Gods and Death

[mfbrandi]

6 minutes ago, theconfusingeel said:

I guess my idea was that chaos is a force that wants to turn glorantha into itself, and so it wants to destroy it.

The price of change — of anything happening, at all — is mortality. The world comes from the Void and to the Void it will return. If it loops exactly, who can tell? If a new and different world arises, that is the gift of Chaos. At least, that is what the bald levitator with the tail told me. 😉

[Ynneadwraith]

12 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

The price of change — of anything happening, at all — is mortality.

Interesting. Was Grandfather Mortal murdered, or was he just fed up of Yelm's unchanging world and just wanted something interesting to happen for a change?

24 minutes ago, theconfusingeel said:

I should have really used a term other than destruction 😅
I guess my idea was that chaos is a force that wants to turn glorantha into itself, and so it wants to destroy it.

Nah, I think destruction is a good way to describe it. We're just wannabe Nysaloreans 😄 

You could claim that 'destruction' just means 'change', but that doesn't mean you're suddenly happy that someone has stamped on your sandcastle. Whether the new thing is better or worse than the old thing is a valid consideration (that I'm sure many riddlers dismiss as a prosaic practicality unworthy of serious consideration by enlightened minds). This, again, is a point I see Orlanthi and Lunars (the fanatical ones) disagreeing on. Lunars claiming that change is inevitable and thus a good thing, and Orlanthi saying 'but what you're changing things into is worse'.

I quite like the idea of a Lunar who doesn't ascribe to the idea that Chaos is an innate part of the world to be welcomed. Perhaps, in conversation with the Orlanthi, they acknowledge that it's a purely destructive force, but argue that as it's here anyway we might as well use it. Sounds like a Tarshite way of thinking to me, intermediate between the two camps.

I also quite like the idea that the Lunars are absolutely right about Chaos simply being the force of creation...but not really considering that what it's creating might be not be in their own best interests. A real 'Finally we've done it!........Oh god, what have we done' moment. Or even that the Lunars think they're right, but in reality they've colossaly misjudged things and Chaos does mean the destruction of everything without the creation of anything new.

The whole Lunar conflict really thrives when no-one really knows quite what they're doing or how things actually work.

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

2 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Is there already a seasonal fertility myth that involves Orlanth descending into the underworld to resurrect Ernalda - Orpheus and Eurydice style?

It’s quite possible that not only is there one, but that it actually preceded Harmast’s progressive revelation of the grand Lightbringer’s Quest. Call it the Lifebringer’s Quest, perhaps.

2 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

I'm pretty sure the whole yelm-orlanth story is based on egyptean mythology, where set kill osiris and then allies with him to kill chaos.

Set is a loyalist; it’s just that he’s Ra’s man through and through. Osiris’s wife, Isis, manipulates her husband onto the throne in the place of radiant solar Ra, and Set (tumultuous, violent, the god of the wilderness and the foreigner) overthrows the usurper by force. But he is still necessary to defend Ra’s sun barque as it travels through the underworld, and the one time he took a day off was the day that the monstrous serpent Apep managed to devour the barque, and so Set had to cut the snake’s belly open at the eleventh hour to save the cosmos.

Elsewhere on these forums I have likened Orlanth to Set, and it’s very apt, but Shargash similarly shares many interesting traits with the god of the Red Land.

2 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

Glorantha was made from chaos, but it was made to be different from it.

Before heaven,
Before earth,
Before the waters,
Before the dark,
Nothing moved on nothing,
Nothing entered into nothing.
Before the gods,
Before the runes,
Before me,
Before you,
Nothing moved on nothing,
Nothing entered into nothing.
Look into my hand.
What, do you not know that Death is in Life?

[mfbrandi]

28 minutes ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

and the one time he took a day off was the day that the monstrous serpent Apep managed to devour the barque, and so Set had to cut the snake’s belly open at the eleventh hour to save the cosmos.

