simonh

In-world there are rumours of "The Wild Healer of the Rockwoods", who's apparently a pacifist broo that worships Chalana Arroy and is a healer. Cults of Prax says that chaos creatures have been known to join the cult and that the wild healer is an example. It's generally accepted here that this rumour is correct, this broo does exist and is a Chalana Arroy healer. Beyond that the details aren't clear. [Open to counter-views or corrections on this]. That doesn't mean that everyone in Glorantha believes this broo exists, or that they are a legitimate Chalana Arroy worshiper, or that they all agree on all the facts, or what it means is any of it is true. I don't think this broo has ever made an appearance in 'settled' lands. I think there must be in-world reports of various people encountering it, but I don't think there's much canonical and there's no guarantee any of these reports are at all consistent with each other. All we have is the original single sentence in Cults of Prax and the mention in the Guide. Absolutely. Are the members of the royal household that lived and worked alongside these not "Good Orlanthi"? We know from the game what it says definitively is the case in the setting, but nobody in Glorantha has access to RQG or the Guide. We can see around us that even today, with video and audio recording equipment everywhere how little agreement there is about "the facts", and even less agreement on how to interpret them. In-world some people probably think all Telmori are chaos creatures. Others meet Telmori occasionally in markets and fought alongside them in various battles and they seem no more weird or 'chaotic' than plenty of other strangers. Same with Lunars. Heck, plenty of Lunar citizens aren't actually members of any Lunar cult (well, they're lay members of the cult of the Emperor but does that really count in any meaningful way?) and lots of them probably disagree completely with each other about the "Lunar" attitude to chaos and what it means. That's a truly terrible heuristic to apply in Glorantha. It's full to the gills with weird crap. You can't afford to go round making mortal enemies with everyone/thing that you don't recognise or understand.

And they're from Ralios and Fronela respectively. Are there Hsunchen in Balazar?

Yep, got the wrong ILH volume. Off-by-one errors, one of the two hardest problems in CS.

Gutted that I couldn't make Dragonmeet, but I was working all weekend. Bummer.

Since the thread is also about chaos, and the crimson bat specifically, I don't think it's a digression. I just looked at Imperial Lunar Handbook 1 (Correction - ILH 2) Right, so Blaskarth is Cosmic Annihilation, and the section on the CB says is it's a manifestation of Blaskarth in the world. No wonder it's so horrifying. It exists in many worlds at once and flits between them unseen. Possibly related to Blasko then. The sun god can never see his own shadow.

The Red Goddess faced Blaskarth, cosmic annihilation and the dissolution of the personal self. Her riding the bat back from the underworld is symbolic of, and a physical manifestation of her conquest of death. That might make the bat an avatar of Mahaquata, but that doesn't mean Mahaquata is necessarily chaotic. I imagine bats have a strong darkness connection as well as moon.

Sure, being one doesn’t exclude being the other.

No it doesn't. Nobody has said that it does. In fact Ron's analysis wouldn't make any sense or be as compelling as it is if that were the case. You don't stop being a victim either though. Nobody is saying that either, or anything like it, or that can be reasonably interpreted that way. I can't for the life of me understand why you think anyone is. There are many issues the myth highlights. It is possible for victims to be victimisers. There must be more to justice than retribution. What is the relationship between rights and responsibilities, and much, much more. These are incredibly hard questions, and I certainly, and Ron Edwards in his essay, are not making simplistic one sided pronouncements of the kind you're suggesting. So who is it that's posting these opinions you're so upset about? Where are these posts and opinions?

I highly recommend reading this essay by Ron Edwards: http://adeptplay.com/sites/default/files/thed essay.pdf

Here you've homed in on exactly what's most interesting to me about this issue. Consciousness is everywhere in Glorantha, we know that every species occasionally produces a member that is fully conscious and intelligent. I had quite a bit of fun on one campaign with a rat shaman that caused untold mayhem. Philosophically this raises the issue of what intelligence and consciousness are, and the relationship between inherent nature and free choice. As a materialist I believe I am my body. My choices are the result of biochemical interactions in my brain, in response to external stimuli. For me, free choice means my choices are determined primarily by my state - my memories, desires, emotional responses, experiences, skills, preferences and mental faculties. The things that make me who I am. My freely chosen actions and choices have a cause that determine them - me, and I have a clear idea what I am - a physical being. However I do not get to choose my own nature, because any such choice would itself be determined by my nature. I find nothing incoherent in this. If that was not the case, if my choices were not determined by my personal state, then I don't see how my actions could be my responsibility. That means I don't have any problem with Broo behaviour being determined by their nature. They don't get to choose who or what they are, any more than I do. However they don't get to dodge moral responsibility for their actions any more than I do either. Nevertheless as an external observer it's hard not to feel some compassion for their condition.

So you think she's particularly morally responsible precisely because she never managed to recover from being abused? You might want to think about that a bit.

They exist but I doubt they are common. I've no problem believing they are available to a major magical community to hold a king to account. Typical frontier communities facing Broo is another matter. It also absolutely does not make sense for every Gloranthan to be cool with that, in fact we know there are many Lunar Gloranthans definitely not cool with it. To who? If it's your family living in a frontier homestead, they are absolutely an existential risk. So it goes for almost anyone actually likely to encounter Broo. If you're having to deal with them at all, by definition you're not somewhere safe and are likely at personal existential risk. I think you said the Bestiary is an in-world source. I don't think that's correct and it makes it very clear they have overwhelming impulses and essentially no choice in their behaviour. This is the primary authoritative source we have and its crystal clear. We don't actually know much about the wild healer of the rockwoods. As an illuminate it may well worship both Malia and Chalana Arroy for example. The Sword Broo just show that their behaviour can be confined within some limits for a time, probably under extreme coercion. According to the Bestiary all broo are automatically lay members of Malia (and Primal Chaos). I'm trying not to turn this into long lists of quotes from sources directly contradicting your statements about broo, so I'm trying to hit the high points, but I'm having to let a lot slide. Humans can choose whether to join a pantheon or not, but that apparently is not the case with broo. Now, we all know in Glorantha there are exceptions to the rules. Sure, maybe the healer of the rockwoods is such, but also maybe not as much as many seem to think. We don't really know (unless I'm missing sources, quite possible). Illumination is a slippery issue. It absolves no sins, restrains no actions, enables all sorts of contradictions. The way I see it, broo are a pernicious ethical issue precisely because they are coerced by their nature. That doesn't really excuse exterminating them in the slightest. If they are coerced, as intelligent beings how can we condemn them for simply following that nature? The problem is in Glorantha, when actually facing broo, that attitude isn't a very practical one.

