Moral Relativism — Now with Added Bite!

[DrGoth]

33 minutes ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

Because what is given can be taken away. If the status quo remained as it was after Castle Blue, there would be no Hero Wars. But that peace has been broken by the hands of mortals, so the conflict between the Old Gods and Sedenya returns.

To be a little more specific, when two cults (mortal worshippers) are Enemies, they do not abide one another's existence. Each will completely destroy the other given the opportunity. But with the gods themselves, it's different in an important way— that conflict is is a part of their eternal identities, it is a part of what makes up the world of Time and the Cosmic Compromise. If given the power to overcome and vanquish their foe in that struggle, they will, because they can do nothing else. But this outcome is identical to the Gods War returning to the world.

I can see all that. But saying there is a conflict is very different to saying the cosmos is taking sides.

[Ormi Phengaria]

1 hour ago, DrGoth said:

I can see all that. But saying there is a conflict is very different to saying the cosmos is taking sides.

In the sense of some singular abstract higher power of all the universe wearing the mask of God and making a conscious, willful decision against one party, yes, it's very different. But that's also not really what it means. The cosmos is Glorantha and her Cosmic Court, it's all of the greater gods of the world in their many relationships, it's the Great Compromise. Many gods actively accept the Red Goddess, many more are netural to her existence, and a handful possess irreconcilable enmity. This arrangement is stable up until the conflict between the Red Goddess and Orlanth exceeds its boundaries, things begin breaking down, and new arrangements become possible.

Her hand is seen in the deaths of both Orlanth (Enemy) and Ernalda (Neutral!) in the Great Winter. The previous world, with the relationships plotted out at Castle Blue, was no longer tenable. Thus it is the opening shot of the Hero Wars.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Ormi Phengaria

[Jeff]

11 hours ago, DrGoth said:

Happy for Jeff to clarify, but I don't I don't see a lot of ambiguity in those quotes.  It's pretty clear to me that Sedenya is part of the compromise after Castle Blue.  I don't remember seeing anything saying the Hero Wars is about the cosmos rejecting Sedenya.  it's a large series of magical conflicts.  Yes, there might be those unhappy with the outcome of Castle Blue, but that's very different to the cosmos rejecting it.  I have difficulty in seeing how the cosmos would reject it. 

The Red Goddess is a part of the cosmos thanks to the Battle of Castle Blue, but her rise to the Middle Air as the Red Moon is not part of that. Her intrusion into Orlanth's domain was after Castle Blue, and was her last deed while she still had mortal free will.

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

The Red Goddess is a part of the cosmos thanks to the Battle of Castle Blue, but her rise to the Middle Air as the Red Moon is not part of that. Her intrusion into Orlanth's domain was after Castle Blue, and was her last deed while she still had mortal free will.

So her riding the Crimson Bat is an acceptable part of the Compromise thanks to the outcome of the conflict at Castle Blue?

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

So her riding the Crimson Bat is an acceptable part of the Compromise thanks to the outcome of the conflict at Castle Blue?

She did it (emphasise the past tense) and that is part of the fabric of Glorantha. But the Bat is not the Red Goddess. The Crimson Bat is no more accepted as a deity than Thed, Vivamort, or Krarsht.

[Darius West]

On 6/28/2023 at 1:07 AM, mfbrandi said:

Continuation of the discussion in the Ethilrist thread.

Now, according to Greg — and who am I to argue? — a Chaos Taint is real but not physical. It can have effects in the good old efficient causality sense.

So:

• If you are born into a society of crazy bigots, you are the one who will end up with a Chaos Taint, not them (so long as they live down adhere to their own low standards, anyway).

  Reveal hidden contents

Replacing “what my society thinks is evil” with “what I think is evil” would get us nowhere in rehabilitating the idea of morality. It might be fun for a psychologised notion of Chaos Taint as self-punishment, but we wouldn’t want to beat up on people for beating themselves up — that would be cruel — so it wouldn’t give a reason to despise those with the Taint.

Ahh, the philosophy of Chaos Taints, what an interesting topic.