And the one time Trickster let go the net and Wakboth swallowed the gods, Argrath — the perfect Orlanthi hero/follower of Seth? — had to cut the snake’s belly open, but all the gods were dead. Still, the cosmos may have been saved, anyway.

Who was it who said that these days Yelm is more sun and less god? (It wasn’t me, I promise.) The world is saved by naturalising it, burning off all the fairy dust. Orlanth killed the sun/god and so trashed the proto-universe (the bad trip of the Gods War); the trick was to bring back the sun but not the god, yielding the real world (when we have all come down); that is the LBQ. Or that is the grumpy nihilist’s view.

Edited April 25 by mfbrandi

[Eff]

In the beginning, there was everything-and-nothing, which the navel-gazers call the Void. The god-groupies call it the Silence, and the chalk-and-candle types call it the Prime Mover, and I'll call it the Primal Plasma. This stuff was everywhere indistinguishable from itself, and so was infinite and took up no space at all at the same time. Perfection in the strict ruler-edge sense. But maybe it never really existed, because it somehow differentiated. Different sections of this raw stuff of vitality and existence took some of its properties for themselves, and they began to interact with each other.

One of those properties was "allness", and another was "thoughtfulness". These were left over, and they coalesced into the Great Organizer. Now this being saw the raw stuff that was swirling about and disintegrating and took their allness and broke it in half, and then took their thoughtfulness and broke that in half, and they put both of them into the mix, and the allness bonded everything together, and the thoughtfulness made it take on shapes and forms. And then they had allness and thoughtfulness. They were made of everything and could interact with everything, and they had thoughts, and they set about enacting those thoughts. But there were thoughts that were not part of the world, and there was allness that was not part of the world, and so those thoughts could enter into the world too.

The first of these thoughts was "deidentification", and it broke the bliss of that time, for under its influence people began to deidentify the parts of the world that were not them. Fearing this diabolic thought, the people selected leaders from among themselves who seemed like they could rebuild the bliss of unity, and then overthrew them when they proved otherwise. So the Aether gave way to Arraz-the-Servant, who gave way to the Sun Queen, who gave way to the Emperor Brightface. And once they had decided that someone was above them, the people made others who were below them, to do the work they didn't want to do. 

But then another thought came into the mix, and this thought was "discernment". And this thought made people react in different ways to the same events, and meant that when the Emperor sat in judgement, one or both would go away unsatisfied, and the Emperor accepted it too, and so he said that some people were exiles and some people were favorites and some people were doing important work staying where nobody else had to listen to them. And then these people were confronted with another thought- "surprise". They realized that the world was not simply the Empire of Brightness and Splendor, but that there was also a Family of Darkness and Depth, a Community of Eaters and Eaten, and others besides, and that many of the monsters that the Emperor had overcome were, surprisingly, people of those other gatherings. And some people began to move between these gatherings and others began to make their own small ones and still others rejected all gatherings, having found the new thought of "solitude". 

But with these new thoughts came ideas that were born from the thoughts. And one of them was "multiplicity". Nobody acknowledged this presence at first, but when the Turner, the Burner, the Blow-Hard, the Puller, and the Topsy-Turvey came together and summoned the Eyes of Justice to judge between them and Brightface, all had their own desires for what would happen after and all had their own grievances, and multiplicity was among them. And when they slew Brightface, none of them heeded the Eyes of Justice at first, but the first two relented and admitted that, although annoying, he had a point. 

And so this was the age when anyone and everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and all the orders that had been ordained before were broken and replaced with ad hoc patches, spaghetti code poorly documented if at all, and where kings and emperors and prime ministers and consuls and chief executive officers and chairmen of the board and first speakers existed, they all had to acknowledge they were not alone. Some resisted this, and strove to be the new Brightface, and in doing so, they knew they would fail. And they made new exiles.

And these exiles went out to the edges of the world, for now everyone had to acknowledge the full size of the world. And there they met three thoughts, coming into the world. The first was "inexplicability", which rejected that allness could ever be all, that there were things which were eternal cleavages between people. The second was "irrationality", which said that people could be thoughtless and still be people. The third was "irrecoverability", which said that thoughtfulness and allness didn't overlap, that there were parts of the allness which could never be found by thought and thoughts which could never correspond to something that existed. 

