Mastako's Rune Spells

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I don’t know if I m a very weird gloranthaphile (and others are fine with all these « many and different truths »)

No, you are not weird. If two statements appear to conflict, then either it is mere appearance and they do not conflict, or at least one of them isn’t true. However, I do not strenuously object to Chaosium’s not making it clear which “conflicting” statements are “really true” and which are not. That is just their way, and if they resolved all the apparent conflicts, you (or I) might not like the way they did it.

Spoiler

If someone takes the headbanging line that contradictions can be true, then you can relax in the knowledge that nothing can be Gregged or retconned, as just because something is now false doesn’t mean it is not also still true. Happy days! 😉

I suspect any tension comes from wanting to preserve the nebulousness of real-world mythology and simultaneously have the gods as cardboard playing pieces one can push around the Gloranthan playing board. Each is fine on its own, but maybe they don’t always play nicely together. But we can live with the tension, can’t we?

[Rodney Dangerduck]

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

The God Learner playbook is for you, then. The identifications are useful for a shallow analysis, but they are bound to fail (spectacularly) if you take them too far.

If @French Desperate WindChild were a Gloranthan, then yes, following the God Learner playbook will fail spectacularly.

However, they are, I believe, an earthling, possibly from France, so they are free to use logic and "one truth" to analyze Glorantha.

As for whether a God Learner "take" is correct for analysis, I constantly see analysis, including on this very thread, that goes

1. God XXX "owns" the YYY Rune.   
2. Therefore they can ZZZ

Now, #1 is a God Learner concept.  Does that mean such an analysis is "shallow" and will "fail spectacularly"?  I dunno...

[Joerg]

12 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

If @French Desperate WindChild were a Gloranthan, then yes, following the God Learner playbook will fail spectacularly.

However, they are, I believe, an earthling, possibly from France, so they are free to use logic and "one truth" to analyze Glorantha.

YGWV and all, yes. Identifying Lodril as Shargash just because the southern Pamaltelans equate the red planet with their fire deity is as much bound to fail as to expect the Mastakos cult to provide Eratocomatose Lucidity just because the Dara Happans identify his planet with Uleria. That's what I meant with taking identifications too far.

[Eff]

17 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

If @French Desperate WindChild were a Gloranthan, then yes, following the God Learner playbook will fail spectacularly.

However, they are, I believe, an earthling, possibly from France, so they are free to use logic and "one truth" to analyze Glorantha.

As for whether a God Learner "take" is correct for analysis, I constantly see analysis, including on this very thread, that goes

1. God XXX "owns" the YYY Rune.   
2. Therefore they can ZZZ

Now, #1 is a God Learner concept.  Does that mean such an analysis is "shallow" and will "fail spectacularly"?  I dunno...

To be fair, we cannot help but God Learn, and Gloranthans can't help it, either. Identifications and connections fail, either when the logic becomes too stressed out or when the dice come up 00, but the process continues on with the new knowledge that an unlucky fumble has proven that the Doctor Rock is actually made of plastic, or whatever. 

As far as this specific topic, might I suggest a handy anticanonical resolution? The lights in the sky are post offices, and they can sort the prayers and sacrifices that are mailed their way.

[French Desperate WindChild]

On 5/18/2024 at 2:00 PM, Joerg said:

The God Learner playbook is for you, then. The identifications are useful for a shallow analysis, but they are bound to fail (spectacularly) if you take them too far.

You don't understand what I mean (or I don't understand what you mean, I will not bet on it 😛 ) : I don't ask for an analysis that one could have and another may disagree with this or that argument (or page in a book, or a discussion 20 years ago, or ...)

I ask for a "cartesian" canon on any divinity not based on ~1624 gloranthan cults  or organizations but something only defined by the game designers.

