Your Dumbest Theory

[mfbrandi]

20 minutes ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

give birth to a coconut-sized hard seed which is planted in a secret place

Or — inkeeping (more-or-less) with “modern elves are humans who think they are plants” — we could try (I am thinking out loud, so apologies to any biologists reading for the barbarisms to follow):

1. Haploid plant spores are inhaled by a “pure” human and start dividing to produce a haploid gametophyte within it
2. The human develops an urge to “return” to their true home, the forest — the human has the thoughts, not the plant growing within: the plant is not intelligent and has no thoughts of its own
3. In the forest, the human is “reborn” as an elf — this can be gruesome or not, to taste — still an animal, but their reproductive system has been “taken over” by their internal plant gametophyte
4. “Elf sex” transfers haploid plant gametes and may produce a purely plant zygote (in either or both of the elves, but not of either, genetically) which develops into a diploid sporophyte within the elf’s abdomen — the human elf is now hosting two plants, one haploid (gametophyte) and one diploid (sporophyte in its coconut stage)
5. The sporophyte (the coconut) is cut from or emerges from the elf’s abdomen — it doesn’t matter whether the human is XX or XY or … — the elf itself cannot reproduce sexually, but it hosts a plant which can
6. The sporophyte is planted, grows (it is photosynthetic, unlike the gametophyte stage), and eventually emits haploid spores (this time meiosis is required)
7. Go to step 1

Why should the broo have all the life-cycle fun? Deliberate infection with aldryami spores is very Invasion of the Bodysnatchers but with no giant pod to dispose of. No elf children in this model.

[JRE]

When you really get down to it, Uz are the closest to humans because they are the only Elder race that enjoys sex. And who also enjoys kinky sex. The rest is window dressing. Ulerians assemble!

[Ormi Phengaria]

13 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Or — inkeeping (more-or-less) with “modern elves are humans who think they are plants” — we could try (I am thinking out loud, so apologies to any biologists reading for the barbarisms to follow):

1. Haploid plant spores are inhaled by a “pure” human and start dividing to produce a haploid gametophyte within it
2. The human develops an urge to “return” to their true home, the forest — the human has the thoughts, not the plant growing within: the plant is not intelligent and has no thoughts of its own
3. In the forest, the human is “reborn” as an elf — this can be gruesome or not, to taste — still an animal, but their reproductive system has been “taken over” by their internal plant gametophyte
4. “Elf sex” transfers haploid plant gametes and may produce a purely plant zygote (in either or both of the elves, but not of either, genetically) which develops into a diploid sporophyte within the elf’s abdomen — the human elf is now hosting two plants, one haploid (gametophyte) and one diploid (sporophyte in its coconut stage)
5. The sporophyte (the coconut) is cut from or emerges from the elf’s abdomen — it doesn’t matter whether the human is XX or XY or … — the elf itself cannot reproduce sexually, but it hosts a plant which can
6. The sporophyte is planted, grows (it is photosynthetic, unlike the gametophyte stage), and eventually emits haploid spores (this time meiosis is required)
7. Go to step 1

Why should the broo have all the life-cycle fun? Deliberate infection with aldryami spores is very Invasion of the Bodysnatchers but with no giant pod to dispose of. No elf children in this model.

Wow, that really is dumb! No, I have in my possession rare, enviable and most expensive second-hand copies of Second Age Slontan documents on elves, and I assure you, the parchment is alive with descriptions of the sappy branches of Plant Men, the damp tree hollows of Plant Women, and even one account of young elves drinking from their mothers' swollen gnarls. This treasure can be yours, and just for you, I have even excised the marginalia (which was full of skepticism most hurtful to those of us of the Mammaltree school, anyway). I have also commissioned illuminations from a student artist in Wilmskirk of these processes of conception, only for the most curious minds, and those with enough silver!

Limited time offer, soon I away to seek the Vegetable Lamb of Pent!

[mfbrandi]

5 minutes ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

Wow, that really is dumb!

