Solar worldview of Time

[Jape_Vicho]

The recent posts in the Well of Daliath by Jeff about the worldview of the Solar civilizations are very interesting. But I think that one very interesting point those post haven't covered is how do those civilizations think of Time/The Dawn.

The thing is, I don't think you can realistically ignore the Dawn. The Dawn brought back to life many dead gods, it brought back the Solar Disk where before only dim and cold Yelmalio resisted, and it brought back the life-force of the Earth, and thus agriculture. But of even greater importance is that since Time came to Glorantha, no God has free will. No God can act of his own volition, only through their followers, and only following his already established mythical patterns. That can't be missed either. And of course there's the matter of Time itself. Did those people "feel" the birth of Time? Did humans before Time die of old age? Did they age? Did they feel things happened one ofter the other? It may be fine for us to think about Vingkot as a mythical figure and not worry about what happened before or after, but many people, like Aram Ya Udram or Froalar, did experience existence both before and after Time. 

We know how orlanthi (and I think trolls, elves and probably triolini share orlanthi mythology in this aspect) think about this milestone. In the Greater Darkness world was fucked, chaos runned rampant, and it was the fault of the gods for being short-sighted and cruel, fighting constantly among themselves. When chaos was so victorious that it even began to fight against itself, many heroes emerged to fight it. Then Urox killed Wakboth, Magasta sealed the Void, and I fought We Won. Chaos was hardly beaten but the world was still broken and battered, and then the 7 Lightbringers did their quest, and made pacts and sacrifices in the underworld to mend the world for good. And then the pacts were sealed by Arachne Solara. To uphold the pact (that means, to keep the Devil tangled on the Web), all gods have to renounce free will, and give the reins of Glorantha to the mortal races. My question, perhaps too extensively worded, is, how do Solar civilizations reinterpret what I've just said in their own worldview of Solar primacy and Golden Age perfection? 

BTW, even though Peloria is the Solar civ. par excellence, I'm even more interested in the East. 

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/solar-worldview/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/continuity-with-the-golden-age/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/solar-purity/

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/kralorela-and-the-eastern-dynasty-of-light/

[Richard S.]

The Dawn was the return of the Emperor from the underworld, the end to the line of bad emperors that ruled during the darkness. Yelm returned to his rightful place, but now also goes to the underworld to rule there each night, proving his universal dominion. His chosen people can speak to him again and rule in his name, the way things are supposed to be. I think both Peloria and Kralorela would see things roughly like that.

I also don't think they really cared about their relative inaction compared to earlier; that was a long time ago, and for the people alive at the Dawn the sudden return of life to the world probably seemed like an overwhelming amount of action. They'd gotten used to a silver age where all they had was Yelmalio and a few spirits, where most of the world was still dead and sleeping.

2 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

Did humans before Time die of old age? Did they age? Did they feel things happened one ofter the other?

From the little we know, I think so. Old age and death by it is a product of Grandfather Mortal's death, not the entropy within Time. And I think there are stories of Dara Happan scholars counting the years since Yelm's death by burning candles, so there was some level of continuity for them at least, especially as they got closer to the Dawn. How that meshes with the nonlinearity of the God Time we know is just one of those impossibilities that has to be accepted.

[mfbrandi]

6 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

many people … did experience existence both before and after Time. 

Quote

Naturally, we were all there — old Qfwfq said — where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines? — Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino

Quote

The world of Glorantha is about 1600 years old. That many years ago, after a great and timeless Darkness, the Sun God rose in the east for the first of many days, instituting the new power of Time …

Illusory Time is that progression of events which seems to manifest itself as we glance backward to God Time myth, or upon the activities which Heroquesters perform in that realm of legend and magic. It is a cosmological fact that the mythical world of God Time exists only in stasis, beyond the touch of Time, and that Chaos lies at the other pole. Reality stretches between them, and the non-existent realms are reachable only when individuals force Illusory Time upon the God Time. — Cults of Prax “Classic”, p. 3

If someone wants to sequence events before the beginning of time, either they are having you on or they are struggling and failing to to talk sense. Of course, it may be that time didn’t begin 1600 years ago, in which case their memory of what happened 1700 years ago may be honest and true. GRoY reads — to me, anyway — like the author didn’t believe that time began 1600 years ago, but I am afraid I cannot help you out with Kralorela.

