Darius West

Is someone suggesting Sedenya isn't a revived Chaos deity?  What are her Runes after all?

#HailArgrath

On 5/19/2024 at 7:15 PM, Joerg said:

IMG, Magasta's whirlpool is the center of the watery doughnut that is Sramak's River, with a massive vertical surface pushing back the Chaos Rift, closing it to the rest of the world. Annilla would touch down tangentially and probably rides a special current that takes her to the outside of the Gates of Dusk in about a day, to wait for the arrival of Lorion for her assisted ascent back to Pole Star. The splash might be audible only to the Chaos Rift.

I thought Annilla invariably drops from the crest of the Dome all the way down as a blue flash.  I'm sure I read it described that way somewhere?  Possibly in Elder Secrets?

20 hours ago, Joerg said:

The space above the Earth (and its creatures) would be filled with plasma, the magical energies emerging from the Source adapted to Aether providing an ambient temperature. Flame is a condensated shape of that environment, as well as aurora effects.

Plasma has a horrible tendency to set plants and people on fire, hence plasma weapons.  Even the aurora would be extremely damaging to living tissue if you were caught in it.

20 hours ago, Joerg said:

The creatures of the Green and Early Golden Age must have had some sort of respiratory system able to take in plasma and transmute matter into plasma. With Umath's birth Aether would have yielded that function to his son's new element.

And what pray tell would that be?  Asbestos lung tissue?  It doesn't work.  No creature would have ever developed lungs if they weren't breathing air for a very long time.  There isn't a mention of a myth as to when the living creatures of the world suddenly all develop lungs so they can partake in the power of the air.  There is no deity who goes around specifically making and handing out lungs like morokanth thumbs in the mythology, so it is a safer bet to suggest that people simply didn't know that air was there, and thought it was part of the sky/fire  until it started to move thanks to Umath cracking the Sky Dome and bursting in, less as a fart than as a reverse caesarian section.

9 hours ago, John Biles said:

Earth doesn't exist until darkness and water are already in place.  So the world machine comes into existence... before fire.

 I think the world machine is being formed piece by piece according to a plan, that starts with formations within darkness, then requires water, then earth, then fire.  It is a gradual assembly that requires diverse parts to work.  The Mostali seem to have lost control of the system when they over-pressurized the dome and allowed air into the system via a breach.  Was this deliberate or was it a system breaking down?

9 hours ago, John Biles said:

Heat matter enough and it turns into gas.

 Heat anything enough and it turns into gas, last time I checked (unless it has already reached a plasma state.

21 hours ago, Joerg said:

Smoke as in dust levitating above the ground would have resulted from Lodril's impact. They would have crackled with lightning.

Oops, I nearly missed this one.  Smoke is actually fire deprived of oxygen.  Contact with smoke in an airless room will burn you, because it is holding explosive energy that simply requires oxygen to be released.  I know this because I have a friend in fire research who showed me during an experiment.  It was something of a surprise to me at the time.

9 hours ago, John Biles said:

With nothing between Fire and Earth, Fire heated the Earth until some of it turned into Umath (the rest came from the heat). 

This seems plausible within the myths.  So did Umath burst into or out of the Sky Dome then?

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

I have been working on and off on a mostali text for quite a while now. That text starts with the creation of Rock (and the Spike) before the Making of Darkness

All you need is a lever and a firm place on which to stand, and you can move the world.  The philosopher's stone.

10 hours ago, Memestream said:

Wait, are you saying that wasn't a literal ghost that approached him?

Amleth was never approached by a ghost afaik.  Shakespeare added that bit.  In any case, all his ghost dad king did was tell Hamlet that his uncle/stepdad had murdered him (the king, not Hamlet).  The ghost certainly doesn't warn Hamlet that Claudius intends to murder Hamlet, because he doesn't want to yet.

