Can Chaos be Hidden?

[Akhôrahil]

17 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

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

Don't get me started on Kero Fin... while it's said that Kero Fin pokes into the Sky World, I can't possibly imagine that the sky dome is only something like 10 km above the surface of Glorantha.

Someone enterprising could start doing the math using illustrations from Dragon Pass and measuring how high in the sky the Red Moon appears compared with the distance to the Crater. For instance, there's just no (geometric, at least) way the Red Moon could appear the way it does on p. 1 of Prince of Sartar if it was just 10 km into the air (and we do know they've considered the moon carefully in those illustrations - it has the correct phase, for one thing!).

Edited September 12, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Qizilbashwoman]

6 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

there's just no way he Red Moon could appear the way it does on p. 1 of Prince of Sartar if it was just 10 km into the air

you're misunderstanding the illustration because our brains are used to a world that isn't flat, look again at Kero Fin and the moon and remember the world is flat

most of the air on earth is within 10km of the surface!

Edited September 12, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Akhôrahil]

44 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

you're misunderstanding the illustration because our brains are used to a world that isn't flat, look again at Kero Fin and the moon and remember the world is flat

most of the air on earth is within 10km of the surface!

Think of it this way - if it’s a thousand km to the Crater, and the moon is 10 km up, then it will be super low in the subjective sky. You couldn’t even see it unless you were up on some peak, because otherwise some small hill or something would get in the way.

It certainly wouldn’t be visible in Esrolia.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Qizilbashwoman]

33 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

then it will be super low in the subjective sky. You couldn’t even see it unless you were up on some peak, because otherwise some small hill or something would get in the way.

... not in a FLAT WORLD. in a FLAT WORLD that hill would have to be ten kilometers high. the world is flat, do you think the Lunar Empire is like five kilometers higher than Esrolia? No. Kerofinela is somewhat of an uphill climb, but then you descend back again to the plains of the North.

my point is that Kero Fin is ten kilometers high and clearly, the Moon is not. From that illustration alone, we can see it's more like... two? Three?

Which makes sense, because you can just walk to it without using magic. You just walk up some stairs. It's not magical stairs, it's just regular stairs.

[Joerg]

The moon is located in the Outer World of the Middle Air, where distances and parallaxes are misleading at least, and subjective much of the time. This does of course also apply to the Red Moon, but the description in p.727-729 of the Guide crowd the moon with forests and oceans. I don't think you would talk about an ocean much smaller than Lake Felster, which has 25 hexes from east to west, the Elf Sea with 17 hexes east to west, or the Sweet Sea with again about 25 hexes diameter.

The Crater is 4 hexes in diameter (25 miles according to Guide p.318) with its peaks 2 to 3 miles high, and the reflection of the Crater forms the Crown Wall mountains on the moon, the limit of the moon surface visible from the surface world. Let's assume that the actual moon has about 2.5 times that diameter, in order to be able to talk about seas rather than lakes on the moon, so about 10 hexes in diameter (or just 30 hexes in circumference).

I would expect the moon to sit several times its diameter above the ground.  The silver bridge from the Imperial Palace to the moon is an impossible band into the sky.

[Akhôrahil]

40 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

... not in a FLAT WORLD. in a FLAT WORLD that hill would have to be ten kilometers high. the world is flat, do you think the Lunar Empire is like five kilometers higher than Esrolia? No. Kerofinela is somewhat of an uphill climb, but then you descend back again to the plains of the North.

While Joerg is of course right and this isn't about regular geometry, you're not thinking about this right. The reasoning has nothing to do with having a horizon, it's simple trigonometry - if you have a triangle with the sides 10 km, 1000 km, and 1000.05 km, it follows quickly that the angle you can see the Moon at in the - at elevation 10 km - is tiny.

Similarly: Let's say the moon is 10 km up and 1000 km away. You don't need a 5 km mountain to block that (although it is what you need if it's halfway). A 1000 m tall mountain a 100 km away will block the viewing angle just fine. Or a 100 m hill 10 km away. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

I've had arguments with Flat-Earthers about this sort of thing, and Akhorahil is, to the best of my knowledge, right.

