Can an illuminated Storm Bull still sense chaos?

[EricW]

If illumination teaches that law and chaos are interchangeable, yet Storm Bull's sense chaos implies that chaos is something separate and different which can be sensed, how can an illuminated Storm Bull believe law and chaos are the same thing, yet still be able to sense chaos?

[John Biles]

I hate Tex-Mex food; much of it makes me ill just to look at it.

If I was illuminated, I would stop hating it, but I would still be able to tell the difference between that and Italian cuisine.

It's not that an illuminate thinks they're the *same* in every way.  It's that he stops hating chaos (or law, if he was an illuminate chaos critter.)

[svensson]

Good question.

I'd tell you to ask Oddi the Keen, but he'd probably answer with a riddle. A NYSALOR riddle 😁

Jokes aside, as I have read Glorantha over the years there are good 'Stafford-ism' arguments for yes and no. If it were my table, my logic would go like this: "In Glorantha, all knowledge and all power comes with a price. The price of Illumination is a sense of disillusionment and disconnectedness with your people and your deity, the two most important emotional connections a Gloranthan has. So with those two pieces of information, I would tend to think no, you can no longer 'Sense' Chaos mystically, but your other senses can identify it with greater clarity. Therefore, a Buller gets to keep the Sense Chaos skill, but it can never be increased and will be described by the GM differently. Instead of 'Yes, you Sense this person might be Chaotic', I might describe it as 'Your previous experiences lead you to think this might be Chaotic behavior. The guy may be Chaotic, but he might also just be crazy. Or perhaps he's afflicted with a spirit.'

[French Desperate WindChild]

imo yes

why not ?

the point (still imo ) of illumination is not to say that red = blue, but that's not because red is red that red is bad, and not because blue is blue that blue is good

so an illuminate is abe to says this is chaos, this is law in the same manner than a non illuminate. The difference is what are their feelings, fears, etc.. once they have conclude.

 

now this specific "power"

this power may be considered as a skill. You don't lose a skill just because you see the world differently. Again, the point is what do you do when your skill tells you "hey  there is chaos".

I already read some material where you can sacrifice a skill for another one (magical/runic sacrifice of course) so maybe some schools of illumination will "remove" your skill (giving disturbing information, with your new knowledge you are not able anymore to detect and understand the signal) or ask you to sacrifice to some entity (but in this case, you are already illuminate, will any bully sacrifice a holy power if not ?)

 

this power may be considered as a gift of your god, like any runic spell. But your god is not able to detect you are illuminate. So in this way, the gift is still yours.

 

so for me, by default, you don't lose it. But in some way, you may decide or accept to lose it because your philosophy, now, tells you that you don't need it (or you need to forget it)

[David Scott]

5 hours ago, EricW said:

If illumination teaches that law and chaos are interchangeable

No. It teaches that Chaos is, in itself, neither evil nor inimical. It makes a person free from automatic fear of Chaos and the obsession to destroy it. (from Cults of Terror and The Lunar Way).

One of the special abilities that some illuminates have, is that with a successful illumination skill roll they will not register with Sense Chaos.

[Akhôrahil]

I would say yes here on intuition, but there's textual evidence against it. Sure, you could argue that Oddi just misses his Sense Chaos roll here, but that doesn't seem diegetically interesting:

Quote

When we crossed into Bilini, we all were silent, but Oddi’s silence lasted longer, for the creature [the Crimson Bat] was a thing of chaos, yet his Storm Bull sense had betrayed him and he had known nothing chaotic was at hand.

 

Edited March 5 by Akhôrahil

[scott-martin]

 

6 hours ago, David Scott said:

One of the special abilities that some illuminates have, is that with a successful illumination skill roll they will not register with Sense Chaos.

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

Quote

When we crossed into Bilini, we all were silent, but Oddi’s silence lasted longer, for the creature [the Crimson Bat] was a thing of chaos, yet his Storm Bull sense had betrayed him and he had known nothing chaotic was at hand.

Sounds to me like the Bat, while horrible to all external senses, might have experienced that flavor of illumination and so would befuddle the Bull. But we know less about that particular flavor than others.

