Your Dumbest Theory

[Ynneadwraith]

16 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

When asked, the Mistress of the Game smiles and says merely, “It is quite the riddle, isn’t it?”

When accused of being obtuse, the Mistress of the Game said "Oh, you can't see the Z-axis? Well, no wonder it doesn't make sense to you. Poor thing..."

[mfbrandi]

23 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Oh, you can’t see the Z-axis?

Although this T-shirt is very popular with players and fans. Possibly they are trying to keep the tourists quiet.

[scott-martin]

Secret history of the lion people in three acts, or ye original sinne repeal'd

 

 

 

Edited May 4 by scott-martin

[mfbrandi]

[Sparked by renewed interest in this from Erol.]

Is it mad to think that the “curse” on Korasting — introject the sun, suffer terribly — was a precondition for Arkat’s “rebirth” as a troll and his “invention” of Zorak Zoran? Given that Arkat = Gbaji = Nysalor, this might seem a mean trick on the trolls, but …

If uzko = enlo = human, is this really so?° Arkat is a troll. The people of Darkness can live under the sun. Arkat has broken its power over them by “killing” the Bright One — And in one gulp he was gone, leaving only a broken halo, which soon guttered out. And in the person of Zorak Zoran, he has inscribed this into the early universe. What is the Darktongue for “palimpsest”?

In an act of Hesiodic grumpiness, Genertelan uz still insist in seeing successively degenerate “races” of troll (and lauding maladaptive traits), but the numbers tell a different story. The enlo are a more successful “build” than the soon-to-be-gone “mistress race”. (But they are grumpy, so never tell them that XU is the midwife of the sun.)

Spoiler

Any suggestion that I live my life by a throwaway slogan in an old fanzine is entirely justified — “All power to the Small Giant Class Liberation Army!”

Oh, and there is this:

• Muri, also known as jungle trolls or hot trolls, are the descendants of Moorgarki, a troll goddess who healed herself from a chaos wound with the aid of fire. As a result, jungle trolls are comfortable in climes which would be unbearably hot for other trolls
  — Elder Races of Pamaltela

Isn’t this just a more positive spin on the same event? It is not that the muri “escaped the curse”, they just leaned into it, embracing the necessary change. “Mutation? Loss of old strengths (most useful in a lost Eden)? In return we get the ability to live in present conditions? Sure, we’ll take that deal.” (And if the lost Eden was never really real, if nostalgia is always for what one has never known?)

See it as the necessary complement of the Lightbringer Quest: if the sun must be born every day, it must also be swallowed every day — if either one, then the other. The Devil is swallowed, but is an essential ingredient of the remade world — is “reborn” at the Dawn, Lucifer Morningstar. And for traditionalist uz, the sun = the Devil? I am not saying it isn’t a double-edged thing, but that’s the plus with Gbaji — for every plague, also a cure. Or at least, a vaccine, which often looks a lot like the plague.

Please, make this rambling st …

———————————————
° There are phenotypical differences and there is genetic range, but that is not to say they are not the same species. Glorantha may have its Black Sun, but let us banish eugenics and “race science”.

Edited May 4 by mfbrandi
Spider-troll-firewitch — hmm …

[mfbrandi]

They say there is an enlo “Moses” with her own Underground Railroad; that after being struck on the head as a child by a lead weight thrown by a Vaneekaran, she began to experience visions and to sleepwalk through tunnels no one else knew about; that as an adult, she leads trollkin in fives and sevens to freedom from enslavement by their fellow uz.

Some say that there are those in the XU “deep cult” who aid these escapes. Some say that this cannot be, as Moses has been known to commune with krarshtkids and has formed an alarmingly close bond with a scuttler she calls “Juān”. Others have it that mystics who would befriend the sun can hardly be expected to have the sense to shun chaosfriends. No one has any evidence.

It is said that “ZZ” graffiti acid-burned into the walls of long-neglected tunnels lead the way to a vertical well, a stream of pure light that will translate Moses’ followers instantly to freedom. It is said …

[Eff]

These paragraphs do not describe a difference in kind, but a difference in degree. 