Edited September 18, 2023 by mfbrandi

[Richard S.]

3 hours ago, Richard S. said:

The Dawn was the return of the Emperor from the underworld, the end to the line of bad emperors that ruled during the darkness. Yelm returned to his rightful place, but now also goes to the underworld to rule there each night, proving his universal dominion. His chosen people can speak to him again and rule in his name, the way things are supposed to be. I think both Peloria and Kralorela would see things roughly like that.

After a little more reading, I think Kralorela might view things differently actually. Yelm was merely the second emperor in a long line, and while perhaps he was the best one, he's not the ultimate source of the Dragon Emperors' authority (or at least I think it's unlikely any of them were Imperator initiates). Sure, the Dawn was doubtless time for celebration, but it was because their emperors had set the world right again, not because of Yelm himself.

[Revilo Divad Of Dyoll]

6 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

My question, perhaps too extensively worded, is, how do Solar civilizations reinterpret what I've just said in their own worldview of Solar primacy and Golden Age perfection? 

Have you looked at the Stafford Library - particularly The Glorious Reascent of Yelm and The Fortunate Succession?  Those cover the Dara Happan view in detail.

Revealed Mythologies does not really explain the Eastern view, which creates its own issues (and discussion threads).  

[radmonger]

I suspect the key thing about 0ST is that after that date, Darra Happan and Kralorean records of celestial phenomenon would agree, in much the same way say Chinese and Byzantine records of eclipses do in the real world.

Before that, they really don't. Even if they both described the same pair of events, they would very likely disagree about the number of years between them, and might about the order. No doubt both cultures would say 'those foreigners can't be trusted to keep accurate records'. It's the Lightbringers and Malkioni who make the philosophical claim that such accuracy was impossible or meaningless.

[Nick Brooke]

Plentonius, a Dawn Age author, thought something even more epoch-defining than the first sunrise happened 111 years after the Dawn of Time, and structured his own calendar around that event. Just putting that out there. Here’s one of the more Velikovskian passages from the Glorious Re-Ascent of Yelm:

“Despite this succession of mishaps in the good land, the heavens continued towards correction. The most glorious event which occurred was the rebirth of true light. The god Antirius, the immortal fount of Justice and Light, rose again from death and into the sky upon the Dawn of the annual New Day [in 111 ST]. Everyone who was watching noticed the difference.

“Thus was signaled the end of the Darkness, for the realms of Day and Night switched places. Kargzant was defeated, ridden by Lightfore. Antirius, stronger and brighter than that old sun, rose. The horns announced the rise of the first new day.

“At that signal, the Hidden Heirs stepped forward, to compete for the Throne. The Empire prepared again for its rightful heir…”

[EricW]

Isn't the diversity of contradictory stories leading up to the sunrise a completely understandable manifestation of the efforts of all to knit the broken world together? 

Different people's stories of what led to dawn contradict each other, but the contradictory stories are all true. People remember different versions of events leading to the dawn, because the world before dawn was broken - groups were leading completely separate lives, separated by unbridgeable gulfs, so there was no shared understanding of what constituted reality.

The dawn, the creating of time, marked the beginning of a shared understanding of what constituted Gloranthan history, by knitting all the broken fragments of Glorantha which could be retrieved into a consistent whole. In that sense, Glorantha is surely a gestalt, a knitting together of contradictory realities, reconciled by the understanding that the dawn marks the point at which everyone agrees Gloranthan history should henceforth be logically consistent.

There is one thread common to all the stories of cultures which witnessed the dawn. Evil was defeated in some manner. Because those fragments of the ancient world which didn't defeat evil, they simply didn't survive. 

