How much Glorantha has shrunk since the Godtime?

[bronze]

In the trusted and tested Tolkien fashion, it seems the world had been better in the good old ancient time. Not only cosmos was more complete, benign and splendid, civilizations seem to be mightier, grandier, more prosperous and advanced than the any incarnation of the later ages, at least until the unfurling of the Greater Darkness. During the Second Age civilizations were on the long road of restoration for their former glory, only to be plummeted to the nadir again. 

It seems the cosmos has ever been shrunk since the Godtime. The impression is at the late Golden Age the world's expansion reached its maximum, and after onset of the Storm Age, it has been gradually but inexorably diminished and lessened. The world gets smaller and smaller, shattered and broken time and time again, not only in metaphysical sense, but also in physical scope. 

I wonder it is true that the cosmos has ceased to expand since the Golden Age, and afterward it only has been withered and shrivelled.  

Edited October 18, 2023 by bronze

[Malin]

I think shattered and sunk might be a better description than shrunk...

 

[bronze]

7 minutes ago, Malin said:

I think shattered and sunk might be a better description than shrunk...

That is true, too! 

[jajagappa]

59 minutes ago, bronze said:

The world gets smaller and smaller, shattered and broken time and time again, not only in metaphysical sense, but also in physical scope. 

If you look at the Cosmology and the Mythic maps in the Mythology book, generally the world as a whole has not contracted but you do have a Sky Dome that now rocks back and forth, there's a bulge in Hell extending downward (outward?), and a lot of the Earth has been shattered and swallowed up by the seas. 

From the perspective of the Earth deities, yes, it has shrunk. From the perspective of the Seas, the area has grown or been recovered/reclaimed. 

[bronze]

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

If you look at the Cosmology and the Mythic maps in the Mythology book, generally the world as a whole has not contracted but you do have a Sky Dome that now rocks back and forth, there's a bulge in Hell extending downward (outward?), and a lot of the Earth has been shattered and swallowed up by the seas. 

From the perspective of the Earth deities, yes, it has shrunk. From the perspective of the Seas, the area has grown or been recovered/reclaimed. 

still get the impression the world has shrunk. Has it been confirmed that size of cosmos as a whole has remained unchanged since the end of the Golden Age? When the world has ceased to expand? 

Edited October 17, 2023 by bronze

[mfbrandi]

56 minutes ago, bronze said:

In the trusted and tested Tolkien fashion, it seems the world had been better in the good old ancient time … at least until the unfurling of the Greater Darkness.

Well, I guess it depends on how you view the division between myth and history. The Society for the Appreciation of the Golden Age has always been telling us that it was better back then, but what if the “events” of the Golden Age are “only” part of myth, not history? I don’t mean that disparagingly, but consider:

• Navigation through the Hero Planes uses Myths to get to events, not maps to get to locations. However, the Myths are not objective reality, but subjective by their very nature. — Guide to Glorantha, p. 155
   
• The modern English “truth” comes from Old English … meaning “faith, faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty” … This is why we talk about remaining “true” to something. “Fact,” by contrast, comes from the Latin factum, “something that happened, something real.” The two have nothing to do with one another except in the post-Enlightenment mutilation of language so that only what can be seen under a microscope is of value. But what it comes down to is “fact” is something we can see, and “Truth” is something we feel. — Andrew Logan Montgomery, Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology (Part One)

If the myths are “true” in that they accord with our feelings, not the facts, then isn’t the SAGA line “just” an expression of pessimism about the world? Joy in the mundane is possible — that’s the mystic’s trick. “Once upon a time, when things were better than they will ever be again …” — is that the story we want to be faithful to? (Of course, bad things happen in history, too, and ALM would think I have missed his point entirely.)

Do we measure the world’s thinning with a ruler? I am going to guess not.

[bronze]

14 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Well, I guess it depends on how you view the division between myth and history. The Society for the Appreciation of the Golden Age has always been telling us that it was better back then, but what if the “events” of the Golden Age are “only” part of myth, not history? I don’t mean that disparagingly, but consider:

• Navigation through the Hero Planes uses Myths to get to events, not maps to get to locations. However, the Myths are not objective reality, but subjective by their very nature. — Guide to Glorantha, p. 155
   
• The modern English “truth” comes from Old English … meaning “faith, faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty” … This is why we talk about remaining “true” to something. “Fact,” by contrast, comes from the Latin factum, “something that happened, something real.” The two have nothing to do with one another except in the post-Enlightenment mutilation of language so that only what can be seen under a microscope is of value. But what it comes down to is “fact” is something we can see, and “Truth” is something we feel. — Andrew Logan Montgomery, Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology (Part One)

If the myths are “true” in that they accord with our feelings, not the facts, then isn’t the SAGA line “just” an expression of pessimism about the world? Joy in the mundane is possible — that’s the mystic’s trick. “Once upon a time, when things were better than they will ever be again …” — is that the story we want to be faithful to? (Of course, bad things happen in history, too, and ALM would think I have missed his point entirely.)

Do we measure the world’s thinning with a ruler? I am going to guess not.