Before, new thoughts had entered, and they had been ignored at first, or feared, or despised, but people had gotten used to having them around eventually and even found joy in them. Where they had been exiled before, they had eventually come in from the cold/heat/rain/dry/slood. These three thoughts came into the world and nobody could accommodate them who hadn't been born from them at first, and then people made new thoughts which pretended to accommodate them while not actually doing so, and this thought of "deception" turned on them as well. 

The paradoxes were thorny. To fight against the thoughts, it seemed, was to admit they were right, and so made them stronger than you. To try and speak to the thoughts was to run up against the denial of communication that flowed from their existence. Before, when someone had forgotten something, they had known they could always recover it, but now they were confronted with the possibility of losing it forever, of not being able to know it when they found it again, and so many thoughts and people that had been part of the world began to be seen as not part of it anymore. 

But the thoughts couldn't accommodate each other, either. Irrationality was an explanation of the inexplicable. Irrecoverability greedily obscured the meaning of the other two. And inexplicability and irrecoverability fought for the love of the game. And so they were forced to split apart and take different paths. And apart, they could be integrated separately. 

Irrationality was integrated in this way- people confronted it head-on and fought it heedlessly and heedfully, and accepted that they were both irrational and rational, and that the one could pin down the other. Inexplicability was integrated in another way- the people accepted that they were much smaller than the world, that individually there was a great open range for inexplicability to wander, but by putting many people to think about a thing, each could place their fences in such a way as to corral the inexplicable and keep it in bounds. 

But irrecoverability was difficult indeed. It came down to the instructions of a spider, who said this:

"You who I have devoured and hold within myself, hear me! You have brought irreversibility into the world, and those who bound you think this a power which can only destroy them. But by doing so, you have brought meaning into the world! You have made it so that choices matter! Liberty exists now, because of you. And because of this irreversibility, you have made it possible to know more things, for your bones are the skeleton of an order that places all actions in relation to one another. So you have done good as well as ill. Therefore, I shall remake you and disgorge you, and I shall put the world under your liberating authority. But I shall split you into two, and one of you shall wear a crown, and one of you shall hold a ledger, and the first shall witness all things which are going to happen from now on, and the second shall remember everything which has happened, so that all pasts will always be here." 

And there is the time which passes forward, which we live in, and there is the time which moves in all directions, which we remember. And because we have accepted we are small, we only remember some things, and because we have accepted that we are both irrational and rational, even the time which has already happened can surprise us. And the spider whispered into the ear of her older daughter a secret, which I have had from that older daughter in turn, and it is this: "the clock always runs forward, but you can reset it and start again, and the hands will point to any number you want, so long as you take responsibility for what you are making." 

And because of what we all agreed to, what we compromised on, there are some thoughts who were rejected as part of the world, for no one would remember them as part of it, and we insisted on this. But we also agreed to the demands from the other side of the table. We accept that thoughts can become part of the world as well. And that is the world we live in.

 

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

15 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Seems to me that the Lunars killing Orlanth and Ernakda. however temporary it may be, is proof that a god CAN be killed in Time and not just in the Godtime. 

not a proof at all 🙂 just what some gloranthan mortals conclude based on the facts they experiment (no more wind, no more plant, no more magic, etc...)

Or maybe even not a mortals conclusion, just a dramatic name describing the desperate period

what "really" (really from glorantha perspective of course) happend is not known.

Maybe it was just the use of some magic reinforcing the  power of the net, blocking even more what the gods (these gods) can normaly interact

Maybe it was another effect, a power "miroring" the compromise : now not only the gods cannot interact by themselves with the mundane world but the mundane world (the worshippers and the physical domain - earth and air -) was unable to interact with the other world.

