Your Dumbest Theory

[Qizilbashwoman]

23 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

It's a TikTok world and the Blind Watchmaker (Invisible God) assembled it, wound it up, and let it go!

ok but then didn't the Spider (SWT) take it over and the Moon is (was) trying to take it from the Spider?

[Eff]

15 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

ok but then didn't the Spider (SWT) take it over and the Moon is (was) trying to take it from the Spider?

Depending on how you look at it:

-The spider is the watch, or rather the consciousness and self-awareness of the watch. 
-The spider is too closely entangled with the watchmaker for a distinction to be meaningful.
-The spider entered into the watch at some point and convinced all of the watch's inhabitants she was very important. 

The moon woman, for her part, is in some sense a spider, but as to whether she's an aspect of the spider, an emanation, an avatar, a gongen, an impersonator, a daughter, a sister, a distant descendant, or simply an unrelated spiderlike phenomenon, I don't know and she doesn't tell me these things. 

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

ok but then didn't the Spider (SWT) take it over and the Moon is (was) trying to take it from the Spider?

The anthropomorphic crowd think that the Spider–Cosmos and the Moon–Chaos are chasing each other around the Möbius loop of the infinity rune, each thinking to herself “my quarry is on the other side.”

The sage shakes her head, sees only the loop, and laughs at the folly of trying to distinguish Cosmos from Chaos.

Or, you know, something …

[Joerg]

19 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Well, I would say that my dumb theory was that Mostal was not the Maker but the World Machine — and that the World Machine was not made but there from the beginning.

There is a multiverse of World Machines spanning the outer realms between the Source and the Void. These are the implementations of Blueprint limiting the potential of the Void with the Energy from the Source.

The World Machines started out as a fabricator that transformed itself to the thing we call universe. It is a self-extracting package placed in between the Void of Unlimited Potential ()a very dense state of quantum vacuum)  and the Source of Unlimited Energy (unlimited at least for the period of observation available to us).

Basically, it is a von Neumann-drone seeded into this inter-dimensional non-space outside of the Void. It had a collector and filter for the raw potential, the Chaosium, and it had another collector for the raw energy of the Source.

The World Machine had a self-extracting blueprint, which was inscribed in adamantium on the surface of the Spike as it was made from the output of the Chaosium.

The Chaosium had a blueprint of its own which it spawned as the emerging elemental blueprints were acted on. This was Grower, a force designed to collect energy from the Source and to manifest as living matter, to be consumed by the Maker. This blueprint was not set in Adamanrium, but imprinted on far more malleable elemental bodies, which allowed it to alter over generations of reproductive cycles. Many of these alterations were predicted by the blueprint, but they did not account for the random waste that could escape the Chaosium when there were unpredicted fluctuation in the intake of potential from the Void. Usually these fluctuations would be contained by incorruptable Adamantium containers and fed into the Chaosium in periods of lesser activity, but even this precaution measure, while being designed to expand along with the base of the Spike.

The Chaosium was expanded only with the power of 2 of the extension of the Spike and not with the power of 3 like the matter extruded, which should have allowed control of the Void intake. Unfortunately, the initial assignment of Void Storage ran slightly above predicted future capacity during the adjustment phase. As a result, there was occasional spill-over into the Darkness Below.

The Master Blueprint, while inscribed in Adamantium, was a living entity, which mortals recognize as the Greatest Goddess Glorantha.

(More to follow, with more World Machine perspective and possibly unnecessary details on the implementation of the Blueprint, in a separate post. Stuff of interest only to the Mostali.)

19 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

All talk of making is unwarranted anthropomorphism. In this way of looking at things, the key Mostali concept is not the design or the blueprint but efficient causation or (differently) the world as mathematically describable. This calls the concept of repair into serious question.

I would say this was my dumb theory, but wasn’t it an RQ3 orthodoxy? (Gods as people was just a fable for the dim and the ignorant. There are no gods. There are no people. There is only the World Machine.)

 

15 hours ago, jajagappa said:

It's a TikTok world and the Blind Watchmaker (Invisible God) assembled it, wound it up, and let it go!

The Invisible God thought things up, and energy interacted with matter according to primal principles. Batteries included, no assembly needed.

