Chaos, Time, & the Great Compromise

[mfbrandi]

 Over in the Thanatar and Krarsht in the Lunar Empire thread:

12 hours ago, svensson said:

Chaos is the antithesis of organization... any kind of organization. Societal rules, the Great Compromise, even physics [such as exist on Glorantha] are anathema to Chaos, which demands that nothing is consistent, nothing is stable, save only the cycle of creation, destruction, and creation again.

It always seemed to me that Time — the essence of the Compromise — was both the ostensible domestication of Chaos and the resolution of the Schrödinger’s rats’ nest of Godtime. In Godtime the Sun and the Earth are both alive and dead, but in Time these are resolved into cycles: the Sun is alive in the day and dead at night, stronger in the summer, and weaker in the winter; the Earth is dead every winter and reborn every spring; und so weiter. (Pamalt is the Earth deity who didn’t (and doesn’t) die “because” Pamaltela has an equatorial climate, presumably.)

But the world of Time is a world of entropy: the world will thin, and the world will run down — “Ev’ry man, master, sir, is destined to eat ’isself”. See this as the eventual triumph of Kajabor or Krarsht if you like (or Wakboth if you must) — possibly heralding a new cosmic cycle of creation of the universe from Chaos/the Void. If we are lucky, we live in the Goldilocks Zone: the Godswar is over, the big magics are played out, and the “superheroes” have done waving their weapons (causing all the “little deaths” of the world), but the final universe-ending apocalypse is still a way off.

There are little cycles and there are grand cycles. The little cycles don’t repeat exactly across the bigger cycles, and they need not sync up with each other.

We may be tempted to paint cycles of creation and destruction as “a Chaos thing,” and in as much as Time is a Chaos thing, this is correct. And the poster girl of “Chaos itself is not the problem” is pally with the mother of Time and has the effrontery to die and be reborn every week just to rub our faces in her Chaotic nature.

      But the Earth dies every year.

            And the Sun dies every day.

                  So why is the Moon a problem if they are not?

Is this just a case of “I am Stormy, you are Disorderly, but she is Chaotic”? The Great Compromise is the compromise of creation (being) with chaos (non-being) and it is a necessary part of the making — and unmaking — of the world. (Alternatively: Godtime is a fairy tale and the Great Compromise/LBQ is just a neat little aetiological story to “explain” the observed facts of cyclical and linear time, with apocalyptic undertones to keep it spicy.)

 

PS: If this seems like polemic, I hope it is at least friendly polemic.

[Akhôrahil]

42 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

But the world of Time is a world of entropy: the world will thin, and the world will run down

I'm not sure this is true - Glorantha doesn't run on the Laws of Thermodynamics, and in particular, creative Chaotic energy seeps in through the Chaosium but is then "laundered" during the Sacred Time rituals, keeping the whole thing going.

Although it seems that this does build up some kind of magical instability that is then resolved by the end of an Age.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[Akhôrahil]

51 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

(Alternatively: Godtime is a fairy tale and the Great Compromise/LBQ is just a neat little aetiological story to “explain” the observed facts of cyclical and linear time, with apocalyptic undertones to keep it spicy.)

I actually prefer to reason from what mortals can experience and know, and then a number of questions become impossible to resolve. There is no way for people to tell whether what you describe here or the official story is the truth, except perhaps to ask the few people claiming to have been there before time, and can you really trust them, especially when time wasn't supposed to exist? Similarly, did the gods exist before people and create them, or are the Gods generated through belief and worship? Even if this has an objective answer, it's not like anyone within the world would be able to tell through any experiences.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

There is no way for people to tell whether what you describe here or the official story is the truth, except perhaps to ask the few people claiming to have been there before time, and can you really trust them, especially when time wasn't supposed to exist?

Presumably, Yelmites and Malkioni (and several other cultures) have no truck with this “Young Glorantha nonsense”: if Zzabur is 5000 years old, then time didn’t start 1600 years ago.