Excellent! — I have successfully reclaimed my dunce’s hat-cum-crown of thorns after recent scurrilous and unfounded claims of smartness. Do I have to hum “Blue Moon”, now?

[radmonger]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Or — inkeeping (more-or-less) with “modern elves are humans who think they are plants”

For Aldryami, i think i prefer the  take that they are trees who dream that they are human. 

Cult precedes not merely culture, but biology. Worshipping in a particular way means using the life force of your magic to shape your body in a particular way.. Which then changes the nature of what results when you reproduce. So by worshiping anthropomorphic deities like Aldrya, trees become able to speak, move and act with agency.

Similarly, Mostali are obviously rogue AIs whose programming drifted due to lack of downtime for sentience-prevention maintenance

Trolls are darkness demons who, expelled to the surface by Yelm, needed to rapidly adapt to survive in such a harsh environment.

There are various other water, fire and celestial demons in the same boat.

Even those usually called humans are in fact just animals who once dreamt of walking on two legs.

The only actual human, Grandfather Mortal,  died before time, and has no surviving descendants.

[mfbrandi]

5 minutes ago, radmonger said:

darkness demons who … needed to rapidly adapt to survive in such a harsh environment … those usually called humans are in fact just animals who once dreamt of walking on two legs

“I have been doing better. But somehow the things drift back again: the stubborn Uz-flesh grows day by day back again.”
— The Island of Doctor KL

[JRE]

I do not consider Uzko as demons, as they are a surface people, a creation of Kyger Lytor to have children that could thrive in the Hurtplace, or at least reproduce fast enough to conquer it. Which is why the Curse of Kin bites so deeply. As they are a weapon, an adaptation, a step beyond the demons, made by using the man rune / mating with Grandfather Mortal.

And I consider them true children of Grandfather Mortal, and that separates them from the Uzuz, unless an Uzko (or a human) quests succesfully to become a demon once again, which will mean among other things rejecting their mortality. 

Grandfather Mortal was the first killed, but he learnt how to return to life, which is why he is still around doing things all over the place during the Lesser and Greater Darkness. Mostly suffer in many ways and have sex with many different partners. 

I think his ressurrection path, as Daka Fal, requires a descendant willing to give you their body, so not useful to certain kind of heroes, or for a fast return from death, unless prepared in advance. It would work with any of his descendants, however, so if you learn it you could return as anything descended from you. I assume most ressurrections that require an existing body and a certain willingness from the resident soul are based on his, though usually with an adoption ritual that turns someone not related into your descendant.

Another of his secrets is actually being able to change his biological sex, so she is also Grandmother Mortal, and the secret her shamans try to emulate, first by changing their gender, later by actually changing physically.

[JRE]

My interpretation of this thread is not actually picking dumb ideas and rejecting better ones (hopefully to their own worthy threads), but presenting ideas as a stream of consciousness channeling of Glorantha. A homage to Greg Stafford's creativity by just improvising without the filter of the rules, the games, the books or even common sense.

Where you are not wrong because somewhere somebody wrote something you did not know. Where that flash of inspiration while watching a curling tournament is as worthy as the actual quote from the Guide. Where having fun is the most important thing. 

Unfortunately I find being a God Learnerish monomythologist fun. That is also dumb.

I hope the gems among the dross will be rescued and get their own proper threads. The others will get their opportunity to make people smile, laugh or huff and then be forgotten. But the wackyness and quirkyness is what makes Glorantha interesting for me after forty years, and this thread is where that shines.

[mfbrandi]

6 minutes ago, JRE said:

My interpretation of this thread is … presenting ideas as a stream of consciousness … just improvising without the filter … or even common sense … Where you are not wrong … Where having fun is the most important thing … make people smile, laugh or huff and then be forgotten … and this thread is where that shines.

[Nods enthusiastically.]

28 minutes ago, JRE said:

I hope the gems among the dross will be rescued and get their own proper threads.

But do we need to take the solos, re-harmonise them, add arrangements, and re-record them? People do it to Parker, but should they? And no one here is Bird, right?

[AlHazred]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

And no one here is Bird, right?

