Is the Sun Stop a Weak Point in the Fabric of Time?

[EricW]

Could historical events when the normal flow of time has broken, such as the sun stop which occurred when Nysalor was born, or even lesser events when the compromise broke down like Castle Blue or the Battle of Night and Day, be exploited by hero questers who want to change history?

Edited October 15, 2019 by EricW

[soltakss]

Yes and No, the classic Gloranthan answer.

Yes, HeroQuestors can travel to those points and participate in them, as they are mythical nodes in God Time as well as events in History.

No, HeroQuestors cannot change History, as that has already happened. So, a HeroQuestor could not go back to when Gbaji cursed the trolls and prevent the Curse of Kin from happening, so all Trollkin wink out of existence, but can stop Trollkin from being born from the time the effects take place.

All HeroQuests have an effect and the effect starts from when the HeroQuest ends in current time. Where the HeroQuest takes part in the God Time, the HeroQuest produces a change in the God Plane that can be accessed by HeroQuestors after that point.

If you wanted to, you could have a HeroQuest that has an effect on the past. I did this in my last Gloranthan Campaign, when a PC HeroQuested into God Time to make a very minor change, then when the PCs went into a Deep Earth Temple in Esrolia, they found an idol there that had always been there, but nobody knew who it was, so the PC who HeroQuested identified the idol as being herself. 

[Qizilbashwoman]

5 hours ago, EricW said:

Could historical events when the normal flow of time has broken, such as the sun stop which occurred when Nysalor was born, or even lesser events when the compromise broke down like Castle Blue or the Battle of Night and Day, be exploited by hero questers who want to change history?

this is what the God Learners did. when the changes got too big, the web snapped back into place and it was like nothing they had ever done had ever changed.

Heroquesting can change things, but changing the actual past in big ways isn't gonna work - things that affect the literal past rather than affecting the way things work now, like "the story where the spirit leaps the river now isn't about tricking the fish but simply using it as a springboard" is kosher but "I stopped the Sun Stop" is treyf.

You can't stop the Dragonkill, or the Red Emperor's Egi from being maimed by the Sultanate of Tork. It's too big a change. Think of time travel rules.

But you can change small things. You could probably change the fate of a minor spirit at the Battle of Castle Blue, thus ensuring it lives (or dies). It's like... Doctor Who rules. There are fixed points.

Mostly we heroquest about the future. We fix heroquests that Chaos has tried to change, or use them to empower ourselves by mimicking the god until we, too, can take its form. Or we use it, as the famous Valare Addi did, to learn the truth of history (or create propaganda about it): what happened in the past? What did the gods do? What lore was lost?

[Sir_Godspeed]

The issue with retractively changing the past is that it may very well be possible, but considering that it's already happened, we cannot reliably verify that it.... happened.

You know?

For example, the unified Lunar goddess might always have existed, or we might have a case where Sedenyan Heroquesters managed to imprint their idea of a unified Lunar goddess backwards into Myth so strongly that she has now always existed.

The same goes for Yelm. Was there always a Great Sun, or did someone manage to heroquest a Great Sun into being retroactively by mashing together the different mythologies of the Little Suns?

In the end, of course, it doesn't matter for practical purposes. The apes have always ruled the planet. Humanity has always been their prey. How could it possibly ever have been differently?

Edited October 16, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[JonL]

You could also conceivably find future (from your perspective) Compromise crises in God Time. If in some crisis yet to come, a god or gods intervene directly within Time, that moment is also within the God Time. 

[Grievous]

1 hour ago, JonL said:

You could also conceivably find future (from your perspective) Compromise crises in God Time. If in some crisis yet to come, a god or gods intervene directly within Time, that moment is also within the God Time. 

I believe all known possibilities are very likely already found somewhere in the God Time... sometimes the Many possibilities are just found in the One myth that we already know... the meaning is created by the witness. Find that a troublesome concept to swallow? Roll for Illumination and wave the Spirits of Reprisal away. Then bring that truth to the people.

 

Edited October 18, 2019 by Grievous

[Lordabdul]

11 hours ago, JonL said:

If in some crisis yet to come, a god or gods intervene directly within Time, that moment is also within the God Time. 

So by heroquesting enough you might be able to witness events that do intrude in Time but haven't happened yet? Is that how scholars manage to make predictions about the future, like the fact that the Hero Wars came with advance warning?

Also, I guess technically any use of Rune Magic involves God intruding into Time, no? So even though that might be like finding a single drop in the middle of the ocean, you could in theory find that one time Ernalda intervened to settle an argument about the price of wheat at Ol' Josie's Earthday market back in 1602?

Edited October 18, 2019 by lordabdul

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, lordabdul said:

So by heroquesting enough you might be able to witness events that do intrude in Time but haven't happened yet?

No, while you can witness God Time events that may be accessible again at some point in the Future, you cannot put yourself into the Future (unless perhaps Belintar did so).  

3 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I guess technically any use of Rune Magic involves God intruding into Time, no?

The Gods do exist in Time as well - the Sun rises, the Winds move, the Earth becomes fertile, Shadows come and go, etc. But entering into worship and using Rune Magic enhances the connection between the gods in their world and you in the mundane world.

[Qizilbashwoman]

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

you could in theory find that one time Ernalda intervened to settle an argument about the price of wheat at Ol' Josie's Earthday market back in 1602?

if that event has entered into the lore, it is easy to heroquest it. 1602 was only 23 years before Canon Now, though, so it's not as easy as if Ol' Josie's Earthday Market was more of a 1500s thing. That's solid myth, and might be a really hilarious heroquest to investigate the truth of.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

No, while you can witness God Time events that may be accessible again at some point in the Future, you cannot put yourself into the Future (unless perhaps Belintar did so).  

