What can gods do within time?

[theconfusingeel]

So as far as I during history gods have no free will and are limited to doing whatever they did during the godtime, but there's various points in history whe the gods do something different:Nysalor fights Kyger Litor, Yelm has children with Hon-eel,Moonson has children with Gorgorma, Yanafal Tarnils fights Humakt(who was apperantly summoned, but how?)
Now the one thing these have in common is that the gods interact with somebody on the human plane, but even then I don't understand what the limitations are there.
Also how does summoning a god work? I know the guide mentions the god learners doing it too.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, theconfusingeel said:

So as far as I during history gods have no free will and are limited to doing whatever they did during the godtime, but there's various points in history whe the gods do something different:Nysalor fights Kyger Litor, Yelm has children with Hon-eel,Moonson has children with Gorgorma, Yanafal Tarnils fights Humakt(who was apperantly summoned, but how?)

These events either took place during a breach of the Compromise like the Battle of Night and Day, with the manifestation of Daysenerus (Yelmalio). Kyger Litor was present in a lesser aspect, the Black Eater.

Hon-eel got impregnated on the Other Side, witnessing the procession of the gods about to emerge from the Gates of Dawn.

Humans can interact with deities, and children can be born on the Other Side, in the timelessness of Godtime, or be born as demigods within Time from a mortal mother (or a mortal father carrying the pregnancy to term).

Given enough magical ambient energies or a very weak veil to the Other Side, such as Belintar's City of Wonders or Castle Blue, gods may walk the streets and interact with those mortals they recognize as worthy enough to recognize at all. Certain high holy day festivals, especially during Sacred Time, might have that effect, too.

Summoning a god requires quite a bit of magical energy to open the veil, and a very compelling summoner. In case of the Battle of Tanian's Victory, an obscure demigod child of Tanian was summoned by the God Learners and then negotiated with (or forced) to summon his parent's burning waters on behalf of the descendant.

The dedication rite for the Sartar Temple of the Reaching Moon was such an event, too, although most gods were merely heroformed by holy people of their cult. The High Priest of Shargash might have gone a little farther when he dragged his planet (which apparently was not involved in the sky dance (yet) to the dancers of Orlanth's Ring, attempting to turn their ascent into the failed invasion of the Upper Sky by Umath in order to challenge Yelm. The Shargash priest probably misjudged the intention of the dancers of the Ring, who instead aimed at producing the conjunction of the Dragon Head with the dragon constellation. While he managed to kill Minaryth, the prerequisites for the dragon summoning had been completed.

 

Summoning part of the power of a god is a fairly normal thing - it is Rune Magic.

Heroforming a god, a mortal or demigod repeating his feats in the mortal plane is a form of heroquesting which contracts this world with the Other Side.

Harrek stepping across the veil to kill and skin his ancestral bear god and bringing back his pelt is a major thing, something which probably was visible in the sky. At a guess, Harrek would have done so as Orlanth's RIng (also known as the Sky Bear) began to emerge from Stormgate.

[John Biles]

Jaldon can trash your clan hold in King of Dragon Pass.

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, John Biles said:

Jaldon can trash your clan hold in King of Dragon Pass.

Jaldon is not a deity, but a re-appearing mortal hero (or if you aren't a Praxian, a mortal monster).

[Eff]

18 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

So as far as I during history gods have no free will and are limited to doing whatever they did during the godtime, but there's various points in history whe the gods do something different:Nysalor fights Kyger Litor, Yelm has children with Hon-eel,Moonson has children with Gorgorma, Yanafal Tarnils fights Humakt(who was apperantly summoned, but how?)

The text contradicts itself. The question becomes whether you prefer a world with mechanical clockwork deterministic gods that move in complicated epicycles or one where the world is built on a fuzzy agreement with boundaries that are negotiable and difficult to avoid crossing, but where the gods behaving as if they have free will under the right circumstances makes sense.

Edited April 20 by Eff

[Nick Brooke]

Read up on Greg’s old idea of heroforming, that’ll get you part of the way. A Khan of Khans is acting as Waha’s agent in the world: his actions can be attributed to Waha. The Masks of Moonson nowadays are mortals heroforming the original Red Emperor. And so on.