LOL, you think birds are real? Birds aren't real! It's all a conspiracy of Vrimak to get some aspect of godhood after all the Portions of Yelm were gone! Fake it 'til you make it, as they say!

Edited July 13, 2023 by AlHazred

[DrGoth]

16 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

2. I picture Hunters deliberately seeking out shrines that offer the magic they're looking for, much like Eurmal worshipers are forced to. This is good roleplaying fodder as well.

(dragged from another thread)

Is that like doing all the hunting grounds in Horizon Zero Dawn?  I swear, sometimes in that game I felt like I was playing a Praxian. You even ride beasts (well, robot ones).

Was someone saying Glorantha is the future of this world?

[mfbrandi]

David Mikics on Harold Bloom (full text here), or “Glorantha and the American Dream”:

[T]he writers he preferred were often imaginative, bloody-minded extremists. Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts were his favorite works of twentieth-century American fiction. These two books are brutally Oedipal, lurid at times, and relentless …, they are absolutely unadulterated by comfort of any kind. But Harold himself was gentle, self-mocking, and heartfelt, not at all tough or cynical …

[I]n Bloom’s work Freud competes with Emerson as a wisdom writer … Emerson celebrates imaginative possibility, whereas Freud’s tragic sensibility stresses our human limitations. Freud believes in the reality principle; Emerson … urges us to defy mundane reality and reach for a higher creative power …

Bloom knew there is a darker side to American self-reliance, best described by D. H. Lawrence when he said, “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” A demonic recklessness runs like a live wire through American culture, and … Harold brought into dialogue these two sides, light and dark, of American individualism …

Bloom says that he hears in both prophets, [James] Baldwin and Jeremiah, “the terrible pathos of origins.” That pathos uncovers a dark side of the American dream, and stands against Emerson’s trust that we can make ourselves anew. Yet Baldwin too has his hopes for America … Bloom shows how, for Baldwin, the racial trauma at the core of American life intersects with Biblical anxiety of influence. Here as elsewhere, Harold was multifaceted about the meaning of America, its promise as well as its burden.

[mfbrandi]

“[B]ringing forth … coal … [and] … oil … Caladra and Aurelion are gods of … fertility and harmony”

— CoRQ Prosopaedia, p. 20
————————————

Someone won’t be happy with this perspective on climate change.

Edited July 16, 2023 by mfbrandi
added XR link

[Joerg]

7 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

“[B]ringing forth … coal … [and] … oil … Caladra and Aurelion are gods of … fertility and harmony”

— CoRQ Prosopaedia, p. 20
————————————

Someone won’t be happy with this perspective on climate change.

They are great users of geothermal energy, but think that volcanic eruptions are good for the environment. A mixed bunch...

Coal may actually be used for making their slash-and-burn fields more fertile, turning it into Terra Preta, rather than just serving as fuel for the casting of bronze objects, and (tentatively) smelting Storm- or Sea-degraded metal ores (oxidic/carbonate/sulphate ores, as opposed to Darkness-degraded sulphidic ores) if there is any smelting done by humans under the surveillance of Gemborg.

At the scale of Gloranthan metallurgy, use of fossile coal is environmentally preferable to the massive use of charcoal, even with some deforestation going on for securing those coal mines.

Same with the petroleum they produce - this replaces massive whaling (or slaying of other marine beings, like e.g. manatees and dugongs, for their blubber) and serves as a replacement of plant oils as fuel, allowing these to be used as food instead. Even without polymer chemistry or synthetic alchemy requiring some dino-juice, there are plenty of alchemy-adjacent uses for oils and paraffine outside of lanterns and candles - de-fatting skins and furs, polishing and preserving metal items, waterproofing textiles, or as a neutral solvent for perfume extraction from basic ingredients.

[mfbrandi]

Worship is a tool of the Evil One, so use it only with special dispensation.

—————————————————————————————————————
In that hidden place was formed Ganesatarus, the Evil God.
Ganesatarus is everything Idovanus is not.
Disobedience, evil, cruelty, hunger, worship, death, and impurity are his tools.