Hamlet doesn't get murdered until he is stabbed during the "friendly" bout with Laertes who has a poisoned blade.  Uncle King Claudius colluded with Laertes because of Hamlet's killing of Polonius, which was semi-accidental.  By then Claudius is very ready to remove Hamlet, but it all goes wrong and nearly everyone gets killed, which was pretty awesome.

On 5/12/2024 at 1:34 AM, scott-martin said:

Now was planet Umath a fugitive moon, a failed would-be sun or something entirely different? Who knows, who cares, MGF prevails.

Just imagine the weirdness of a closed system world with no air.  There is fire/sky, and earth, water and darkness, but the fire consumes nothing and produces no smoke, and the world is effectively a vacuum where nobody breathes.  Is it any wonder the pressure build-up caused a rupture that let air in?  Whoever designed the world machine didn't understand that heat causes entropy.  The true source of evil in the world is poor design, apparently.

On 5/11/2024 at 7:56 AM, Memestream said:

Maybe Hamlet's actually the source of the problem? Perhaps if we stopped telling this Hamlet story, this tendency of reality would get rippled out by the other narratives and allow us to do something other than kill ourselves in the name of vindication?

Except that isn't what happened in Hamlet.  Hamlet was the victim of an assassination plot, but he has time to take revenge before the poison in his system takes effect.  Of course Hamlet IRL, Prince Amleth feigned madness, killed his stepfather and dumped him in a pig trough during a palace coup, and Amleth simply took the throne thereafter.  I do think Shakespeare's retelling adds depth to a simple Norse revenge saga though.

On 5/9/2024 at 4:11 PM, XcessiveNinja17 said:

If the Red Moon is the embodiment of the Moon Rune and Wakboth is the embodiment of the Chaos Rune, then would this not be removing two things that Glorantha really needs to function? Without Moon Magic there might no longer the regular maintenance of the Mortal Realm and its laws of reality by connecting it to the God Time. Without Chaos there might no longer be a source of energy and mass for Glorantha itself - since all originated from Chaos in the first place.

The world worked just fine during the first and second ages when there was no Red Moon.

As to the removal of Wakboth, that is just the Goddess Glorantha finding out her cancer treatment has worked.

The great problem in the 4th Age is that a lot of Gods were "sacred utuma-ed" during the failed Arachne Solara's Net hero questand are no longer ossified, and might be considered dead.  This took a lot of the magic out of the world.  Of course gods don't really die, because they are immortal, so they will eventually re-form.  The biggest problem was the loss of Lhankor Mhy and literacy, as a lot of magic was tied up in knowledge.

Does Anilla go "bloop" when she falls into Magasta's Pool?  If so, how far away can the bloop be heard?

Frankly 90,000L as the income for a city seems a bit low to me.  Consider that a city represents only 5% of the population in a region at Bronze Age development, as the vast bulk of people will be rural.  That means there should be at least 80,000 in the surrounding area, and if we assume that we are only taxing households, then that should mean about 20,000 households being taxed about 10% each, which means 6L of a 60L income, or 120,000L (400 Talents).

Now add to that the fact that Alda Chur is an important trade hub during peace.  During war time Alda Chur is a very important fortress town, even if the Lunars will never attack it up the Glasswall because that would be suicide.  Nevertheless, as an important border fortification, it is necessary for Alda Chur to be well maintained.  The population will swell with warriors as well as caravan guards and warriors like Uroxi who brave Snakepipe Hollow.  Add to this that Alda Chur is the major clearing house for the Northern Sartar wool market (the foundation of Britain's wealth for most of its history btw), and Herongreen is the nearby major source of lumber for New Pavis and much of Sartar, and beyond. So the issue becomes whether trade continues between the Lunar Empire and Sartar along the Farpoint Road during lulls in the Hero Wars?

On 5/8/2024 at 5:07 PM, John Biles said:

And Trollpak is no longer canon.  People can use it in their own games, but basically, all that's gone down the memory hole.