Edited September 19, 2023 by EricW

[Malin]

I think another issue is that we, as people within time, can't look at things happening before time without applying time to it. The very act of viewing and trying to understand it makes time a factor, even if it wasn't one for the gods and people living there at the time. I don't have time to go looking for the physics articles right now, but I remember seeing some scientists talk about time as one of the "room" dimensions. There is no inherent direction to it; it is we who impose the direction since we only perceive it as one way. It must have been disconcerting for people who were alive across the threshold, but even today, we often look back and adjust our past to fit with how we currently see the world.

Both we modern humans of today and the gloranthans, are trapped in this new worldview, and trying to imagine what came before is a fallacy because we NEED to imply a "before," but when time did not exist as a line, there was no "before" only "now."

The way I personally think about it is that before, "time" was not linear, it was a "now" that could be freely experienced. A human born before mortality would have within them all their parts of life. A babe, an adult, an elder. They would experience the whole of their existence, just like we experience the whole of our bodies today. It is who we are. When death entered, there was suddenly an endpoint, but it didn't change the essential experience. However, as the world was put together and "time" created, all those experiences collapsed within a single line. No longer could an existence be "experienced," but a life needed to be "lived" with a beginning and an end. All experiences of those rare people who survived the dawn would sort themselves into line with this new reality, and they would need to examine what was suddenly their "past" and put it in order.

This also makes sense as to why the gods can no longer be directly involved with the world. If they interact intentionally and directly within the world of time, they would risk being bound by it and having their "existence" become linear and thus "lived." They might break themselves in the process. The Red Goddess, born within time, is an anomaly here, fusing "existence" and "life" as much as she fuses "chaos" and "matter." I see her as the greatest threat and the greatest promise because she breaks all rules and tries to have the cake and eat it too.

When you think about it, it's no wonder that so many great heroes and heroines arise, filled with all the powers of the gods, but able to act within time. Maybe what broke Harrek's Bear God wasn't the act of killing it, but dragging the skin into time and trapping it there.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Plentonius, a Dawn Age author, thought something even more epoch-defining than the first sunrise happened 111 years after the Dawn of Time, and structured his own calendar around that event. Just putting that out there.

Plentonius stanned Avivath, the first urban Dara Happan to wield the power of Yelm (the Sunspear) within Time (unless the Hyalorings had that power, and later the Pure Horse tribes?)

The Bridling of Kargzant ended Hyaloring power when the sons of Vuranoste (Plentonius uses a Dara Happanized Vuranostum) failed to prevent the Barbarian Warrior in the sky from putting the roving Kargzant onto the Sunpath. There may have been more than one Night Sun in the sky prior to that, or simply a Lightfore unfazed by the Gates of Dusk and Dawn, remaining in the sky come sunrise or sunset.

IMG there were two such night suns - the pale trailing golden spearman Cold Sun following Hot Antirius, and Reladivus Elmal Kargzant the roving sunhorse. This event merged the two celestial bodies and their cults.

Who was the Orlanthi hero who did this? Possibly a hero of Elmal? Plentonius blames Orlanatus, but then he always does.

[French Desperate WindChild]

38 minutes ago, Malin said:

I don't have time to go looking for the physics articles right now

if you get "time", that would interest me because : (spoiler because out of glorantha 🙂 )

Spoiler

39 minutes ago, Malin said:

but I remember seeing some scientists talk about time as one of the "room" dimensions

I have the same memory

39 minutes ago, Malin said:

There is no inherent direction to it

but I have a different memory : what is done is done.

What I understand, with my poor words, is more that when any event (x,y,z, t,..) happens, an individual may not yet notice it when another does but in all cases, if they travel in any direction (X, Y, Z, T...) , they cannot arrive before this event (x, y, z, t'<t ...)