CoR — Prosopaedia, p. 43 [line breaks and emphasis mine]
—————————————————————————————————————

For extra theological fun, debate whether existence is a predicate and whether if Idovanus/Ganesatarus is, then Ganesatarus/Idovanus is not. (Up to 5 marks for this question.)

[mfbrandi]

Dwarves do not have a true religion. Instead, they follow the Way of Mostal. This path defines the universe for the majority of dwarves everywhere. It gives them personal immortality at the expense of illusory freedom. Dwarves that keep at their ancestral tasks, doing the things that dwarves are meant to do, live forever — a powerful incentive to maintain this way of life.

— Guide to Glorantha, p. 87
——————————————————————

 

When Zzabur asked his father, “How do we stay immortal?” the Prophet answered simply. He said, “Do not change. Do what you have done. Act within the Laws and Ways you have been given, for they are immortal. Your actions embody the One, your bodies enact the One. Anything new from this moment forward is Death.”

Thus we were never severed from Life, like the rest; from Magic, like the rest; from Divinity, like the rest; from Good, like the rest; from ourselves, like the rest. We are not mortal people, or gods, or good people, or our own people — we simply are. All else is a wan shadow of us.

When we die, the world dies.

— Brithini Immortality
——————————————————————

 

The eternal gods themselves would have ceased to exist but for the Cosmic Compromise, whereby the gods that still were voluntarily abdicated their free will within the temporal world rather than lose their All into the maws of nonexistence. The gods remained eternal at the cost of being limited to their God Time actions; their actions in Time are fixed in place. If they were ever to transgress from their fixed portions of the universe, they would enter the temporal world where Death and entropy would rob and destroy them.

— God Time, CoR Prosopaedia, p. 48
——————————————————————

 

I think it is fair to say that we are not supposed to think kindly of the Brithini or the dwarves for clinging to immortality in this way, so presumably we are supposed to despise the gods for taking the same line. They are fed to Wakboth by Argrath because he despises them for their rigidity and cowardice.

It all plays to the familiar trope of short-lived, adaptable humans who are fated to replace their inflexible but long-lived elder “cousins”.

But wait — if Argrath really is Ferric Jaggar, we might not want to agree too quickly that this is all right and proper. After all, perhaps the dwarves and Brithini were cruelly libelled, and if the Prosopaedia may have been written by “Bastakos Forkbeard, the Knowing Companion of Prince Argrath” …

[mfbrandi]

WAITING MOUTH INDUCTION, session one

They gave you your blotter on the way in? Good. You’ve signed the release? Really, it is just a formality. Here is your futon. Now, close your eyes — slow breaths — and picture Escher’s Möbius Strip II …

The strip is a mesh, a net, a web. Twisted into the familiar figure 8 of the infinity rune. Don’t let the shape fool you: attend to the odd number of half-twists which enable the serpent, the Devil, the dragon to swallow its own tail.

And the red ants. Are they ants? Do they have six legs? How are their bodies shaped? Spiders? No? How fast are they moving? Is it perhaps one creature trailing afterimages, chasing itself? The monster is on the other side. The other side. The other …

Chaos outside. Cosmos inside. Chaos inside. Cosmos outside. There is only one side. Faster, faster! Is the “ant” moving or the strip? Can we separate them? Three. Two. One. None.

Listen! Julius Henry’s friend is speaking:

• 
  
  At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
  Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
  But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
  Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
  Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
  There would be no dance, and there is only the dance …
  
  Descend lower, descend only
  Into the world of perpetual solitude,
  World not world, but that which is not world,
  Internal darkness, deprivation
  And destitution of all property,
  Desiccation of the world of sense,
  Evacuation of the world of fancy,
  Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
  This is the one way, and the other
  Is the same, not in movement
  But abstention from movement; while the world moves
  In appetency, on its metalled ways
  Of time past and time future.

• 

Spider/web. Devil/dragon. Chaos/law. Wanting/wantless. Catch/release. Empty/full. They are just trying to confuse you. Don’t worry: She is patient.