Well that's just sad.  Trollpak is an excellent document.  The best thing RQ ever produced, imo.   I have been hoping that Aldryami, Mostali and Dragonewts would all receive a Trollpak treatment.  Instead you are telling me that Trollpak is no longer canon.  That's pretty woeful.

50 minutes ago, John Biles said:

The idea that having trollkin permanently means you only have trollkin is not found in any of the sources I have for current canon.

Rather, that a Dark Troll Mother can have either and it's about 50-50.

 

It is in trollpak somewhere.

Shamanism is always a balancing act.  You want high POW but the higher it is, the more it cuts down on your power ups, so you compromise.  I think 15 is a good number.

On 5/7/2024 at 2:37 AM, Joerg said:

Do uz females mate primarily for reproduction, or do they mate for enjoyment, too? A superior trollkin (about to be) culled for uppity might very well be superior for enjoyment. Not that (successful) dark troll males are lackluster lovers, they wouldn't dare, and risk ending up eaten.

If a female Uz produces a litter of trollkin, she will always only produce trollkin thereafter, and her fate is to be relegated to a minor female.  Only mothers who can at least produce Dark Trolls are ever given much status.  Among mothers who are relegated to birthing only trollkins, to mate with a trollkin would not be a problem, but is (a) unfulfilling due to the size difference and (b) a social no-no for a Dark troll, but not the end of the world for a trollkin mother dark troll, who is already down on the pecking order.

On 5/6/2024 at 2:04 PM, Memestream said:

Yet not perfectly! Their story is a delightfully brilliant illustration of the inherent philosophical absurdity that challenges us incessantly, among other things. They did all the math and lined up all their ducks, yet their conviction that they resided within a clockwork universe bound by deterministic rules ultimately proved incomplete!

Nah, they just didn't understand their clockwork universe to enough decimal places. 😄

On 5/3/2024 at 6:03 AM, Tom Pleasant said:

Deep cut research needed! Does anyone know what species lived in Europe during the time of Hyperborea? The fandom wiki says: "200,000 years ago, the human kingdom in Mu reaches its height, while Europe is inhabited by "hybrid entities" and Hyperborea is home to the cult of Tsathoggua." I've looked everywhere and can't find anything. Obviously happy to make it up, but going HPL canon would be nice!

I think the inference is that there homo sapiens sapiens alive and active in Mu, but elsewhere the humans were more primitive.  Within our scientific knowledge, Europe would have had Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, and perhaps Denisovians.  It is also distinctly possible that the races of the degenerate "little people" from "worms of the Earth" and Arthur Machen's "The White People" were still living on the surface at this time, and had not become "little faeries under the hill" yet.

I actually take a very similar attitude to yourself about Gloranthan magic Memestream.  I like simulationism in my RPGs, and while it is a fantasy setting, Glorantha has enough real world in it, that it meets what I want to a good degree.  Gloranthan magic is seldom if ever tangible.  It takes the form of buffs, which can be dismissed as "confidence raising rituals", and "confirmation bias".  IDK how well versed you are in Gloranthan lore, but the most successful culture in Gloranthan history was the Jrusteli Empire, otherwise known as the God Learner Empire. While the God Learners might be viewed as munchkins who obtained a copy of the rules and abused them, they actually also used the magic they knew in a scientific way and systematized the magic of other societies.  Arguably the God Learners were entirely materialist, and their answer worked better than any other before or since, and the long reach of their changes are so subtle that many gods in Glorantha in the 3rd Age are unrecognizable from their previous manifestations due to God Learner alterations/opportunism.

It seems to me as if Great Sister is really a repository of Nysalor Riddles.  This makes sense, as you can't really write down Nysalor Riddles; you can perhaps encode them into architecture or other puzzles, but if you write them, they lose the disengagement of intellect that illumination requires.  Great Sister's role would largely be to receive good lunars for Illumination training.  They come in and she asks them a blistering series of riddles, in the hopes of breaking their brains enough to allow "Nysalor" in.  Of course she also has a militant sisterhood to protect Great Sister and do her will.  Of course taking in such students also means they gain a loyalty passion towards Great Sister, and that is a powerful political tool, going forwards for Great Sister to use.