Something I , you , we, they may appreciate or not (I would prefer that X is a mask of Y, they disagree that Yelmalio and Elmal are the same, you see Mastakos and Jmijie as two different entities when David see them as different aspects of the same god, blablabla)

a kind of justice of the peace : So if Jmijie and Mastakos are the same, they are the same, not because any shallow analysis, just because it is the game designers decision. If you believe in a creator, you don't ask it to demonstrate if it choices are based on the best deeper analysis.

Game designers are glorantha books creators. Of course anyone varies their glorantha (so do I; I m a rebel 😛  that's a call to play and dream, so noone will tell me what I have to do) but at least with this kind of product, things are clear : if you want something, you know if this thing is or not the canon.

 

Which is very little to do with god learners: they are gloranthan and believe in the reality of glorantha. Oh surprise, I don't believe in Glorantha existence (no offense if you hear me wonderful universe 🙂 ) 

 

But again, I am maybe an exception and the vast majority of us may prefer the happy cloud

 

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

On 5/18/2024 at 4:11 PM, mfbrandi said:

you (or I) might not like the way they did it.

of course

the question is how I (or you, or x) may react if they don't like the way.

For me there is no importance. Chaosium see a god in a way I dislike ? ok, I play the god in the way I like. Don't need to fight to convince that I'm right. I may change in few weeks / months / years, they may change in few decades ( 😛 )  with the next version. no need to suffer or hurt others. Just sharing how I see it differently and play it in another "branch" of glorantha. My main issue is to understand when I am on my branch, when I am on the trunk

[PhilHibbs]

22 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I ask for a "cartesian" canon on any divinity not based on ~1624 gloranthan cults  or organizations but something only defined by the game designers.

Something I , you , we, they may appreciate or not (I would prefer that X is a mask of Y, they disagree that Yelmalio and Elmal are the same, you see Mastakos and Jmijie as two different entities when David see them as different aspects of the same god, blablabla)

The problem with that is, Glorantha was not invented to be a game. It is an experimental mythology. It's ambiguous and mutable. It's a thunderstorm, but you want a photograph of a lightning bolt. Scenarios can provide such a photograph, something definite with a predefined menu of consequences (that you can of course scribble on and change, if you wish), but another campaign or scenario might reveal a subtly different truth.

[radmonger]

9 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

The problem with that is, Glorantha was not invented to be a game

WWII wasn't designed to be a game either; that doesn't prevent Axis and Allies from existing. 

Quote

I ask for a "cartesian" canon on any divinity not based on ~1624 gloranthan cults

Unless I am misunderstanding you, that is exactly what the RQ:G cults book currently do provide. 

A few Gloranthans still believe Elmal to be different from Yelmalio, and they are wrong. Or least will be once the Solar cult book comes out. A larger number believe yu Kargzant to be non-identifiable with Yelm, and they are wrong too. However, they are right about Dendara and Ernalda.

The rules term subcult is a bit misleading, as it is nothing to do with temple organisation, or what priests do. Instead, it is a statement on the nature of the deity, or at the very least their magic. For more details, see the 'rules as written' section of this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Joerg]

11 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

I ask for a "cartesian" canon on any divinity not based on ~1624 gloranthan cults  or organizations but something only defined by the game designers.

Not sure anybody (Greg, Jeff, Sandy) is able to give that to you.

If it was me who had to give you this in mathematical terms, I would give you partial identity - estimates of overlap in the venn diagrams of mythical identity. If you wish, avatars or incarnations of an entity that add "personal myths" and substract irrelevant aspects.

And worse, you have myths (or feat-defining portions of myths) with roles filled by different entities leading to the same or a very similar outcome, like ripping the dragon apart to free the sweet water.

You have entities claiming hereditary connections or association by following a leader that other avatars or incarnations don't share, but that contribute greatly to the deity known by that name. You have entities claiming local or continental portions of landscape or other such natural phenomena (recurring storms, currents), possibly as their birthplace, and you may end up with a single deity like Orlanth claiming quite a few birthplaces. To Fronelan Orlanthi, Top of the World is the birthplace of Orlanth. In Umathela, that honor goes to a peak beyond Vralos. And we know about Kero Fin.

