Is Argrath a good or at least acceptable Orlanthi (hero)?

[Jeff]

39 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Peredur is endlessly relatable and is in fact my old lady mentor's favorite. Some people have trouble with his rarefied cousin but the grails in question are arguably so different that comparisons break down.

To cut back to the origin of the thread, I'm not convinced capital-H Heroes are that common even in Orlanthite history. On the WBRM map, the home team fields a total of one (1) with some friendly free agents . . . and this is the terminal third age, culmination of generations of cosmic tension, etc. etc. This might be because the WBRM epic actually drives other Heroes and Hero candidates away from the other guy's drama like magnets turned to the same polarity. They have their own shit to do and despite the allure of a good seat for all the drama ultimately end up doing said shit far from the noise. But someone like Garundyer manages to remain aloof long enough that he doesn't get a counter for the period of time the game covers.

To run with that a little further, Heroes with a. capital "H" aren't common anywhere. The Lunars have three - the Red Emperor, Jar-eel, and the underrated Beat-Pot. Sartar has one home grown Hero - Argrath, with three from afar, Harrek, Gunda, and Jaldon. There's the Feathered Horse Queen, Ethirlrist, Cragspider, the Dwarf, and of course Androgeus. And four True Dragons and the Inhuman King.

Outside of there we have Garundyer, Meriatan, Lord Death on a Horse, the King of Wings, and an ancient elf or two. Let's say around twenty or so. And some two thirds of them get dragged into Dragon Pass.

[scott-martin]

23 minutes ago, Jeff said:

some two thirds of them get dragged into Dragon Pass

Musing briefly on how LBQ and similar heroquesting of last resort function within the game environment sharpens my sense that the experimental heroquesters remain "off board" while their flashier colleagues spend down the world's accumulated resources to finish saying what they need to say. A plotline of spiritual struggle going on simultaneous with the clash of armies as though a literal pilgrimage / bildungsroman / "quest" narrative had somehow been interpolated into a Lord of the Rings style epic.

The hints toward how capital-H Heroism operates in non-Orlanth contexts are interesting as well! Perhaps these personages aren't quite as straightforward as cultural paragons as their hype implies. 

[mfbrandi]

19 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Their heroquesting is largely conventional and devotional

I suspect that way back when — when we still expected Masters of Luck and Death any day now any year now at all — we none of us thought that going to church would be heroquesting. It is, I suspect, an inside–outside problem. The story of the hero’s confrontation with the external monster may sometimes stand for our confrontation with our inner demons, but when our ritual re-enactment of stories of fights with external monsters becomes a tool to help us fight … err, real external monsters, my brain starts to itch — and not necessarily in a good way. But for good or ill, this is the recursive nightmare of the Arkatland theme park — to which we all happily paid the price of admission — in which we get to see a man not-at-all-figuratively wrestle with and dismember himself. Shame about the collateral damage. Pass the popcorn.

To drag this back to the point: is Orlanth’s “hero’s journey” something that begins as a response to/atonement for the murder of the Sun, or is the murder of the Sun an integral part of the quest? It seems to me that you start with the Sun as divine authority (the demon in the brain that makes us see the world wrongly and suffer because of it) [THESIS], so you murder the Sun/god [ANTITHESIS], and you recreate the world so the Sun is more fusion reaction and less divine father/cop in the head [SYNTHESIS]. Rinse and repeat till you have only the mundane world left/you have reached psychic liberation/you have stepped off the hamster wheel of rebirth. Very roughly right?

So Nysalor and the Red Moon are the divine reasserting itself within time (keeping us from Nirvana/liberation, whatever they preach). If you see Orlanth as the architect of the Great Compromise — rather than the idiot tool of Trickster and the Sun Spider — then they will be the number one targets of the Orlanthi hero, and the dead civilians and the fallen empires are just details. But if Orlanth were to reassert himself within time, he would be part of the problem. Hence Argrath & the Devil. But if the perfect Orlanthi hero is the manifestation of Orlanth and the hero is always fighting themself, then who gets swallowed and who gets dismembered? I don’t have all the answers. Hell, by trying to squish too much together, I probably end up with none of them. Fail better next time.