So let us consider how you can obtain a Chaos Taint...

(1) Being born into a chaotic species

(2) Joining the cult of a Deity with a Chaos rune.

(3) Performing the Chaos Gift Rune Magic of the Seven Mothers.  There may be other examples of magic that passes a chaos taint this way.

(4) Obtaining a Chaos Feature through means such as eating Chaos Ooze.

(5) Breaking taboos and performing heinous acts such as rape, cannibalism (sometimes), and incest.  You know, things that "crazy bigots" really object to.

Now, how do we recognize who has a chaos taint?

(1) The Stormbull/Uroxi Sense Chaos ability.

(2) The Detect Chaos spirit magic spell.

(3) Waha's Spirits of Law

(4) Visual identification of a chaos feature mutation or trait that is obviously out of keeping with the species.

(5) Adverse reaction to the touch of truestone

(6) Falling into 1d4+1 pieces when coming into contact with a trollish "stone to kill chaos".

And of course there is one way to hide a chaos taint apart from leaving town whenever an Uroxi shows up...

(1) Illumination.

While there are a few ways to remove a chaos taint, including bathing in the secret sacred waters of the Zola Fel, such as was done by the Cleansed One.  As this was a Hero Quest of the Zola Fel cult, it is possible that other cults have other means to remove a chaos taint that are not common knowledge.

Within the rules as written, I assume that Chaos Taint comes with activating the Chaos Rune within you, in much the same way that joining a Solar Deity activates your Sky Rune.  This is demonstrated in the Bestiary as every chaotic race has a certain Chaos Rune percentage.  Non-sentient chaotic species don't have this, but only because it isn't relevant to their stat blocks as they don't cast magic.

In this sense Chaos Taint is real but not necessarily physical.  On the other hand, when I GM I generally play that  a Chaos Taint does carry an unobvious chaotic mutation, only becoming apparent in mutated and appallingly bizarre organs only visible when the body is torn asunder like Wilbur Whateley when he was mauled by Napoleon the guard dog due to his unnatural smell, but other GMs may feel more charitable.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Darius West

[metcalph]

7 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Now, how do we recognize who has a chaos taint?

[...]

(2) The Detect Chaos spirit magic spell.

Funnily enough I don't think this exists.  At the very least, it's too broad a focus and should be broken down.  This would be there would be spells to detect the likes of Ooze, Disease or Unliving but a borad spectrum detect chaos spell has not been described in the literature AFAIK.  

Quote

(3) Waha's Spirits of Law

It's not clear whether it has any special powers in doing so.  RQG p344 says it's summoned "for a spirit combat
attack on a target that has already revealed its Chaotic nature".  The Red Book of Magic p95 just says Chaotic target but both versions do have the sentence "If the spirit appears and does not detect a Chaotic spirit or soul, the Spirit of Law departs without making any attack" suggesting that a spirit could fail to sense a chaotic in its vicinity.

 

[Darius West]

Just now, metcalph said:

Funnily enough I don't think this exists.  At the very least, it's too broad a focus and should be broken down.  This would be there would be spells to detect the likes of Ooze, Disease or Unliving but a borad spectrum detect chaos spell has not been described in the literature AFAIK.  

Detect (substance) can include Detect Chaos as it would simply identify creatures with an active chaos rune.  It was certainly never a problem in RQ2.

[metcalph]

3 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Detect (substance) can include Detect Chaos as it would simply identify creatures with an active chaos rune.  It was certainly never a problem in RQ2.

It doesn't say so in the rules and it's existence has never been acknowledged in published materials.

[Darius West]

6 minutes ago, metcalph said:

It's not clear whether it has any special powers in doing so.  RQG p344 says it's summoned "for a spirit combat
attack on a target that has already revealed its Chaotic nature".  The Red Book of Magic p95 just says Chaotic target but both versions do have the sentence "If the spirit appears and does not detect a Chaotic spirit or soul, the Spirit of Law departs without making any attack" suggesting that a spirit could fail to sense a chaotic in its vicinity.