And when new gods are active in the middle world (e.g. Nysalor when he wounded Kyger Litor, or Sedenya when she liberated Peloria from the Carmanian yoke), they aren’t yet bound by the Great Compromise and have more freedom of original action… but the Old Gods can still react when prodded, as the God Learners discovered. (Hence Castle Blue, and her final triumph and ascension.)

[French Desperate WindChild]

I don't know how far from canon (maybe it is canon, or part are canon 😛 )my answer is, but it is what I understand, or want to understand, and in all cases what I play:

 

Gods are not machine or computer programme, gods decide and are sentient. The compromise does not change it.

When the world started, the first thing who was was a rune. A rune is not sentient, a rune is a mechanism.

Then, call it evolution, luck, or new thing, the god appears as a combination of runes and sentience.

Maybe some gods appears before some runes but in all cases, a god cannot appear before its own runes.

 

Then here are my gods : a combination of runes and sentience

When you are a sorcerer you don't need gods, you need runes. you learn how to manipulate the runes.

When you are not sorcerer, you can have effect magic in two ways :

1) you are powerful enough to create yourself the effect. That's spirit spell, heroic spell or heroic/shaman ability you know

2) you are not powerful enough to create yourself the effect. You need the power of someone else. That's rune spell. You need to call a god power (from a standard cult) or a great spirit/entity power (from a spirit cult)

 

18 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

So as far as I during history gods have no free will and are limited to doing whatever they did during the godtime, but there's various points in history whe the gods do something different

then based on "my" god definition :

Since the compromise, gods are still sentient. So they have free will...or semi free will ^^

 

What they sacrifice is not (in my opinion) their will, but what they can do in the mundane world:

they can't act by themselves in the time world.

Of course there are exceptions, for me in two ways:

When the god time merges with the mundane world (like the Holy country for example when Belintar led it)

When the compromise is broken by another god (or a new god as Nick just said before).

 

The other point they sacrificed (but maybe they did not imagine it when they "signed") is the capacity to change and create new power. They cannot anymore discover new powers, new manners. They have to follow patterns they created before the compromise. For example Uleria or Chalana will never find a way to kill someone. Then even are not able to imagine that killing someone could be an option to solve an issue they are facing (If there is no myth where they killed someone, of course; but I don't know any of them)

 

But they can communicate (dream or other ways if they decide to tell you something when you don't ask them, divination or divine intervention if you ask them)

And of course they can act through yourself (when you cast a rune spell, your energy and pray is used to open the gate, ask your god, then the god uses its power to have the effect)

And of course (for me, for other this of course is not of course at all, it is the opposite 😛 ) even if you succeed to cast your rune spell (or divine intervention), they can decide to not answer your request if they decide ("free will") that's what you demand is "wrong" (see the sun county supplement describing how Yelmalio refused to save a lot of his rune lords who tried a divine intervention to save themselves from the dragons)

 

 

[mfbrandi]

• Ompalam: The gods’ actions are fully determined and at every point freely chosen: freedom is slavery.
• Aldrya: Are we unfree because we grow toward the light?
• Mostal: A fully repaired World Machine has no moving parts.
• Eurmal: Free will is an illusion brought about by an insufficiency of peyote.
• Nysalor: Nothing happens for a reason.

[Geoff R Evil]

@French Desperate WindChild talks a lot of sense and makes sense of a lot of mythology for the purposes of interpretation into Gloranthan time. But nothing is absolute, no agreement has no holes. So in your game allow some freedom to tweak or have exceptions if well presented by players. I also like the heroforming idea, that is a much simpler way of understanding how to extend what is “known” about a gods abilities within the compromise, by doing them, you are discovering them. If your GM allows of course.

[Darius West]

The main way Deities can interact with the world is obviously via their worshippers.

The Divination spell is extremely important for this.  The worshipper is literally communicating with their deity, which is tantamount to getting the Deity's opinion on a given situation.

[Ynneadwraith]

On 4/20/2024 at 12:33 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

When the world started, the first thing who was was a rune. A rune is not sentient, a rune is a mechanism.