[soltakss]

11 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

11 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

If he fails, then he's obviously not.

Aw no, that can't be so. Heroes that never ultimately fail.... Tell me you are making a joke Shiningbrow. Or someone else tell me he is correct and Orlanthi heroes are never the losers... Or perhaps Orlanthi do not worship thems that lose (either would truly make me sad... my fave sports hero is mighty Casey!)... I prefer to have heroes that can fail! It's what makes them heroes to my mind. Well off to research this, cause ya know, having a "never failing hero trope" sounds...

Orlanthi Heroes can, and do, fail.

King of Sartar mentions Karsten Fardrosson when talking about the Lightbringers Quest.

Quote

One spectacular failure should be mentioned. Near to Castle Blue a holy man from the Yestina Clan attempted to undertake this quest. When he failed, he seized those near to him, and the result was a trio of stars which fell from the sky, and landed upon his people in Brolia and Worion.

 

[scott-martin]

7 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

my brain starts to itch

In a way, all of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us.

I was exposed to trickster authors like Idries Shah and Don Juan Matus a little too early so the sign is always sliding unless you expend superhuman effort to pin it in place . . . and then the rest of the landscape gets melty. Build a hero war around the limits of interpretation, where our ability to negotiate difference breaks down and coexistence becomes difficult. The itch. 

I like the popcorn that accompanies the spectacular. Thinking about how Harmast accumulated his lightbringer surrogates suggests that the LBQ is also about assembling an "orlanth" from trace encounters until you reach a critical mass that satisfies. You can walk away from it. It speaks for itself. In that scenario, Orlanth's unique relationship with a trickster becomes important. He's the only one of the great gods who will wrap Eurmal in his protective mantle of personality and embrace the luciferian disruption as a familiar. I think this is the transgressive strand that keeps emerging throughout the history of Orlanthite religion, the way his system remains open to trying it different this time. Improvisation within the chord progressions of time. And as we know, it gets harder to distinguish between the storm hero prince and the trickster as you walk westward.

If there were three high elements present at the birth of time, I suspect there would be endless learned debate on how many eyes each kept open and what that means. Sun is famously stuck in the web of dharma and accepts the eternal return with something that I guess looks like joy. Moon equivocates, finessing the contradictions as far as they go. Storm classically is the one who pushes back. But the gunas revolve.
 

[Jeff]

17 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

In a way, all of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us.

I was exposed to trickster authors like Idries Shah and Don Juan Matus a little too early so the sign is always sliding unless you expend superhuman effort to pin it in place . . . and then the rest of the landscape gets melty. Build a hero war around the limits of interpretation, where our ability to negotiate difference breaks down and coexistence becomes difficult. The itch. 

I like the popcorn that accompanies the spectacular. Thinking about how Harmast accumulated his lightbringer surrogates suggests that the LBQ is also about assembling an "orlanth" from trace encounters until you reach a critical mass that satisfies. You can walk away from it. It speaks for itself. In that scenario, Orlanth's unique relationship with a trickster becomes important. He's the only one of the great gods who will wrap Eurmal in his protective mantle of personality and embrace the luciferian disruption as a familiar. I think this is the transgressive strand that keeps emerging throughout the history of Orlanthite religion, the way his system remains open to trying it different this time. Improvisation within the chord progressions of time. And as we know, it gets harder to distinguish between the storm hero prince and the trickster as you walk westward.

If there were three high elements present at the birth of time, I suspect there would be endless learned debate on how many eyes each kept open and what that means. Sun is famously stuck in the web of dharma and accepts the eternal return with something that I guess looks like joy. Moon equivocates, finessing the contradictions as far as they go. Storm classically is the one who pushes back. But the gunas revolve.
 

This is the essence of heroquesting. One of the reasons that Orlanth is the patron of heroes is to some extent he is both a hero and the construct of the self-exploration of heroes.