Hungry? Fancy a bite? There are steamed wontons next door. Just through there. On the other side.

Spoiler

OUROBOROS … is depicted as a dragon devouring its own tail … instead of the Infinite, our perceptions are confronted with some other image, which we are capable of comprehending: the Cosmic Dragon … In [Kralori and EWF] worship, the Cosmic Dragon is held to be … solely responsible for the creations of the worlds … The primary action of the Cosmic Dragon is its conflict with the monster called Orxili … The body of Orxili was placed in the center of the world and the Cosmic Dragon set it spinning and wrapped itself about the body
— Prosopaedia, p. 97

ORXILI … The Cosmic Egg … or a Chaos god. To dragons, Orxili is the source of the creation of Glorantha … God Learners who contacted it identified it as a Chaos god with a bloated body, six limbs and no head … Though cut apart, the limbs returned as lesser Chaos monsters.
— Prosopaedia, p. 96

Edited July 21, 2023 by mfbrandi
update graphic

[scott-martin]

What fell out of PA MAL(T) to construct (OM) PA LAM was of course 
What they incorporated into the stale (OM) PA LAM to get the world moving again was of course 

[JRE]

Changing Topic to well trod paths. 

Ralzakark practises Daka Fali heroic ressurrection, which means you return in the body of one of your descendants, which is easier when you are a broo. As he has gotten used to the unicorn imagery, and to give an impression of continuity, he always tries to have some captive unicorns. Sometimes the return is not perfect, specially as he has been increasing in power lately, so one body, even a specially prepared broo unicorn, cannot hold all that power, so he returns in several bodies, using Arkat's trick.

This growing power could be linked to the Lunar support of Rashorana / Nysalor, but I think it is more likely due to the growing power of the returning Arkats, and it bleeds off into their shadow, including similar aspects. As such, Ralzakark the Red Emperor would be the shadow equivalent of Arkat the Emperor, which would hint what is the aspect of Arkat developing in Dragon Pass.

Right now, for my own work in Ralios, I will assume the Empire of Peace cannot return to Ralios, and the land cannot be unified, because the keystone aspect is busy becoming a storm emperor in Dragon Pass.

Taking it further, other aspects of Nysalor are already present in the Red Emperor, and in the three kingdom Talar, so the Arkat / Nysalor  round two becomes just a small part of the whole fight for the middle air / strain the limits of the compromise / redefine the place of Chaos in the world that is actually the cover for the actual aim of allowing the gods and the whole god time magical extraction apparatus fall apart / perform a sacred Utuma and leave Glorantha for good, finally enlightened.

Genocidal humanism under a draconic mask for the win.

And at the end, Chaos will no longer be an existential menace to Glorantha, just a part of it, one given to wide variations and tendency for extremes, but nevertheless part of the world, as the old war that the gods refused to finish because it meant they were beaten, has finally ended.

And Peace between Chaos and what is not Chaos arrived. That is what the Fourth Age really represents, for me. 

[Akhôrahil]

On 8/2/2023 at 4:01 PM, JRE said:

Ralzakark practises Daka Fali heroic ressurrection, which means you return in the body of one of your descendants, which is easier when you are a broo.

For another dumb theory, it's easy to imagine Ralzakark, with his multiple bodies, being a "job" in the way the Red Emperor or the Pharaoh is (was). Just with multiple parallel and not merely serial bodies. You can become Ralzakark in the same way you can become the Red Emperor or the Pharaoh, except you can do it while the bearer of the mantle is still alive and it's non-exclusive (just as Arkat Reborn seems to be).

Under this interpretation, Ralzakark with the Scorpion Arm is at least more original than the Unicorn Emperor (but where the Unicorn Emperor usurped the majority of the Ralzakark mantle), and the "Ralzakark" defeated in Hahlgrim's War could have been a pretender (or even two pretenders!) to becoming Ralzakark. It would also explain how "Ralzakark" can come back to become the Monster Emperor even after "final death" (LoT) - sure, that Ralzakark is dead, the same way a previous incarnation of the Red Emperor or the Pharaoh can be dead, but you can still become the Ralzakark (or one of them). You could even argue that when the God-Learners wake Ralzakark, what happens is that someone manages to claim that currently empty job description.