A very interesting and illuminating perspective. Thank you for providing a food for thought.

It should be noted that I think the true golden age of Gloranthan civilization was early to middle Storm Age, rather than the rueful Golden Age. 

Edited October 17, 2023 by bronze

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, bronze said:

still get the impression the world has shrunk. Has it been confirmed that size of cosmos as a whole has remained unchanged since the end of the Golden Age? When the world has ceased to expand?

The mythic maps detail the same scope of the world as that presented in Time. 

Unless we hire out the Mostali who can confirm with their endless and eternal plans regarding the World Machine, I don't think we can otherwise answer that.

[EricW]

I think there is a definite hint that parts of the old world may have been lost.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons experimental heroquesting is so dangerous - if you follow a path to a place which never got caught in the net of time, how do you find your way back?

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, EricW said:

if you follow a path to a place which never got caught in the net of time, how do you find your way back?

Some entirely frivolous suggestions:

1. The most flippant answer is “retrace your steps (taking care not to step on any butterflies),” but that isn’t very entertaining.
    
2. You may have altered the Godtime in such a way that your path is no longer there to go back along. In that case, look for another pre-existing path to something familiar from Time, or — more fun? — frantically make more edits in the hope of establishing a new path to the familiar.
    
3. Perhaps all that got caught in the net was the Devil — the world is the Devil, and from some points of view, you are better off not finding your way back: if you stepped out of Time to seek power, renounce that and look for a quiet bit of myth to settle down in.

[soltakss]

Glorantha hasn't shrunk but the people within it have.

The Deities were gigantic. Larnste sat down when he was tired of creating the Rockwoods and where he sat became Dragon Pass. His Footprint is a huge Chaos Nest in the Holy Country. Genert was a huge giant with a massive Garden, to us, but it was more like his back yard. 

So, for the Deities, Glorantha was really small.

As people have become smaller, the land seems larger than ever before.

Now, some of the land has vanished beneath the waters. At one stage, everything was dry land but then the waters invaded and sank much of it. The Spike exploded. Both of those events reduced the amount of land available, making Glorantha appear smaller.

Edited October 20, 2023 by soltakss

[Sir_Godspeed]

I love this topic, because it's so many things in one: a question of literal geography, a question of historical naratives, of mythological narratives, of worldbuilding as an exercise, of size versus scope and scale and so many other things. 

Glorantha, as well as Tolkien's works, clearly draws hugely on Greek ideas of the long-lost Golden Age. This is also present in the Old Testament in the sense that people used to live longer, wonders used to happen more regularly, great feats used to be done more easily, and so on. In a way, it's nostalgia as a worldview, perhaps a somewhat universal "the grass is greener elsewhere/elsewhen", or maybe a feature of those societies of antiquity that were moving from oral tradition into a more rigid written tradition (this last part is completely speculative and more vibes-y.). We see similar trends in various other polytheistic traditions where the gods USED to interbreed more commonly with mortals, but usually not so often at the time when those traditions have been put to letter.

But overall, it's clear that the modern day Lunar Empire doesn't quite have the lustre of the Decapolis of Murharzarm, for example, or Sartar doesn't quite capture the vibrancy of Vingkot's Kingdom/Ernaldela, and so on and so forth. Nature isn't as spontaneous as Genert's heyday, or Flamal's youth in the Green Age. The world is... dimmer now. Less vibrant. 

Again, this is thematically intentional, and I think this "lessening" is more significant than literal SIZE. 

For example, we're informed that the Dawn Age and the following Gbaji Wars had significantly smaller populations that modern Glorantha, but it was SILLY with heroes. Just absolutely LOUSY with them. This makes the First Age seem "more than" compared to the modern day, arguably, because it had more larger-than-life actors performing feats compared to nowadays. Places were farther apart and more distant and mysterious, but also, arguably, individual heroes and hero bands were able to have more extraordinary journeys more often despite that. (compare the Oddyssee to something like Vasco da Gama as a not-quite-accurate analogy.)

The Imperial Age shows an overall trend from the impressive local feats of heroes to the large-scale societies and empires where the great feats were organized by great rulers and massive armies which CONTAINED heroes. A shift from Bronze Age duel-based warfare to classical mass maneuver warfare, as it were. 

The modern age is probably a continuation of this trend, although obviously things are gearing up for something truly extraordinary during the Hero Wars. 

So yeah, less a case of things shrinking, and more the sheer, inbridled POTENTIAL and DYNAMISM of the world kinda dimming as the ages pass on, imho.

[mfbrandi]

19 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

less a case of things shrinking, and more the sheer, inbridled POTENTIAL and DYNAMISM of the world kinda dimming as the ages pass on, imho.

But which would we choose, some crash bang wallop Avengers or Star Wars movie in Dolby THX, or the much cheaper, monochrome La Pointe Courte and À bout de souffle?

Or put another way: we have lost the T. rex, but we still have plenty of dinosaurs, and I see them perched on the tree outside my bathroom window every day. The religious vision or the acid trip fades, but now take another look at the mundane world — the “magic” is still there, right?