Then, call it evolution, luck, or new thing, the god appears as a combination of runes and sentience.

 

On 4/20/2024 at 1:57 PM, mfbrandi said:

• Mostal: A fully repaired World Machine has no moving parts.

Literal 'Gods in the Machine'. Boltzmann Brains coalescing from the swirling runic landscape.

Agreed that the compromise doesn't limit their free will, just their ability to exercise it, which raises a point for the philosophers of course. If you have free will but no mechanism to act upon it, do you have free will at all?

Of course, the gods are fortunate in that the way they act on their free will is through delivering magic to mortals. I never envisaged the system of magic in Glorantha as an impersonal one, where you sacrifice X to achieve Y and the God is simply a delivery mechanism. I'd always pictured it that the sacrifice is a way to persuade the God that you are acting to further their interests. It's more conversational than transactional. That's where gods are still able to exercise their free will.

I've been mulling around how to operationalise that approach in game contexts, but I think having to justify how each spell you use further's Orlanth's cause* would get tiresome pretty quickly. Perhaps saving that for BIG MAGIC would work well.

*note that Orlanth's cause isn't just 'make Orlanth a more powerful god'. It's tied to his domain. So 'make the world a stormier place' would also suffice.

Spoiler

The psychology student in me wants to just make it a random dice roll but tell people it's indicative of whether their actions further a god's cause and try and develop some form of pigeon religion in them 😄

 

Edited April 22 by Ynneadwraith

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 hour ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I've been mulling around how to operationalise that approach in game contexts, but I think having to justify how each spell you use further's Orlanth's cause* would get tiresome pretty quickly. Perhaps saving that for BIG MAGIC would work well.

oh for me (as gm) I don't ask a reason every time. The point is more when the request seems to me bad "how do you explain that Orlanth will give you his power to kill your brother, breaking a taboo ?"  If the anwser is reasonable, I let it do. If the answer is questionable, I ask a roll and let the dices decide. If the answer is obviously ridiculous, it doesn't work. An other impact is the character devotion: if the god refuses, automatic loss, if the character lies to convince the god, a devotion roll, to check if there is a loss (no possible gain then)

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 hour ago, Ynneadwraith said:

If you have free will but no mechanism to act upon it, do you have free will at all?

you have, but you are in a jail 🙂 

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Spoiler

The psychology student in me wants to just make it a random dice roll but tell people it's indicative of whether their actions further a god’s cause and try and develop some form of pigeon religion in them

Well …

• “Roll d100 under POW for divine intervention” as an overt mechanic has the characters as the pigeons.
• “Roll d100 under POW for divine intervention” as a covert mechanic has the players as the pigeons.
• To the experimental heroquester, the gods are the pigeons — and the otherworlds are labs full of Skinner boxes? — and the trick is to nudge the pigeon–gods into new stereotyped behaviours, conditioned reflexes, or superstitions.
• There is this caged lion, and one of its little acquired behavioural tics is to eat a zoo keeper given the chance. Opening the cage door at the right moment — that is casting a bit of offensive rune magic.

[Ynneadwraith]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Well …

• “Roll d100 under POW for divine intervention” as an overt mechanic has the characters as the pigeons.
• “Roll d100 under POW for divine intervention” as a covert mechanic has the players as the pigeons.
• To the experimental heroquester, the gods are the pigeons — and the otherworlds are labs full of Skinner boxes? — and the trick is to nudge the pigeon–gods into new stereotyped behaviours, conditioned reflexes, or superstitions.

Perhaps it's pigeons all the way down! Until one of them turns out to be a maneater, of course. Let's hope that doesn't happen to one of the players Jumanji-style!

[Akhôrahil]

On 4/20/2024 at 12:17 PM, Joerg said:

Jaldon is not a deity, but a re-appearing mortal hero (or if you aren't a Praxian, a mortal monster).

However, it's interesting to ask who the Waha that Pavis defeated and then healed was. Even if you just say "an avatar of Waha, not the big kahuna himself", this means that a god can act within time using such an avatar, and this seems as though it would be important and a Compromise workaround.