lies, I will settle for True (1) and False (0). Happily, our line is supposed to be our Shadow and our circle our Sun, so we get the desired symbolic instability. And is our winged lion god the Sun — per Carmanian iconography — or Ahriman (Orlanth as Kajabor given a bit of the love they deserve) per Legge? I used to think Kazkurtum was just dead Yelm. Was I always wrong (usually the best bet), or did things get unnecessarily complicated over the years?

And generational collapse — or at least telescoping — is always hovering in the background.

I refer your honour to Exhibit A — which has Orlanth outside the universe, though they didn’t go there: it is just what they are. As I — feebly! — grasp it, IG has at least two functions: (a) to be removed from Creation (although I prefer to ditch the Three and embrace pantheism); (b) to be top god, above mere saints and burtae. So I made Yelm/top god the Inside and Orlanth the Outside. The One and the Zero. Then Orlanth’s blow against Yelm was reimagined as an act of mutual benefit, an opening of communication between Inside and Outside, rather than a murder. None of this would be accepted by orthodox Malkioni, Orlanthi, or Yelmies, of course; they would rightly say that it does violence to their subtle, beautiful, and true cosmologies. All the astrological/astronomical stuff and the stepping outside of the universe fits with the plundered Mithraism, too. (Though, again, not in-keeping with real Mithraism, whatever the hell that was like.) And we all know what we find outside the universe … [cue spooky music]

Well, they are “brothers”, early users of Eurmal’s toy, and IMG shorn of the Air rune. Humakt is the ultimate extinction that comes to mortals and gods — a bit like Kajabor. IO and Humakt both seem to be illuminated. So far not such a dumb theory (not in my crazy world): you could see the “sons” of Umath as being like the “daughters” of Earth, who — sometimes at least — are their “mother”. IO’s picnic on the bull’s skin can be seen as like Humakt’s rejection of his Storm heritage. Of course, IO is poor dead Urox, too, for Creation is Utuma. Some IO cultists might not be so down on the undead as Humakt’s crowd, seeing them a liminal figures and expressions of the balance. Of course, one imagines Urox is cool with that, seeing as his besty is a Fire/Shadow commander of zombies.

This is all good. The Sun see its own shadow? You wouldn’t think it could. It would take something very bright to make it cast one. But in a mystery cult, we can certainly have the cult secret of Light/the Sun casting its own Shadow. In a different context, I proposed this glyph: … and that will do for the Sun floating above its own shadow, and for something to be chalked on walls by the weirder Invisible Orlanth cultists. Turn it on its side, and we get: “I” for the Invisible Shadow (and Idovanus) and “O” for Orlanatus (who like Mithras is and is not the Sun) — Deus Sol Invictus Orlanatus! You cannot separate Caster and Shadow, because we are all us (and all One and all Zero). Be careful how you play with the elements of that glyph. If the Red Emperor were to look for Orlanth — or the IO cult — using magic attuned to the Air rune, he would fail as IO is not an Air cult. If he found magic that did work, then — if his Solar credentials are legit — he would find that IO is in the room (but unlike in Aliens, not in the ceiling). Can IO still be a wind deity? Sure. What makes the wind blow? Heat from the Sun to make the air molecules runes jiggle about. A Void for them to blow into (low pressure). I think we have both of those covered. So IO makes the wind blow — and the Solar Wind, too — but they are not a windbag, a goatskin taut with flatus. Much better. But that IO is a Celestial/Cosmic cult with all kinds of crazy Solar notions (like the Sun Inside) and crazier Lunar ideas (balance, reconciliation, 7 degrees, and whisper it … the Void) does not mean that it could not end up in conflict with the Empire: “What do you mean you are the Sun and so is your wife? I am the Emperor. Only I get to be the Sun, and don’t you forget it!” And they are bound to have problems with that smelly lot from Charg: “A picnic with the Sun on the freshly flayed skin of what? I don’t think so!”

Being the one to have received the knuckle-rap for the drift off topic (and with no burning need to talk about the Late Bronze Age Collapse), perhaps it should fall to me to try to pull this back to Invisible Orlanth. We (in playerland) know Invisible Orlanth by that name because the cult is some kind of Invisible God–Orlanth mash-up, but is there anything interesting to say from a Gloranthan point of view as to why Invisible Orlanth is invisible? That Invisible Orlanth is invisible because air is invisible seems the lamest possible answer. We could just piggy-back on the reason why the Invisible God is not visible — presumably one of these: they are far, far away or not anywhere (in creation), so none of us can see them pantheism: (outside of mystical experience) you can never see everything they are hiding in plain sight Kajabor ate them Not the last? Suit yourself. I am sure you can think up something much better, so barf forth your ideas! This document did drop through a wormhole onto my desk; it seems to be some kind of videophone IVR script: … but surely Trickster wrote it.