IMG a bull cultist infected with nysalor consciousness might have trouble making the old easy intuitive distinctions between wholesome creation and corrosive chaos . . . but there are other schools, arkat consciousness in particular has historically intensified the abreaction response to an apocalyptic degree. I suspect we'll see this kind of thing unleashed on the world when Charg opens.

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

Sounds to me like the Bat, while horrible to all external senses, might have experienced that flavor of illumination and so would befuddle the Bull.

According to the Bestiary, the Bat only has animal intelligence. I doubt this is consistent with being Illuminated.

[svensson]

3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I would say yes here on intuition, but there's textual evidence against it. Sure, you could argue that Oddi just misses his Sense Chaos roll here, but that doesn't seem diegetically interesting:

 

And one would think that something like the Bat would ring the Sense Chaos bell like a cathedral at Christmas

[svensson]

7 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

According to the Bestiary, the Bat only has animal intelligence. I doubt this is consistent with being Illuminated.

There is a difference between the acceptance of your own existence and the philosophical reasoning to understand your nature, especially the negative aspects of your character.

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Sounds to me like the Bat, while horrible to all external senses, might have experienced that flavor of illumination and so would befuddle the Bull.

Surely the point is neither the nature of the Bat nor the senses of the Bull (Urox is as befuddled or as sharp as ever), but the change in Oddi after his getting blown out. He is still coming to terms with his new perception of the world, and at this point nothing makes sense to him. We can worry in the other place about whether his perceptions were more reliable before or after his extinguishment (as clearly the mainstream view is that Chaos is “a thing” even if this was sometimes undercut in the past). Even if we are supposed to think that BAU will re-assert itself soon enough, there is a period of adjustment, right?

Personally, I don’t mind the idea of illuminated animals who post-illumination don’t spook at imagined Chaos, but who knows?

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

According to the Bestiary, the Bat only has animal intelligence. I doubt this is consistent with being Illuminated.

I could say that about a lot of the storm bulls I've met . . . 

[EricW]

2 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

According to the Bestiary, the Bat only has animal intelligence. I doubt this is consistent with being Illuminated.

The goddess “cured” the bat, which probably involved illumination? Maybe she chaos gifted the bat intelligence for long enough so the bat could answer a bunch of riddles? Or just mind linked and did it directly somehow

[mfbrandi]

33 minutes ago, EricW said:

Maybe she chaos gifted the bat intelligence for long enough so the bat could answer a bunch of riddles?

Although we can theorise about illumination, perhaps we don’t need much intellect just to be illuminated:

• Illumination conveys much the same information present in the fragment from Salonar Tamaskil’s book, but teaches by emotional experience rather than intellectual argument.
  — Cults of Terror (Classic PDF, p. 86)

So maybe the Bat didn’t need an INT boost to be illuminated (if it was). I don’t think we have any problem with “unintelligent” Chaos creatures being tormented by their (supposed) nature, so maybe no surprise if they can get some relief from that torment, too. Just how dumb is animal intelligence, anyway? Jay? Octopus? Orca? Sea lion? OK, the Bat can’t read Sanskrit, but neither can I.

As for the mind link, I am imagining Spock–Sedenya engaged in Bat-whispering and the Bat each unsure whether she is a goddess dreaming she is a Chaos monster dreaming she is a hummingbird, or a hummingbird dreaming she is a Chaos monster dreaming she is a goddess, or a lump of rock dreaming she is a pterosaur dreaming she is a bat dreaming she is a moth dreaming … Perhaps neither of them has been quite sure at any time since.

Edited March 5 by mfbrandi

[John Biles]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

As for the mind link, I am imagining Spock–Sedenya engaged in Bat-whispering and the Bat each unsure whether she is a goddess dreaming she is a Chaos monster dreaming she is a hummingbird, or a hummingbird dreaming she is a Chaos monster dreaming she is a goddess, or a lump of rock dreaming she is a pterosaur dreaming she is a bat dreaming she is a moth dreaming … Perhaps neither of them has been quite sure at any time since.

Bat-whispering is a pretty good description for what the Bat-handlers do and I can totally see that basically being how it works.