Sequence in Godtime and entities straddling the no-time–time boundary are problems for the Young Glorantha theorists. I wish them luck with it.

Maybe their smartest move would be to say, “Myth isn’t history, and when we say ‘A long time ago …’, we are just articulating truths about the forces at work in the world today — and every day — and you shouldn’t expect to dig up evidence.” But then some Smart Alec will say that they are not mining metal but doing battlefield archaeology.

We just have to shrug and move on, as we are never going to get a satisfactory explanation. Do we really need one? (Don’t try to keep the whole picture in mind at once, and maybe your head won’t explode.)

[Jeff]

6 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Presumably, Yelmites and Malkioni (and several other cultures) have no truck with this “Young Glorantha nonsense”: if Zzabur is 5000 years old, then time didn’t start 1600 years ago.

Sequence in Godtime and entities straddling the no-time–time boundary are problems for the Young Glorantha theorists. I wish them luck with it.

Maybe their smartest move would be to say, “Myth isn’t history, and when we say ‘A long time ago …’, we are just articulating truths about the forces at work in the world today — and every day — and you shouldn’t expect to dig up evidence.” But then some Smart Alec will say that they are not mining metal but doing battlefield archaeology.

We just have to shrug and move on, as we are never going to get a satisfactory explanation. Do we really need one? (Don’t try to keep the whole picture in mind at once, and maybe your head won’t explode.)

The Yelmites and Malkioni agree that before the Dawn, Time as we understand it did not exist. 

[mfbrandi]

2 minutes ago, Jeff said:

The Yelmites and Malkioni agree that before the Dawn, Time as we understand it did not exist. 

But they will give pre-Dawn timelines, anyway?

[Jeff]

1 minute ago, mfbrandi said:

But they will give pre-Dawn timelines, anyway?

As do the Theyalans. Even if they really make no sense - but scholars gotta scholar.

[Darius West]

15 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

(Pamalt is the Earth deity who didn’t (and doesn’t) die “because” Pamaltela has an equatorial climate, presumably.)

You are putting the cart before the horse here.  The equatorial climate and fertility of Pamaltela is due to the fact that Pamalt lives.

15 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

But the world of Time is a world of entropy: the world will thin, and the world will run down — “Ev’ry man, master, sir, is destined to eat ’isself”. See this as the eventual triumph of Kajabor or Krarsht if you like (or Wakboth if you must) — possibly heralding a new cosmic cycle of creation of the universe from Chaos/the Void. If we are lucky, we live in the Goldilocks Zone: the Godswar is over, the big magics are played out, and the “superheroes” have done waving their weapons (causing all the “little deaths” of the world), but the final universe-ending apocalypse is still a way off.

Really they difference between Time and Entropy is slender.

15 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Is this just a case of “I am Stormy, you are Disorderly, but she is Chaotic”? The Great Compromise is the compromise of creation (being) with chaos (non-being) and it is a necessary part of the making — and unmaking — of the world.

Chaos stems from the ritual pollution of the Primal Plasma by the Unholy trio, turning it into the Chaosium (or source of all Chaos).  The beings born from this were linked to annihilation, and they pollute and corrupt the world.  If you don't believe me, feed your children to a Bagogi queen, or let them be decapitated by Thanatar, or perhaps offer them to the broos and see what happens.  Chaos is the death of the world, and if you love the world, you fight for its survival against chaos.  If you are debased and foul, wanting power even if in its ugliest forms, then you fight for chaos.

[JRE]

For my own peace of mind I consider there was an objective reality of the events before Dawn. And that it was sequential, though unevenly distributed. But it is unknowable and unprovable from this side of the Compromise, as it separates both sets, Time and fixed out of time. My current opinion, though that changes often, is that the Compromise is a cheat to save the gods (and possibly the world, but it is also possible the chaotics were just freedom fighters against godly oppression. Damned establishment propaganda...).

