Your Dumbest Theory

[scott-martin]

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Most of the biomass of the oceans — of Earth — is microbes.

Ron Weighell memorial quote post

I suspect part of the problem of Malia and the fugitive gloranthan prokaryote is that as you say the collective immensity of her miasma would be overwhelming if it was "visible." Squint right and the world dissolves into a swarm of microcosmic entities, mindless single-shell spirits that statistically almost never interact with macrobiotic life in any appreciable way . . . but the hypochondriac mind recoils from them all as "demons."

This is the immune theory of the Bright Empire and its discontents. And even today it's difficult to distinguish between the demons (chaotic) and the little eaters that multiply below the visible frontier. The God Learners argued both ways.

[jajagappa]

17 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

So we are left with the puzzle of why we “translate” a Theyalan word to so technical an English word as “prokaryote” (bacteria and archaea) if Glorantha has none.

Gorp. 

Great bacterial mats that float around in the Hornilio and Sozganjio swamps and others forming stromatolites there. 

[Oldskolgmr]

Glorantha is conscious and that's why it resists efforts like the God Learner's!

 

 

[mfbrandi]

ZERO-SUM GAME
From across time and space,
Forces gathered for the final battle.
We fought.
I lost.
Someone had to.

[mfbrandi]

From an LRB review of a couple of books by Wendy D.

• Campbell, a more optimistic and Western-centred Hegelian even than Jung (which is saying a good deal), believes he has found the universal substratum beneath all the great stories. He throws the carcases of the world’s religions into a giant stewpot and boils them down to make a stock, and then persuades us that the universal stock always pre-existed the soup. Such a confident mythographer is always going to attract followers. To Doniger, Campbell’s ‘static mono-myth’ appears deeply pernicious — ‘the very antithesis of the ceaselessly engaged and always subject-filled approach that I argue for.’
  — Margaret Anne Doody, The One We’d Like to Meet

Edited January 16 by mfbrandi
fixed link

[mfbrandi]

ARACHNE’S ADVENTURES UNDERGROUND

 

• The rays are made up of radiating bands filled with transverse strokes in a type of ‘ladder’ pattern, some with empty spaces in between. Some of the meticulous specimens within this category bear resemblance to a spider's web.
  — Sun stones and the darkened sun: Neolithic miniature art from the island of Bornholm, Denmark
   
• The predominance of sun and plant motifs is striking. These stones are seen as a kind of prayer or invocation for the sun to return, and for crops to grow again.
  — Alison Sheridan, quoted in Ancient, engraved stones may have been buried to summon the sun

[Ynneadwraith]

New dumbest theory from me.

Ok, just putting it out there that I'm (probably) a Yelmalio heretic. My concept of Yelmalio in present day Glorantha is that he is a patchwork deity, sewn together from random bits of other (potentially unrelated) deities by the great syncretist Monrogh. Is he the recreation of an older god that was once whole? Maybe. Did Monrogh get all the pieces right, or does he have two mismatched eyes and some other god's kidney? Probably the latter. It's more politically expedient for him to say 'of course your god is the same as mine, now come join my army...'.

So essentially, Elmal is Yelmalio if people think he is. That's how syncretism functions. People make connections and say 'this is the same god'. Are they really the same god? Who knows. This is a world with God Learners and Heroquesters editing the source code. There's probably no way to know for certain.

Not got to the dumbest theory bit yet. Bear with me...

Maybe Elmal was part of some historic Yelmalio that got fractured...but is he the only bit that took on a second life? Why do we think Elmal is the same as Yelmalio? Because their names sound kinda similar? Who else sounds kinda like a bastardisation of Yelmalio?

...Eurmal.

So, I propose an alternative 'historic vision' of Yelmalio in which he was a trickster sun god. The sun that gives no warmth sounds pretty trickstery to me. Perhaps he split the trickster element of himself away to go on the Lightbringers quest, leaving the dead serious bit behind to be the butt of various practical jokes by Orlanth/Zorak Zorak et al.

All hail Eurmalio...

Edited Tuesday at 12:20 PM by Ynneadwraith

[Ynneadwraith]

Double post.

Edited Tuesday at 12:17 PM by Ynneadwraith

[mfbrandi]

46 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I propose an alternative “historic vision” of Yelmalio in which he was a trickster sun god.

He stole fire from the gods hidden in the fennel stalk we call “Zorak Zoran”. You should see the two of them knock back the absinthe.

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

My concept of Yelmalio in present day Glorantha is that he is a patchwork deity, sewn together from random bits of other (potentially unrelated) deities by the great syncretist Monrogh.

And others before him. There is a major Lightfore event in or around 110 ST which unites Antirius of the Sunpath and the roaming Lightfore Kargzant, binding them to the anti-Sun nightly walk or run on the Sunpath.

Zola Fel Sun County in its Solitude of Testing somehow managed the inflow of Teshnan settlers from what we now call the Grantlands some time after 1250, importing Teshnan peculiarities (and later rejecting some of these as contact with Dragon Pass got renewed).

Monrogh was a contemporary of Tarkalor, probably one of his tutors. He dealt with the influx of imperial sun worship and its influence on Sartarite sun worshippers. While it is possible that he learned about the Zola Fel valley peculiarities, his main agenda was the Elmali suppression and getting the Kitori out of Vanntar.

2 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Maybe Elmal was part of some historic Yelmalio that got fractured...but is he the only bit that took on a second life? Why do we think Elmal is the same as Yelmalio? Because their names sound kinda similar? 

Yelmalio has one of his origins as one of the Planetary Sons. Which is a collective similar to the Storm Brothers, with three notable breakout deities, one of which being Reladivus Kargzant, the roaming Lightfore who roamed the lower skies even before the Dismemberment of Yelm that released the static Antirius Lightfore.