(To make it even dumber, maybe the Bright Empire Ralzakark wasn't the original either. The Thing With Many Bodies, anyone?)

Edited August 3, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[mfbrandi]

On 8/2/2023 at 3:01 PM, JRE said:

And Peace between Chaos and what is not Chaos arrived. That is what the Fourth Age really represents, for me.

What is and what is not. Cosmos and Chaos. And to be quite unfair to poor syphilitic Freddy (and who among us can say we have never indulged in that cruel hobby?) some of us when we stare into Chaos — into the Abyss, into what is not — see only monsters, sprout tentacles, claws, or fangs, and become the monsters we fancied were there, for human nature abhors a vacuum and longs to fill it with the abhorrent. And then we go to war with ourselves, because we hate and fear all monsters. If HPL scared himself by staring too long into the dark, he seems to have realised that he was the monster he feared — or at least, that is how I choose to spin The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Monsters are born at the “interface” of what is and what is not, but it is senseless to blame what is not for this teratogenesis — if there is a cause, it is always something that is, part of Cosmos. There is nothing on the dark side of the mirror.

So of course Arkat is the slayer of Gbaji and also Gbaji himself, but never Nysalor. Arkat is the endlessly replicated Gerroldian “folded man” — it turns out that Arkat is Cosmos, and Cosmos is the demon who swallowed Cosmic Fire and ever after howled in fear and pain. We are all Arkat, the bootstrapped Cosmos, the A–Z, the Alpha and the Omega, and we are terrified. After this realization of pantheistic solipsism, is it any wonder we’ve taken to covering, smashing, or turning to the wall any mirrors we find?

The thing I have always liked about Nysalor is that Nysalor is dead — or perhaps I should say “cannot exist”.

On the one hand:

Quote

This deity [Nysalor] was first was known as Rashoran, and … is known to have been killed by the god of entropy sometime during the Great Darkness … Near the end of the First Age, the mortal races successfully built a new god, Nysalor
— CoT PDF, p. 84

But on the other:

Quote

Kajabor wields entropy in the world. Often called God-Killer or Black Hole or Great Fear, he destroys all …, annihilating all possibilities of individuality or unity. Entities slain by Kajabor have never returned
— CoT PDF, p. 14

There is no coming back from Kajabor, so whatever was loosed in Dorastor, it wasn’t Rashoran/a. Nysalor is not a part of the furniture of the world, cannot be. But Gbaji is — Gbaji is Cosmos when it knows that it has only itself to blame but nonetheless cannot accept it. Gbaji is us, and we deceive ourselves.

The thing about Kajabor is that it doesn’t seem credible as a monster stomping the lozenge: who are the Kajabor-swallowed entities such that “their names, and memories of them, have been lost” (CoR Prosopaedia, p. 68)? If it is impossible to say, then is anyone able to say that there were any such? Rather Kajabor is fear of the Void and Rashoran/a is the comfort of the Void; these are not gods, they are just attitudes we can take, poses we can strike; saying that the latter was fed to the former is merely a fairy tale expression of pessimism.

So we can hope for peace in the Fourth Age — where the Moon is invisible because it is not there — but Chaos won’t come to the treaty table, only elements of Cosmos can. But some of them will be Chaos-haunted — “Void-touched”, “gripped by the Great Fear” — and like Rashoran/a we must comfort them; after all, they are us.

Then we go looking for Ferric Jaggar, but what must we do with him when we have found him? Certainly, we must not allow that one man to become a god.

The trouble with this is that it all seems completely orthodox.

Edited August 3, 2023 by mfbrandi
whitespace

[mfbrandi]

 This set me thinking (the wise have stopped reading already):

On 8/2/2023 at 12:41 AM, Scorus said:

I'm afraid you'll need to explain this one to me like I'm five. The Night ends and the Dawn begins before the Dawn?