[mfbrandi]

36 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

He's the only one of the great gods who will wrap Eurmal in his protective mantle of personality and embrace the luciferian disruption as a familiar.

Or the splitting of the Trickster from the Hero is a reach for plausible deniability — “I would never do that. It was that bum, Eurmal.” — but sooner or later the Hero has to face reality and reintegrate the Trickster. (Or fail, of course.) I mean, the goat never did anything wrong. Except maybe eat my trousers.

24 minutes ago, Jeff said:

the construct of the self-exploration of heroes

Gulp!

[Jeff]

3 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Or the splitting of the Trickster from the Hero is a reach for plausible deniability — “I would never do that. It was that bum, Eurmal.” — but sooner or later the Hero has to face reality and reintegrate the Trickster. (Or fail, of course.) I mean, the goat never did anything wrong. Except maybe eat my trousers.

Gulp!

That's the weight of secular cynicism speaking. The assumption that there needs to be some sort of secret materialist scheme behind every story. Let it go and the wild can be much wilder!

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

That's the weight of secular cynicism speaking.

I tried being a cynic, but I lacked the necessary enthusiasm for dogs. Diogenes himself seems to verge on the holy fool, which kinda–sorta brings us back to the Trickster. As a kid, I loved the idea of going out at noon with a lamp to look for an honest man … but only on the understanding that I wouldn’t find one. I mean, where would I put him?

Here I was only pushing the idea that there is no sliding a cigarette paper between trickster and hero — but then I always rooted for Prometheus, not Achilles.

[Joerg]

On 10/2/2022 at 5:47 AM, Shiningbrow said:

I think the answer is somewhat obvious...

If he succeeds, he's a true Orlanthi Hero.

If he fails, then he's obviously not.

That's patently wrong, unless your only definition of "hero" is that of Hollywood.

Heroes are the subject of tragedy, they will find a "bad end". It is part of the job description. There are few exceptions, like Beowulf who succeeded in death, or Odysseus whose ten years of shagging with occasional travel and monster enconters interspersed allowed him to reunite with a  son he didn't know and a wife who had offered "hospitality" to dozens of suitors in a home drenched with blood. But then, the Odyssey is the comedy coda to the drama of the Ilias and related stories.

Jarolar may not have been the most heroic of the sons of Saronil, but he did have two moments - when his ambush out of a forest destroyed the Lunar strength and the personal forces of Philigos, and when he chose to make a last stand wilh his household forces to cover the retreat of the Far Place tribes at Dwarf Ford. It was a last stand, something which is the mark of many a hero.

Rolant for instance earned his eternal heroism in death at Roncesvaux Pass. The (often heroic) Ostrogoth kings following Theoderich share a lot with the fated end of the Sartar dynasty, minus the difficulties of a conquered empire.

The Varus battle did not make Varus a hero (but then his suicide and loss of three legions was not an achievement), but he was more administrator than war-leader anyway. The victor Arminius was a hero, and accordingly found his gruesome demise.

 

Argrath's feat at Sword Hill was similarly momentous as the Varus Battle - a "barbarian" foe meeting the empire on its own terms, overpowering them in a magical battle where that was what the Lunars usually did. And from horseback, too (at least the Eaglebrowns, and what goes for "horseback" near the Plaines of Prax). Sure, there was an ambush, but way too well  organized and orchestrated.

[Joerg]

Why do people have a problem with Argrath? IMO because he is the player identification character from a different game than a roleplaying game. He is like the role of Mark Hamill in Wing Commander, someone all players of that game have taken on as their role. And all of a sudden, there are roleplaying games where the players create heroic characters of their own, with ambitions as grand as that player identification character of the setting, who suddenly becomes the dread establishment.

Weirdly, no players seem to complain that there is that Art(h)u<s/r> character in the Pendragon rpg and that they play lowly knights rather than becoming the Pendragon. But then the establishment of Camelot and the Round Table follows the Boy King developments which are no longer the subject of RQG.