[scott-martin]

6 minutes ago, Eff said:

These paragraphs do not describe a difference in kind, but a difference in degree. 

Love it. Does this mean that the so-called "elder races" lack a degree of free will (Hepherones, a Ganbarrian) and so are closer to conventional "gods?" Or that the "spirit races" like the Altinelans, Luathans, Luxites and so on have a degree of individuality?

[Eff]

10 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Love it. Does this mean that the so-called "elder races" lack a degree of free will (Hepherones, a Ganbarrian) and so are closer to conventional "gods?" Or that the "spirit races" like the Altinelans, Luathans, Luxites and so on have a degree of individuality?

Por qué no los dos? But I would go further beyond. 

What does this say about the spider? Oh, you know. You just have to ask her yourself.

[MJ Sadique]

Just Playing KoDPass with heavily drunks God-talkers...

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Does this mean that the so-called “elder races” lack a degree of free will (Hepherones, a Ganbarrian) and so are closer to conventional “gods?”

Freedom may come in degrees — I am free to move about my cell, but I cannot leave it — but does free will? “A little bit pregnant.” Of course, I say that as a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic about “radical” or “metaphysical” notions of free will, but perhaps there is a middle way. To abuse Aunty L, to say that someone has free will is to have a certain attitude toward them — to hold that they are possible recipients of blame (as earthquakes are not). And that might come in degrees — culpable, but how culpable? — and float free of the “facts” about the ironclad laws of causation.

This might work for many cases: Orlanth is the wind — senseless to blame “him” if your house is blown down, as the wind is not a person; the stealing of your pants was done by a mischievous imp — who needs to be held to account/taught a lesson, as that little spirit is a person, an agent. It even works for Kajabor, “who had to do it”, who swallowed gods and nations as the sea swallows luckless sailors. But Wakboth is — I guess — the test case for this sort of thing. Isn’t Wakboth supposed to be mightier than the gods but eminently blameworthy? What sort of people would we be to take that sort of attitude, to let the gods off the hook (“just in time”), but not the Devil? Not grown-ups, I would say, but the Devil probably has something to say on their own account:

• Promises create obligations, not fetters:
   Empty words do not a Prison make,
   Nor iron vows a Cage.
  That is why you had to pin me under this damned block.
  Oh, and my will is as free as it ever was.
  Besides, I never promised anything.
  Or if I did, I had my talons crossed, so it doesn’t count.

But who in their right mind listens to the Devil? Although, if my “promise” magicked manacles about my wrists, could we truly call it a promise? Is it a contract if I cannot break it (although we will surely want to distinguish promises from contracts)? A vow is not a surrendering of power, it is but a surrendering of authority — in the sense that if I do the forbidden thing, I am no longer in the right. Is it productive to fudge over whether the Compromise is a yielding of power — “putting the weapons beyond use” — or something making it dishonourable to perform the dangerous acts in future?

Making a divine vow a magical (contr)act in the Styx will literally-and-inevitably strangle the promise-breaker sense enables this fudge, but if the gods are as real as we are (an error no believer would make), should we embrace that fudge? Would it set a poor precedent for mortal givers of promises? The point of a promise is not to set a tariff for its breaking, neither to give the other party a hostage against my misbehaviour, nor even to make its breaking impossible.

“But,” you say, “Brandi is of the Devil’s party and not without knowing it.”

[Eff]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Freedom may come in degrees — I am free to move about my cell, but I cannot leave it — but does free will? 

Is there a meaningful difference from an empirical perspective?

[SMM]

Based on my propensity to accumulate unread books, and assuming I am not alone in that, my dumb theory is that the Devil is trapped beneath the collective tsundoku of Gloranthaphiles everywhere. The Block is just the paperweight on top. You might say it is the weight of lore, not Law, keeping the Devil in his place. I'll get my coat...

[mfbrandi]

45 minutes ago, SMM said:

The Devil is trapped beneath the collective tsundoku of Gloranthaphiles everywhere.

The PDF is the Devil’s invention, making the load ever lighter as dead trees slip from shelf to landfill or incinerator.