Elmal also carries some Hyaloring heritage, brought to the Vingkotlings by Beren the Rider, and possibly also Ulanin the Rider, both founders of Vingkotling tribes with daughters of Vingkot. That points to a heritage from Yamsur, too, at least for the tribal rites.

Somewhere in all those male precursors there is also the Praxian Sun Daughter, a female Lightfore, and apparently a pernicious influence on the Zola Fel Sun Dome.

[mfbrandi]

THE MYSTERIES OF BIRD FLIGHT

Apologies for reducing Ynneadwraith to bullet points, but we are all friends here:

6 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

• The method by which Yelm stripped the ducks of flight was by unbirding them.
• Ostriches and emus would be capable of flight if you put them in a hot air balloon.
• Put [ducks] in a hot-air balloon and it simply won’t take off.
• Ground the Crimson Bat by putting ducks in a catapult and flinging them at the Bat, which would then be mythically incapable of bearing the ducks in flight and come crashing down to the ground.

• Do insects (), pterosaurs (), and bats ( or °) partake of birdness? No, but they fly.
• Wings say that flying is the province of , not .
• Birds are dinosaurs are reptiles and so (allegedly).
• Are birds flapping through their sibling to leave Mother and get closer to Daddy ? Cue Jim Morrison.
• Orlanthi ducks begin to make sense, but … “The hell with the lot of you — I pick .”
• If you see a cultist with a hooded falcon, does it make you think of ’s binding of Danfive Xaron?
• Tear up all these notes. Let’s go ask SurEnslib!

—————————————
° But really, who can tell them apart when the coin is spinning?

[scott-martin]

What I think I've just seen is a logically valid argument that ducks are centaurs, which works shockingly well.

DEAD SUNS
Every god we remember by one name or another but they say is impossible to contact has simply changed "telephone numbers," as it were and is acknowledged in some pantheon as someone else. Those we do not remember at all are of no consequence either way. 

[mfbrandi]

[This comment was too boring to live and has been euthanised.]

Edited 15 hours ago by mfbrandi
redacted

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

What I think I’ve just seen is a logically valid argument that ducks are centaurs

It is true. Take a needle, some stout twine, the top half of a duck, and the bottom half of a duck, and get stitching. You will find Mary Shelley in the Upland Marsh assuring her children that they are definitely not undead.

[Ynneadwraith]

Ok I adore that graphic 😄 I can imagine a particularly obsessive duck rules-lawyer pushing every single possible boundary of what might be considered 'flight'. I'm also sold on the idea that the line is fully arbitrary, defined primarily by whether Yelm decides someone is trying to 'get cute'.

New dumb idea. What if the curse is contingent on proximity to Yelm? It's still clearly powerful enough to function in the dead of night...but is it harder to throw a duck under the midday sun?

I'm just picturing a duck causing some degree of consternation in an attempt to evict them from the Tower of Yelm, feet planted immovably upon the floor, magically incapable of even being thrown out lest someone get wise and call it 'flight'.

[scott-martin]

10 minutes ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I'm just picturing a duck causing some degree of consternation in an attempt to evict them from the Tower of Yelm, feet planted immovably upon the floor, magically incapable of even being thrown out lest someone get wise and call it 'flight'.

 

And this is truly experimental heroquesting. If the duck wins, the yelmic authorities lose. And if the duck loses, then even the yelmic authorities must concede that ducks can fly.

Either way, a hero is born for the ages. The pillars of creation shake.

[Ynneadwraith]

11 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

 

And this is truly experimental heroquesting. If the duck wins, the yelmic authorities lose. And if the duck loses, then even the yelmic authorities must concede that ducks can fly.

Either way, a hero is born for the ages. The pillars of creation shake.

Stunning!

Ducks not flying is Glorantha's coconut.jpg?

Bet that'd drive the Mostali nuts...

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

What if the curse is contingent on proximity to Yelm? It's still clearly powerful enough to function in the dead of night … but is it harder to throw a duck under the midday sun?

If we allow Yelm to be the arbiter of flight, I vote for levitating — vampire? — ducks with lead parasols.

Philosophers in their cups debate whether:

1. Yelm’s rays push us down to keep us earthbound,
   but lead blocks them,
   enabling us to rise,
   
   or
    
2. opposites attract and darkness metal is drawn toward the sun,
   enabling lead armour to be light enough to wear
   and lead slingstones to travel so far.

Then they pass out in a puddle of their own incoherence.

[Zebraman1]

14 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Ok I adore that graphic 😄 I can imagine a particularly obsessive duck rules-lawyer pushing every single possible boundary of what might be considered 'flight'. I'm also sold on the idea that the line is fully arbitrary, defined primarily by whether Yelm decides someone is trying to 'get cute'.

New dumb idea. What if the curse is contingent on proximity to Yelm? It's still clearly powerful enough to function in the dead of night...but is it harder to throw a duck under the midday sun?

I'm just picturing a duck causing some degree of consternation in an attempt to evict them from the Tower of Yelm, feet planted immovably upon the floor, magically incapable of even being thrown out lest someone get wise and call it 'flight'.

This works both ways though. Yelm has ordained that ducks can't fly, so whatever else the duck is doing it isn't flying. A duck moving through the air under its own power might change the definition of flight before it alters Yelm's authority. 

[Ynneadwraith]

10 minutes ago, Zebraman1 said:

This works both ways though. Yelm has ordained that ducks can't fly, so whatever else the duck is doing it isn't flying. A duck moving through the air under its own power might change the definition of flight before it alters Yelm's authority. 

Now we're getting into some proper God Learner knots!