 

However I found this :

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342860481_Reversible_dynamics_with_closed_time-like_curves_and_freedom_of_choice

and then there are some outreach articles about them. Aka yes maths say you can go past without paradox - I don't say it , just what they say-

however, there are very few reviews about it so is it because it is "ridiculous" or because that is so clear, well demonstrated, etc... I don't know

There is this article :

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361752360_Remark_on_Reversible_dynamics_with_closed_time-like_curve_and_freedom_of_choice_by_Germain_Tobar_Fabio_Costa

"We comment this paper by pointing out at least 4 issues that make this paper problematic, not only practically but also conceptually"

 

I have not enough skills for that, so, without more confirmation (in 10-20-30 years ?) that is for me an hypothesis, in a scientific approach. Not an actual state of knowledge

 

but back to the future glorantha

 

18 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

That can't be missed either. And of course there's the matter of Time itself. Did those people "feel" the birth of Time? Did humans before Time die of old age? Did they age? Did they feel things happened one ofter the other? It may be fine for us to think about Vingkot as a mythical figure and not worry about what happened before or after, but many people, like Aram Ya Udram or Froalar, did experience existence both before and after Time.

but... did they "really" exist "before" this "Time" ?

- people write their history in a way to give them the right to lead their lands, to prove they are the "best" (from their values, which is their gods values, etc...)

so "solar" people may create their history since their gods led the world (so golden age). Thus they have right to lead Peloria, Kralorela, etc.. And they have right to conquer the world, by all means, even the most debatable, because others are bad and break the perfect order (their order of course).

so "wind" people may create their history since their gods led honorably the world (so lightbringer quests). Thus they have right to lead Dragon Pass, etc.. And they have right to conquer the world, by all means, even the most debatable (Sheng Seleris, dragons, ...) because others are bad, corrupt the world or want to enslave the world.

Then a theory among other:

- the gods exist as the myths say.

- the events "before time" (heroquest) happened (for me, in a sequence,Orlanth can't make peace with Yelm before killing him for example, but that's not realy important in this theory)

- the creation of Time is in fact the "freeze" of the world from a divine perspective:

• They cannot change the world by themselves.
• That doesn't mean the world cannot change. It can, it does, but because time and mundane creatures.
• That doesn't mean the gods are not present in the world, they are, they can be seen (holy country), they can be joined (divination, etc..) just they can't change the world.

then

- if mundane people are able to join the myth (and play the role of their gods)

- if mundane people were born/created since the Time.

We may imagine that a part of the compromise is the creation of "mortal" (from a time perspective) by the "sacrifice" of a part of the "matter" (runes ? , essence ? ) of the gods. This "mundane" part was the power they lost: to change the world.

That may explain why :

- they are "called" by their god/dess for initiation (they inherited a bigger part of their god and the resonance of this part make them good candidates of initiation)

- it is easier for an initiate of a god/dess to "play" its role in heroquest than to play another role (the god's part in them makes a better "echo" to the myth)

- they are able to "explore" the heroplan, because even if they are "heir" of the god, they have parts of other gods (maybe even chaotic gods?) so they can do things differently, but it is difficult

 

So mortals are heir of gods in some way. What the priests say about their pre-time origin is not really a lie. An explanation, a parable or just an "understanding" of what is the reality.

And yes Yelm initiates have right to lead solar people because they have /are the part of the "mundane" Yelm when other solar people have/are part of Yelm's subjects. And yes the emperor, as he succeeds the tests, proves that he has/are more part of the mundane Yelm than any other Yelm initiate, so it is normal that he leads every one in the solar empire.

 

After all, irl, who can say what realy did Nero while Rome burned. Was he the instigator ? was he pleased ? was he mad ? Those who  wrotte that did it because it was true, because they believed it or because they were paid to say it ? but there is a proven fact: Rome burned

 

just one theory, among others 😛

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, EricW said:

[T]he dawn marks the point at which everyone agrees Gloranthan history should henceforth be logically consistent.

• History in the sense of what we write down about what happened —
  ought always to be logically consistent
  but it seldom is.
   
• History in the sense of what happened —
  is always logically consistent
  but that is often denied.