Just as they were going to lose, Arachne Solara took the gods, and most significantly their pasts, out of Time. So the Godtime really has all jumbled together, not because it was like that before, but because the Compromise took all references to time out.

Chaos is just what comes from outside the world. One problem of arriving in a well established existing system is that there is no place for you, so you need to make one, which is not peaceful, so many manifestations of Chaos became destructive or violent. Natural selection through an aeon of war guaranteed that the non-aggresive, non-violent manifestations of Chaos were the first to go.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, JRE said:

One problem of arriving in a well established existing system is that there is no place for you, so you need to make one, which is not peaceful, so many manifestations of Chaos became destructive or violent.

And as you surely intended, you can substitute “Storm” or “Umath” for “Chaos” here.

1 hour ago, JRE said:

Natural selection through an aeon of war guaranteed that the non-aggressive, non-violent manifestations of Chaos were the first to go.

Although natural selection will produce grass and field mice, not just sharks and lions.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

You are putting the cart before the horse here.

The scare quotes were there for a reason.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Really the difference between Time and Entropy is slender.

I think most of us are OK with that.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Chaos stems from the ritual pollution of the Primal Plasma by the Unholy trio, turning it into the Chaosium (or source of all Chaos). 

Surely Chaos precedes everything else, very much including the cabal of the unholy trio — per Godlearner ordering of the origins of the world — and you can oppose Chaos (if you must) as “anti-existence”, “a non-hole in reality”, “the god killer”, or whatever without viewing it as a Jilly-come-lately. In the pretty anti-Chaos Greg Sez, we get:

Quote

Sometimes the world, protesting the violation of its reality, bursts forth in a wild effort to fill that non-hole, and this is expressed as a chaos feature.

… or put another way, Chaos is the agent infecting the world, but the “manifestations of Chaos” that we see are the world’s immune system having a massive overreaction to “less than nothing”. In sepsis (septicaemia or blood poisoning), it is your own immune system that injures and sometimes kills you, not the infection.

Of course, it is true that Chaos will end everything, eventually, but that doesn’t make it monstrous or evil. The acceptance of mortality — for bodies, for souls, for the universe — is just a sign of maturity, not the mark of a devotee of the grossest thrill kill cult.

———————————
PS: Did the unholy trio kill Rashoran — surely always a Chaos deity — before or after polluting the primal plasma? My guess would be before, but I honestly don’t know.

[French Desperate WindChild]

I don't consider Time as result of compromise like "before Time there was no time" maybe for the same reasons than  @JRE just because I want to not become unsane

 

so for me Time is the period we know : there are regular cycles, as you describe (day/night, season, etc...)

and probably, before "Time" there was no cycle, so what means "time", even irl in a bronze age society if you are not able to have any evidence of "hours", "days", etc....

how hard it would be to determine "what time is it" when the only reference you have is the birth and the death of people you know ?

probably the same than sending you in the deep space, somewhere there no "near sun", "no near planet" nothing you can see rotate (-> the cycle). Easier for me to imagine it as I even don't recognize any star, unable to see if this one has "moved" or not

and maybe time before "Time" is not a linear thing (but again what does linear mean if there is no regular cycle ?)

 

but there is another point I have been considering very interesting since some months. Something I didn't notice before.. It was Jeff who said (i paraphrase sorry) : " the great compromise was a compromise between the gods and the chaotic gods"

that wasn't only the gods (aka non chaotic) who decided on their own side to do something

 

and there is one of my character (scholar) hypothesis...

the great compromise was a trick from the chaotic gods. What is the result ?

1) the world exists

2) the gods are not anymore free in the world

3) the chaotic gods exist.

 

"where is the trick ?" some may ask

what if there were no compromise ? Why did the god the compromise ? to save the world, right ?