[Ynneadwraith]

Another theory inspired by this comment on the Enlo Curse thread:

On 3/3/2019 at 10:11 PM, The God Learner said:

Mmm, perhaps my misunderstanding was that the Compromise was intended to keep God Time intact.

My interpretation was that this is exactly the purpose of the Compromise...but it's nowhere near as ironclad as the gods say it is. 'Spider silk is stronger than steel' people say...neglecting to mention the fact you can snap it with your fingers.

Perhaps the Compromise is nowhere near as strong as people think it is.

What if, when the Lunars kill Orlanth and cause the Windstop...then all of that mythic stuff comes to bite them in the backside...that wasn't the Compromise reasserting itself. What if 'The Compromise reasserting itself' is just a post-hoc rationalisation of actions that real mortal people took to fix things.

Isn't it comforting to think that the universe won't let you screw things up too badly? That someone else will sort out the mess you've caused? It's certainly much scarier to admit that you actually were inches away from irrevocable change, and only the desperate chance actions of a handful of people averted disaster.

Reminds me of the climate change debate back when it was actually a debate. 'The world has heated before, and then cooled again of its own accord. We won't need to actually do anything.'

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

Ezkankekko is always (was always) your shadow, the Other, the person like you who is not you, who offers you a way to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. He was the ambassador of Darkness to all things that were not-Darkness (but not-Void, the things that Darkness made room for). He wasn't casting magic or shapeshifting; he just was always the Darkness reflecting those who look upon it. He was Argan Argar's hope for peace, the Darkness's attempt to understand the things that gushed forth out of it, and yet his own being even so.

Because of this, in the Rightarm Islands he is still known as "Swimmer in Shadows," and because of this, the trolls of the Shadow Plateau seem incapable of stamping out the legend of "the best enlo who ever lived" once and for all. (Thank goodness the creatures of Chaos are uninclined towards accurate recordkeeping, at least in a form that the Beard People can access, and so we do not know about his Other Face, his war face that he did not even show Belintar his enemy.)

[Whizbang]

Orlanth best embodies the Lunar Way.

The Solars have some dark shadow but Yelm is so bright he can't see it.

The Lunars claim to combine dark and light into one but the moon separates dark phases from light phases. That is no unification in my book.

But Orlanth is the syncretization. He does good things, he does bad things, but then he realizes it and tries to fix them. His Duality is united and manifest in One. He is Perfect in his Imperfection. He has reconciled with his Other.

[Eff]

11 minutes ago, Whizbang said:

Orlanth best embodies the Lunar Way.

The Solars have some dark shadow but Yelm is so bright he can't see it.

The Lunars claim to combine dark and light into one but the moon separates dark phases from light phases. That is no unification in my book.

But Orlanth is the syncretization. He does good things, he does bad things, but then he realizes it and tries to fix them. His Duality is united and manifest in One. He is Perfect in his Imperfection. He has reconciled with his Other.

Puckish counterpoint: being able to distinguish things of different colors is good for crossing roads and picking berries. Symbolically. 

Dumber theory: Glorantha was in sepia tones before the rising of the Red Moon, at which point it got one single color. The White Moon only exists to split into anywhere from five to twelve Moons of other colors.

[John Biles]

19 minutes ago, Eff said:

Puckish counterpoint: being able to distinguish things of different colors is good for crossing roads and picking berries. Symbolically. 

Dumber theory: Glorantha was in sepia tones before the rising of the Red Moon, at which point it got one single color. The White Moon only exists to split into anywhere from five to twelve Moons of other colors.

Each of those moons will choose a Sentai as its champion in the Fourth Age, when Glorantha will become like a Sentai show.

After 10,000 years, Jar-Eel will be free to conquer Earth.

[Whizbang]

3 hours ago, Eff said:

Puckish counterpoint: being able to distinguish things of different colors is good for crossing roads and picking berries. Symbolically.

Triggered. My hubby wants me to play no-map Valheim with him. He says "Just follow the paths I put down" and I'm like "What paths?"

Also, raspberry bushes can just go fuck themselves.