Right, that’s my sub–La Rochefoucauld vein tapped out for today.

[radmonger]

A related point is cyclic time. 

As i understand it, that refers to the fact that on a given day every year, the right ritual in the right place will take you to a specific event in the Gods War. With, mostly, things in early seasons being in early ages, and things in later seasons later ages.

What can happen is that if you screw up a ritual early on in  the year, that can have downstream consequences that makes a later one harder, or even impossible. Which can have corresponding effect on later rituals. If you fail to keep Flamal alive until you plant your crops, don't expect much of a harvest this year.

Then, sacred time happens, and the God's World is recreated, like a video game getting a server reset. Flamal is reborn, and once again you can learn his magic. And so can the elves, and so can the spirits of the wild paces.

 

[mfbrandi]

48 minutes ago, radmonger said:

Then, sacred time happens, and the God's World is recreated, like a video game getting a server reset.

So if I do an experimental heroquest to retcon something in the Gods War, it’ll all be wiped out in time for next year? Argrath’s feeding the gods to the Devil achieved nothing?

Maybe there are wheels within wheels and the annual cycle isn’t the biggest one — not everything gets completely reset annually (though possibly everything gets reset eventually — after Void has eaten Cosmos). Or maybe take what the priests say with a pinch of salt — as big a pinch as your heart can stand.

48 minutes ago, radmonger said:

cyclic time

• Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do (an octave higher: the same note (Do), but not the same Do)
• Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun (a week later: the same day (Sunday), but not the same Sunday)

And Peggy Lee asks, ‘Is that all there is to cyclic time?’ But that is not a specifically Gloranthan take, of course.

Edited September 19, 2023 by mfbrandi

[Jape_Vicho]

16 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Naturally, we were all there — old Qfwfq said — where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines? — Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino

Now that I think of it, many novels and specially comic books have long traditions of exploring time, multiverses and such things, much more than "traditional" fantasy. Sadly, I've never delved far on those kinds of stories.

 

15 hours ago, Richard S. said:

After a little more reading, I think Kralorela might view things differently actually. Yelm was merely the second emperor in a long line, and while perhaps he was the best one, he's not the ultimate source of the Dragon Emperors' authority (or at least I think it's unlikely any of them were Imperator initiates). Sure, the Dawn was doubtless time for celebration, but it was because their emperors had set the world right again, not because of Yelm himself.

After reading your comment I re-read Jeff's post about Kralorela and found that the last Emperor before the Dawn, Vashanti, is mentioned to have "went to the underworld to return the Viceroys of Day and Night from the Underworld". IDK how I missed that. If I recall correctly, the last Vormaino dynasty before the Dawn is said to have abdicated just when it happened, so the myths may be very similar. I think that points towards a kind of "the Many Lighbringers" myths, meaning that all civilizations who managed to exit the Darkness by themselves have their own similar stories in which a great god or hero travels to the Underworld and revives the Dead Gods. And because the defeat of Chaos is a story of I Fought We Won, which means that We won because everyone did their part, you can magically prove that all those beigns indeed revived Yelm, maybe even Yelm itself (or a part of himself).

4 hours ago, Malin said:

The way I personally think about it is that before, "time" was not linear, it was a "now" that could be freely experienced. A human born before mortality would have within them all their parts of life. A babe, an adult, an elder. They would experience the whole of their existence, just like we experience the whole of our bodies today. It is who we are. When death entered, there was suddenly an endpoint, but it didn't change the essential experience. However, as the world was put together and "time" created, all those experiences collapsed within a single line. No longer could an existence be "experienced," but a life needed to be "lived" with a beginning and an end.

Then imagine the case of the Mistress Race trolls of Dagori Inkarth. Some of those beings probably began their existence in the Green Age, before things really were differentiated, that means they even existed even before they were Uzuz!. Then they lived in the Golden Age, when Death didn't exist. Then they were expelled from their homes and forced into a land that was hostile to them (and they were hostile to the land as well). And then, after being witnesses to the worst of Chaos, Time was born, and they were suddenly cut from all their previous existence, which they had lived by for what now seemed like tens of thousands of years. If all that doesn't turn you crazy...