Personally I choose not to make a weak spell even more useless.  I mean, according to you, the Waha initiate accuses someone of being chaos and attacks them, then calls on the spirit, and if they are chaotic then the spirit hits them in spirit combat, and if not, then too bad, they have a dagger ax in their head, but no harm, no foul, they aren't chaos, just a big misunderstanding. 

I prefer to treat the spell as an "ultima ratio khanum", that sends a spirit that can tell if someone is chaotic with unerring precision so that a Stormbull initiate making noisy claims of chaos can seek a ruling from the Waha Khan before acting totally precipitously. It allows Waha to be more useful and potentially de-escalate the worst excesses of Stormbulls.  it seems more appropriate to the setting, and MGF, as it means that Summon Spirit of Law actually has a social purpose as well as a second rate military application.

[Darius West]

25 minutes ago, metcalph said:

It doesn't say so in the rules and it's existence has never been acknowledged in published materials.

I'm pretty sure it showed up in Griffin Mountain but I can't be bothered digging for it. 

In any case, if you can cast a detect paper spell or a detect iron spell, by comparison it is a hell of a lot easier to detect a the presence of a rune.  Or do we want to get really specific?  I mean, logically we could have a Detect Illuminate spell and that would be just as plausible as a Detect Mostali spell. Substance is a very broad term, but an active rune like a Chaos Rune definitely has a reality in Glorantha, as reality is based on Runes.  I mean, if you can Detect Life, why not just Detect Life which has an active Chaos Rune? It seems a lot more plausible that detecting every form of dead Plant Rune or dead Beast Rune that could feasibly be of a thinness that would constitute paper.  Don't get me started on Detect Enemies aka "Detect every living, spirit, or undead thing within range that would wish me harm if it knew I was here" spell.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Darius West

[radmonger]

We know that one of the forbidden god learner secrets was something called the 'runequest sight'. Commonly thought to be reasonably approximated by giving whoever used it the RQ statistics of the thing it is used on.

So there is certainly precedence for a spell being logically possible, but not widely known because of the bad things that happen to anyone who tries to cast it.

There is a worldview that runes are knowable physical things, that, for example, the forging an iron sword causes some objectively measurable death rune quantity to increase.  This is implicit in a lot of fan and published material, rq2, rq3, hq and/or hw, 

The current RQ:G approach[1] seems to be that the runes are strictly the _metaphysical_ component of Glorantha. You could take a broo, grind it down to the finest powder, sieve it through the finest sieve, and you would not find one atom of chaos[1].

So the ambiguity to be addressed in play  is not 'bob is chaotic, but does that mean he is  evil?' but simply 'is bob chaotic?'

[1]this is contrary to what i posted above about Mostali, although maybe what they consider trivial is still impossible to anyone else.

[2] reference links to a shelf in the Nochet great library that was sequentially sunk, burnt and exploded on one day several centuries back. It is kept in it's devastated state by the Lhankor Mhy cult, and used as a backdrop when the chief librarian makes his regular lecture to apprentices on the importance of wisdom as a guide to the pursuit of knowledge.

 

[Nick Brooke]

Darius wants “Detect Evil” spells in his Glorantha, and that’s fine: HGWV. The rest of us know that the Storm Bull’s PTSD is the only semi-reliable way to detect Chaos. If a common-or-garden Spirit Magic spell could do the same, why would anyone tolerate those louts?

[French Desperate WindChild]

5 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Darius wants “Detect Evil” spells in his Glorantha, and that’s fine: HGWV. The rest of us know that the Storm Bull’s PTSD is the only semi-reliable way to detect Chaos. If a common-or-garden Spirit Magic spell could do the same, why would anyone tolerate those louts?

there are at least two reasons in my opinion :

 

detect evil : duration = 5 min and cost = 1mp

sense chaos : duration  = always and cost = 0

 

well cost = 0... except tables, chairs, and arms destroyed by these drunkards 😛

 

and there is not only the detection but all the "true" powers to face chaos

 

but is detect evil needed when detect ennemy does a better job (after all, chaos is your ennemy, not "you" = illuminated Nick, i agree, but "you" = sane blind people 😛 )

[Jeff]

5 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Darius wants “Detect Evil” spells in his Glorantha, and that’s fine: HGWV. The rest of us know that the Storm Bull’s PTSD is the only semi-reliable way to detect Chaos. If a common-or-garden Spirit Magic spell could do the same, why would anyone tolerate those louts?

