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Diseases and Decay


DrGoth

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"All diseases are caused by spirits, magic, curses, etc. I am not sure what a “naturalistic” disease would be." Jeff October 8, 2020.

It's stated in many places that diseases are caused by spirits.  Does that apply to infections as well as disease?  And, if so, what causes decay? If it's spirits, are they Malia's disease spirits. And then, does that mean decay is regarded as chaotic? And, b y many cultures a bad thing?

Or maybe my initial assumption is wrong, and not all disease spirits are Malia's?

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An infectious disease is a type of disease, so it is the domain of Malia. Some disease spirits have the power to reproduce, some don't.

Decay is the domain of Mee Vorala:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/prosopaedia/deities/m/mee-vorala/

Note that not all things that can go wrong with a man-rune entity are diseases. Most of them are classified by Mostali clay-caste healers as runic imbalances, with one of the more common being an inappropriate manifestation of the death rune, commonly called a 'wound'.

So the gloranthan equivalent of a fungal infection like athlete's foot would be diagnosed as an unbalanced runic manifestation of darkness. Recommended treatment is by exposure to light, air, water, or, in extreme cases, fire.

 

 

 

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17 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

It's stated in many places that diseases are caused by spirits.  Does that apply to infections as well as disease? 

Infections are the minor diseases.

17 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

And, if so, what causes decay?

When a spirit is separated from it's body, the body decays because of time. It's like aging without a spirit.

17 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

If it's spirits, are they Malia's disease spirits. And then, does that mean decay is regarded as chaotic? And, b y many cultures a bad thing?

Mallia is only chaotic when worshipped by the Broos. When propitiated she's not chaotic. 

 

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3 minutes ago, radmonger said:

Decay is the domain of Mee Vorala:

Only in that fungi feed on decaying material: the fungi, consists of members who breed in the decay of life. Thriving on death, multiplying in corruption,

They aren't the source of decay.

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7 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Only in that fungi feed on decaying material: the fungi, consists of members who breed in the decay of life. Thriving on death, multiplying in corruption,

They aren't the source of decay.

 

In the real world, 'decay' literally means 'being consumed by fungus and bacteria'. Because, being dead, you no longer have an immune system. That would seem to map directly to a body no longer having a spirit in it, and so being unable to fight off things that would not normally be a problem. 

Note that mummies and other forms of corpse preparation are generally said to prevent decay;

https://www.si.edu/spotlight/ancient-egypt/mummies

Using special processes, the Egyptians removed all moisture from the body, leaving only a dried form that would not easily decay.

The glorantha bestiary doesn't have an entry for mummies, so it is not clear this works there. But I would have thought the whole deal with the Necropolis in Esrolia had the implication bodies suitably prepared would remain recognizable.

 

 

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Back in the day — croaked the old man — Mallia’s diseases could exist apart from spells and spirits of disease, and she had a rôle in the necessary process of decay. In the Cults of Terror write-up:

Quote

[Mallia] found nourishment and life amid the fallen foes, the wreckage and destruction, and the blood of everything that died in that age … Mallia is also the janitor of the gods, providing the corruption which turns flesh and bone back to dust. Without her work in this regard, there soon would be no room for the living. — p.26

Quote

SPREAD DISEASE
With this skill, a small district can be infected with a sickness without resorting to a spirit of disease. This non-magical attack is recognizable only by a Healer of Arroin … Quantities of the appropriate potion are implanted in often-trafficked areas such as wells, pantries, silos, cribs, etc. Inhabitants and visitors to the district will have to make their resistance roll or contract the disease. — p. 28

The obvious way to read this would be that Mallia’s bacteria had their expected rôle in decay and disease. There were spirits of disease which spread — but don’t seem to have been identical with — diseases. Chaosium is free to retcon this — and seemingly has — but I cannot help as to the reason why.

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2 hours ago, radmonger said:

.....

The glorantha bestiary doesn't have an entry for mummies, so it is not clear this works there. But I would have thought the whole deal with the Necropolis in Esrolia had the implication bodies suitably prepared would remain recognizable.

I always took the annual return of the dead to be their return as spirits, not that the bodies all broke out of their Necropolis  tombs and hiked to Nochet barefoot.  

RQiiG has already established that spirits can manifest in the Middle World, that is become visible.