Here are some pictures of Glorantha:

Each is a picture — the sort of thing one might be in the grip of — not a formal diagram. There is no real model, no empirical theory. If I suggested otherwise, I would make cosmologists sad, and that would be wrong.

The first picture is the one I had when I was twelve, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever: history sprang fully armoured from the brow of Zeus — it had that whole in medias res thing going on — and yet, somehow, before that there had been a war among the gods which had taken no time at all and had no sequence. It is still cool, right? Or maybe I am still twelve … or even younger.

The second picture is indescribably dull: we say time began 1,600 years ago, but it is not really true; something important may have happened then, but we have people and cultures who rightly say they go back much further than 1,600 years; they remember the Gods War — it happened to them, and they wrote it down as it happened. Now where, I ask you, is the fun in that? Nowhere. There is none. Dull, dull, dull!

Finally, we have something that may be a bit like the current official view, if there is one. History — the real deal, all the objective shit — happens along the x axis, at y = 0. Is your x coordinate your location in time? Not quite: if you have a non-zero y coordinate, you have wandered out of history, out of time, as such. Like I said, it wouldn’t do to lean too hard on any of this.

“However, the Myths are not objective reality, but subjective by their very nature” (GtG, p. 154), so our y axis is something like subjectivity, and the further you travel away from the objectivity of life on the x axis — the bigger your y value — the deeper into story you get. And way up the weird end of story, we find the Gods War. The Gods War doesn’t occupy a line but a fuzzy cloud, and perhaps that »cough« explains »cough« the “contradictions”: different versions of a Gods War event may occur at different y values. Yada, yada, yada …

Perhaps there is a wrinkle in that as you try to reduce your x value, your y value goes up: you cannot time travel/heroquest back into history — i.e. y = 0 — if you try, you are pushed away from the x axis and into the high y hell of the Gods War, and maybe there is a steep change in y as you try to push past 0 ST or thereabouts, the nominal beginning of time. (You try to change your x coordinate, but does it shift, at all? Perhaps you go straight up. Perhaps.)

Presumably, every point in the Grey/Silver Age has a positive y coordinate, and in this picture, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t end exactly on 0 ST, nor if people argue about exactly when the Dawn was — the Grey/Silver Age comes before “normal” time’s reliable cycle of sunrise and sunset. It is before “time”, as well as “above” objective reality. But it is getting there.

A variant on this would be that it is not just that one cannot reach the objective past, but that there isn’t one: the “past” is subjective, and it is more subjective the further back you look: there is no creation, only creation myth.

Do I buy the idea of subjective reality or subjectivity as a dimension of reality, even as a bit of fun? No, not really, but the point is to get to grips with something like a metaphor — “OK, he’s a witch; now what?” — not an empirical theory, not real cosmology: with this vague picture before the mind, which way will my imagination run? Which way will yours?

Even with that said — ambition set woefully low — the above is likely as full of holes as a shotgun-blasted sieve. So it goes.

Edited August 3, 2023 by mfbrandi
grip —> grips

[John Biles]

I wanted to draw this, but I can't draw it.

I subscribe to the 'Glorantha within time is synthesized from what was left of the many nearby islands of reality which periodically intersected during the God Time' theory.  This is why the God Time is so contradictory and time is weird there; it's like trying to reconstruct a story from fanfics based on it.

As Chaos ate them up, the cosmic compromise brought together what was left and tried to reconstruct the whole thing, creating the stable region inside time.  So there's a huge messy network of arrows and loops before time, then after time, you have a straight line but parallel to it is the reconstructed God Time.

 

[JRE]

Long metaphysics that nobody in Glorantha really believes.

After creation there were sequential events, as progressively more thing existed than there were before. But none had self-awareness, so there are no tales and little information. Then the first self aware observers appeared, and that brought tales and deliberate conflict. The conflict escalated, those self aware awakened others, and founded three paths. You could coerce the powers into doing what you wanted, you could make a deal with the powers, which required making them self-aware first, or you could search for power inside yourself. It is not clear if they found the dragons or the action created the dragons, but the dragons are.