You have (a) Basmol slain by Tada in Prax while (a) Basmol happily produced demigod offspring in Seshnela (all the way into the Dawn Age), and Pamaltelan Basmoli unaware that their ancestral deity ever left the veldt or lost his skin.

You have Rathor claiming the constellation known as The Rebel to the Dara Happans and The Star Bear to the Odaylans and in Lunar myth, and as Orlanth's Ring to the Theyalans. You have both Mastakos and Uleria identified with the blue planet that passes overhead thrice a day/night cycle.

All of this points to Venn-diagram-like overlap of identifications.

 

The God Learners identified deities as the combination of runes through which they expressed their feats and magical nature. The nature of the runes or rather the spectrum of stuff associated with them is pretty well-defined. You can map the gods onto runes fairly reliably, although you might stumble on incarnations or avatars with one extra or different rune. You might encounter myths where two deities became one - such as Lodril wrestling with the Earth, changing his pure celestial nature into something almost like an Earth King (and certainly an Earth Walker).

11 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

a kind of justice of the peace : So if Jmijie and Mastakos are the same, they are the same, not because any shallow analysis, just because it is the game designers decision. If you believe in a creator, you don't ask it to demonstrate if it choices are based on the best deeper analysis.

In my understanding of Glorantha, Jmijie and Mastakos certainly are not 100% the same. Both link to the same Mobility archetype, but eachof these deities is burdened with other identities - different experiences their incarnations/avatars suffered which define quite a few of their feats derived from Mobility. Jmijie has no ancestral connection to Magasta, Mastakos is not a bead in Pamalt's Necklace. And the archetypical movement deity behind them did not experience those events and probably doesn't exhibit any consequences of those.

Deities - or rather instances of deities - may encounter other instances of the same avatar in myth. Sometimes they merge, sometimes they diverge further from one another, making different decisions that lead to different experiences adding to the identity of that instance. Sometimes they have to end their existence to rejoin the archetype, and then sharing some or all their experiences with all the other instances, at other times they take on a variant identity of their own. Sometimes access to or even memory of a previous instance is lost, at other times two or more variants are available.

In other words, Jmijie and Mastakos might well share say 16 out of 22 chromosomes, but may carry difference from different parents giving birth to their incarnation. Or they are copies of the same basic AI, but learned from totally different datasets, developing two rather different AIs which still share their basic structure.

You can peel at both Jmijie and Mastakos (e.g. using the Bathe of Nelat as an agent) and might be left with identical material after deconstructing the deity and what made the deity what it is. (And then you might pull out your backup copy and apply the residues on it to reinforce that identity.)

 

Nothing of this is canon (unless I grasped bits of canon correctly and managed to reproduce them intelligibly). But this is the closest I can come to your idea of cartesian deities as multidimensional point clouds that have significant partial overlap.

[French Desperate WindChild]

22 hours ago, radmonger said:

Unless I am misunderstanding you, that is exactly what the RQ:G cults book currently do provide. 

you don't misundertand me 🙂 I just change few of your words : "that is exactly what the RQ:G cults book currently try to provide" (note that the books provide more than that , that's not the question)

while we are able to see lore masters disagree on this or that deity, the full answer is not yet provided 🙂

22 hours ago, radmonger said:

The rules term subcult is a bit misleading, as it is nothing to do with temple organisation, or what priests do. Instead, it is a statement on the nature of the deity, or at the very least their magic.

ah.. for me, it is different. Subcults are, for me, temple organisation (group of secrets teached to initiate who perform some things and obey some leaders), there is a  hierarchy of adventurous, there is a hierarchy of thunderous. There even is temples dedicated to this subcult or this  subcult. I agree that there is a relationship with the nature of the deity, but the adventurous "group of spells/characteristics of the deity" is an artefact created by the mortals. After all, the rex "group of spells" was created long after any Orlanthi accepted that Orlanth was the king of gods.

