was Orlanth LBQ a failure ?

[French Desperate WindChild]

the goal of the LBQ is to save the world from chaos.

After the LBQ, chaos was still present

So I can conclude Orlanth LBQ was a failure.

Now the question is why it was a failure ?

As Jeff said, the purpose of the LBQ is not to bring back to life someone.

And what was the purpose of Orlanth ? Bring back Yelm. The intention was wrong. And that was the original mistake.

Arachne Solara may have understood that. She tried to change the intention by manipulating Orlanth with the Ginna Jar mask. And she failed (If she knew how to save the world).

Then she manipulated all the gods, creating the great compromise. This net was just the first (second ?) patch, until the next chaotic attack.

And maybe, Argrath succeed to save the world from chaos by doing something else than "just" the LBQ.

[scott-martin]

We're all here to argue about it. Since the alternative would have been worse, I'll call it a qualified win, a compromise.

18 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

And what was the purpose of Orlanth ? Bring back Yelm. The intention was wrong. And that was the original mistake.

Some of my favorite lines characterize his intent (and his role) a little differently:

Orlanth found his mother dead, saw his father suffering and chained between the earth and sky, and took upon himself the task to right the wrongs which had brought such disaster about. He took what tools and weapons he could, called some friends and met others along the way, and thereby joined the Lightbringers who searched unknowable paths to rescue the world.

IMG to undertake the quest with the Lightbringers is a matter of atonement. You need to feel sorry and you need to take responsibility for the way the world has evolved around you. The quest is an adventure in search of solutions. In the story we tell, the solution he found was forgiving his enemy and submitting to alien justice for the good of the world. A new sun rose. The world was not reset as though nothing had ever gone wrong. It was only repaired, good to go until the next time.

Later a hippie becomes so distraught by the way he sees the world going that he tries something similar. Following in god's footsteps hands him a weapon from the west. We say he has raised the dead or restored the world, or something. The weapon he reached for changes the world and those changes require additional adjustment. Time is a process.

Clever people figure out what's going on and weaponize the ritual trigonometry in order to get what they want. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they only get what they need. 

I really like this line also:

34 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

And maybe, Argrath succeed to save the world from chaos by doing something else than "just" the LBQ.

 

[Dissolv]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

the goal of the LBQ is to save the world from chaos.

After the LBQ, chaos was still present

So I can conclude Orlanth LBQ was a failure.

That's quite the premise, and I find it a stretch.  Orlanth went to save the world sure, but total eradication of all Chaos or failure?  Seems way too binary.  Orlanth wasn't about to put everything back to the Green Age, or the Lesser Darkness.  Why go back to a system that doesn't work for you and yours, or return to a time where the excesses led directly to the Greater Darkness?  Orlanth is more about moving forward with something new, and what they came up with was the best that the various powers could do with what was left. 

Considering the alternative was oblivion, and the case was so dire that only the IfoughtWeWon held things together in his absence, it's tough for me to characterize the Lightbringers Quest as a "failure".

[Akhôrahil]

I think that the LBQ, by its nature, can never be a total victory. The compromise is fundamental to the whole thing. Best case, you bring back someone who will be trouble later.

Edited June 30, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Roko Joko]

He wanted his wife.

[John Biles]

Orlanth brought back the Sun and ended the Great Darkness.  He definitely succeeded.

 

[Fedman Kassad]

I always imagined the end of the LBQ going something like this:

"Orlanth stood with Yelm in the Hall of the Dead, and saw before him two paths...

One path was a path of light, and showed Yelm put back on his throne, back as the Emperor of all Gods, back as the Ruler of the Celestial Court, back as a Lord that even Orlanth must recognize as the One above All...  This path rid the world of all Chaos but made he and his people thralls for eternity...  and Orlanth cried out and cast his gaze from this path.

The other path was darker, and saw the taint of Chaos spread throughout the cosmos, saw the compromise that he and all others must embrace, saw the conflict and struggle that continued without end, saw the gods die and saw magic leave the world...  but this path left his people free of the terrible yoke of servitude, free to struggle and to prosper and to fail and to die, but to die free of the reign of others...

And Orlanth strode out onto the darker path, where awaited Arachne Solara..."

[Sir_Godspeed]

While he did not defeat Chaos completely (which wasn't really his goal as such, but to save the world for his kin and by extension everyone I suppose), he did provide the necessary impetus for Arachne Solara to devour/mate with Kajabor and produce Time, ie. entropy, a kind of cosmos-integrated Chaos. 

Orlanth is truly the Larnsting.

Edited July 3, 2020 by Sir_Godspeed

[French Desperate WindChild]

 

On 6/30/2020 at 9:05 PM, John Biles said:

Orlanth brought back the Sun and ended the Great Darkness.  He definitely succeeded.

 

He succeed if LBQ object is bring back the Sun and end Great Darkness. If not, that just a result of the quest, not its success (event if it is a good news... except for darkness).

 

On 6/30/2020 at 7:30 PM, Akhôrahil said:

I think that the LBQ, by its nature, can never be a total victory. The compromise is fundamental to the whole thing. Best case, you bring back someone who will be trouble later.

12 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

While he did not defeat Chaos completely (which wasn't really his goal as such, but to save the world for his kin and by extension everyone I suppose), he did provide the necessary impetus for Arachne Solara to devour/mate with Kajabor and produce Time, ie. entropy, a kind of cosmos-integrated Chaos. 

Orlanth is truly the Larnsting.

Yes it is, I m not sure of my sentence in english but I consider Orlanth's LBQ result as a remission but not an healing. He transformed the world in a better way but he didn't fit 100% of the objective.

 

[Jeff]

Orlanth restored the Grand Order and was able to continue existing, along with the rest of the gods. I'd say it was a success.