Did he think up the Blueprint for Glorantha? If yes, did he assign Danmalastan to the World Machine project in one of the four slots around the Spike?

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

There is a multiverse of World Machines spanning the outer realms between the Source and the Void. These are the implementations of Blueprint limiting the potential of the Void with the Energy from the Source.

The World Machines started out as a fabricator that transformed itself to the thing we call universe. It is a self-extracting package placed in between the Void of Unlimited Potential ()a very dense state of quantum vacuum)  and the Source of Unlimited Energy (unlimited at least for the period of observation available to us).

Basically, it is a von Neumann-drone seeded into this inter-dimensional non-space outside of the Void. It had a collector and filter for the raw potential, the Chaosium, and it had another collector for the raw energy of the Source.

One of the functions of a self-assembling von Neumann drone is self replication after having completed its cycle of self-assembly. This would have begun after completing the elemental balance, a process that got disrupted by the Birth of Umath rather than the manufacturer of the Moon engines which were to be the child drones. One surviving early prototype was found in the Feldichi ruins of Dorastor, the Pseudocosmic Egg which was used to breed Osentalka, the Perfect God. The limitation of the Young Elementals to Darkness, Water, Earth and Fire either suggests that this was the entire list of pre-designed elements (the absence of a Bronze caste of Mostali, with a Brass caste as one of the three derivations of the Tin caste instead, seems to support this) or that this was one of possibly several items under construction. The moons of the Storm Age may have been other such mechanisms prematurely released by the birth of Umath, with the one resulting in Nysalor and Arkat possibly being rather far from completion.

[Qizilbashwoman]

17 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

The anthropomorphic crowd think that the Spider–Cosmos and the Moon–Chaos are chasing each other around the Möbius loop of the infinity rune, each thinking to herself “my quarry is on the other side.”

The sage shakes her head, sees only the loop, and laughs at the folly of trying to distinguish Cosmos from Chaos.

Or, you know, something …

this is a nysalorean riddle, i'm not going to fall for it

[AlHazred]

On 2/18/2023 at 8:49 AM, Qizilbashwoman said:

this is a nysalorean riddle, i'm not going to fall for it

"So, which Skill did you learn the Nysaloran riddle for?"

"Uh... Riddling."

"... Huh, that's a circular... uh, yeah..."

[radmonger]

7 hours ago, AlHazred said:

"... Huh, that's a circular... uh, yeah..."

 

Gbaji, by acronym, jokingly illuminated.

[davecake]

On 2/17/2023 at 6:19 AM, mfbrandi said:

How does one motivate anti-Chaos fanaticism in an illuminate? Rummage in your bag of possible stronger beliefs.

    Chaos is neither evil nor inimical but I will root it out and destroy it because …

Chaos before the cosmos, or outside it, is not evil or inimical. One way to reconcile this is a sort of militant mysticism - Chaos is good if it remains outside the Cosmos, and you should seek contact with the Void by transcending mortality, but evil and inimical when it leaks into the cosmos. This seems a kind of Kralorelan approach. But that seems a bit of a glib answer to the implied question of Arkat’s motivation. 

Chaos is both Kajabor (entropy) and Wakboth (moral evil). To struggle against Kajabor is the condition of mortality, is life, but to hope to destroy it is delusional. The answer to Kajabor is Rashorans answer, to cease to fear the Great Fear. 
But instead to take that fear and encourage it, to use it as a weapon for empower one’s hatred, that is Wakboth, that is the true root of moral evil, and it must be destroyed, because otherwise it will spread and destroy all. 
Arkats core philosophy can be understood as, at the core (though of course he goes past this point) as Humakt post-Rashoran - we must accept entropy and death and reconcile ourselves and not fear the Great Fear, but we must destroy those who succumb to moral evil, and embrace the Great Fear for their own greed, ambition and hatred. And Gbaji embraces those who do that, and must be destroyed. 
 

ETA: the Mostali probably do think that they should eventually eliminate entropy, but it’s a very late stage in repair of the World Machine. 