Maybe something focusing their attention elsewhere, so strongly that they forgot the dragon pass for seasons, some magical drugs (same with sleeping more than dead)

etc

 

22 hours ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

the gods can die like mortals can

I know at least 4 "states" of dead gods :

those who were lost in oblivion (are they totally ... "off ?" or just in another dimension ? who knows ?)

those who are "dead" like Genert. What it means for them, except mortals cannot join them.. I don't know. Maybe what is called "Death" is just "We remember but we can't interact"

those who are "dead" like Umath. What it means for them I don't know. Maybe what is called "Death" is just "We remember, we can't interact, but we can interact with what is clearly part of them"

those who were "dead" like Yelm, and a lot of others gods. Probably not dead like Genert or Umath, as they were able to come back.

 

In all cases, I would not say that gods can like mortas can

It is probably different. Orlanth did not kill Yelm with a sword but with the death itself. What does it mean ? Don't know. Is it possible to understand what it means ? Godlearners don't seem to have totally understood anything

Is their a irl canon explanation ? I don't think so. So answers are just what each of us understand and interpret the texts. Now answering about a god death without answering about the time and its impact, the pre-time and its rules, the differences between runes and gods etc.... seems a bottom less pit where you can only find questions and distractions. And maybe... if you are lucky enough to survive and continue your travel... In other words if your powerful and fool enough to follow Eurmal path you may find at the end a formless thing, bring back to us and ... just push the "end world" button

[John Biles]

My thoughts on how Chaos overlaps with but is not the same as Change that isn't Chaos.

Glorantha is a system in which some runes provide stability and others provide for changes *within the limits of the system*.  Stasis, Harmony, Truth, and Life provide stability to Glornatha; Movement, Disorder, Illusion, and Death provide change *within the system*.  Things die, go back into nature, and eventually become new life.  The conflict of Harmony and Disorder balances group and individual interest.  And so on.

Eurmal cannot rebel against society without a society.

Without Chaos, Glorantha can change, but there are limits to change; Glorantha can be stable but that has limits too.

Chaos violates these limits.  It can make you alive and dead at the same time.  It can make a human grow fangs and claws without involving the Beast Rune's power.  It lets a Broo impregnate a tree. 

Chaos is entropic; many of the potential states it creates simply run things down and make them useless, twisted horrors.  Entropy is the transition of things from a state where they can do work to one where they are useless.  And there's far more useless states than useful ones.

This is why Chaos can obliterate Gods better than Death can.  Death generally just banishes you to the Underworld; Chaos can make you cease to exist.  Or turn you into churned rock.

 

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

3 hours ago, John Biles said:

and Death provide change *within the system*.

 

It is fun that I totaly agree with you with the only exception that Death provides stasis (aka once dead you cannot change anymore, you cannot travel anymore)) and Life provides change (you move, you learn, you create, you build, you destroy, etc...)

[Eff]

5 hours ago, John Biles said:

Chaos is entropic; many of the potential states it creates simply run things down and make them useless, twisted horrors.  Entropy is the transition of things from a state where they can do work to one where they are useless.  And there's far more useless states than useful ones.

Incorrect. Entropy is a state variable related to the thermodynamics of a system, which cannot decrease with the evolution of time in an isolated system only. This means that such systems evolve towards an equilibrium point of maximum entropy, and that some physical processes are irreversible (and others aren't). From this, we get the arrow of time.

It also represents the number of possible and probable microstates a system composed of many smaller parts can be within, with more entropy meaning more possible microstates and more probability of the system being found in each one, meaning entropy also communicates complexity and freedom within a system.  

Finally, Shannon entropy is related to thermodynamic entropy, but considers information, data processing, and signal noise, and works out to the gap between the information needed to describe the macrostate of a system and the information needed to describe the particular microstate of a system, and Shannon entropy means that the process of gaining and producing information increases entropy both in the Shannon sense and thermodynamically. 

There is a lot more to entropy than simply "oh it means uselessness", right down to Glorantha not being a thermodynamically isolated system, thanks to its specific cosmology. This may or may not have been intended by Stafford, but the beauty of texts is that meaning is generated in a more complicated way than the author shoving it in.