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Minor illnesses and diseases can also be caused by other entities’ displeasure, not the work of Mallia’s epidemic diseases. Disrespect or offend the naiad of your local water source and you might find your body unable to hold in her water, resulting in diarrhea. Disrespect or offend the grain goddess and eating her grain denies you the life held within it, either causing you vomit it back up or otherwise leaving you hungry and lethargic. Anger an ancestor spirit, maybe they use their source of your man rune to curse you in your sleep with terrible nightmares or impotence until you correct your course of action.

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20 hours ago, radmonger said:

In the real world, 'decay' literally means 'being consumed by fungus and bacteria'.

yes

20 hours ago, radmonger said:

That would seem to map directly to a body no longer having a spirit in it, and so being unable to fight off things that would not normally be a problem.

I have a very simple point then (from a gloranthan perspective)

that's just you are dead and some entities eat you

in the same way that people eat flesh from dead (who are unable to fight then), fungus eat flesh from dead

then

20 hours ago, DrGoth said:

And then, does that mean decay is regarded as chaotic

how many cultures consider that eating flesh is chaotic ?

so no, i don't consider fungus are chaotic, they are just as others, they eat

so in my opinion, disease is chaotic, because before Malia and the trio did what they did, there was no disease. (hum is it canon ? don't know) So before chaos entered in Glorantha, there was no disease, disease = chaos (ok that could be called a sophism, I agree^^)

 

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22 hours ago, DrGoth said:

"All diseases are caused by spirits, magic, curses, etc. I am not sure what a “naturalistic” disease would be." Jeff October 8, 2020.

As already noted in this thread, there are other causes for disease in Glorantha. From the current RQ rulebook:

Quote

"Bacteria, viruses, or genetics do not cause disease in Glorantha. Instead, disease is caused by disease spirits, the presence of Chaos, curses, divine anger, and even Runic imbalance. Pollution, such as rotting waste, foul air, or impure water, increases the likelihood of disease. Spiritual purity through proper ritual behavior, ablutions, etc., and divine favor can all reduce the likelihood of disease."

The main diseases listed in the rulebook have something in common: they are entities that consume parts of the living, specifically, characteristic points. None of these entities consume dead matter, so far as we know. That feels like a useful distinction to me.

We know that Mallia was originally a spirit of healing and fertility, born in the Darkness, who was later corrupted. Mee Vorala, whose fungi feed on dead matter (mostly?), is also an entity of the Darkness.

What about "decay"? As David points out, fungi feed upon decaying matter but may not be the source of decay. It's worth noting that Time has its origin in the the devouring of the Chaos god of entropy, Kajabor, by Arachne Solara. Entropy - the tendency towards annihilation is built into Time, but is constantly counteracted by the cycle of life, the birth and rebirth of souls, and the growth of new living matter.

Mallia is an agent of Chaos and works to accelerate the annihilation of life.

Mee Vorala is an agent of life (she has the Fertility rune, according to the online prosopaedia). She is also an agent of Darkness, and there does seem to be an underlying pattern of consumption, eating, and therefore hunger, amongst the Darkness tribe. I think she is the goddess of consuming dead matter in order to nourish new life. But as one of the trio of Darkness "form" deities (with Sokazub and Kyger Litor), she predates death; so perhaps this is a role that she acquired, or a potential that she always held.

There will be more on this in a forthcoming book about the voralans on the Jonstown Compendium, so I'll watch this thread with interest.

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15 minutes ago, Brian Duguid said:

What about "decay"? As David points out, fungi feed upon decaying matter but may not be the source of decay. It's worth noting that Time has its origin in the the devouring of the Chaos god of entropy, Kajabor, by Arachne Solara. Entropy — the tendency towards annihilation is built into Time, but is constantly counteracted by the cycle of life, the birth and rebirth of souls, and the growth of new living matter.

I still don’t get why we would want to squirm away from the thought that decay is a positive — facilitating recycling — with that ecosystem service provided by Darkness entities.

It wouldn’t do to equate decay with Kajabor–Time as the “agent of entropy” bringing about the heat death of the universe (when it will no longer be possible for anything to happen). Sure, any event may bring the end of all things that bit closer, but decay isn’t special in that respect, and it fends off the other apocalypse of converting all matter into corpses and other waste. [NB: This is just supposed to be a good-enough-for-RPG-metaphor account. Of course, even judged that way, you may find it defective.]

