Can Chaos be Hidden?

[davecake]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

I would posit that a lot of illuminated chaotics would be "occluded" rather than "enlightened".

Occlusion is just a fancy Lunar word meaning 'when an Illuminated person behaves in a way that another Illuminate thinks is crazy'. So I'm sure it is true, but I'm not sure what it means. 

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Outside of the Empire, Illumination is going to be incredibly rare for Chaos creatures.

Well, it's going to be more common where there are other mystics around - but that is at least The Lunar Empire, Kralorela, the East Isles, Ralios. And it sure helps if you are the sort of chaotic being that is likely to interact with the Illuminates in question (so, mostly ogres or corrupted humans). 

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

There was one broo in Prax who I believe was a natural Illuminate. It cleansed itself of Chaos through Zola Fel, became a great priest of that deity, and is now a subcult. This is like one in a million.

That was a lot more than just Illumination, that was a major heroquest. 

[Akhôrahil]

34 minutes ago, davecake said:

Occlusion is just a fancy Lunar word meaning 'when an Illuminated person behaves in a way that another Illuminate thinks is crazy'. So I'm sure it is true, but I'm not sure what it means. 

The difference between an someone Occluded and an Illuminate is the same as the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter.

[Sir_Godspeed]

No True Scotsman at work again.

"I HAVE  meditated upon the Ultimate, and I've decided I'm gonna punch the moon!"
"No, that's not, like, REAL enlightenment!"

[Videopete]

With every one mentioning storm bulls forgets one thing. Not a lot of people enjoy having them around. Stormbulls are massive A plus ranked jerks.  They are only barely tolerated, and that is only when a obvious chaos threat pops up, or all other methods have failed to solve a problem.  So treat Stormbulls as just barely better than the cure. So when a bend of Stormbulls show up, they kill the chieftains prized horse, drink all of the booze, took a dump in the corner of the hall,  impregnated your daughter and ate the prized cow, but took out a band of broo, and you still had to pay them.

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

That was a lot more than just Illumination, that was a major heroquest. 

well YES, but the start of it was natural Illumination. My point was there's not a lot of natural Illuminates floating around.

[EricW]

12 hours ago, Joerg said:

I would posit that a lot of illuminated chaotics would be "occluded" rather than "enlightened". For them the world being a transitory stage has much less impact on their self-awareness as for a non-chaotic who tends to regard the physical world as a universal constant. Any chaotic being is already exposed to the Void, and it is that exposition that makes them different from the rest of Creation.

Chaotic taints like cave troll regeneration or Telmori Wildday rampages may be less chaotic than the hole in the soul of Vivamort vampires. For many illuminated chaotics, illumination may be just an insight why their existence is as f...ed up as it is, putting it into a frame of reference that was missing prior to the experience.

Advanced mystics can avoid the taint of Chaos even when exposed to fairly ultimate sources (like the Devil, or the Maggot fought by Baroshi), and so can draconic mystics with previous exposure to soul rendering outer worlds.

Quite a lot of Chaotic Illuminates have probably gone insane from the experience, but that too is not that much of a difference to their previous state of mind.

The Lunar Empire is trying to heal the world, and that includes chaotics. There must be an approach which works for chaotics, maybe embracing illumination is the only way they can win freedom from enslavement.

Ralzakark or Dorastor is an illuminate, at one time he must have believed in the harmony of Nysalor and achieved illumination to help construct the great unity. Maybe he still does.

There are hints that there are significant numbers of other illuminates running around Dorastor, ranging from Hellwood elves to members of Ralzakark's Humakt legion who are forgiven their geases if they are illuminates - from memory illuminates are considered to be embracing honour at a higher level and therefore not subject to mundane interpretations of Humakt's cult restrictions.

I think the problem with illumination is they feel totally justified regardless of their choices, so what outsiders perceive as madness and abomination is simply illuminates helping themselves to whatever magical tools are convenient to achieve their personal goal, whatever it is, without considering the wider consequences.

Don't have time to read that pesky knowledge scroll which in any case is written in a language you don't know? Just consume it using Thanatar magic. Much more convenient. 

Want a bonus on your power checks? Join Malia. As an illuminate you don't have to spread her diseases, but you still get the benefits.

Want to persuade atheists to join your cult? Spread a disease, then cure it, so they learn respect for your magic. Completely justified, you have plenty of healers ready to make sure nobody suffers providing they give up their intransigence and let you do your work, but a terrific demonstration to the atheists of the limits of their world view.

Want to increase a stat, perhaps beyond human limits? Take on a chaos feature. If you don't like the result you can always cure your own chaos wound and try again later, hope for a better result next time. Where is the harm? Once you have a chaos feature or two which don't alter your appearance too much, you get the benefits of chaos without the downside, and even storm bulls can't tell what you've done to yourself. 

