Your Dumbest Theory

[mfbrandi]

14 hours ago, davecake said:

I think that there are quite a lot of anti-Chaos mystics in the East

But when we think of Kralorela as a sort of “Cod China” (which we have been shuddering at since that illo in Gods of Glorantha, at least), it is hard not to link mysticism and Chaos.

This from Arthur Waley’s Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi) section of Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China (p. 56 in my edition):

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[T]he Taoist knows how to live in the world without being of the world, how to be at leisure without the solitude of ‘hills and seas.’

And this is Ray Turney saying what’s wrong with Chaos in Cults of Terror (p. 19, lower box-out):

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The chaotic are arrogant: they want to be in the world, but not of it.

And in as much as the standard PC attitude (default = Orlanthi, right?) is to fight for what is right, this contrasts strongly with Waley’s Daoists (Waley, p.65) — presumably, Tai Chin Jên to the king of Wei:

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To love the people is to harm them; to side with those who are in the right in order to end war is the way to start fresh wars.

And Waley again (pp. 66–67):

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What then is man’s true treasure? It is his Inward Vision (ming), a generalized perception that can come into play only when the distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, between ‘self’ and ‘things’, between ‘this’ and ‘that’ has been entirely obliterated. Chuang Tzu’s symbol for this state of pure consciousness, which sees without looking, hears without listening, knows without thinking, is the god Hun-tun (‘Chaos’): [then follows the famous story about how Chaos is killed by his guests]

Now, I am in no position to say whether Waley’s take on Warring States philosophy is a sound one, but it does seem plausible that it is one that a bunch of hippies writing an RPG in the 1970s might have been familiar with. And with that voice in the back of one’s head crying “in the face of evil, something must be done”, it is easy to get frustrated with the Zhuangzi POV as presented in Waley.

So I do think that Gloranthan Chaos and mysticism/illumination make a natural package and that this was likely a result of the designers’ take on IRL “eastern” mysticism, which on the face of it, at least, they seem not to have been huge fans of. So why not Kralorela, too? Whether this all amounts to an irredeemable Orientalist nightmare, I am not going to venture an opinion on. Neither am I going to scream hatred in the face of Chaos, as some here seem to enjoy doing. (I don’t mean you, @davecake.)

Edited December 4, 2022 by mfbrandi
spelling

[mfbrandi]

The dwarfs were created by an embittered Brithini philosopher as a parody of their own people. The godtime Mostali are a lie.

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

The dwarfs were created by an embittered Brithini philosopher as a parody of their own people. The godtime Mostali are a lie.

The Brithini were created by a deluded Mostali alchemist seeking to enhance selected features of his own people - these were the original clay men.  Unfortunately they multiplied before they could be properly recycled. 

[AlHazred]

6 hours ago, jajagappa said:

The Brithini were created by a deluded Mostali alchemist seeking to enhance selected features of his own people - these were the original clay men.  Unfortunately they multiplied before they could be properly recycled. 

strikes the speaker with a mystic strike too quick to be seen by even the inner eye "Brithini is the most perfect creature ever to sanctify Glorantha with the imprint of its foot."

Edited December 5, 2022 by AlHazred

[Ormi Phengaria]

On 12/4/2022 at 10:46 AM, mfbrandi said:

So I do think that Gloranthan Chaos and mysticism/illumination make a natural package and that this was likely a result of the designers’ take on IRL “eastern” mysticism, which on the face of it, at least, they seem not to have been huge fans of. So why not Kralorela, too? Whether this all amounts to an irredeemable Orientalist nightmare, I am not going to venture an opinion on.

As a "religious Daoist" in my beliefs first and foremost, much of the more accessible material on illumination, Vithelan enlightenment, draconic consciousness, etc. did come across that way to me– initially. Equating the Void with Chaos maps pretty well to equating weiwuwei with acceptance of evil. But the presented conflicts and perspectives relating to those things are not what they might first seem, and now I can't help but read them as being exceedingly mischievous.

[svensson]

Ducks are STILL Illuminated.

The Proof is Out There.

 

[svensson]

1 hour ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

As a "religious Daoist" in my beliefs first and foremost, much of the more accessible material on illumination, Vithelan enlightenment, draconic consciousness, etc. did come across that way to me– initially. Equating the Void with Chaos maps pretty well to equating weiwuwei with acceptance of evil. But the presented conflicts and perspectives relating to those things are not what they might first seem, and now I can't help but read them as being exceedingly mischievous.

The problem with Gloranthan 'enlightenment' is that accepts the existence of Chaos. What's more, it rationalizes for the existence of Chaos. It mistakes the Chaos imperative as being 'change', when in fact it is 'destruction'.