 

7 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Plentonius, a Dawn Age author, thought something even more epoch-defining than the first sunrise happened 111 years after the Dawn of Time, and structured his own calendar around that event. Just putting that out there.

Every time I read about Plentonious in this forum or even in official books, ppl are talking about how wrong he was, so I don't know if he is to be trusted in any matter 😆. I'm sure many Theyalan Knowing God scholars say Dara Happan historians are less deserving of trust than a Trickster, but that is the nature of scholars anyway.

 

---------------------------

BTW, this thread has made me more aware of how much of a threat is Sedenya to the Cosmos... I think I'm more anti-lunar than yesterday.

 

[Jape_Vicho]

15 hours ago, Revilo Divad Of Dyoll said:

Have you looked at the Stafford Library - particularly The Glorious Reascent of Yelm and The Fortunate Succession?  Those cover the Dara Happan view in detail.

Revealed Mythologies does not really explain the Eastern view, which creates its own issues (and discussion threads).  

I haven't yet, but I plan to read it someday. I've only read King of Sartar and skimmed through Heortling Mythology.

[radmonger]

30 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

So if I do an experimental heroquest to retcon something in the Gods War, it’ll all be wiped out in time for next year? Argrath’s feeding the gods to the Devil achieved nothing?

The only event all the Gods were at was I Fought We Won, right at the end of the  Gods War and so corresponding to sacred time. 

So it seems what happened was what happens if you fail [1] the sacred time rituals that recreate the world. This likely happens fairly regularly at the clan or kingdom level. Once that community loses access to magic, it loses conflicts with its neighbors, and its people drift away to other communities that can offer more.

Argrath is remembered because he created a world-spanning empire to set the stage for his failure. 

[1] Perhaps deliberately, probably not. Even his hagiographers were reduced to claiming he was playing some kind of 11 dimensional chess when he brought about the Gloranthan version of the bronze age collapse...

[Joerg]

4 minutes ago, radmonger said:

The only event all the Gods were at was I Fought We Won, right at the end of the  Gods War and so corresponding to sacred time.

I Fought We Won was fought by heroes and demigods in the Surface World. Some of the Silver Age heroes of the Theyalans were participants in that conflict - King Heort, the Only Old One, the (future?) Inhuman King, a dwarf hero (possibly one of the few ancient Mostali instead), a High King Elf hero. Some claim that Zzabur participated, and while I think he did something major concurrently, I don't think that he was attuned to the same world-renewing mystery. The concurrent event with (nearly) all the gods participating was the RItual of the Net in the Underworld, an event enabled by the Lightbringers' Quest, and possibly other quests/chained feats of other deities. Kralori emperor Vashanti was somehow involved in the Underworld business, for instance.

 

13 minutes ago, radmonger said:

So it seems what happened was what happens if you fail [1] the sacred time rituals that recreate the world. This likely happens fairly regularly at the clan or kingdom level. Once that community loses access to magic, it loses conflicts with its neighbors, and its people drift away to other communities that can offer more.

Failure is relative. The 1625 ritual of Kallyr Starbrow - her Short Lightbringers'  Quest starting at he Hill of Orlanth VIctorious - avoided to become  major failure by a hair's breadth while ending up as a resounding failure for its purpose to strengthen Kallyr's reign and Sartarite unity. By that outcome, the Lunar invasion that leads to the Battle of Queens should be an uncontested victory, but somehow that fails to materialize.

Also, possibly due to Jar-eel playing with the Sartarites rather than running the imperial world-confirming quests, the Empire gets invaded by Dranz Goloi.

In the end, all those quests resonate with one another, and mutual intrusions at magically very charged questing would be an expected outcome.

Argrath's Full Lightbringers' Quest took more than a year, similar to those original two of Harmast.