 

 

On 5/19/2024 at 11:15 PM, PhilHibbs said:

The problem with that is, Glorantha was not invented to be a game. It is an experimental mythology

it is an interesting thing. But that is, for me totally compatible with another level of "design". Mythology, cults, etc.. are what the worshippers believe / understand / ...

Let's see the Basmol example that @Joerg tolds. That's true, at the level we have there is an inconsistency :

Basmol is dead in Prax, Basmol is not known as dead in Pamaltela.

That's what we have in all our resources because all our reources are at mythology level.

 

Now if we consider that myths are what the mortals, the worshippers understand of the world. How they explain the world. But not exactly what the word is. It is totally different :

- if Pamaltelan Basmoli are unaware of their god death, that means at least three things (from a "cartesian" perspective - sorry sir Descartes if I misuse your spirit)

Hyp  A) The god is alive, they are able to obtain his blessings / spells / ...

Hyp D) The god is dead, they refuse to accept it and their leaders have invented (maybe they believied it) a myth to explain their incapacity to invoke Basmol's powers (or maybe another god, (Basmol's heir ?) still answer their call without telling them his/her name.

Hyp N) There was never any Basmol god, maybe there is even no god at all, maybe Basmol is just a mask of a greater god and answer them for any reason. Something like the cargo cult.

- if Praxian Basmoli say Basmol is dead, that means at least three things

Hyp D) they are unable to join him because he is dead

Hyp A) they are unable to join him because another reason (they are cursed, one of their past shaman/priest/leader did something wrong, ... etc) and one of their shamans/priests/leaders told them / teached them that if he doesn't answer that's because he is dead (and of course not because one of the leader fault...  courage ! let's flee our responsabilities and keep our power)

Hyp N) There was never any Basmol god, maybe there is even no god at all, maybe Basmol is just a mask of a greater god and doesn't answer them for any reason. Something like the cargo cult.

 

Other options are possible; but I hope that coud demonstrate that the ambiguity, the mutability can be explained at another level. (of course world designers may consider the myths level as the reality level, not a "mortals explanation of the reality" level)

 

I have some work and my english is so poor (40 minutes to write this post, what a shame !) but I will in few days propose a "unified answer of heroquesting inconsistency" in the same approach

 

[metcalph]

Another explanation to the Basmol thing (which is kinda off topic): that the belief of both groups (that he is dead or gone to Canada) amount to pretty much the same spiritual experience - his worshippers have no direct spiritual contact with Basmol and rely instead on intermediaries.

[radmonger]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

ah.. for me, it is different. Subcults are, for me, temple organisation (group of secrets teached to initiate who perform some things and obey some leaders), there is a  hierarchy of adventurous, there is a hierarchy of thunderous.

As I understand it, a cult is best thought of as a template for a temple. Every actual temple is subtly different, and quite a few have myths, stories and magics available nowhere else. But they have obvious patterns of similarities. It is these patterns, or write-ups, that the cults book contain. After all, 'the complete book of all temples in Glorantha' would be completly impractical to write and publish. So it says Orlanth Adventurous temples are like this, Orlanth Thunderous ones like that.

Both Rune Cults and Subcults are such patterns, or write-ups. This includes details of whether they do, or do not, tend to have inter-temple hierarchy or coordination. The difference between a rune cult and subcult writeup is that in the latter, being initiated in one temple and worshiping in another works. Between two different top-level Rune cults,  this is not so.

Note this is a thing that Gloranthan experts would generally know, and only be wrong about in unusual cases.You can still have a metaphysical debate about what the rune magic functionally working really means, just as in the real world you can debate the boundaries between Europe and Asia. But such a debate won't cause you to need a ship to get from Paris to Moscow.

 

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Basmol is dead in Prax, Basmol is not known as dead in Pamaltela.