And that's a problem for most people.

There is a reason why many [but not all] prohibitions exist. That reason is that what is prohibited is bad for society as a whole and the human psyche personally. Now, I'm not talking about 'alternative lifestyles' or religious beliefs that are different than my own. I'm talking about more universal things like 'murder', 'theft', 'child abuse', and so on. There are MANY 'ought to do's' and 'ought not to do's' that most religions, lifestyles, and legal systems agree on. These are what I'm referring to here.

And in a Gloranthan sense, you can add 'Thou Shalt Not Suffer Chaos to Live' is a perfectly reasonable stricture.

[Ormi Phengaria]

Sometimes, destruction is good! Sometimes, you just have to make yourself a little breathing room between heaven and earth.

[Eff]

My dumb theory is that either Trickster, Gbaji, or both is a kind of cognitohazard if you're not careful and ends up planting all kinds of mischievous nonsense in people's minds even if they're not literally within Glorantha.

[svensson]

2 minutes ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

Sometimes, destruction is good! Sometimes, you just have to make yourself a little breathing room between heaven and earth.

'Change' will happen with or without Chaos. It is the very nature of life that change happens. Beings are born, live to effect the world and die, the quintessential changes of existence. The seasons pass and the land changes. The only constant is change. Sorry to upset all the Mostali out there, but there it is.

Chaos is not like that. Chaos is nihilistic destruction solely and only for destruction's sake. Chaos destroys NOT to make way for the new, but because its only impulse is to destroy, infect, subvert, demean, and befoul.

[Ormi Phengaria]

9 minutes ago, svensson said:

'Change' will happen with or without Chaos. It is the very nature of life that change happens. Beings are born, live to effect the world and die, the quintessential changes of existence. The seasons pass and the land changes. The only constant is change. Sorry to upset all the Mostali out there, but there it is.

Chaos is not like that. Chaos is nihilistic destruction solely and only for destruction's sake. Chaos destroys NOT to make way for the new, but because its only impulse is to destroy, infect, subvert, demean, and befoul.

You know. You're right. The Bat really isn't chaotic!

[davecake]

While it’s getting beyond dumbest theories - Chaos in the philosophical sense is the limitless potential of everything, the boundless possibilities of what could potentially be as compared to the Cosmos that is limited to what actually is. So without Chaos nothing truly new comes into being, including originally the Cosmos itself. So Chaos can’t be considered malign or evil in the philosophical sense, without it there would be nothing, and the mystics who are striving to transcend the limitations of this universe see that. 

Of course, Chaos in practice is quite different, it manifests as that which shouldn’t exist leaking through into a universe that rejects it, it’s an affront to consensus reality and a continual urge to break all rules, from the rules of physics to the laws of morality. Chaos as the philosophical foundation outside the universe and our reality, from which existence emerged, is one thing - the problem is when Chaos doesn’t stay there, Chaos leaking into the universe and breaking reality and laws is quite different, and generally horrifying and dangerous to mortal minds (not to mention reality itself). It gets conceptually quite Lovecraftian - gods from universes where the concepts of logic itself are different. The greatest of Chaos deities aren’t simply mutations of the non-Chaotic, but perverse twists of Glorantha metaphysics. 

On 12/4/2022 at 7:53 PM, mfbrandi said:

Well, if the Seven Mothers can combine and , and if Krarsht can combine and , I don’t see why you cannot have chaos sorcerers.

Notably combining Opposed Runes (in oneself) is an Illumination power. A Seven Mothers cultist can learn both Death and Life Rune magic, but she can’t be good at casting them both unless Illuminated. Illumination is the mystic learning to perceive the world in ways that transcend mortal consciousness. Chaos sorcery might require Illumination, as it requires the resolution of incompatible logics, believing several impossible things at once. 
 

On 12/4/2022 at 7:53 PM, mfbrandi said:

Of course, mastering both is some trick, but and might help. Lunar College of Magic includes sorcerers, right?

Well, Moon is a fast path to Illumination. My (possibly Dumb) theory is the Sevening rites of the Lunar cults are a ‘speed run’ of Nysaloran Illumination by pushing the mind of the cultist outside of normal perceptions with the help of a lot of madness magic - hopefully the cultist Illuminated without too much permanent damage to their sanity. Terribly dangerous to one’s mental health, but you can’t afford to wait around for years of meditation and riddles when you need more Illuminated Red Moon magicians for the Lunar College of Magic!

Most Lunar sorcerers aren’t Chaos sorcerers except in the most paranoid sense, just sorcerers who know a bit of Moon rune magic, though. 