So if there were no compromise, there would be no world. If there were no world, everything would have joined the chaos, the oblivion...

everything... EVERYTHING... even the chaotic gods...

so a compromise is something where all parties lose something...

the gods lost the leadership of the world...

but what did the chaotic gods lose ? You may meet cacodemon and see him doing what he wants..

So yes a weaker cacodemon... perhaps... but what he lost is ridiculously few compared to the gods...

And see age after age... chaos is still here, and strong... but not the "full chaos", not the "oblivion"... just those chaos, refusing any authority except violence, doing what they want when they want if nothing more powerful is present... And the most powerful entities, the gods, are now partially "out of the game"

Considering we save the world every age is just a lie. the world is safe because it is what chaotic gods want.. They don't want to lose what they have, they don't want to join chaos.

If we want to change the world we have to remove from the world the chaotic god... and maybe... to do that... we have to remove all the gods from OUR world

 

[JRE]

53 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Although natural selection will produce grass and field mice, not just sharks and lions.

Ok, add detectable. So the rainbow grasses and the platypus were burnt with prejudice, but orchids (as an example) and other epiphytes did not detect as chaotic and are still with us, adding some variety to the world, at the expense of some low key parasitism... 

I am sure some Western wizard blames intestinal parasites, STDs and short skirts on undetected chaos influences, but at this point it is part of the world anyway.

[mfbrandi]

19 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

but there is another point I have been considering very interesting since some months. Something I didn't notice before.. It was Jeff who said (i paraphrase sorry) : " the great compromise was a compromise between the gods and the chaotic gods"

that wasn't only the gods (aka non chaotic) who decided on their own side to do something

Well, if we are considering Time to be the GC — not some grudging handshake between Orlanth and Yelm — then Arachne Solara engineered it without consulting the non-chaotic gods (her child was hidden in the net), and the Devil is the “father” of Time, but the Devil’s contribution may not have been voluntary.

Time is a middle way between everything everywhere all-at-once and nothing at all — and Arachne Solara as an agent of the balance may be considered part-chaotic or to have a chaotic twin in Krarsht — but we needn’t imagine a peace conference between the forces of Chaos and the squabbling gods.

30 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

chaos, refusing any authority except violence, doing what they want when they want if nothing more powerful is present

Of course, it is not only entities coded “chaotic” who behave this way. “Violence is always an option” some joker once said (and presumably says this on a loop, eternally).

[JRE]

48 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

what if there were no compromise ? Why did the god the compromise ? to save the world, right ?

So if there were no compromise, there would be no world. If there were no world, everything would have joined the chaos, the oblivion...

everything... EVERYTHING... even the chaotic gods...

 

My understanding (and a clear example of my belief in sequentiality before the compromise) was that Wakboth killed Kajabor because Wakboth (moral corruption) wanted to rule Glorantha, not destroy it, probably by subverting Kajabor and making it devour itself, as it was considered invincible. Dead Kajabor went to hell and faced the dead gods, while above the survivors of the world faced off against Wakboth and its hordes of the corrupted (freedom loving mortals with foreign support fighting against the corrupt theocrat establishment, according to other interpretations). At the same instant (sequentiality again) AS devoured Kajabor, the survivors faced off their chaotic mirror selves and Fate or Storm Bull squashed Wakboth with a big chunk of crystallized law. I would agree that the survivors winning their "desperate" fight was because they were not really fighting anyone, as everybody just wanted to survive, and with Kajabor gone nobody really wanted to ruin the world, so a true Compromise between the two sides once the mad leaders were not around.

Apparently the official party line is that Wakboth now goes to hell (possibly after being squashed, but then why is the block needed to keep him pinned?) instead to be spider snack/fucktoy and unwilling parent of Time, so I am not sure what happened with Kajabor. Maybe they have just switched places.

I at least will not look below the Block, and we have always being at war with Eastasia, yessir.