[radmonger]

28 minutes ago, Joerg said:

By that outcome, the Lunar invasion that leads to the Battle of Queens should be an uncontested victory, but somehow that fails to materialize.

The Lunars always planned to keep Sartar as a client  kingdom. if they had won, some new member of Temertain's line would have eventually been given the throne.

Their defeat is a precondition for the Sartarite establishment to be fully replaced by Argrath, with his Praxian and Colymar allies.

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/argraths-story/

 

[Akhôrahil]

On 9/18/2023 at 3:46 PM, Jape_Vicho said:

And of course there's the matter of Time itself. Did those people "feel" the birth of Time?

Possibly, but there weren't many of them at that point. It's also possible that they missed it, because things might not have looked very metaphysically differently locally. Perhaps it was like waking after a maximally realistic dream?

You could visit Cragspider and ask, I guess?

On 9/18/2023 at 3:46 PM, Jape_Vicho said:

Did humans before Time die of old age?

Yes - little need for royal or imperial lines otherwise, for instance.

On 9/18/2023 at 3:46 PM, Jape_Vicho said:

Did they age?

Yes, or we wouldn't have had any new adults, the way we clearly do.

On 9/18/2023 at 3:46 PM, Jape_Vicho said:

Did they feel things happened one ofter the other?

Yes, but this was only true locally.

Basically, people must have felt that things happened one after the other and were causally connected, but this was only locally true. There was no universal order of events, and no objective or non-contradicting reality (it existed but was subjective and contradictory). No-one could say whether event A happened before event B if they were separated enough, or whether myth 1 or its variant myth 2 was what "really" happened (there was no such "really"). Once Time happens though, we get linear, universal time, a non-contradictory mundane world, real and objective causal connections, and historical (as opposed to mythical) truths. Except when the Godtime intrudes or the Compromise is broken.

All IMO.

Edited September 19, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[Jape_Vicho]

4 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Possibly, but there weren't many of them at that point. It's also possible that they missed it, because things might not have looked very metaphysically differently locally. Perhaps it was like waking after a maximally realistic dream?

I love that idea.

5 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Basically, people must have felt that things happened one after the other and were causally connected, but this was only locally true. There was no universal order of events, and no objective or non-contradicting reality (it existed but was subjective and contradictory). No-one could say whether event A happened before event B, or whether myth 1 or its variant myth 2 was what "really" happened (there was no such "really"). Once Time happens though, we get linear, universal time, a non-contradictory mundane world, real and objective causal connections, and historical (as opposed to mythical) truths. Except when the Godtime intrudes or the Compromise is broken.

That makes a lot of sense actually. That way you can have things like Six Ages, and even TTRPG campaigns before Time. Of course, if characters were to wander to distant regions, things would seem very weird to them, but that's alright as not many people wandered much before Time.

[Akhôrahil]

32 minutes ago, Jape_Vicho said:

I love that idea.

That makes a lot of sense actually. That way you can have things like Six Ages, and even TTRPG campaigns before Time. Of course, if characters were to wander to distant regions, things would seem very weird to them, but that's alright as not many people wandered much before Time.

Also, I think it makes sense to say that only since Time could things be historically true, but before that they could be mythically true.

Take the Grazers. We know, for a fact, that their origin myth of being centaurs separated into men and horses isn't the historical truth. But it can still be mythically true, and is - you can heroquest the myth, despite the fact that it never actually happened (where "fact", "actually" and "historically" are irrelevant words when it comes to mythical content).

[EricW]

On 9/19/2023 at 8:40 PM, mfbrandi said:

• History in the sense of what we write down about what happened —
  ought always to be logically consistent
  but it seldom is.
   
• History in the sense of what happened —
  is always logically consistent
  but that is often denied.

Right, that’s my sub–La Rochefoucauld vein tapped out for today.

He he - logically consistent, but not always knowable.

Having said that, Glorantha has divination spells, and knowledge gods have even more extreme methods like reconstruction magic. Or they can talk to dead people and ask what happened. They have better knowledge of the past than we could ever hope for.