[davecake]

On 12/5/2022 at 2:46 AM, mfbrandi said:

But when we think of Kralorela as a sort of “Cod China”

Well, I was thinking a bit further East, given Ive just been writing about the East Isles for the Jonstown Compendium, and had my head buried in Revealed Mythologies and mysticism for a year or so. It’s hard to see the Vithelan Great Sages, all of whom struggled against what seems like Chaos, as secretly Chaotic. Mashunasenndefeating Oorsu Sara and then Avanapdur, for example. 

But the general point of a lot of Glorantha treatment of Mysticism comes across very Orientalist, especially the early stuff and Kralorela in particular, is true. I think pointing to sources like Waley is not far off. But like Joseph Campbell, Greg was quite capable of using some sources while simultaneously criticising too rigid or mistaken approaches. The God Learners can be taken as both Greg saying Joseph Campbell has a lot of value and is disastrous if taken too literally. Nysalor and the Arkat story can be taken as Greg saying the idea of enlightenment from Indian (mostly) thought can be misinterpreted terribly and immorally, but that isn’t all there is to it (and I think Greg had some personal reasons for putting that view, and was familiar with some of the misguided Orientalist interpretations). Greg’s thought often has hidden depths to it. 

But damn I wish he was still here to talk about it with us. 

 

[svensson]

Boxers are the 'orange cat' of the canine world.

Prove me wrong.

 

[Mark Mohrfield]

If she should ever appear in my Glorantha, Yolanela the Taloned Countess will be based on Carol Burnett’s portrayal of Nora Desmond. She is suspected (pretty much known, actually) to have killed several husbands, not just one, as well as many chance passersby.

P.S. She is always accompanied by her bald manservant, Maximus, of course.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Mark Mohrfield

[AlHazred]

15 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

If she should ever appear in my Glorantha, Yolanela the Taloned Countess will be based on Carol Burnett’s portrayal of Nora Desmond. She is suspected (pretty much known, actually) to have killed several husbands, not just one, as well as many chance passersby.

P.S. She is always accompanied by her bald manservant, Maximus, of course.

Ah, yes, the Taloned Countess of the Sunnyset Empire....

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 12/7/2022 at 4:08 AM, davecake said:

Well, I was thinking a bit further East, given Ive just been writing about the East Isles for the Jonstown Compendium, and had my head buried in Revealed Mythologies and mysticism for a year or so. It’s hard to see the Vithelan Great Sages, all of whom struggled against what seems like Chaos, as secretly Chaotic. Mashunasenndefeating Oorsu Sara and then Avanapdur, for example. 

But the general point of a lot of Glorantha treatment of Mysticism comes across very Orientalist, especially the early stuff and Kralorela in particular, is true. I think pointing to sources like Waley is not far off. But like Joseph Campbell, Greg was quite capable of using some sources while simultaneously criticising too rigid or mistaken approaches. The God Learners can be taken as both Greg saying Joseph Campbell has a lot of value and is disastrous if taken too literally. Nysalor and the Arkat story can be taken as Greg saying the idea of enlightenment from Indian (mostly) thought can be misinterpreted terribly and immorally, but that isn’t all there is to it (and I think Greg had some personal reasons for putting that view, and was familiar with some of the misguided Orientalist interpretations). Greg’s thought often has hidden depths to it. 

But damn I wish he was still here to talk about it with us. 

 

I always thought that enlightenmrnt in RQ was the player character awakening into the player.   " It's just a game, so I'll do what I want."

 

[metcalph]

The Feldichi of Dorastor are alive today in God Forgot...

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I always thought that enlightenment in RQ was the player character awakening into the player.   "It's just a game, so I'll do what I want."

Awakening into the player made me think: “Platonic solids with numbered faces. A white moon. No spirits anywhere. What am I wearing? Where am I?”

[mfbrandi]

“H” is for hyena.

The deprecation of the Issaries rune — — is part of a long and shockingly successful plot by the cult of the blue boy to pervert the original cult of Issaries Hyenafriend: speaker of truth to power and laugher at despots.

Orlanth does this because:

• kings don’t like anarchists or equal/fair exchange
• lightbringer deities need to be domesticated into vassals/housecats
• all feliforms must be alynxes: hyenas and especially mongooses cannot be tolerated
• the spotted hyena alpha female provides an alternative to the prescribed dilemma of psycho or earth mother
• hyenas eat alynxes for breakfast

The reason the hyena doesn’t eat you if your tent flap is closed is that this is an agreed signal between Issaries and Grandmother Hyena. If you sleep in the open without hyena friends, you are fair game.