Being individually more dangerous doesn't necessarily mean collectively so, and it doesn't guarantee supremacy anyway (ask Rurik), so there's no contradiction. They don't 'rely' on such tactics or resort to them due to an inability anyway, it's an instinctive and even religious imperative. Self destructive? They're immune to their own diseases. Even if they do crumple militarily (often true), their specialty is raids and terror. That's the risk you run from catch-and-release. OK, this is why we are at odds. That is how they are, very thoroughly and unambiguously, described in the sources. This is why they are a particular ethical case. If they had genuine free choice there would be no specific ethical issue, it would be mostly the same question as with humans.

RQ and Glorantha generally doesn't have the concept of mooks. Rurik was killed by a trollkin. In any case Broo are individually stronger and tougher than humans, and absolutely just as smart. Along with chaos features and diseases, a bog standard Broo is significantly more dangerous than an average human. They specialise in terror tactics such as poisoning or polluting water and food supplies, so even repelling them militarily isn't enough.

Oath magic like this is very costly, and not always available (in fact rarely available). Even if they leave your lands alone, they're still a dire existential threat to everyone else. Down the line, to you and your descendants too. They're not of your culture, so how can we expect them to feel just as compelled to abide by it's norms? Many of them worship entities explicitly inimical to such norms. Societies that routinely practice catch and release with Broo, if the're anywhere near significant numbers of Broo, are not societies that will last long. In fact if you practice catch-and-release and encounter even one Broo, living next to significant numbers of them is highly likely to be the result.

"Issaries The Guide" is Issaries title in his Lightbringer aspect, so it might have been a mix up.

It's questions like this that fascinate me about Glorantha, you can dig deep on fundamental questions of philosophy and metaphysics and it mostly all holds up. It seems clear to me that Broo are conscious beings. The next question relevant to their moral responsibility is do they have free will? Are they autonomous beings? Well, what does true autonomy mean? Do humans have free will, and what does free will even mean? That's actually not a settled debate here in the real world. Does the powerful instinctive drive Broo experience that motivates their worst behaviour count as coercion? Even if so, does that make a practical difference to how they should be treated? Humans have instincts and emotional drives too after all. It's the fact that there are no easy moral answers that makes it such a powerful playground of the mind.

The set it gorgeous, arrived yesterday. I'm going to have to look into ways to reinforce the covers. It's been a while since I used staple bound RPG books. Sticky plastic should do it. It seems a shame, but these are going to get used.

Six days later and still not shipped. I'm sure the warehouse nilmergs are doing their best, but I wants it! EDIT: Aha - just changed to shipped. It's on it's way! Unfortunately the "tracking link" on my order page isn't a link, maybe that's a US thing and I'm UK. I have an order number but no way to track it. Oh well, it'll be a nice surprise.

Backed.

I suspect that Yueh's taking down the shield round HQ probably didn't have a decisive military effect, but enabled a commando strike that made it impossible for the duke and his family to escape.

How about Fonrit, impalement perhaps? Possibly also beheading, burning and stoning depending on the crime or social status of the condemned. One advantage of impalement is it doesn't damage the skeleton or major musculature so would be ideal for victims intended to be subsequently raised as undead. What about pressing? It seems earthy to me.

Some of Greg's early maps of the West, such as some in Revealed Mythologies, divided Glorantha into triangular regions in the cardinal directions. The overall map was a square, so the map for each region was a right angle triangle with the spike at the central point. The most perfect triangle, like the law rune, is clearly equilateral. It turns out the triangular sides of a classic square based pyramid are equilateral triangles. So my theory is that the primeval form of Glorantha was not a cube or lozenge, but a pyramid. The cosmic mountain.

Right, and runes are in there somewhere too. Greg was quite eclectic, borrowing metaphysical, mythic or psychological systems and adapting them as needed. In terms of sex or gender Greg had biological male and female as the two main poles in the continuum of possibilities; but any given individual could fall anywhere on the spectrum, or even way out in uncharted territory. He was also a great believer in the individual’s ability to chart their own destiny, but that doing so could involve significant risks.

I concede the point on the Atreides getting caught flat footed, you're right, it doesn't make sense that a doctor could bring the whole defence system down like that. Paul is acutely aware in the first book of the mass destruction he is about to unleash. He considers it while riding his first sandworm, and before his duel with Feyd. The cost of the Jihad presses down on his conscience throughout the latter parts of the book. But in any case, the criticism of messiahship is inherent in the fact that the ascent of the messiah is plotted and engineered long before he's even born. The whole thing is a BG manipulation he cynically exploits. Contrast with regular white messiah stories like Tarzan, The Last Sammurai or Avatar where whitey learns the native's culture better than they themselves, and wins due to his innate greatness. Paul's greatness is bred into him by the BG, and he understands Fremen culture so well because he was given the handbook on it by the people that manipulated it into existence in the first place. It's a sham from start to finish.