Thinking “visiony” visions rather than potentially here-and-now real (if supernatural) stuff, a cheap trick would be a premonition of some bit of the metaplot “written” across the sky. If there is some bit of the metaplot you don’t like, you could: (a) treat it as a warning: if you don’t act, this will happen; (b) show it in an altered version. So for example, you could: (a) show Jar-Eel killing Belintar; (b) show Jar-Eel doing a deal with or failing to kill Belintar. Then you get the question of who is running the projector. Or you could treat it as straight foreshadowing, as far as the players and characters can tell — e.g. a vision of Wolf Pirates torching everything around the bay and setting the sea on fire just to put the cherry on top — many chickens’ entrails and saucers of tea leaves are examined, but every fortune teller says it is definitely going to happen & you keep up your GM poker face. You don’t have to have decided whether the event will happen (or when) and can make your plans around the PCs’ actions (and/or the players’ feelings). And if the Bay’s water is truly mirrorlike in its calmness, you can run a reflection of the sky vision in the water. It goes without saying that it will not match exactly the version in the sky. Perhaps they even interact — think Duck Soup. The fortune tellers still swear it is definitely going to happen, but they cannot agree on just what has been foretold.

Now, I may have this wrong — in the long run, you won’t lose money by betting against my opinions — but I thought the switch to ‘iron’ (i.e. steel) in the Mediterranean and thereabouts was due to the difficulty of maintaining supplies of the ingredients for bronze, there being few dead gods to scavenge from. Sure, steel made better — lighter, stronger — weapons, but it took more than that to push everybody over the technological hump: in the end, people shifted to iron because they had to, not because it was better.

Maybe their mating dances are a tourist attraction. Maybe migrating flocks are a problem — perhaps they attract giant predators. Only in the shallows, but how deep is shallow for a giant crane?

I had drafted a much longer version of this, but TL;DR: how about an Invisible Orlanth modelled on the Roman cult of Mithras? The cult of Mithras takes from Zoroastrianism (i.e. old Carmanian religion) but it is not it: where Persian Mithra/Mihr is a yazata (think RC or Malkioni saint), Roman Mithras is top banana. Think of Invisible Orlanth as a Dara Happan–Theyalan syncretism with some significant Carmanian chrome. From @Nick Brooke’s old website: Mithras was born from a rock — Petra Genetrix, but let’s call her Kero Fin — with a sword (very Orlanth) in one hand and a torch (the sun) in the other. Flame of Sartar too much of a stretch? Also: So we have Bull = Dark = Storm and Lion = Light = Sun. But remember When you squint, rebel and emperor seem to coalesce. Mithras is a bull killer. Well, that is one way for Urox to become father of the herds. Note Ahriman there: the outsider who attacks creation but in doing so helps to create the world. If you like, that is the violence of Orlanth (and indeed of Kajabor) helping to create the world as we know it with its solar cycle of day and night. Here the bull is a creature of Ohrmazd/Ahura Mazda, so coded “Light”. Now Mithraic iconography has three esoteric gods: the twin Mithras clones Cautes (torch up = sunrise & ascent into immortality (out of the universe/cave)) and Cautopates (torch down = sunset & descent into mortality (into the universe/cave)), but also a “mysterious” lion-headed god. Who he? Well: So we can have a revaluation/reconsideration of our Carmanian symbolism: here the lion is not a symbol of the sun but of the supposed enemy of creation (Orlanth/Kajabor). But if we see the bull killing as not so bad after all, and if per Invisible Orlanth for Masochists, we propose an inside/outside unification of the Emperor and the Rebel, Creation and the Void, we can see how the symbolism might be unstable (or possibly revolving). “Our” Mithras/Orlanth is a god of the balance and the soldiery (which the Carmanians should like) of oaths (per Persian Mithra, “contract”, which the Orlanthi should like) and a reconciler of Order and Chaos (which the Lunars should like, along with its “esoteric hierarchy of seven grades”). But the Uroxi barbarians? No, they will hate Invisible Orlanth. Well, I seem to have gone on far too long, anyway. Quotes not attributed to Nick Brooke are from the entry on Mithraism on Encylopædia Iranica, and there is more good nick-it-for-Glorantha stuff in there. “Deus Sol Invictus Orlanatus! — You thought I said ‘invisible’? No, ‘invincible’.” PS: A tip of the hat to @davecake who had the foresight to say:

Sartar rebels should view Lunar maps with interest, as they will tell them which routes look plausible to the Lunar army, no? And if you can nick a marked-up, in-use map from the local barracks or from a general’s tent …