[Videopete]

In Cults of terror they kind of alluded to different outcomes of illumination. Almost as if illumination is the first step of enlightenment.  The first is the most constructive Nysalor style, accepting that chaos is a part of this world and how it interacts with the world, the problem is not with chaos perse but rather the corruption of chaos with out direction wich is of the devil. This gives you Gabaji illumination this is the selfish destructive form that if chaos and order are the same, then any desicion i male is the same as any other so I do what I want.  Then there is Arkat's style of illumination, this one resulted in a broken world ruled by darkness,  perhaps the best form maybe as it tries to teach iĺlumination with restriant.  As the members try to police other illuminates in making sure they dont go down the path of Gabaji.  What I think is the problem with illumination is that it is only a brief moment of the light going off  of an epiphany and after that it takes hard directed work to keep that clarity with out making assumptions with out going down god learner and EWF paths of self destruction.

[Qizilbashwoman]

2 hours ago, Videopete said:

EWF paths of self destruction

to be fair the EWF plan was not to enlighten people but to use the emotions of non-non-dragonewts through a multi-level marketing-style action to create a world dragon out of Kethaela, not to actually enlighten people anyway. they killed everyone because the Inhuman King and the dragons realised it was gonna fail so they decided just to stop the process (dragonewts just get reborn and they don't care about mortals).

 

[Joerg]

37 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

to be fair the EWF plan was not to enlighten people but to use the emotions of non-non-dragonewts through a multi-level marketing-style action to create a world dragon out of Kethaela, not to actually enlighten people anyway. they killed everyone because the Inhuman King and the dragons realised it was gonna fail so they decided just to stop the process (dragonewts just get reborn and they don't care about mortals).

Now that's not what draconic mysticism was about, and what the first edition of MRQ Glorantha got badly wrong.

Obduran the Flyer was EWF/draconic mysticism done right. His path to full dragonhood and beyond was exemplary even to dragonewts and True Dragons. Then there was Ingolf, doing the mysticism right until he entangled himself in the world, being forced to start again from scratch. (He was a lot like Hrestol in this.)

But there were also the short cut approaches of Isgangdrang and his cotery, the pyramid scheme, and the "dragon as a community" approach with the huge outline, and lots of weird schemes that happened inside the EWF without being tied to their core activity, like the fusion of the Aramites with their Tuskers to create the Tusk Rider physique (that breeds true), the Pavis experiment, the Stitched Zoo, or Delecti.

And I still think of the demise of the draconic thinkers in 1042 as the Mass Utuma that salvaged the draconic consciousness accumulated in the EWF to the next level (in a way quite similar to the Grand Dragon project, though).

[Videopete]

Also the Dragon Newts didnt kill off the EWF, it was essentially every body out side of Dragon Pass dog piling EWF, then once the barbarians won, the barbarians deciding that sacking Dragonnewt cities was a good idea and wich sparked off the Dragon Kill War as a result.  Draconic Mystism works. Attacking a Dragon Newt Nest does not.

[Qizilbashwoman]

45 minutes ago, Videopete said:

Dragon Kill War

I don't know why we call it a war, they just effectively nuked us from orbit. That's not a war, that's a culling. It's should be just the Dragonkill, because that's what they did.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

what the first edition of MRQ Glorantha got badly wrong.

To be fair I know nothing at all about Mongoose; I was just quoting Sandy Peterson in Forgotten Secrets of Glorantha, which is sold on Chaosium.com as part of the Stafford Library.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Joerg]

Dragonkill War

4 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I don't know why we call it a war, they just effectively nuked us from orbit. That's not a war, that's a culling. It's should be just the Dragonkill, because that's what they did.

But it was a genocidal war already earlier - the Pelorian forces went in and attacked both dragonewts and humans, wiping out the population or sending them fleeing before the dragons even had the chance to incinerate them.

Assuming similar population numbers  as in 1621, more than half a million people inhabited Dragon Pass. Possibly more, although the collapse of the draconic agriculture in 1042 would have led to some severe famine and possibly depopulation, but 1120 is three generations later. The cities appear to have remained inhabited until the invasion of the True Golden Horde.

 

4 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

To be fair I know nothing at all about Mongoose; I was just quoting Sandy Peterson in Forgotten Secrets of Glorantha, which is sold on Chaosium.com as part of the Stafford Library.

The Grand Dragon project is probably the least secret secret of Glorantha, next to "The God Learnes could change myths".

King of Sartar mentions a few approaches for a collective draconic ascension in Argrath Book's EWF essay, whereas History of the Heortling People and Heortling Mythology concentrate on individual paths to dragonhood.

[davecake]

On 9/11/2019 at 12:45 AM, Qizilbashwoman said:

well YES, but the start of it was natural Illumination. My point was there's not a lot of natural Illuminates floating around.