 

The usual protagonist in fairy tales and Sword and Sorcery does their heroic bit, ang receives (half) the kingdom and the hands and/or affections of princesses (or high priestesses). Mulairk is one such, receiving Furthest and the surrounding lands (and people).

 

There is the typical problem that this reward is personalized, it goes to one distinct character rather than the usual gang of five (or however many protagonists your campaign has). From a world-building perspective, fantasy cultures ruled by councils of five or seven rather than an individual might be better for roleplaying game purposes. (Such as Orlanthi Glorantha in the First and Second Age, before Alakoring ruined it...)

 

Gloranthan story-telling follows the "heroic )future) leader with heroic companions" trope, often minus the paternal overpowering wizard figure guiding the fledgeling hero as much as the newly raised king (or whatever title you want). In literature, that king often is the weakest link in the party, be it young Artus guided by Merlin surrounded by better knights, be it in Shannara or the Belgariad with the Gandalf/Merlin/Chiron/Aristotle figure. Instead, we have the main heroes as their own protagonists, still supported by an excellent team but at the very least princeps inter pares.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Heroes are the subject of tragedy, they will find a "bad end". It is part of the job description.

This deserves a fuller answer than it will get here, but this will have to do for now:

• You and Shiningbrow are likely talking at cross-purposes: from the point of view of the Orlanthi (characters), a hero succeeds (or at least isn’t seen as marked for a bad end: “follow this guy — he’s a loser”); from the point of view of literary theorists (readers), a hero who fails may be more interesting — and a tragic hero has to screw up somehow. So it may be unfair to accuse them of falling for the Hollywoodisation of the hero.
• I love the notion of tragedy as Hubris clobbered by Nemesis (Aldiss’s wording and he applied it to SF, but the idea wasn’t new), but does it work for all — or all worthwhile — hero stories? (By this measure, the Godlearners make perfect Gloranthan heroes, which is OK by me.)

I take it you don’t mean something as narrow as “the hero is the protagonist and the hero’s pride/overreaching leads to the hero’s death in failure by the end of the play.” That wouldn’t even work for Oedipus the King: he makes the classic error of “I’ll find the person responsible for this plague” but he is not dead by the end of the play. And the hubris may be spread over generations: “don’t worry, we’ll off the kid and then he’ll cause no trouble” — that undoes a bunch of people (Laius first) but it isn’t done by the hero. Achilles’ choice of a short, glorious life doesn’t obviously make him a tragic hero, but arguably that — and being a killing machine — does make him a hero (though, again, there’s the doubleness of the lit. crit. term and the term as understood by the Achaeans). If he is a tragic figure it is not in getting himself killed, it is in getting Patroclus killed. But heroes are always getting other people killed …

Anyway, this deserves more and from someone smarter than me.

[French Desperate WindChild]

On 10/2/2022 at 5:47 AM, Shiningbrow said:

I think the answer is somewhat obvious...

If he succeeds, he's a true Orlanthi Hero.

If he fails, then he's obviously not.

yes that was exactly what I said in the original post.

for me there is nothing to say about Argrath, of course he is a good Orlanthi hero, as he did as Orlanth (strange gods) AND he was successful

 

here the good = fit with Orlanth cult, not the opposite of the one who does bad thing.

same for Hero, hero in the sense of the one who does things that average people will never do, try or even imagine.

Do I like/love him or do I hate him if I were gloranthan ? well ... what kind of gloranthan I would be ? In all cases he did very dangerous and impacting things, and it is said he changed the world

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

for me there is nothing to say about Argrath, of course he is a good Orlanthi hero, as he did as Orlanth (strange gods) AND he was successful

Except, of course, that he fed Orlanth to Wakboth and declared that “The world will remain as it is now, without interference from any god or goddess.” (The grand declaration rather undercuts the idea that he was betrayed by Trickster.) So maybe he is a good human hero — a liberator — but not such a great Orlanthi, even if he does act like Orlanth. Would a great Christian hero feed their god to their devil? I like to think so, but …

So there has got to be something to say about Argrath. He is not totally boring.