By the time Great Sister is through with you, peace is war, freedom is slavery, and you love Takanegi, Great Sister, and the Crimson Bat.

I can see shades of Hassan-i Sabbah about Great Sister.

This is a great topic.  

The issue I have is that there is nobody from the Lunar Empire going on large world discovery missions by sea that are listed in the histories.  As such, the idea that the people of Vormain would have any contact with the Lunar Way of Peloria is very unlikely.  In any case, as the Red Moon rose in 1247, the Vormaino have had 378 years to develop an alternative version of Lunar Worship.

It is interesting that other cultures around Glorantha haven't also seen the Red Moon rise and decided to worship it and see what happens.  Or perhaps they did, and not much occurred?  Given that Sedenya is illuminated, it is unlikely anyone could sense the Red Moon's chaos at such distances.

Octamo is an interesting deity.  I wonder how the Vormaino managed to get Sedenya to give them farming powers?  I mean, Octamo is listed as a peaceful deity, and I would not recognize Hon-Eel's agricultural blood worship as being peaceful at all.  Or are the Vormaino so bloodthirsty that human sacrifice such as the Hon-Eel cult demands are not considered a problem?

I have run a few campaigns using the Tovtari tribe.  I generally opt to have my players as members of the Wild Goose Clan.  The Goose is a strong totem, given Imarja, and the clan is known for mercenaries, and guerillas who lead their adversaries into wild goose chases.  Strangely I get a lot of love for Elmal among my players.  Elmal is a version of Yelmalio that survives in the hinterlands and rejects the Lunarized version of their god that the traitor Monrogh perpetrated.  

4 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

My PCs tried to set up a complicated plan using Darkwalk, until I told them they wouldn’t be able to see or hear each other.

That's fine.  Invisible people can't see each other.

11 hours ago, Jens said:

Unless you can see in the dark, or are peering out from the shadows into better lit areas, IMHO you'd need some additional magical assistance (Catseye, Darksee, Soul Sight, Second Sight) to see.

I play that when darkwalk is up, you can see yourself, but if you are in the dark, you need another spell to see in the dark.  You obviously can't see other darkwalking characters.  If torches or lamps etc. are present you can see by them.  You can potentially also use the Red Moonlight for illumination 😄, get it?

It should also be noted that darkwalk renders the caster silent, and so trollish darksee cannot detect them.

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

Permit me to clear away as much of the gory remnants of my post you so mercilessly vivisected and aim for clarity in response. 

Sure.

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

Ah. So Chan Buddhism but rejecting the Great Vehicle's sutras as fraudulent?

Point to this Great Vehicle please.

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

You're propounding a false dharma by Buddhist standards, one without any affiliation to any school, and holding it up as received truth.

So, Theravada is a false dharma according to you?

24 minutes ago, Eff said:

This is a truly fascinating claim. Have you any evidence for it, beyond superficial resemblances? It certainly isn't part of the generally accepted historiography of the Stoics.

Start at the very beginning and follow the footnotes: Greco-Buddhism

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 Where did you receive your education in Buddhism? 

Partly from extensive personal reading.  Partly from a gentleman with a verified lineage.  Partly from a meditation group.  Partly from arguing with Buddhists.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

So you accept the Lotus Sutra as authentic 

The Lotus Sutra is a tool.  I am dubious about all things Mahayana, as there is so much obvious fraud in their sutras.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 but reject the notion of the bodhisattva entirely? 

Not entirely, but I am extremely skeptical of the idea of bodhisattvas as part of Buddhist doctrine.   There are too many contradictions regarding what a bodhisattva is.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 From whom did you learn the dharma/dhamma? 