If you're a 1000 km. away from something, even a small hill will be able to cover the line of sight to something that's 10km high in the air.

I would argue that both the Red Moon and Kero Fin are magical locuses, and therefore either pluripresent, or deviate from simple Eucledian geometry. It's sort of like in a video game where the objective marker is always visible even if you can't see the objective yet. And Kero Fin is of course in the Sky World because they Sky isn't even a part of the Inner World.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I've had arguments with Flat-Earthers about this sort of thing, and Akhorahil is, to the best of my knowledge, right.

If you're a 1000 km. away from something, even a small hill will be able to cover the line of sight to something that's 10km away.

I would argue that both the Red Moon and Kero Fin are magical locuses, and therefore either pluripresent, or deviate from simple Eucledian geometry. It's sort of like in a video game where the objective marker is always visible even if you can't see the objective yet. And Kero Fin is of course in the Sky World because they Sky isn't even a part of the Inner World.

I never really thought about it! Thank both of you. And to think I was once superlative at maths! (No, really - SAT 780 Math back in the old days; not sure how they grade them now..)

This is because I think/play in Glorantha it magically works like Earth does with a horizon - mostly because our brains struggle otherwise and it's tiring in a not particularly interesting way.

Similarly, I never worry about details like "Kero Fin touches the Sky" because it's Magic... if there's an issue like you're on the 🌚and look up, you're STILL gonna see Kero Fin reaching into the Sky. If you're climbing it somehow, there's fog and then you're in the Sky World.

[Sir_Godspeed]

36 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Similarly, I never worry about details like "Kero Fin touches the Sky" because it's Magic... if there's an issue like you're on the 🌚and look up, you're STILL gonna see Kero Fin reaching into the Sky. If you're climbing it somehow, there's fog and then you're in the Sky World.

I've got a similar impression. It's present in both worlds and that's just how it works.

EDIT: Changed "10 km away" to "10 km up in the air", had a brain fart there.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[Qizilbashwoman]

Can I just say it's hilarious that emojis work on the board but we got no R U N E S I want my RUNES

[EricW]

According to King of Sartar, after Argarath pushed the Lunars out of Pavis, the moon was more difficult to see. So my guess its the visibility of the moon is very much dependent on the local Lunar influence, maybe the number of Lunars in the area and their political and military power, rather than geography. 

[Bill the barbarian]

5 minutes ago, EricW said:

According to King of Sartar, after Argarath pushed the Lunars out of Pavis, the moon was more difficult to see. So my guess its the visibility of the moon is very much dependent on the local Lunar influence, maybe the number of Lunars in the area and their political and military power, rather than geography. 

I believe the effects of the moon (including its visibility)  has much to do with the  Temples of the Reaching Moon, which are used to extend the glowline. Dragonrise occurred as the Lunars were about to open their new Temple of the Reaching Moon after ;20 odd years of spell castings and prayers and meditations, no?

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I believe the effects of the moon (including its visibility)  has much to do with the  Temples of the Reaching Moon, which are used to extend the glowline. Dragonrise occurred as the Lunars were about to open their new Temple of the Reaching Moon after ;20 odd years of spell castings and prayers and meditations, no?

the TRM provide expansion of the Glowline, which allows you to pretend it's the Full Moon when casting Lunar magic (which is affected by the Lunar phase). This is also why the Crimson Bat was employed in Lunar wars, as it, too, provides a Glowline expansion around it for miles, preventing enemies from striking down the Lunar magicians on waning days when their magic sucked.

We know after it failed the Moon visibly receded, but Lunar casters were still able to use magic normally (under the phases) with no penalty.

[Bill the barbarian]

3 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

the TRM provide expansion of the Glowline, which allows you to pretend it's the Full Moon when casting Lunar magic (which is affected by the Lunar phase). This is also why the Crimson Bat was employed in Lunar wars, as it, too, provides a Glowline expansion around it for miles, preventing enemies from striking down the Lunar magicians on waning days when their magic sucked.