[Joerg]

Orlanth is the god of trial and error, and his heroes are allowed failures, too. And in that sense the following quote remains wrong.

On 10/2/2022 at 5:47 AM, Shiningbrow said:

I think the answer is somewhat obvious...

If he succeeds, he's a true Orlanthi Hero.

If he fails, then he's obviously not.

Orlanth's first battle against the forces of Chaos is called Stormfall, and it was an unmitigated disaster, with Orlanth escaping in tatters and much of his household destroyed.

Argrath's 1624 attempt to invade from Prax was such a disaster of almost Jon Snow (TV series version) dimensions.

Heroically lost battles are par for the course, it seems. Winning some only gives you the resources to eff up royally, beyond any redemption (or recognition). Situation normal, really.

Heroic failure is written into White Bear and Red Moon. Heroic escapes from disastrous battles.

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

This deserves a fuller answer than it will get here, but this will have to do for now:

• You and Shiningbrow are likely talking at cross-purposes: from the point of view of the Orlanthi (characters), a hero succeeds (or at least isn’t seen as marked for a bad end: “follow this guy — he’s a loser”); from the point of view of literary theorists (readers), a hero who fails may be more interesting — and a tragic hero has to screw up somehow. So it may be unfair to accuse them of falling for the Hollywoodisation of the hero.

The denial of tragedy as an outcome is a very Hollywood problem, with happy endings stitched onto just about any story.

 

The Orlanthi love success, true. But they know how to tolerate failure. You cannot win the Lightbringers' Quest (even the annual one) without massive failue on the way. If you do, your seemingly positive result may be a curse. Of course, interim failure doesn't protect from ultimate failure, either.

 

A hero isn't necessarily someone you follow, and a good leader doesn't have to be heroic. (Compare the two Byzantine leaders against the Ostrogoths in Italy, Belisar as a heroic leader leading from the front, and Narsetes the eunuch bureaucrat who systematically drove them out.) Heroes aid leaders, and may lead limited action. A hero as a leader is a bad idea unless the followers are fanatics, really desperate, or heroic themselves.

A leader with potential for heroism but not defined by that heroism is the better leader by far. You want wisdom, political and economic acumen (or at least good human resource management to get good followers in charge of those pursuits).

 

Harmast is a Hero whose "successes" were two massive failures, for all the interim advantages they may have brought. He did end the Bright Empire by releasing Arkat and Talor on it, but at some cost. (And he was hit by the tragedy of the Harmastsons which led to the death of most if not even all of his male offspring.)

 

More recently, Londra of Londros managed to miss all of her objectives in the Upland Marsh, leading to the dissolution of her Temple of the Wooden Sword heroband (which otherwise might have ended up as one of the canonical units in the Dragon Pass game, possibly after a name-shift).

[JRE]

One of the strengths of Glorantha is that nobody has the moral high ground, and that certainly applies to Argrath. I remember since the beginning (Dragon Pass in my case) disliking Harrek and rooting for Jar-Eel, though the Bat made it also difficult to support the Lunars.

Anything you dislike about Argrath is probably is something you dislike about the Dragon Pass Orlanthi, and that is where the disconnect is, as people accept Argrath is flawed, but they do not want to accept their character's people are flawed as well, which means the character would be similarly flawed.

As an aside I consider most Greek gods are less than ideal role models, except for Athena, because most stories we have come from Athens or their colonies, so of course they support her and lambast other deities... I am sure other polis had tales of Athena as a greedy whore. Because that is the way humans are, and Athena becomes a placeholder for Athenians. What Argrath succeeds, and what we have to keep in mind, is that he becomes a placeholder for Dragon Pass Orlanthi.