God time is timeless. So if a god dies, or changes in any other way[1], before time, you can chose to worship them before or after the change. And you can found a temple that supports worship in that fashion.

More specifically, God time is cyclic. A temple, based on its demographics and economics, can support a certain number of holy day ceremonies per year. Each is mapped to a particular God Time event or myth, generally in order corresponding to the seasons and mythic ages. Almost all gods did more things than almost all temples can afford to support shrines or ceremonies for. And many gods did things that are apparently pointless, or culturally irrelevant. So a temple has to select which myths it is going to magically invest in. Those are the spells it offers. A Great Temple has better economics and demographics than a smaller one, and so can support more myths, including those from multiple subcults.

If a god died in a later age in the God Time, but you know enough good stories about what he did before they died, you can establish a fully viable temple from just the pre-Death stories. Or maybe you hold that the stories about, or after, his death are the most important[4].

If there are two such sets of temples, each with their own particular cultural heritage and context, then it either is or isn't possible to learn a spell at one and renew it at the other. One case corresponds to a single deity with a story that both subcults know part of, the other to two deities worshipped by two rune cults.

If you have a RQ:G writeup of both cults, you will have canon as to which is which. 

 

[1] except, I suspect, being annihilated by Chaos

[2] unless you do the magical equivalent of building the Panama canal.

[3] Note that, confusingly,  a subordinate cult is an entirely different thing to a subcult, and in some way the logical opposite. It is a cult to a different god that is entirely supported by a Rune Cult.

[4] I suspect classical Dara Happa worships Yelm solely between the time he became emperor and his death. What happens before or after is either denied or downplayed. hence they have no magic of conquest or mortality.

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

38 minutes ago, radmonger said:

So if a god dies, or changes in any other way[1], before time, you can chose to worship them before or after the change. And you can found a temple that supports worship in that fashion.

I m not so sure of that.. because how many temples of Yelmalio propose any fire secrets ? We know Yelmalio had fire then lost it. So there is a change and it seems (in the canon) that noone is able to worship a version of Yelmalio with fire powers

This question of the creation of time with the compromise disturbs me.

I prefer to consider that the time of compromise is more the time with the gods outside (aka they can't change any more) when the god time is the time with the gods inside (they can develop new abilities, steal or lose some powers, etc...). What you worship (in my opinion) is a part of what the god was/had when the AS time started. What was lost before is lost for ever. What you can find (new spell, new power) during heroquesting  is not what the god had at one moment in the god time but something people forgot (or did not notice) since the compromise

the notion of cycle is not in opposition with time (a before, a after). tides show us cycle, moon, day/night, etc... show us cycle even if we are in the time

[radmonger]

9 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

how many temples of Yelmalio propose any fire secrets ?

Canonically, in 1625,  zero to two. Without the Solar Book published we don't know whether the surviving Elmal temples in Runegate and southern Sartar worship Yelmalio before or after he lost his fire powers. I suspect the latter, because he did more useful and interesting stuff afterwards than before, in particular marrying Ernalda.

Also, in the Dragon Pass region, the sun does not commonly set things on fire, so a story in which it can lacks truth. 

Either way, it it been stated Elmal will be a subcult in that book, finally once and for all ending the Elmal debate.

 

[David Scott]

On 5/19/2024 at 9:44 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

David see them as different aspects of the same god

Masks of the same god. I'd really recommend Joseph Campbell's Masks of God as a good grounding for this concept, likewise Hero with a 1000 faces. Ignore that thay maybe dated in some concepts - these formed the basis for much of Greg's work.

Quote

Are there any authors on mythology you'd recommend?

The first person I'd recommend someone to read is Joseph Campbell. It's not going to give you specifics about any part of Gloranthan mythology but it will give you a very important background source of how. to understand and look at mythology.

Greg Stafford Interview, Tales of the Reaching Moon, #5, 1991

 

Edited May 21 by David Scott