At this point change was not irreversible, so you could always return to a previous state, if it was more to your liking. That did not set well with the disfavored, because it meant that the powerful would always be more powerful, and even a temporary victory would be unmade. So they searched for and found irreversible change. Now things could really change.

And of course they changed for the worse. At a certain point there was so little unchanged that the Spike exploded or collapsed and the world turned to pieces.

The few remaining survivors faced with annihilation of everything, bound the power of irreversible change into a power named Time, and put what remained of their power outside of it, outside Glorantha, where reversible change was still possible, within the constraints of power and awareness of what had already taken place. 

What was an unexpected effect is that creatures within Time could actually implement irreversible change in the Godplane. But it was a natural consequence of allowing the Godplane to affect the mundane world of Time. If it could affect the mundane, the mundane could affect it.

Initially changes were involuntary. conflating gods, making up new myths and then inserting them into the Godplane, weakening an enemy by weakening their magic. But soon the changes were voluntary, making up new gods, erasing others. The Godplane defended itself, as each irreversible change once again weakened reality and risked a second collapse. But the presence of Time strengthened also the world, as it was harder and harder to apply widespread change. And what could be changed was becoming more codified. Magic that used to be just what you could imagine, now was subject to precedent and hardened into natural laws. The world of Time was becoming rigid, harder to change from outside.

The Hero Wars plays this conflict, between change and the unchanging, between a wild imaginative magic and a rigid set of rules, between the remnants of the previous age of magic and the new age of matter. 

In this interpretation, there was Time after the Unity Battle / the Compromise, even if the Dawn was still far away, but it was still finding its place. So there was some scope to reverse changes you did not like. It was a period of learning the new rules of the world and of rebuilding the world. The Sacred Time is mostly pumping up magic into the Godplane to keep it running.

 

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, JRE said:

three paths …

• coerce …
• make a deal …
• search for power inside yourself

[formatting mine]

Or ride three horses at once and join the circus, but even in Glorantha, some people will shun the path of the Trumpian superhero and just go with the flow. I find myself in sympathy with the Malkioni Ompalam Sufis:

Quote

The school of the Wool Cloaks seeks the understanding of esoteric knowledge through complete submission to Ompalam and the annihilation of the self … The adepts of these techniques claim, paradoxically, that they are the only truly liberated mortals in all of Glorantha.
— GtG, p. 47

If I were doing their PR, I might give that a trim/rewrite:

• The school of the Wool Cloaks seeks complete submission and the annihilation of the self.
  Our adepts are the only truly liberated mortals in all of Glorantha.
  Pick up a leaflet at the door.

As it stands, it reads like the submission is only a means to the end of esoteric knowledge (which will then be used in the usual sledgehammer fashion). When it comes to the writers’ attitude to mysticism (by which I don’t mean unlocking one’s hidden superpowers), I am never sure whether:

1. it is hostile, but they like to give the Devil the best lines
2. it is hostile, but I sometimes think it is ambivalent because I am sympathetic
3. it is ambivalent
4. it is sympathetic, but it is wrapped up in the monstrous as a tease (this seems a stretch, even for me)

The cynic in me says one of the low numbers has it.

3 hours ago, JRE said:

The Hero Wars plays this conflict, between change and the unchanging, between a wild imaginative magic and a rigid set of rules, between the remnants of the previous age of magic and the new age of matter …

The Sacred Time is mostly pumping up magic into the Godplane to keep it running.

So couldn’t we get the advantages of thinning — “Peace between Chaos and what is not Chaos” — by just cutting off the Sacred Time POW supply, without the need for the melodramatic feeding of the gods to Wakboth? Or maybe that is what happened: tired out by the holy wars, people fell away from religion, and there was a slow, creeping secularisation; some wag later wrote the fairy story of Argrath and the Devil to jazz it up (or to lay the groundwork for a religious revival).

My pet theory is that as the world begins to make sense and the gods fade into traumatic memory, Gloranthan imaginations flourish and their poetry improves immeasurably.