[scott-martin]

44 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

a remission but not an healing.

I like the oncological vocabulary you are using and hope that all is well. To extend the metaphor, there is no ultimate or permanent cure for chaos in Glorantha. All we can do is extend our ability to mitigate its virulence, buying time for something else to kill us instead. The LBQ does a "good enough" job and so is still prescribed today in cases that do not respond to more orthodox forms of treatment. Specialists keep working on refinements that help the therapy work even better . . . we've come a long way since Harmast and outcomes that would have been miraculous a century ago are now routine.

[Nick Brooke]

Radiation causes cancer. Radiation can also be used to treat cancer. +1% Illumination chance next Sacred Time if you follow my analogy to its logical end.

[jajagappa]

52 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Radiation causes cancer. Radiation can also be used to treat cancer. +1% Illumination chance next Sacred Time if you follow my analogy to its logical end.

The Red Goddess is a Duck.

[soltakss]

On 6/30/2020 at 4:09 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

the goal of the LBQ is to save the world from chaos.

The goal of the LBQ was to save the world from destruction.

On 6/30/2020 at 4:09 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

After the LBQ, chaos was still present

The world existed after the LBQ.

On 6/30/2020 at 4:09 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

So I can conclude Orlanth LBQ was a failure.

Or it was a success.

 

[scott-martin]

45 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

The Red Goddess is a Duck.

Photographic record checks out.

[Ian Absentia]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

To extend the metaphor, there is no ultimate or permanent cure for chaos in Glorantha. All we can do is extend our ability to mitigate its virulence, buying time for something else to kill us instead.

There's always another sunrise, yeah?

Unless Orlanth comes along and dicks it all up.

!i!

[kalidor]

And what is the diference between LIGHT-BQ and LIFE-BQ ? Same stations? Is posible to repeat the LIFE-BQ? or was the knowledge Lost?

[jajagappa]

15 minutes ago, kalidor said:

And what is the diference between LIGHT-BQ and LIFE-BQ ?

I believe that one restored the Sun, and the other Life.  They may be synonymous, or they may reflect the respective returns of Yelm and Ernalda.

17 minutes ago, kalidor said:

Is posible to repeat the LIFE-BQ? or was the knowledge Lost?

Probably, in the sense that any myth can be repeated, but is never quite the same.

And yes, the knowledge was probably lost, since no one has likely completed/undertaken the Lifebringer's Quest since it was originally done.

Same stations?  Probably not.

[scott-martin]

5 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I believe that one restored the Sun, and the other Life.  They may be synonymous, or they may reflect the respective returns of Yelm and Ernalda

 

Now that you two mention it, I wonder if the Flamal Quest ("greater bonus") wasn't really the core of an archaic LifeBQ pushed to the margins of history as the Yelm narrative took over from the Dawn Age. In that scenario, some people might still perform it every year with only the usual hoopla . . .it just hasn't been weaponized in the same way.

Of course in the Hero Wars people spinning out of the Argrath mystique might reach back to these primal mysteries. I know I would.

[Sir_Godspeed]

6 hours ago, kalidor said:

And what is the diference between LIGHT-BQ and LIFE-BQ ? Same stations? Is posible to repeat the LIFE-BQ? or was the knowledge Lost?

It's possible that the Lifebringer Quest was a more ancient myth, told by the Grey/Dawn Era Heortlings. It's possible that the Lightbringer Quest was a mythic innovation or just re-orientation (by focusing on slightly different elements, ie. the Sun instead of Ernalda/Earth/Life) done by the Heortling-Pelorian synthesis of the Bright Empire (that's also probably when we see Rebellus Terminus being identified with Orlanth, and the Bad Emperor being identified with Yelm for the first time, with them previously having been unidentified, or even different entities entirely. Myth is weird).

This all depends on how much you believe the God Time has a central core of "true" events, and how much you believe the God Time is more a reflection of the myths that people tell, believe and performat any one time. (It's entirely possible that both are true at once. Once again, myth is weird.)

Edited July 4, 2020 by Sir_Godspeed

[MOB]

On 7/1/2020 at 1:09 AM, French Desperate WindChild said:

the goal of the LBQ is to save the world from chaos.

After the LBQ, chaos was still present

So I can conclude Orlanth LBQ was a failure.

Now the question is why it was a failure ?

As Jeff said, the purpose of the LBQ is not to bring back to life someone.

And what was the purpose of Orlanth ? Bring back Yelm. The intention was wrong. And that was the original mistake.

Arachne Solara may have understood that. She tried to change the intention by manipulating Orlanth with the Ginna Jar mask. And she failed (If she knew how to save the world).

Then she manipulated all the gods, creating the great compromise. This net was just the first (second ?) patch, until the next chaotic attack.

And maybe, Argrath succeed to save the world from chaos by doing something else than "just" the LBQ.

I think this is worthy of @scott-martin's Your Dumbest Theory thread (my fave thread on this forum for a long time). And I definitely mean that as a compliment!

[Austin]

On 7/3/2020 at 11:55 AM, jajagappa said:

The Red Goddess is a Duck.

Build a bridge out of her!

[John Biles]

On 7/3/2020 at 11:55 AM, jajagappa said:

The Red Goddess is a Duck.

So you're saying that we need to put her and Argath in a scale, and if they weigh the same, he's a witch, so we have to burn him?

[Akhôrahil]

On 7/3/2020 at 6:55 PM, jajagappa said:

The Red Goddess is a Duck.

The Red Moon is her egg.

When it hatches, the world will wail.

[jajagappa]

6 hours ago, John Biles said:

So you're saying that we need to put her and Argath in a scale, and if they weigh the same, he's a witch, so we have to burn him?

Clearly!  Bonfire of the Gods, here we come!