Edited November 25, 2022 by JRE

[mfbrandi]

5 minutes ago, JRE said:

but then why is the block needed to keep him pinned? … I at least will not look below the Block

Maybe it is not needed at all.
Go on — lift the Block.

   You know you want to.
      It’ll take years off you.
         It’ll double your POW and quadruple your CHA.

It is the only course of action that makes sense.
You will do it — it is only a matter of Time.

[French Desperate WindChild]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Of course, it is not only entities coded “chaotic” who behave this way. “Violence is always an option” some joker once said (and presumably says this on a loop, eternally).

of course yes ! with , I think a difference : "violence is always an option" is not "violence and corruption are always two options " 😛 but of course that's hypocrisy

 

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

then Arachne Solara engineered it without consulting the non-chaotic gods (her child was hidden in the net), and the Devil is the “father” of Time, but the Devil’s contribution may not have been voluntary.

Time is a middle way between everything everywhere all-at-once and nothing at all — and Arachne Solara as an agent of the balance may be considered part-chaotic or to have a chaotic twin in Krarsht — but we needn’t imagine a peace conference between the forces of Chaos and the squabbling gods.

i understand Arachne Solara as the organizer of this. And of course a lot of things may be consider as myth (not "history") or metaphorically ( was a net a real/magical net or just "seduction / love" )

and all options are open : was AS a chaotic agent luring the gods ? was AS a non chaotic god who was lured herself ? was AS really convinced it was the only way to save the world ? was the result what she expected ? Was she corruped when she ates the chaotic god ? Was it a voluntary sacrifice (by both parts)

 

in all cases some "things" from both "sides" (if we may consider there is a chaos side, or even a "gods" side) were needed to be "consume"/"sacrifice"/ ... to change the world.

did each side negotiate or were forced to do (or part of each side, nothing say everyone had to experiment the same way) ? were there other possibilities ? or do even negotiation or obligation make any sense at this "time" ?

what I like in glorantha is this mix between fate and will. We fought I won (not a mistake 😛 )

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

if we may consider there is a chaos side

Well, Chaos splits at least three ways — and as you suggest, even these splits may not helpfully be considered factions:

1. Outside entities — like Krarsht
2. Balancers — like the Red Goddess
3. Corrupted entities — like Ragnaglar

I wondered where creatures like the broos fitted into this division. If my genes are damaged by exposure to radiation and this affects many generations of my descendants, that is not to say that they are radioactive. So maybe it is not helpful to consider the broos a chaotic race, at all. Certainly, aspects like their parasitism need not be considered chaotic, even if they were originally cuddly goat-creatures of conventional reproductive habit and the parasitism came after Thed’s “fall” and as a result of it.

3 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

i understand Arachne Solara as the organizer of this.

The organiser and the actor. The gods at the ritual of the net are just bait, made to feel more important by a bit of chat from Trickster. (And as part of the long game, it doesn’t hurt to get them used to the ‘just stand here and hold this’ rôle — which is about all most of them can manage, poor dears — as you have got to get their defences down to get them ready for Argrath & the Devil.)

Edited November 25, 2022 by mfbrandi
stray auto-emoji (ugh!)

[kalidor]

40 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Well, Chaos splits at least three ways — and as you suggest, even these splits may not helpfully be considered factions:

1. Outside entities — like Krarsht
2. Balancers — like the Red Goddess
3. Corrupted entities — like Ragnaglar

I wondered where creatures like the broos fitted into this division. If my genes are damaged by exposure to radiation and this affects many generations of my descendants, that is not to say that they are radioactive. So maybe it is not helpful to consider the broos a chaotic race, at all. Certainly, aspects like their parasitism need not be considered chaotic, even if they were originally cuddly goat-creatures of conventional reproductive habit and the parasitism came after Thed’s “fall” and as a result of it.