 

Going back to the original topic of this - Illumination is a cheat code that lets you abuse divine power.  Nothing could be more in the spirit of illumination than being illuminated, initiating to Storm Bull, then using chaos detection to have sexy hookups with Chaos creatures.

Sure, this means you're occulted and doing wrong, but doing wrong seems much more common than doing it right.

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

15 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I would say yes here on intuition, but there's textual evidence against it. Sure, you could argue that Oddi just misses his Sense Chaos roll here, but that doesn't seem diegetically interesting:

Quote

When we crossed into Bilini, we all were silent, but Oddi’s silence lasted longer, for the creature [the Crimson Bat] was a thing of chaos, yet his Storm Bull sense had betrayed him and he had known nothing chaotic was at hand.

 

In fact I don't see any evidence at all in your quote

who is talking ? the "we" seems to demonstrate he is a companion of Oddi. Probably someone who trusted Oddi.

Now what does he say ?

Oddi's silence lasted longer. ==>if* he did not lie intentionaly, that's a fact.

then he concludes that his sense of chaos had betrayed him. ==> if* he told what he think, that's not a fact but an interpretation. And a normal one if he trusted Oddi, that's the better interpretation of a storm bull behaviour.

 

However, there are different options

- Oddi failed to detect the chaos (his conclusion)

- Oddi detected the chaos, but smart enough he decided to no attack it directly and to not share the information with others (maybe they were dumb enough -or fanatic enough- to charge the bat).

- Oddi detected the chaos but he did not care because he was illuminate and had other priorities (note that "other priorities" doesn't mean he was a chaos supporter)

 

* doubt is everywhere. What people say are not always what they think

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

who is talking ? the "we" seems to demonstrate he is a companion of Oddi. Probably someone who trusted Oddi.

Paulus Longvale, a Lunar, is the narrator, as he is throughout the texts in Cults of Terror.

 

[Erol of Backford]

"The intensity of the feeling gives
a rough estimate of the amount of chaos present. This skill
is effective within a 15m radius."

It reminds me of when my mom deep fried smelts when I was a child, it made me retch when I'd come home and head up the back steps... no matter if I am matured (not really) or got married, lived overseas became enlightened... I still can't stand the smell of smelts deep frying... its like Schnapps, I smell it and want to puke due to some bad experience when I was younger. 

I think it's the same for sense chaos. Your ability to sense something would not be altered or diminished by a change in thought process.

The same goes for fresh cut grass from mowing lawns as a kid or say crumpling Fall leaves in your hand. I used to run and jump in the piles but have changed my though process do to experience. I will likely get injured if I were to run and jump in a pile of leaves whereas I didn't know that as a child until it happened a few times. I digress but you wouldn't lose your sense of smell by being illuminated so your sense chaos for me wouldn't change. You'd still sense it but you may not trigger to go kill without thinning... you'd use your imagination as to how to go about it...

Makes me think what sense is being used for chaos? Smell chaos seems the most obvious but what are chaos molecules and are they like a sort of Gloranthian cancer?

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Erol of Backford said:

Makes me think what sense is being used for chaos? Smell chaos seems the most obvious but what are chaos molecules and are they like a sort of Gloranthian cancer?

You might smell a Chaotic feature as a dog might smell a tumour or a giant pouched rat tuberculosis or explosives, but not the Chaos taint itself.

Of course, you might “seem” to smell the Chaos on someone, that might be what it is like for the SB — a bit like synaesthesia, perhaps? — but the Chaos taint doesn’t provide any molecules to sniff. Sometimes the SBs say that there is Chaos present when no scientific test or normal sense could detect it — it is their USP. As long as most of the time there is plausible corroboration, people are “happy” to trust them in the other cases. Mostly, the SBs are perfectly sincere in their denouncements of secret Chaos.

We could say any of these things:

• in the difficult cases, the SBs have a hotline to the occult truth courtesy of their god;
• in the difficult cases, they don’t really know: sometimes they are right, sometimes wrong, but it is random — dumb luck — not detection;
• the difficult cases reveal that “Chaos tainted” is a BS category (there is no practice of justification — sometimes they “have a feeling” and that is all there is).