We used to grant Mallia an ambivalent position: on the one hand craving destruction, but on the other being an important part of the cycle of life — corruption … [w]ithout her work in this regard, there soon would be no room for the living. Isn’t a little bit of nuance a good thing? And having the same service provided by the :20-element-darkness::20-power-death:-coded Mallia and the :20-element-darkness::20-power-life:-coded Mee Vorala is better yet. Maybe it is a Darkness thing — as you seem to suggest — and not a Life vs. Death thing, never mind a Chaos-as-evil or Chaos-as-the-end-of-everything thing.

49 minutes ago, Brian Duguid said:

fungi feed upon decaying matter but may not be the source of decay

This seems to be saying that Mee Vorala needs someone to chew her food for her. As has been noted before, Mee Vorala doesn’t even need to wait for you to die to get her teeth into you — see, for example, this book review.

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7 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

This seems to be saying that Mee Vorala needs someone to chew her food for her. As has been noted before, Mee Vorala doesn’t even need to wait for you to die to get her teeth into you — see, for example, this book review.

Yes, I've read that book (Entangled Life), and will happily second the review's recommendation.

I think we're in the fairly standard place here of trying to define the soft edge between:

  • things in real life that are transferable to Glorantha, most of which we know is observed to work in the same way as real life (humans eat food, they derive nourishment from it, they excrete), but where the cause and the explanation are not precisely the same i.e. the need to eat may have a mythic rather than evolutionary origin, and there are probably no gut bacteria or flora;
  • those things in Glorantha which work differently because the mythic logic leeds to a different form of action (diseases result from exposure to a spirit, not to harmful bacteria - because spirits exist and bacteria do not); the observed outcome may differ, and Gloranthan disease can do things that real-world disease cannot.

Regarding decay, I think we observe the same phenomenon in Glorantha as in our world: dead things disintegrate, and they probably provide nourishment for new living things (plants). Metal also rusts, and rocks eventually crumble. I do wonder about the source of soil in Glorantha if Orlanth, Aldrya, Mee Vorala and others did not in some myth or other act upon the surface of Gata to create it.

Organic decay, rust, and disintegration are different processes in the real world. Must they have different mythic causes in Glorantha? Does rust in Glorantha require the presence of water and oxygen? Is it simply an inevitability of Time (ageing, as David mentions for organic bodies)?

I think it's an open question, and we have some degree of choice here, because it matters very little other than to those of us writing mythology for Mee Vorala for fun in the background. We are certainly not bound to proceed from how things work in the real world.

In the real world, much or perhaps most organic matter can decay quite happily without the presence of fungi. Fungi are especially good at degrading cellulose, which suggests to me something about the relationship between Aldrya and Mee Vorala. In my headcanon, things that are too small to see in Glorantha i.e. are invisible, are spirits, which are likewise unseen. Decay can therefore perhaps be caused by visible fungi, invisible fungal spirits, and by other invisible spirits (acting as bacteria do).

None of this implies that Mee Vorala requires someone to chew her food, or that she can't dine also upon the living. But it suggests to me that her children are at the very least not the only agents of decay in Glorantha, that there are other forces which may work to rust metal, disintegrate mountains, and digest dead organic matter. And I do wonder about the role of Entropy within Time - we know that Time was quite literally made from what remained of the dead god of Entropy.

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35 minutes ago, Brian Duguid said:

And I do wonder about the role of Entropy within Time — we know that Time was quite literally made from what remained of the dead god of Entropy.

Do we know that? We thought we did, but do we?

Spoiler

lightbringersfamilytree.thumb.jpg.5f16e037697ad1eb21e38526aad4bc45.jpg

Recent canon would seem to be that Wakboth is the father of Time. The Glorantha Sourcebook has Arachne Solara devouring Wakboth alive (p. 131). It also has it that the vows of the “beings responsible for the creation of the world … are the source and cause of Time” (p. 133). One could almost imagine that the birth of the child Time was really just a matter of the gods agreeing that Arachne should vomit up the still living Wakboth and let it loose — a Great Compromise, indeed. (Yes, I know, that is not really how spiders eat.) After all, chaos, entropy, and evil are all loose in Glorantha.