Argrath sources are mostly in game, so that can play a role as well, with the added weight that most Sartarite tribes would find the Telmori genocide or putting the unreliable clans of Furthest under a trusted follower of the king perfectly normal, and expect Mularik to squeeze and exploit first Furthest and then all of Tarsh. So for the narrator those events also show Argrath as a good king, and only later is Mularik's murder whitewashed as putting down a tyrant, another Orlanthi meritorious act. The king had made other meritorious acts, fulfilling his oath and being generous with his followers. It is when you take the whole picture that you see how being an ideal Orlanthi hero can be a government disaster, and Argrath still manages to salvage the situation. 

Argrath's career spans decades and many difficult choices. And an Orlanthi king has limited agency, so many actions attributed to Argrath was probably done by someone else. Maybe the Telmori massacres was how the Wulfland colonists proved to their neighbours they in the Cinsina that they were on their side, and the Wolfrunners are the troops they tithe to the high king's wars. Maybe he appointed Mularik to Tarsh to get rid of him, or maybe he was blind, as so many rulers have been, to the defects of their friends, till another friend brought it up. And in the  conflict between king and friend, kingship won, becoming also a cautionary tale, and surely becoming an example of Orlanthi Rex virtue, as we have simlar tales in the European Middle Ages refering to Arthur and Charlemagne with similar events.

I use Dragon Pass Orlanthi rather than Sartarite because I believe that also includes a big portion of Kethaela, the Pol-Joni, with some changes the Tarsh Exiles and will absorb the Fazzurites. That also allows me to have the Ralios Orlanthi similar but different from all that material about Sartar and the existential war against the Lunars, focusing on the Conan the Barbarian tropes, and the noble savage and decadent civilization. 

 

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

The denial of tragedy as an outcome is a very Hollywood problem, with happy endings stitched onto just about any story.

I have no argument with that.

They can do “beautiful loser” films — Thelma & Louise; Thunderbolt & Lightfoot; Easy Rider; Midnight Cowboy — but two of those have British directors, the range they cover is very narrow, and they are not tragedies. They don’t have happy endings, though. One of the catches is that protagonists are all disposable from the mainstream perspective — criminals, women, and hippies — and are only allowed screen time on the understanding that at least half of them will be killed off.

Is Citizen Kane supposed to be parsed as a tragedy? What about Touch of Evil?

Ulzana’s Raid ends with the death of a star, but he is not the protagonist. However, Ulzana himself can be seen as a tragic figure: he chooses to fight the Yankees, but it is only ever going to end one way. There is a classic anti-hero in the cavalry lieutenant, but no hero. Only Ulzana and Ke-Ni-Tay have any agency. Surely, this can be converted into a Prax-set scenario.

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Narsetes the eunuch bureaucrat who systematically drove them out

I’ll root for the eunuch bureaucrat, every time, and stay as far away from heroes as I can manage.

[mfbrandi]

23 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Look, we know some traditional old-school Macedonians thought Alexander was going whacko out East. This is not rocket science. Re-read Campbell?

OK, Nick Brooke posted that in another thread, but it turned out to basically be this one in a light disguise. And I think what follows fits better here.

In poking around, I found this CliffsNotes version of The Hero with a Thousand Faces from Norman Spinrad masquerading as an Orson Scott Card book review (a couple of years before Card outed himself as … well, you know the story). It has case studies — Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (still Tiger! Tiger! to me) and Frank Herbert’s Dune — and is much more sympathetic to Campbell than I expected from the author of The Iron Dream. It is a fun read, at least.

If Argrath were to turn out to be a mask of Feric Jaggar, would that make all of us Homer Whipples? I shudder.

Edited October 4, 2022 by mfbrandi
clarification

[Rodney Dangerduck]

On 10/3/2022 at 4:16 AM, mfbrandi said:

Except, of course, that he fed Orlanth to Wakboth and declared that “The world will remain as it is now, without interference from any god or goddess.” (The grand declaration rather undercuts the idea that he was betrayed by Trickster.) So maybe he is a good human hero — a liberator — but not such a great Orlanthi, even if he does act like Orlanth. Would a great Christian hero feed their god to their devil? I like to think so, but …

So there has got to be something to say about Argrath. He is not totally boring.