It is because Issaries “owns” that they have contempt for greed and politicking — like the hyena, they sometimes have to laugh at humanity and seek the solace of the wastes. Goldentongue, Middleman, and Spare Grain are the progressively more degraded “child” cults. But the Age is ending, and in the wastes the parent cult may be reassembling itself as well as the OG sun.

And if a liberated Issaries begins to look like the original to the funhouse mirror distortion of poor enslaved Eurmal …

[scott-martin]

On 12/15/2022 at 5:43 PM, mfbrandi said:

• kings don’t like anarchists or equal/fair exchange

Everything solid melts into "air." Two gods, something like brothers, once had a reasonable claim on the birthright of the Larnste rune, so the ghosts of the Court declared a contest to determine which would be the best steward. When the time came, one brother, under the tutelage of Harana Ilor, came back with Movement, a system of exchange that had reached dynamic equilibrium. The ghosts of the Court decided it was good on the whole but despite all the permutations something was missing, some potential left untried. Maybe, the whisper came, it was a little boring in the end, wind going nowhere.

The second brother, who had only the shock of a restless tectonic landscape to claim for a mountain mother, came back with Change, which is Larnste plus Disorder. This was something new at last, the ghosts of the Court determined as they awarded the second brother the prize: not just a power rune but his own element. And so the first brother recedes into his own system in stormy seasons, speaking every language but thunder. On the other hand versions of this story are told where everything solid melts into "light" and the second brother is banished.

--[*]--

Elves are just a different type of archaic person in thrall to the great tree consciousness. As much as it pains them to acknowledge, they bleed like us, breed like us and die like us. Wooden bones venerated in museums and libraries are mostly devotional forgeries or, very rarely, a bona fide relic of a profound shamanic experience.

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Everything solid melts into "air."

A spectre is haunting Glorantha — the spectre of . All the Powers of old Genertela have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pharaoh and Emperor, Queen and Khan, Nysalor Radicals and Arkati police-spies.

Or something …

I was thinking more of teenage years scratching my head over Kropotkin and George Woodcock. Never did figure it out.

[mfbrandi]

15 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Elves are just a different type of archaic person in thrall to the great tree consciousness. As much as it pains them to acknowledge, they bleed like us, breed like us and die like us. Wooden bones venerated in museums and libraries are mostly devotional forgeries or, very rarely, a bona fide relic

The recent gory — sappy? — stuff on how to initiate to Aldrya if born animal resonates well with this. It makes me think of human wannabe aldryami as indulging in the ultimately masochistic Imitatio Christi — it is not enough to be nailed to the tree, one must become the tree. One wonders whether the original elves were created from “beast” stock this way by some vegetable Mengele–Moreau: “Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not elves? Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not elves?”

And if the stubborn beast flesh grows back, perhaps that is part of what makes them useful to the [and here I gag] “Wood Wide Web”. Like Arnie’s flesh on his steel armature.

(Apologies if this concedes too much to the orthodoxy.)

Edited December 21, 2022 by mfbrandi
added link

[scott-martin]

58 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

it is not enough to be nailed to the tree, one must become the tree

Definitely. When the tree starts winning, human nature tries as hard as it can to copy the tree. And then when the tree starts losing, you're stuck.

If my local sages weren't so tapped out lately figuring out how to reshape our acre of  ̶M̶a̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶ Maniria to better express the forest's changing needs (beeches, burdock and lilacs, apparently, and of course oak) my critical translation of the late Geleron Green's 14-volume treatise The Golden Bow or Shadows Dance: Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild would be much, much farther along. As it is, canon will probably move first. We can wait to reveal things that don't really concern the canon like what they actually do with the genitals in particular.

[metcalph]

Started by a post of Jeff (https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/the-origin-of-belintar/ 

The origins of Belintar.

Belintar was Artmal.  He was buried at the Blue Man Hills in Fonrit.  Many people had spoken to him then, seeking the secrets of the lost Artmali Empire.  The God Learners planned to restore him to life but either abandoned the project because they did not like what they had learned or they were killed before they could begin.

When the Red Moon rose, Belintar finally became alive but he was still trapped in his tomb.  The Yranians freed him in return for his power, which they used to set up a Mighty Empire.  The newly freed Belintar decided not to help the Yranians but to seek out the source of the Red Moon.  Since the Oceans were closed, he swam (via the Celestial River).  He landed in Kethaela and set up the Holy Country.

The Yranians did not understand the power they had wielded and used too much of it.  Because oif their mistakes, Belintar was able to reclaim his lent power and used them to create the  first Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death.