That still leaves Kajabor = Wakboth vs. Kajabor != Wakboth. Don’t ask me, I don’t know. But perhaps the uncertainty over whether entropy is evil and whether decay is entropy explains all the unnecessary shilly-shallying over the agents of decay. Maybe even why Mallia is sometimes associated with Chaos and sometimes not. Vagueness and uncertainty are fine if they are productive. Are they in this case? Someone else can answer that, perhaps.

Spoiler

Or — and I am sure @Eff has at least hinted at this — the Devils are twins: one living; one dead.

“In the Bible, a scapegoat is one of a pair of kid goats that is released into the wilderness, taking with it all sins and impurities, while the other is sacrificed. The concept first appears in the Book of Leviticus, in which a goat is designated to be cast into the desert to carry away the sins of the community.” — Wikipedia

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53 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Recent canon would seem to be that Wakboth is the father of Time.

One of two things I love about this is the ways it reopens questions of who exactly is trapped under the Block.

IMG these deep mysteries of the pharmakon and in particular the fermentation techniques that convert the disease into the cure (pharmentation, as it were) are one of those rare profound insights into mythic structure so dangerous that they were actually wiped out within human ken. Conventional sages who talk animatedly about the schools of illumination, blue moon divination, EWF and the secret of the God Learners clam up around the inner workings of Chalana Arroy and her dead boy. That's okay.

Even conventional modern elves won't talk about it. That's okay too. We all need our privacies.

Time in the sense of "becoming" (ereignis, speaking of the dank drippy places) is an interesting wrinkle here. Maybe the lunar elites, having finally wiped out their elves in the wild, ponder the fruits of time on their way to being squeezed for "redder wine," which we all know as the sloe gin fizz. But conventional sages don't really talk much about what the lunar elites really think about.

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10 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

One of two things I love about this is the ways it reopens questions of who exactly is trapped under the Block.

One interpretation would be that Wakboth is trapped under the Block. But because he was killed, he went to the Underworld next, because that's what you do.

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18 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

But conventional sages don't really talk much about what the lunar elites really think about.

One ponders just how many of the elite have been through some form of Kinderheim 511 or Parallax or IPCRESS. 

Ah, this thread is about diseases and decay, isn't it? Let's contemplate for a moment that human digestion is partially dependent, including in the absorption of dietary fiber, on gastrointestinal microbiota- fungi, bacteria, archaea, and viruses that live in the gut and eat, and the byproducts of their eating are in turn absorbed by the human body as part of its process of digesting food. Or, to put it another way, the hollow spaces of darkness in the stomach and intestines are where eating becomes beneficial to the body. 

Decay and disease (which is a leading cause of death) can perhaps be analogized as a broader form of digestion, the goddess Glorantha's gut microbiota (or by comparison to her, perhaps picobiota) breaking down things within her for her to eat and live. It is thus worth pointing out that gut microbiota are external in origin. Which would make them Chaotic, or para-Chaotic. Mallia, defying the metaphysics of the current incarnation of Glorantha, can be Chaotic and not Chaotic. 

But if you start thinking about such things, then you end up in Lunar territory again, so it is better to shut down our reasoning faculties and go juggle apples.  

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8 minutes ago, Eff said:

the goddess Glorantha's gut microbiota (or by comparison to her, perhaps picobiota) breaking down things within her for her to eat and live

While I would hate to contemplate "naturalistic" parallels within the Gloranthan corpus, I never really bought the story that trolls spent an eternity just happily breaking shit down in the lower depths until one bad day the sun brought them all boiling up to the surface. Our hypothetical archaic elves might tell another story of the days before they took death out for a spin.

7 minutes ago, Eff said:

juggle apples

Trees there will be
Apples, fruits maybe
You know what I fear
 ~ the aphorisms of tight indigo trousers

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On 3/30/2023 at 12:33 PM, radmonger said:

In the real world, 'decay' literally means 'being consumed by fungus and bacteria'. Because, being dead, you no longer have an immune system. That would seem to map directly to a body no longer having a spirit in it, and so being unable to fight off things that would not normally be a problem. 

In Glorantha it is more likely related to Change, as the form of the substance is being changed into something else.

On 3/30/2023 at 11:48 AM, DrGoth said:

It's stated in many places that diseases are caused by spirits.  Does that apply to infections as well as disease?  And, if so, what causes decay? If it's spirits, are they Malia's disease spirits. And then, does that mean decay is regarded as chaotic? And, b y many cultures a bad thing?

Sometimes decay just happens.