So maybe something is lost in the transition to the Fourth Age, but maybe the Fourth Age is “bigger” and more “open” than the prior ages and the Godtime. Maybe. Sometimes thinning is the happy ending (and screw the Inklings). 😉

[scott-martin]

41 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

screw the Inklings

Oh, you know, Bill Burroughs was obsessed with That Hideous Strength and I agree with him. Plus Williams can stay.

But you all put something important together for me in relation to the original question. Glorantha has shrunk almost 100% since the golden age and then started reinflating at the dawn. We know this because almost everyone agrees that the world was once united and then disintegrated to the point where every "community" was reduced to an isolated individual fighting alone in the dark. That's maximum alienation. If you were lucky, the world extended a little past your fingertips.

Then two of these atomic consciousnesses came into contact and decided to dream a world big enough for the two of them. Each was an "I" at first. They could have fought each other. Instead they decided to fight alongside each other as a "we." The world doubled. And even in the face of imperial disaster it's largely been expanding ever since. Maybe this means the dwarves are right in their way. 

After all, they are clearly left over from the shrunken times.

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by scott-martin
zinger

[Joerg]

Subjective distances are a thing in the Outer World of Glorantha, but a little less so in the Inner World. Still, I maintain that Glorantha has shrunk compared to Godtime prior to the Greater Darkness, except that the stuff lost to Chaos was also excised from Godtime, and the Glorantha we are able to interact with within History is a patchwork of shards of reality held together by spider silk smoothing out the transitions with the unlimited potential of the material the Father of TIme provided.

Glorantha is a post-apocalyptic world, never mind the regularly recurring periods of cataclysms. Much has been diminished, while a lot of things have received a lot more definition than they might ever have had.

The population growth in Glorantha reached a peak in the Second Age, especially in the Theyalan lands, but also in Peloria and the Western lands.

 

When it comes to topography, I think that a wedge of hitherto unrecognized land may have been added to Fronela during the Syndics' Ban. IMG there are shards of reality that did not make it into the surface part of the web at the Dawn, held in the folds of the web like puzzle pieces that were left over after the image was completed with reconstruction at certain edges.

[mfbrandi]

On 10/21/2023 at 3:03 PM, scott-martin said:

Oh, you know, Bill Burroughs …

On 10/21/2023 at 6:11 PM, Joerg said:

… and the Western lands.

Has anyone riffed on the Gloranthan West as the land of the dead? Plenty of ex-Lunars with seven souls to take on the hike. The Devil as Argrath’s atom bomb/soul killer?

On 10/21/2023 at 6:11 PM, Joerg said:

except that the stuff lost to Chaos was also excised from Godtime

In the retconned away so neatly no one even knows where it was or what it was called sense? Great as a story/myth, but presumably tricky to evidence if considered as history.

On 10/21/2023 at 6:11 PM, Joerg said:

the material the Father of TIme provided

An awful lot of void to eke out the concentrated packets of reality?

[scott-martin]

42 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Has anyone riffed on the Gloranthan West as the land of the dead? Plenty of ex-Lunars with seven souls to take on the hike. The Devil as Argrath’s atom bomb/soul killer?

I've flirted with the conceit that the east-west axis is actually Time expressed spatially and so any westfaring is a disintegrating journey into the future through disenchantment to death, which is why all iron ultimately comes from there and the luathan giants were just us all along, viewed from up the doppler well. Vithela, on the other hand, is the breakfast counter at the start of the universe, constantly receding from us in its transcendental perfection as long as the sun has torque. However this is a dumb theory at this stage and poses obvious challenges when it comes to defusing outdated cultural prejudices and assumptions.

But fairly recently I'm losing immediate interest in that while the Campbell quadrivium beckons. There's an "eastern" monomyth alongside the "western" one we know, with the Pelorian bowl ironically aligned with the metaphysical east in this case while conventional coastal storm cultures look to the more humanistic western model. And there's a northern continent of the soul grounded in the way of the animal powers surprisingly absent from our modern view of the south, which must be more intimately organized around vegetable orders. 

This creates its share of opportunities to go with the obvious challenges, especially for a better understanding of the Season Wars and other elf intricacies. The year is a wheel. Death is its axle. The heart of the world is the homeward hole.

[mfbrandi]

5 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

the Season Wars and other elf intricacies

Though one hopes for a tropical philosophy where the year counts for very little and the familiar building blocks of myth are recontextualised. What do the yellow elves have to say for themselves? Perhaps: Shall we their fond pageant see?

[jajagappa]

15 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

and the luathan giants were just us all along, viewed from up the doppler well.

I like that one!

16 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

And there's a northern continent of the soul grounded in the way of the animal powers surprisingly absent from our modern view of the south, which must be more intimately organized around vegetable orders.

Reflecting Pamalt's power vs. the fall of Genert and the rise of the Hykimi in alliance with different groups.

[Sir_Godspeed]

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I like that one!

Reflecting Pamalt's power vs. the fall of Genert and the rise of the Hykimi in alliance with different groups.

Possibly also reflecting the prevalence of dragons in the North? Ie., dragons as predecessors of the beast rune/complex.