Thank you for reminding me of this end.  It makes me like Argrath a lot more! 

And gives some support to my sometimes Gloranthan god cynical view that not all characters and Heroes need be fanatic Devotion automatons, (note - I have run some who are), not every 16 year old made a perfect choice of cult, and maybe there are some sane Babs Gor, and some Humakti who want to grow old and die in their sleep.

[mfbrandi]

34 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Thank you for reminding me of this end.  It makes me like Argrath a lot more!

And Jeff recently posted this:

Quote

By all rights, [Argrath’s bringing back Sheng Seleris] should have worked. That it didn’t may have dispelled the final illusion that mortals could be freed of the Gods War by following in the path of the gods. If the world was to be saved, the relationship between mortals and gods needed to be changed.

I sometimes get the feeling that Gloranthaphiles (including the creators) have secret shrines to Orlanth and Ernalda in their basements, but there is a definite strain of the gods must stop interfering or it will all end in tears, too — and there always has been. Of course, the cheesy trope of the gods are powered by mortal worship suggests that there may be less apocalyptic ways to do this than massive bloodbaths every 600 years or so.

[mfbrandi]

48 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Humakti who want to grow old and die in their sleep

I can imagine a sect of Humakti who are all about calmly accepting their inevitable death when it comes, not about hastening the deaths of their fellow mortals.

[Eff]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

And Jeff recently posted this:

I sometimes get the feeling that Gloranthaphiles (including the creators) have secret shrines to Orlanth and Ernalda in their basements, but there is a definite strain of the gods must stop interfering or it will all end in tears, too — and there always has been. Of course, the cheesy trope of the gods are powered by mortal worship suggests that there may be less apocalyptic ways to do this than massive bloodbaths every 600 years or so.

Of course, we should probably remember that Greg Stafford attempted to be a practicing shaman and, if my secondhand understanding is correct, was perfectly sincere in that belief. So I'm not sure that the idea that the spiritual and the human are distant and separated in the (real world/post-Hero Wars Glorantha he compared to our world) is one that he intended. But much of this does come down to personal religious and spiritual beliefs at this level. 

[mfbrandi]

4 minutes ago, Eff said:

Of course, we should probably remember that Greg Stafford attempted to be a practicing shaman

Does a shaman have to believe in one or more interventionist gods? Do they have to think that interventionist gods are a good thing? Does all sincere religion have ontological commitments? On the first two, I couldn’t say. On the last, I suspect that not all practitioners think so: pantheists; some Buddhists; some Quakers. But maybe I have that wrong, too.

[scott-martin]

10 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Does a shaman have to believe in one or more interventionist gods? Do they have to think that interventionist gods are a good thing? Does all sincere religion have ontological commitments? On the first two, I couldn’t say. On the last, I suspect that not all practitioners think so: pantheists; some Buddhists; some Quakers. But maybe I have that wrong, too.

For what it's worth, I can't recall meeting a shaman who relied on categories of belief . . . the spirits had intervened in their lives with enough force to satisfy the standard of evidence and that was that. Most of the struggle after that revolved around how to structure the relationship created in the encounter, less Kierkegaard and more Nietzsche where the commitments precipitate out of the ontological instead of the other way around. 

This suggests that glorantha is really most deeply understood a verb or at its most nounlike a "transitional" object that supports various processes of consciousness formation. Sometimes there are gods in there with you, sometimes you're alone. The lunar way has historically understood this even if it gets lost in the modern imperial babble. The storm religion tends to fumble into it under pressure, an ordeal like classical shamanic initiation that reminds me that while storm people preserve an interest in universal initiation they rarely seem to take it to the point where consciousness is really transformed. That requires an Argrath-type deeper dive and is one of the reasons he is depicted as being unusual by storm standards. 

It would be fun to resuscitate "misapplied worship" in this context of people who absorb the initiatory content too well for comfort and so enter into relationships with the gods that deviate from normative theism. I think these edge cases (again, "transitional") are a big part of what interested Greg . . . the moving lines where hexagrams blend and twist.