It could be that decay is what happens when sinful people, or things, die, or perhaps is is just a facet of mortality. After all, some Heroes have been found whose bodies have not decayed, centuries after their death, maybe they were beyond decay and had transcended that which causes decay.

 

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So we grope toward a neo-godlearnerish revisionist (non-canon!) Gloranthan tree of life …

Mallia can have the titchy things — conceived of as physical or spiritual, to taste — the Prokaryotes (bacteria & archaea), Plasmids, Viruses, Viroids, and even the Prions.

Let’s play to the gallery and give Uleria all the Eukaryotes, and let some scholar somewhere be scratching “Uleria Euleria.” Within the Eukaryotes:

  • We could lazily assign all the Bikonts (Diphoda) to Flamal — green plants and a bunch of other stuff.
  • Within the Unikonts (Amorphea), we have the Opisthokonta covered: Mee Vorala gets the Holomycota (inc. fungi) and Hykim–Mikyh gets the Holozoa (inc. animals).
  • Who gets the Amoebozoa? Surely they were queueing up for the job of parent of gorps and the dog vomit slime mold.
  • The Apusomonadida? I have no idea. (And I am guessing we don’t care.)

The lichens are joint enterprises: Mee Vorala + Flamal or Mallia (it varies case by case).

The glamourpuss macrobiota — over in Hykim-Mikyh & Flamal Land — lean heavily on the children of Mee Vorala and Mallia to get anything done and to keep the place tidy, but that is OK because it is an interdependence.

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On 3/30/2023 at 4:48 AM, DrGoth said:

"All diseases are caused by spirits, magic, curses, etc. I am not sure what a “naturalistic” disease would be." Jeff October 8, 2020.

It's stated in many places that diseases are caused by spirits.  Does that apply to infections as well as disease?  And, if so, what causes decay? If it's spirits, are they Malia's disease spirits. And then, does that mean decay is regarded as chaotic? And, b y many cultures a bad thing?

Or maybe my initial assumption is wrong, and not all disease spirits are Malia's?

Disease and decay are not the same thing. So all diseases are caused by spirits, magic, curses, spiritual pollution, etc. Now that's hardly a novel take - that was generally what would have been held in most of the world for most of human history.

Decay can mean a lot of things. Entropy is Chaotic, but is also inherent in Time (which many philosophers hold has chaotic origins as well). Things break down, die, and break down into their component parts. Decay is part of that process, and some living things exist off decomposition, most famously Mee Vorala. But so do many of the children of Swems and Gorakiki. None of those entities are chaotic, but plenty of farmers dislike Mee Vorala, particularly when she brings the rusts that plague agriculture! Similarly, Gorakiki is not chaotic, but how many people would be glad to be rid of mosquitos, locusts, or aphids?

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14 hours ago, Jeff said:

Disease and decay are not the same thing. So all diseases are caused by spirits, magic, curses, spiritual pollution, etc. Now that's hardly a novel take - that was generally what would have been held in most of the world for most of human history.

Decay can mean a lot of things. Entropy is Chaotic, but is also inherent in Time (which many philosophers hold has chaotic origins as well). Things break down, die, and break down into their component parts. Decay is part of that process, and some living things exist off decomposition, most famously Mee Vorala. But so do many of the children of Swems and Gorakiki. None of those entities are chaotic, but plenty of farmers dislike Mee Vorala, particularly when she brings the rusts that plague agriculture! Similarly, Gorakiki is not chaotic, but how many people would be glad to be rid of mosquitos, locusts, or aphids?

Thanks Jeff, and thanks to all the others for answering what I thought was a little question!

So my reading of that is that decay is a product of Time, without any bacteria or their analogue behind it. It has no relation to disease, whatever the situation in this world may be. I think that says some very important things about Time in Glorantha and is another useful reminder of how the Myths make things different from here. It also makes the point Soltakss made about heroes very interesting:

16 hours ago, soltakss said:

After all, some Heroes have been found whose bodies have not decayed, centuries after their death, maybe they were beyond decay and had transcended that which causes decay.

That really does, to me, say something about heroes who don't decay.  We know (at least I think we know) that one thing heroes can do is achieve immortality. That is, their body doesn't age (or, in another view decay, if you take age to be a form of decay).   They are changing their relation to Time on their way to Apotheosis?  To me that would mean immortality is not a fun byproduct of being a Hero, but an important part of it.

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