We know after it failed the Moon visibly receded, but Lunar casters were still able to use magic normally (under the phases) with no penalty.

Nothing there contradicts what I said...

[Qizilbashwoman]

19 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Nothing there contradicts what I said...

The effects of the moon are not dependent on the temples, as you can access Lunar magic without them.

You are right about the appearance, as I said, but not about the effects of the Moon.

I'd asked whether or not the Red Moon affects places like Jrustela and Pamaltela, or is Lunar magic restricted to a region in or around Genertela only. that's the context. Hence my clarification about the temples enhancing Lunar magic.

[Bill the barbarian]

4 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

The effects of the moon are not dependent on the temples, as you can access Lunar magic without them.

 

Granted but what has that to do with Eric’s question that I was answering

[Akhôrahil]

7 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I've got a similar impression. It's present in both worlds and that's just how it works.

No, I agree - ascending Kero Fin means gradually slipping into an otherworld, and it's there, not in the physical world, that it penetrates the Sky World.

To a lesser extent, this likely holds true for the other Orlanthi sacred mountains as well. Their peaks aren't fully mundane any longer (compare Thunder Mountain in the Dorastor module).

Edited September 13, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[soltakss]

On 9/10/2019 at 3:55 PM, davecake said:

On 9/10/2019 at 12:03 PM, 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. 

Or when an illuminate behaves badly, according to the ruling Illuminates. Illuminates in Dorastor, for example, probably see no problem with an occluded illuminate. In this case, the occlusion is behaving differently to what the Lunar Illuminates want you to behave.

[soltakss]

14 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Can I just say it's hilarious that emojis work on the board but we got no R U N E S I want my RUNES

🔺Law Rune

⬛ Earth Rune

⬜ Dust Rune

⚪ Light Rune

⚫ Darkness Rune

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by soltakss

[Humakt]

16 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Can I just say it's hilarious that emojis work on the board but we got no R U N E S I want my RUNES

🌀✝️Y✝️

[soltakss]

On 9/8/2019 at 9:49 PM, Bill the barbarian said:

On 9/8/2019 at 11:35 AM, soltakss said:

Gondo Holst has a caravan in Griffin Mountain, for example.

 Ogres in the Lunar Army would be posted elsewhere and have the opportunity to murder folks near their postings. Ogres who have infiltrated society might kill the odd person, to satisfy their cravings, or to remember the good old days.

Spoilers....

Huh, I've added them in now, but can't put spoilers around your original quote.

[Bill the barbarian]

9 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Huh, I've added them in now, but can't put spoilers around your original quote.

Thank you, done.

[Qizilbashwoman]

18 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Granted but what has that to do with Eric’s question that I was answering

oh that's my bad, I misread it as a response to me! my brain not so good.

back to illuminated ogres... wouldn't they, uh, not care about ogrish things quite so much anymore?

the entire point of illumination is to transcend the limitations of the runes - you can break cult vows, and so forth. Sure you can hide your Chaos rune to prevent getting mercked by Storm Bulls or whatever, but you might not be particularly motivated to skulk in taverns with your kinfolk and eat travelers so much anymore, either. We've seen a broo get illuminated and make ... a move to become the Red Emperor. Another removed (!) its Chaos rune and became a Water god. And those are just broo.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[soltakss]

1 minute ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

the entire point of illumination is to transcend the limitations of the runes - you can break cult vows, and so forth. Sure you can hide your Chaos rune to prevent getting mercked by Storm Bulls or whatever, but you might not be particularly motivated to skulk in taverns with your kinfolk and eat travelers so much anymore, either.

As far as I know, the Cacodemon effect does not matter if you are Illuminated or not, it affects all Ogres who come nearer than a mile or two. In any case, even Illuminated Ogres have to eat.

[Akhôrahil]

9 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

back to illuminated ogres... wouldn't they, uh, not care about ogrish things quite so much anymore?

"I am now aware that I don't have to eat people, and that I'm free to make my own decisions. It just turns out I have decided to keep eating people."