A living lineage operating out of Indonesia's Hakka Chinese community that can trace its origins back to Huineng.  I am not giving out names without permission.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

 Because what you are expounding is not a part of any school of Buddhism with which I am familiar

Living lineages' primary duty is the transmission of enlightenment.  Dogma and ritual are only useful if they promote that transmission for the specific individual.

20 hours ago, Eff said:

the schools of the "great vehicle" and those of the "way of the elders" both agree that there is a kind of person called a bodhisattva, that this is a positive phenomenon, and disagree about what specific positive meaning to assign to it and the extensibility of the phenomenon. 

I am a skeptic first and a Buddhist second.  My teacher liked the fact I asked difficult questions.  About Bodhisattvas, consider this...  Probably the clearest transmission of Buddhism into the West was via the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom into Alexandria and the Roman Empire, and became known as the Philosophy of Stoicism. 

Are bodhisattvas recognized within the philosophy of Stoicism?

The main way Deities can interact with the world is obviously via their worshippers.

The Divination spell is extremely important for this.  The worshipper is literally communicating with their deity, which is tantamount to getting the Deity's opinion on a given situation.

On 4/20/2024 at 8:43 PM, Runeblogger said:

But how can you accidentally leave the Dragon Path? 🤔

Very easily.  It is about as easy as a medieval peasant falling into heresy because they didn't understand a sermon properly. 

For example: "Oh, you wanted me to form a charity to feed starving widows and orphans... I thought you said you wanted me to start a charity FOR STARVING widows and orphans...  Should I unchain them and let them out of the shed then?  Give them some bread?"

On 4/20/2024 at 8:51 PM, Eff said:

Well, you've got your crusade and that's that. I think there's quite a lot to unpick in how even the idea that fantasy might take the ideas of Buddhism and place them in a different context, such as having bodhisattvas who fuck or having a morally ambiguous transcendent entity, is apparently beyond the pale for you, but it seems quite clear that the offense lies in suggesting Gloranthan Illumination might have any connections to anything other than what you consider to be pure evil. Case in point:

I find the whole issue of Bodhisattvas about the most problematic part of Buddhist doctrine.  The idea just doesn't scow on any level of examination.  Why would you avoid enlightenment to be reborn?  Clearly a bodhisattva is far too attached to being a living person to be enlightened for many lifetimes, despite understanding the suffering.  

If you know the Lotus Sutra, then a bodhisattva is someone who has left the burning building, seen the pretty carts out the front, had a ride in the carts, then gone back inside the burning building telling you that they will bring more children out to ride in the carts.  Are they really saved?  Are they really going to bring more children out?  Or are they just far too fond of the games in the burning building?

As to the notion of Bodhisattvas who fuck, not a problem; bodhisattvas are counterfeit enlightened people.  A truly enlightened person wouldn't be interested in sex.  Sex is just another pointless addiction/desire  that will just drag you back into suffering, karma, and rebirth, when you could be transcending all that nonsense.  A certain sort of person cannot conceive of anything better than sex, and they are not enlightened, any more than a glutton or a drunkard are enlightened.

As to moral ambiguity, that is unavoidable.  Every person will make morally incorrect or ambiguous decisions, even Buddhist teachers.  Much of this is the process of working off past bad karma.  The important thing is to measure one's actions against wisdom and compassion, and act according to the best and most selfless intentions.

23 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

As for the supposed nihilism of the riddlers, the slide into the dark side — the baleful influence of Star Wars? — was presented as an error, not an entailment of Chaos = Law, wasn’t it?

 There is no Law and Chaos in Buddhism.  They understand good and evil in terms of compassion and the lack thereof.  There is no "Dark Side", there are just arseholes who are justifying their lousy behavior with some sort of warped personal philosophy.   There is no "anti-Buddhism", the way Christianity has Satanism.

In Buddhism, the most bitter arguments are about curriculum i.e. which teaching method works the best. 

Occasionally there were doctrinal arguments over the meaning of certain teachings, but these were generally settled by a more knowledgeable third party.