There is no Detect Evil spell, as "evil" is a mighty hard thing to define. Detect Enemies detects hostile intent or a specific individual. Detect Honor (a Rune spell) detects whether an individual possesses the Honor passion at 60%, has broken an oath, etc. 

The only Detect (Rune) rune or spirit magic spell is Detect Truth, which really detects whether someone is lying. 

Given that Storm Bull does not have a Detect Chaos spell, only a magical skill, I certainly don't think anyone else would provide that.

Now it might be possible to deduce a Detect Chaos sorcery spell as a variant of Identify Rune, but that might be a Boristi cult secret.

[John Biles]

9 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Darius wants “Detect Evil” spells in his Glorantha, and that’s fine: HGWV. The rest of us know that the Storm Bull’s PTSD is the only semi-reliable way to detect Chaos. If a common-or-garden Spirit Magic spell could do the same, why would anyone tolerate those louts?

In Prax, I expect that a Stormbull isn't much worse than the average male clansman anyway.

But also, they're good at FIGHTING Chaos.

 

[Frp]

16 hours ago, Darius West said:

Personally I choose not to make a weak spell even more useless.  I mean, according to you, the Waha initiate accuses someone of being chaos and attacks them, then calls on the spirit, and if they are chaotic then the spirit hits them in spirit combat, and if not, then too bad, they have a dagger ax in their head, but no harm, no foul, they aren't chaos, just a big misunderstanding. 

 

Any spirit can detect rune affinities over 50% at POW x 10 meters and cult affinities at POW x 1 meters. Even if a Spirit of Law has no other special chaos detecting abilities it's going to find a target unless the summoner was really clueless about what they're up against. If it would attack someone for being a member of a chaos cult, if they've got a less than 50% chaos rune, and they weren't up to anything particularly chaotic when the spirit arrived, I'm not sure. 

Reveal Rune is the only spell that can detect chaos that I've ever heard of. It takes, at least, 5 minutes and it's an active spell. 

 

[Nick Brooke]

14 hours ago, John Biles said:

In Prax, I expect that a Stormbull isn't much worse than the average male clansman anyway.

Re-read the cult writeup. Storm Bull cultists are total assholes, even to other Praxians.

[mfbrandi]

38 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Re-read the cult writeup. Storm Bull cultists are total assholes, even to other Praxians.

It was obviously a typo: he meant “Klansman”.

[Akhôrahil]

16 hours ago, John Biles said:

But also, they're good at FIGHTING Chaos.

Agree. Detecting is good, but having a poor sense of self-preservation and being both willing and capable of fighting Chaos is also really important.

Edited July 4, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[Darius West]

On 7/4/2023 at 3:58 AM, Jeff said:

There is no Detect Evil spell, as "evil" is a mighty hard thing to define. Detect Enemies detects hostile intent or a specific individual. Detect Honor (a Rune spell) detects whether an individual possesses the Honor passion at 60%, has broken an oath, etc. 

I have always had a problem with Detect Enemies as a spell.  I mean, if the "enemies" don't know you are there, perhaps even don't know you exist at all, how can they feel hostile towards you?  I mean, obviously once conflict starts then they will show up, but what would the point of the spell be then?  Clearly the definition of an enemy is something the Caster chooses, or perhaps even something the spell spirit chooses.  Then there are those cases such as Argan Argar Trolls who might be hostile, or may not be...  Those spell spirits certainly know their inter-species psychology to split hairs so reliably.

Next to this, detecting an active chaos rune seems easy.  Of course illumination protects from such detection, because that is what mystical moral relativism is for.