[Ynneadwraith]

8 hours ago, Whizbang said:

Orlanth best embodies the Lunar Way.

The Solars have some dark shadow but Yelm is so bright he can't see it.

The Lunars claim to combine dark and light into one but the moon separates dark phases from light phases. That is no unification in my book.

But Orlanth is the syncretization. He does good things, he does bad things, but then he realizes it and tries to fix them. His Duality is united and manifest in One. He is Perfect in his Imperfection. He has reconciled with his Other.

Two things.

Love the idea of Orlanth being a better model for Illumination than the Red Moon (but everyone being too tribalist to realise it).

Also, the idea of Brightface never having seen a shadow in his life (because he's always the brightest light anywhere he goes) is a fascinating idea. I wonder what that would be symbolic of? Does he live in a world dominated by the MUM effect (that thing where people deliberately downplay bad news when relaying it at each step of a hierarchy)?

What might that say of the Golden Age? Was it that golden at all, or did it only appear golden wherever Yelm looked...

[mfbrandi]

10 hours ago, Whizbang said:

[Orlanth] does bad things, but then he realizes it and tries to fix them.

• “Gbaji” missionaries:
  [1] spread new and interesting diseases;
  [2] cure the same new and interesting diseases while passing on the “good news”;
  [3] look for new lands who haven’t seen the light — rinse and repeat (till caught).
   
• Orlanth:
  [1] murder the sun;
  [2] resurrect the sun;
  [3] repeat [1] and [2] till the clockwork runs down.

Doubtless there are interesting differences between the cases, but: infect the people -> illuminate the people; murder the sun -> illuminate the sun.

Spoiler

Don’t suppose that an illuminator need be “enlightened” — must a killer be dead?

What the Orlanth model is not: repent and sin no more. In fact, one might say that murdering the sun is such a jolly jape, that we should repeat it not only annually but daily, too. Of course, one might downplay Orlanth’s agency: he did not at any point understand the consequences of his actions and did not give informed consent to the disintegration loops of time. One might say that.

Then again, one might say that the first story is a piece of propaganda or purported reportage — ethics of the missionaries very much of interest (and — going meta — the tale is surely a comment on IRL missionaries and empire) — but that despite the structural parallels, the Orlanth story has a different function: it is a just so story, an aetiological myth; the ethics of Orlanth and the rights and wrongs of the quarrel with Yelm are beside the point.

[scott-martin]

57 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

a comment on IRL missionaries and empire

I bore a lot of people and amuse myself framing the riddler plague as psychoanalysis . . . both systems spread first by raising awareness to the level of a "problem" that they are uniquely situated to address, Freud and Jung coming on the steamer like Dracula . . . but the broader colonial reading is less esoteric nowadays and should be chased as far as it goes.

For example:
the primary missionary vector of the new bright god was the riddlers
the primary missionary vector of the new spider god was the tricksters
something reminiscent of modern "Eurmal" led the lightbringer diaspora
bound trickster of modern times is an artifact of the Harmast restoration
rival systems of consciousness

 

[scott-martin]

8 hours ago, Whizbang said:

Also, raspberry bushes can just go fuck themselves.

The wife loves the idea of having acres of them surrounding the house as long as someone cuts a path through them before she thinks about going down to the creek. They keep gesturing vaguely toward taking the house back . . . so far not yet but part of me likes to think it's inevitable. But I've already given them just enough blood that I am their creature now we have an undertanding.

Moonlight is colorblind so all berries are red in the light of the red moon, which makes some of this sumac dangerous. I wonder if the prismatic approach (pink floyd record cover) is part of the white moon gospel . . . knights in "white" satin indeed.

[mfbrandi]

5 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

something reminiscent of modern “Eurmal” led the lightbringer diaspora
bound trickster of modern times is an artifact of the Harmast restoration

Lightbringer -> Firebringer -> Prometheus bound.

[mfbrandi]

10 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

bound trickster of modern times is an artifact of the Harmast restoration
rival systems of consciousness

Bound Nysalor is an artifact — an undesired alteration — of the moon’s restoration? “By all means ask questions, but these are the right answers.”