Clearly, the first of these is the party line, but it is surely also the case that the thing is deliberately set up for the skeptics and human rights lawyers to feel justified in their disgust at witch hunts, right? Are we being teased by the designers? I really couldn’t say. I hope so. 😉

[Akhôrahil]

14 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Makes me think what sense is being used for chaos?

Pain. Storm Bulls literally experience pain in the presence of Chaos. Yet another reason to drink, I guess.

Edited March 7 by Akhôrahil

[Malin]

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

Storm Bulls literally experience pain in the presence of Chaos. Yet another reason to drink, I guess.

And now I am thinking how that is probably a reason why most Storm Bulls prefer the wilderness. Any chaos they feel can be either moved away from quickly or eliminated. In a city, just locating what the problem is without offending everyone and causing a major scene might be hard. No wonder they're annoyed if they're lowkey hurting half the time.

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, Malin said:

And now I am thinking how that is probably a reason why most Storm Bulls prefer the wilderness … No wonder they're annoyed if they're lowkey hurting half the time.

Maybe what really gets an SB’s goat is sensing that omnipresent low hum of Chaos in a large community that is clearly functioning perfectly well. That is not supposed to happen. When it is just a matter of dragonsnails eating the crops, life is a lot simpler — dangerous, but not challenging. Their headaches are mostly brought on by those old sods they meet in the agora who will insist on asking awkward questions. SBs in town always carry hemlock, hemp, tar, and feathers.

[Erol of Backford]

23 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

synaesthesia

Had to look this up. I try to recall where I have had this sensation but cannot...

11 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Yet another reason to drink, I guess.

Or smoke the grass without the hangover, curious are there taverns in Pavis where smoking narcotics is the norm?

11 hours ago, Malin said:

No wonder they're annoyed if they're lowkey hurting half the time.

Maybe they are just not happy with their lot in life and they need something to hate to make an excuse for their own sorry ass lot in life!?

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Their headaches are mostly brought on by those old sods they meet in the agora who will insist on asking awkward questions.

All the more reason to get illuminated, they wouldn't feel the side effects of sense chaos and could eliminate it at their leisure?

If they feel pain from the ability I'd tend to start calling it a disability as it hinders due process of thought or so I am guessing.

Nice discussion all, never gave this much thought even almost always have had 1-2 SB's in groups, warrior Connan types...

[JonL]

On 3/7/2024 at 5:58 AM, Malin said:

And now I am thinking how that is probably a reason why most Storm Bulls prefer the wilderness. Any chaos they feel can be either moved away from quickly or eliminated. In a city, just locating what the problem is without offending everyone and causing a major scene might be hard. No wonder they're annoyed if they're lowkey hurting half the time.

 

23 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Maybe what really gets an SB’s goat is sensing that omnipresent low hum of Chaos in a large community that is clearly functioning perfectly well. That is not supposed to happen. When it is just a matter of dragonsnails eating the crops, life is a lot simpler — dangerous, but not challenging. Their headaches are mostly brought on by those old sods they meet in the agora who will insist on asking awkward questions. SBs in town always carry hemlock, hemp, tar, and feathers.

Range is still limited to your immediate area, but if the local bureaucracy's been subverted by Karshti or something, things are going to get rough. I wonder how sensitive they are to less Chaos-rune-active social anathema stuff like secret murder, sexual assault, or kin slaying? Black Fang's runes are Death & Spirit, but secret murder is kind of their thing. Serial rapists can eventually turn into Broo. Can a sufficiently corrupt official eventually pick up Karshtid features? How far down such a road can someone go before they ping Uroxi-sense?

[Eff]

On 3/4/2024 at 11:44 PM, EricW said:

If illumination teaches that law and chaos are interchangeable, yet Storm Bull's sense chaos implies that chaos is something separate and different which can be sensed, how can an illuminated Storm Bull believe law and chaos are the same thing, yet still be able to sense chaos?

Liquid water and ice are the same thing, dihydrogen monoxide. But I can sense ice without confusing it with liquid water.