Putting yoursel into the future is a standard heroic feat, really - basically any legendary king worth his salt to be called upon in the future has such an abode. Arthur, Barbarossa, Jordan's heroes of the Horn...

The problem is that this is a one way trip, and you miss much of the intervening activity while lingering or sleeping in your personal limbo.

 

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

The Gods do exist in Time as well - the Sun rises, the Winds move, the Earth becomes fertile, Shadows come and go, etc. But entering into worship and using Rune Magic enhances the connection between the gods in their world and you in the mundane world.

Aspects of the gods exist in Time. Sure, those aspects can be immense, and they might draw in the full attention of the entity when Compromise is broken.

The agency of the gods outside of their assigned cyclical roles lies in their devotees taking on the existence of that deity when they perform one of the deity's feats.

[Lordabdul]

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

Aspects of the gods exist in Time. Sure, those aspects can be immense, and they might draw in the full attention of the entity when Compromise is broken.

Is there any precedent to somebody breaking the Compromise and Time showing up to slap them around?

9 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

if that event has entered into the lore, it is easy to heroquest it. 1602 was only 23 years before Canon Now, though, so it's not as easy as if Ol' Josie's Earthday Market was more of a 1500s thing. That's solid myth, and might be a really hilarious heroquest to investigate the truth of.

It wouldn't be easy, like I said, but my points/questions were that:

1. Can you find a God Plane event for every action a God has ever done? I would think so, but only well known/repeatedly worshiped/legendary actions would be accessible from the mundane world. Trying to re-enact "Ol' Josie's wheat price argument" just makes you look stupid, while re-enacting the wooing of Ernalda most likely gets you on the God Plane if done right.
2. Jeff often insists that when you use Rune Magic, for a second, you _are_ your God. So if Ol' Josie used Arouse Passion to give a better argument about why her wheat should cost more, then she _was_ Ernalda for a little bit. As such, that godly act, along with the other billion occurences of Gods manifesting through people using Rune Magic, would in theory exist on the God Plane, creating a "soup" of mostly unimportant and mostly unaccessible events. There's probably more in this "soup", like all the times Yelm circled his sky path for instance. And I'm starting to wonder that this "soup" may actually be important somehow...

So if you're crazy enough, and have enough resources, you could start re-enacting "Ol' Josie's wheat price argument" on Earthdays, and maybe by the time your grandchildren are running around with Ol' Josie costumes, shouting her most famous lines from her speech, it has become a moderately accessible God Plane node... of course, that's God Learnerism at its worst but hey, we all know God Learners are cool.

Edited October 19, 2019 by lordabdul

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Is there any precedent to somebody breaking the Compromise and Time showing up to slap them around?

 

Good question. While Time is referred to as a god (the youngest god), I am not aware that it is worshipped anywhere by anyone, thus I'm not sure if they're capable of "striking back" as it were, like other deities have been known to do.

[Qizilbashwoman]

5 hours ago, lordabdul said:

of course, that's God Learnerism at its worst

what if the reason it's famous is because the story has stood the test of time as the moment Ol' Josie really masked Ernalda? It's been told so many times by the fire it's now basically clan lore (hence my notion for an earlier date) and kids already have been dressing up as Ol' Josie?

[Lordabdul]

6 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

It's been told so many times by the fire it's now basically clan lore (hence my notion for an earlier date) and kids already have been dressing up as Ol' Josie?

Sure, but my original goal was to discuss casual (and forgettable) uses of Rune Magic and whether those are actually:

1. Your God intervening on the mortal plane through you, in exchange for all the worship you give her.
2. You doing a one-second long re-enactment of something the God did in some similar-but-different occasion... so Ol' Josie using Arouse Passion and appearing as Ernalda for a second was really Ol' Josie re-enacting some archetypal myth were Ernalda got passionate about something.

Option 1 means that the God Plane is probably full of this "soup" of small events that Gods do as part of their eternal everyday job, while option 2 means that whatever the Gods did during the God Time is pretty much all there is to them, and they are eternal and immortal only in the sense that they can only live through people repeating their actions, never able to do new things... which... I guess is what the Compromise is about anyway?

Option 2 would also mean that if, say, you're using Lightning to strike down a foe, you might say "Orlanth, hear my call, smite these foul creatures!" but really what you mean is "hey stupid Broos, remember when Orlanth raised his hand like this and screamed like this AAAAAAAH" <crack!!> "yeah, those were good times, you fuckers"... Orlanth isn't doing anything for you -- he's just letting you tap into that time he did something for himself.

Edited October 20, 2019 by lordabdul

[Qizilbashwoman]

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Option 2 would also mean that if, say, you're using Lightning to strike down a foe, you might say "Orlanth, hear my call, smite these foul creatures!" but really what you mean is "hey stupid Broos, remember when Orlanth raised his hand like this and screamed like this AAAAAAAH" <crack!!> "yeah, those were good times, you fuckers"... Orlanth isn't doing anything for you -- he's just letting you tap into that time he did something for himself.

actually option two means that for a second you Mask the god: you get a thunderous sound to your voice, your eyes crackle, and you are a tiny vision of Orlanth. You aren't saying "remember when Orlanth...", for a moment "I Orlanth am VICTORIOUS"

You channel the god. You ... kind of become the god.

[Lordabdul]

11 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

You channel the god. You ... kind of become the god.

Yes but again, I'm not sure if you become the god as they did that thing way back when in God Time, or if you become the god as they do the thing right now through you. Does that make sense?

[Sir_Godspeed]

43 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Yes but again, I'm not sure if you become the god as they did that thing way back when in God Time, or if you become the god as they do the thing right now through you. Does that make sense?

These options aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.