There are also the usual institutional problems such as (a) Abbot X is far more interested in donations and luxury than in getting people enlightened, to which the Abbot counters (b)  I am trying to get money together to build a new dormitory wing and meditation hall so I can get more people training.  But it turns out that Abbot X is in fact entertaining a secret bevvy of pretty nuns for "tantric rituals", and he loses his position.

23 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Once a being has realized that there is no final difference between Chaos and Law, he may later make a similar but false parallel between his personal ethics and his personal desires, reasoning that since there is no ultimate division to the former, neither is there any final difference between the latter.
— Cults of Terror (Classic PDF, p. 87) [emphasis mine]

 

That's Nietzsche, not Buddhism.  This is the mindset of Dostoyevsky's Nietzsche reading character Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment", before he goes and commits a double homicide, because he is "Beyond good and evil".  Any person who thinks they are beyond good and evil in this sense is really only in the process of getting ready to do something bad deliberately, and using philosophy as a justification for behaving like an arsehole.

23 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

It seems pretty clear that Greg’s Gloranthan gods viewed the void as evil — presumably because in it they would not exist, though why their extinguishment should be evil I couldn’t say — but I am not qualified to say what Greg thought on his own account; there is this, but what is one to make of it? It certainly seems that for someone (possibly fictional), nirvana is evil (or an evil).

• Other interpretations of evil will be revealed and explored where appropriate. Some will be mentioned here. There is an Empty Void, which is a pre-everything conception and bears some resemblance to a Buddhist Nivanna
  — Greg Stafford, Cults of Prax: Designer Notes (Classic PDF, p. 106)

This is a classic translation problem to do with the doctrine of Annata, and the idea of Nirvana in Buddhism.  In a western mindset the Void is a dark thing like a bottomless pit or the inky depths of frigid outer space.  The void seems synonymous with a form of hell, where we go to be annihilated.  While referring to a void is poetic, it is misleading, but speaking of "absence" isn't half so intriguing as a sales point, even though it would be closer to the truth.

A classic teaching of Buddhism is to see enlightenment as the snuffing out of "the self" much as one snuffs out a candle.  Wow, can that be misinterpreted.  Think about it in these terms.  What does the flame do to the candle?  It burns up and melts the wax.  If it is left to burn, the candle will be destroyed.  So we snuff out the flame.  We can see the flame as the self and its worries and desires prematurely consuming us.  But wait?  Isn't the purpose of a candle to burn and provide light thereby?  Yes, it is.  So don't waste the candle by burning it without a proper purpose.  Snuffing the candle is an analogy.  It is not a metaphor for suicide, as some German students believed.

While the point I will raise is also fraught with the potential for error, I would suggest that it is better to view Buddhist enlightenment, no-self, and Nirvana through an alternative philosophical perspective.  Imagine if you will, that it is possible for a human to be Objective.  That it is possible, through close monitoring of personal bias and mental process, to remove all mental clutter and to ditch one's Subjectivity.  The result is a somewhat alien clarity of mind where you can "sense clearly" what others cannot.  "The Void" that the loss of self involves in Buddhism is often described as being "indescribable", which is something of a Lovecraftian problem. 

Those enlightened people who have tried to describe it say it is nothing dark, but an experience of the most excruciatingly perfect and crystalline clarity where the beauty of the world is expressed in ravishing splendor, and one's mind, memory, and senses are perfect and you never miss any detail, like stepping into the antechamber of omniscience.  You find yourself in love with the world and all living things (an expression of compassion), and can clearly see that with a few words you can potentially make a wicked person choose to be good, and a good person become even more excellent.  Many people find the experience so overwhelming that they lose the power of speech and reason and behave like they have gone insane for weeks.  Even the best minds struggle not to be saturated by the richness and overwhelming joy of the experience.  This is the howling void we are referring to.

This is why Nysalor isn't teaching Buddhism, he's teaching Nietzschean Ethics and Cultural relativity.