Natural Illuminates? No. Illuminates due to another Illuminate trying to teach Illumination? Quite a few, including literally almost everyone in the Lunar Empire who holds a position of significant authority. 

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Natural Illuminates? No. Illuminates due to another Illuminate trying to teach Illumination? Quite a few, including literally almost everyone in the Lunar Empire who holds a position of significant authority. 

And since you can more or less accidentally fall into Illumination by listening to a few Riddles, how hard can the process really be?

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

And since you can more or less accidentally fall into Illumination by listening to a few Riddles, how hard can the process really be?

Getting illuminated is more or less a matter of time after your first exposure to a riddle or a more direct eperience of the Ultimate. The question is whether achieving Illumination destroys your rationality, or whether you can continue as more or less the person you used to be.

[Sir_Godspeed]

5 hours ago, davecake said:

Quite a few, including literally almost everyone in the Lunar Empire who holds a position of significant authority. 

How many thousands are we talking about here?

[davecake]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

How many thousands are we talking about here?

I can't put a firm number on it, but at the very least:

- every member of the Red Goddess Cult is Illuminated

- everyone admitted to status of Yelm Imperator (as they must all now be good Lunars too, by order of the Emperor)

- at least every Major Class magician in the Lunar College of Magic, probably many more. 

There are active schools of Ilumination in the Empire who teach it - very different to being in the provinces. A Lunar magician who wants to become Illuminated and has the right resources and connections will probably do so inside a few years. 

So easily into the tens of thousands at least, I would think. 

 

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 minute ago, davecake said:

So easily into the tens of thousands at least, I would think. 

Holy crap.

That Sevening must be pretty reliable.

[Qizilbashwoman]

2 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Holy crap.

That Sevening must be pretty reliable.

I don't know about the numbers or not, but the Lunar Way is literally an engine for Illuminating people.

[Sir_Godspeed]

3 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I don't know about the numbers or not, but the Lunar Way is literally an engine for Illuminating people.

Choo choo!

[davecake]

15 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

That Sevening must be pretty reliable.

The percentage that go crazy in the process is surely smallish. At least, permanently crazy. A few weeks time out in the facilities for those experiencing some awkwardness in their relationship with consensus reality is just part of the process. (I seriously would not put it past the Empire to encourage people along with Madness spells now and then). 

But yeah - producing lots of Illuminates is a major priority of an actual Empire, as Illuminates (and even more, Red Goddess initiates, who must be Illuminated to be even considered, and get to learn some fancy special magic, not to mention accumulate Chaos powers and collect Lunar rune magic at a rate). They have multiple schools of Illumination, by which I mean actual learning institutions some of them with branches in multiple major cities, supported at the highest possible levels (especially Great Sister). 

[Akhôrahil]

19 minutes ago, davecake said:

The percentage that go crazy in the process is surely smallish. At least, permanently crazy. . 

Also, you can be a bit (possibly more than a bit) crazy without becoming useless to the empire.

Definitely a case of "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps."

[Qizilbashwoman]

21 minutes ago, davecake said:

They have multiple schools of Illumination, by which I mean actual learning institutions some of them with branches in multiple major cities, supported at the highest possible levels (especially Great Sister). 

The magical advantage to the empire is crucial, which enables the further spread of the Lunar Way, and the more Illuminates the better the chance for new Moon divinities to shore up the partisans of Sedenya. Despite her winning "victory" as a god, her role in the cosmos is still small and Sheng Seleris, who was just a Hero, was able to kick the pants out of the Moon and murder many Egi, which caused the Red Emperor reincarnation crisis (IMHO the reason for the eventual collapse of the Empire)

I'm not even sure if you can see the Red Moon outside Genertela? Bolded in case there's a Chronomancer around who can clarify.

Like, can Jrusteli see the Red Moon? I'm not sure.

Now I'm wondering what would happen if, in theory, you managed to build a Glowline temple on Jrustela.

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

Also, you can be a bit (possibly more than a bit) crazy without becoming useless to the empire.

The problem is when you are ignoring consensus enough to cause strife, like in HQG when Samastina the Enlightened starts to suggest to the War Council of Nochet that they ally with Gagix Two-Barb the Baqoqi, Queen of Jab, and her scorpionmen, to fight off the Lunar siege of 1623!

Edited September 12, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Akhôrahil]

1 minute ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I'm not even sure if you can see the Red Moon outside Genertela? Bolded in case there's a Chronomancer around who can clarify.

There's no reason you shouldn't, is there? It's high up there in the middle air, above a flat world.

[Qizilbashwoman]

Just now, Akhôrahil said:

There's no reason you shouldn't, is there? It's high up there in the middle air, above a flat world.

it's not actually that high in the Middle Air, though... you're technically right that it's in the Middle Air (which is the best kind of right) but I'm pretty sure it's a lot lower than Kero Fin's peak