The organiser and the actor. The gods at the ritual of the net are just bait, made to feel more important by a bit of chat from Trickster. (And as part of the long game, it doesn’t hurt to get them used to the ‘just stand here and hold this’ rôle — which is about all most of them can manage, poor dears — as you have got to get their defences down to get them ready for Argrath & the Devil.)

Just right now, I think that, what was devoured in Argrath and the net were the masks we mortals interacted with, not the gods themselves. After that, mortals had to discover another way to interact with the divine. 

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 minute ago, kalidor said:

Just right now, I think that, what was devoured in Argrath and the net were the masks we mortals interacted with, not the gods themselves. After that, mortals had to discover another way to interact with the divine. 

yep mortals cannot see/interacts with gods so they think they are "dead", but they may just be too far, elsewhere

[kalidor]

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

yep mortals cannot see/interacts with gods so they think they are "dead", but they may just be too far, elsewhere

The more I think about, the more I think that gods are the machine code of glorantha, and what we mortals think as gods is only a software layer/interface to interact with this machine code. Think of this as the difference between programming machine code directly and use C# or Java, Javascript... So... Before we have maybe Matrix 1.0, after the dawn matrix 2.0,... Well.... Too much caffeine... I now increase my stasis rune and my illusion rune +20 😅😅😅 and I will probably receive a visit of a group of Iron Mostal from Nida

Edited November 25, 2022 by kalidor

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, kalidor said:

Just right now, I think that, what was devoured in Argrath and the net were the masks we mortals interacted with, not the gods themselves. After that, mortals had to discover another way to interact with the divine.

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

yep mortals cannot see/interacts with gods so they think they are "dead", but they may just be too far, elsewhere

These are totally legitimate views, but given that we are all — and I am most definitely included — just playing with what we would like to be true “in the fiction”, why the attachment to the idea that the gods who seem to have been eaten are not dead?

There would seem to be plenty of kinds of spirituality/religion still available: the hero cult of Argrath; veneration of the too-big-to-interact-with Arachne Solara; ever-perilous interaction with the Trickster (if Trickster has not retired); animism; veneration of the dead; probably a whole bunch of other stuff that didn’t spring to mind. Even if those resources were unavailable, as long as there is a world and people in it, pantheism and mysticism are goers, as they have no additional ontological commitments.

But the fewer gods who like to conduct wars across the mundane world, the better, right?

[kalidor]

4 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

These are totally legitimate views, but given that we are all — and I am most definitely included — just playing with what we would like to be true “in the fiction”, why the attachment to the idea that the gods who seem to have been eaten are not dead?

There would seem to be plenty of kinds of spirituality/religion still available: the hero cult of Argrath; veneration of the too-big-to-interact-with Arachne Solara; ever-perilous interaction with the Trickster (if Trickster has not retired); animism; veneration of the dead; probably a whole bunch of other stuff that didn’t spring to mind. Even if those resources were unavailable, as long as there is a world and people in it, pantheism and mysticism are goers, as they have no additional ontological commitments.

But the fewer gods who like to conduct wars across the mundane world, the better, right?

https://theconversation.com/how-to-test-if-were-living-in-a-computer-simulation-194929

Powerful the illusion rune is... 😬

This explains the great power of Eurmal

[mfbrandi]

9 minutes ago, kalidor said:

I will probably receive a visit of a group of Iron Mostali

I think they will be understanding, but they will assure you that the gods were just bugs in some higher-level language code, and then make you an offer you probably shouldn’t refuse to help fix the world machine. It is interesting work and secure employment, but the food is lousy.

That’s assuming the Mostali survived the upgrade and reboot into Glorantha 4.0.

[kalidor]

8 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

I think they will be understanding, but they will assure you that the gods were just bugs in some higher-level language code, and then make you an offer you probably shouldn’t refuse to help fix the world machine. It is interesting work and secure employment, but the food is lousy.

That’s assuming the Mostali survived the upgrade and reboot into Glorantha 4.0.

Probably an "Elon Musk Twitter" type offer... 😜