Edited February 24, 2023 by davecake

[davecake]

On 2/18/2023 at 9:22 PM, Joerg said:

The limitation of the Young Elementals to Darkness, Water, Earth and Fire either suggests that this was the entire list of pre-designed elements (the absence of a Bronze caste of Mostali, with a Brass caste as one of the three derivations of the Tin caste instead, seems to support this)

The classifications of the Mostali caste are not a classification of the elements of the world (obviously), but of the tools used to repair it. But this does indicate a Mostali unfamiliarity with a post-Storm cosmology, and how to use Storm effectively? They do seem to use bellows though (and, you know, breathe). 

[Joerg]

The common hope about Glorantha is that it was Kajabor (the misplaced unlimited potential) who was consumed with all orifices to give birth to Time rather than Wakboth (who is both moral evil and annihilation, but born of and into the cosmos of Glorantha).

This would mean that the entropy inherent in Arachne Solara's Web is not evil, but that a suppressed evil still is trapped in the world.

[John Biles]

12 hours ago, Joerg said:

The common hope about Glorantha is that it was Kajabor (the misplaced unlimited potential) who was consumed with all orifices to give birth to Time rather than Wakboth (who is both moral evil and annihilation, but born of and into the cosmos of Glorantha).

This would mean that the entropy inherent in Arachne Solara's Web is not evil, but that a suppressed evil still is trapped in the world.

That's the standard mythology, as laid out in the Guide, volume 1.

 

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, John Biles said:

That [Kajabor’s consumption to give birth to Time] is the standard mythology, as laid out in the Guide, volume 1.

But it got retconned, no?

[John Biles]

27 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

But it got retconned, no?

I have to assume that's a mistake, given that Wakboth would have to be pinned under the block AND eaten and turned into time at the same time.

 

[Richard S.]

Wakboth and Kabajor are both the devil. The difference is semantic, if there even is one. Storm Bull crushed the Devil, and the Devil went to hell, and Arachne Solara devoured it to give birth to Time. The Devil is beneath the Block and within the Net; not gone, but forever trapped by the world.

[Akhôrahil]

Entropy and Time feel conceptually connected in a way that Evil and Time doesn't.

[Joerg]

11 hours ago, John Biles said:

I have to assume that's a mistake, given that Wakboth would have to be pinned under the block AND eaten and turned into time at the same time.

And the problem with that is? Deities may be in several places at once.

[Bill the barbarian]

So what's it all about?

Chaosium has regretted giving up the HeroQuest name, so will link with Hasbro to use their HQ as the basis of Gloranthan gaming going forward!

[mfbrandi]

16 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Entropy and Time feel conceptually connected in a way that Evil and Time doesn't.

I guess some people just have a profoundly depressing view of the world.

[SDLeary]

14 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Chaosium has regretted giving up the HeroQuest name, so will link with Hasbro to use their HQ as the basis of Gloranthan gaming going forward!

God that would be horrible... We would move the timeline another 6 years forward, and start with Sartar ALL OVER AGAIN!!😧

SDLeary

[soltakss]

21 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Chaosium has regretted giving up the HeroQuest name, so will link with Hasbro to use their HQ as the basis of Gloranthan gaming going forward!

Chaosium is buying Hasbro to get the HeroQuest name back.

[John Biles]

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

Chaosium is buying Hasbro to get the HeroQuest name back.

It would also give them control of D&D.

 

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, John Biles said:

It would also give them control of D&D.

RPG Powerhouse

[John Biles]

27 minutes ago, soltakss said:

RPG Powerhouse

They then would need to buy Mongoose to get Traveller and they'd basically control the main survivors from the early age of RPGs.

 

[Erol of Backford]

I'd help convert old D&D modules to Rune Quest. Never played Traveller but Star Frontiers (box cover clip below) was fun as was Boot Hill.

I wonder if carbines and revolvers could be converted from standard dwarven weapons? Possibly a variable strength disruption matrix could be placed on/into something that looks like a sonic devastator, 50d3!?

So many old D&D modules could fit with modifications of course, I mean who doesn't convert all sorts of old scenarios?

Tomb of Horrors might be fun... maybe the lich in there is one of the two named colleagues of Delecti from Remakerela?

Dralasites could be on Zoo Island as well...