Malkioni 'grey area' questions

[PaulJW]

16 hours ago, Nevermet said:

I have impossible, unfair, and unrealistic hopes for the IG book, and I know this.

Well the other cults books so far have 15, 16 and 19 cult write-ups respectively.  So, I guess we can expect write-ups for around that many IG/Malkioni/Sorcerous sects.  The only question, then, is which ones.  Just listing possibilities off the top of my head:

Brithini, Vadeli, Rokari, New Hrestoli, Castle Coasters, Borists, Galvosti, Trader Princes, Idovanus, Proven Appearance of Arkat, Black Arkati, Chariot of Lightening, Arkat Kingtroll, maybe various other Arkati sects, Aeolians, Malki, whatever nonsense is going on in God Forgot (the people there, Jeff informs us 'are not and were never “just Brithini.')

That's easily up to 17+ right there.

[radmonger]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

That sort of flies in the face of the whole "The Brithini are breeding" quote though.  Surely if only the Horali breed up for war, that would be commented on, rather than a general Brithini breeding program, which is what seems to have been indicated?

As I understand it, Brihini castes are not really hereditary, they are more a matter of what spells get used during pregnancy and early childhood.

So if anticipating war, why would they not 'breed up' a cohort heavy in those who are going to be good at it? 

I don't think you can read much into that soundbite not explicitly saying that they are doing the obvious logical thing.

 

 

[metcalph]

15 minutes ago, PaulJW said:

I suppose, in that sense, both the Brithini and the Vadeli ultimately recognise no real higher power than themselves.

I think the same is true of the Malkioni Wizards (Seshnegi and to a lesser extent, the Loskalmi).  They do not worship the Invisible God but rather act as emanations of It.  Other castes may have this quaint impression of the Invisible God being some white bearded guy in the clouds ruling everything but the Wizards believe that life is too short to correct them of their error.  Instead they inform the other castes of how best to live with the benefit of the wisdom of the Wizards.  The only thing constraining the Wizards in general from abusing their power is that they are an argumentative lot who rarely agree on anything.

The spell Worship Invisible God (as presented in Gods of Glorantha), I regard as being little more than a means of collecting magical energy.  A Malkioni can trample on their faith's holy relics and still have rightness even if their fellow worshippers are scandalized.   

The difference between the Brithini and the Moderns is that the latter know that after death, they will spend time on the Spirit World and ultimately be reincarnated.  This is the Solace of the Body.  The Brithini deny this newfangled definition because their Zzaburi only accept teachings of Malkion made when he was in an idealized state and not those made after he became mortal.  To relax their rigid interpretation undermines their philosophical strengths and in doing so, they cease to be Brithini.  I think there are scattered communities of Brithini ghosts scattered throughout the West and the Otherside who continue to live their ancient ways.  If pointed out that they died a long time ago, the ghosts become very angry.

 

[metcalph]

I think the Invisible God book might be split between sects (eg Rokari) and cults (eg Talor).  Thus my idle thoughts of what might be are:

Sects:  Rokari, New Idealists, Materialists (Idovanus, Ganesatarus, Malakinus) and Henotheists.  The Brithini and Vadeli are comparative side-bars.

Cults: Hrestol, Arkat, Zzabur, Talar, Horal and Dronar.  Gerlant, Talor and others are hero cults in comparison.

[PaulJW]

1 hour ago, metcalph said:

I think the Invisible God book might be split between sects (eg Rokari) and cults (eg Talor). 

Whatever way they end up doing it, its very easy to see them getting to the 15-19 detailed write-ups that feature in the other cults books very quickly.  One way or another I suspect at least some of the things that the likes of Nevermet are hoping to see covered are going to get missed out/only covered fairly superficially.

[Eff]

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

That sort of flies in the face of the whole "The Brithini are breeding" quote though.  Surely if only the Horali breed up for war, that would be commented on, rather than a general Brithini breeding program, which is what seems to have been indicated?

Brithini castes are based on birth order. Firstborn son is a drone, secondborn son is a soldier, and so on.

[mfbrandi]

20 hours ago, Nevermet said:

Someone in one of these threads (Dumb Theory?) suggested Ompalam was a deified Vadeli.

Possibly related:

• Malkioni heresies flourish in Fonrit. The school of the Wool Cloaks seeks the understanding of esoteric knowledge through complete submission to Ompalam and the annihilation of the self while remaining physically alive. The adepts of these techniques claim, paradoxically, that they are the only truly liberated mortals in all of Glorantha.
  — Guide to Glorantha (PDF, p. 47)

If you wanted a charitable reading of this°, it would do nicely as an outsider’s description of a mystical sect of a naturalistic and pantheistic subset of Malkioni. An acceptance of the world as we find it — “you cannot change the laws of physics” — is the only freedom obtainable. You cannot introspect the self; ghostly stuff, otherworlds, and interventionist gods drop away as needless complications — and union with God is right here, right now.

Ompalam = the Invisible God. The chains bind Invisible Ompalam as much as they bind us (and all creation), but it is no hardship to be bound by the laws of nature, and “radical” free will is a nonsense. Seen right, the chains of Ompalam are the web of Arachne Solara. (And if it is the Devil held immobile at the centre of the web, can we truly tell the spider from its meal? You are what you eat.)

Of course, looked at this way, slavery is a metaphor. Only those who would slander the Wool Cloaks claim that they must be defenders of slavery. If we see the Malkioni as the People of the Book — rather than something narrower — we can well imagine the libels and vicious infighting between the various branches.

It needn’t be the Wool Cloaks themselves who call the IG “Ompalam” — that may be how their enemies put it.

———————————————————————
° Charitable to the real-world authors, that is, whom we excuse of having a dig at IRL faiths. Uncharitably, it stands to Islam (Wool Cloaks = Sufis, and so on) as Gbajism does to Buddhism.

[davecake]

9 hours ago, PaulJW said:

I suppose, in that sense, both the Brithini and the Vadeli ultimately recognise no real higher power than themselves

It depends on what exactly you mean by ‘higher’, but more or less yes. They recognise the Eranschula, and the Brithini even recognise one or two of them as being worthy of listening to (like Zzabur). The Vadeli probably a bit less, most are just thought of as beings notable for their power but mostly not respected for their intellect, and all beings exploitable if you can. 

And acknowledged ‘higher power’ entities like Kiona or Ferbrith are just theoretical entities of lower dimensional thought space or something. Important theoretically and conceptually, but dealing with them as anything more than such an abstract concept is to fall into Error. Some of those mortals might talk about Malkion the Seer etc as if they were meaningful deities, but that’s just because those mortals die before they have time to properly understand metaphysics, and as a consequence they are little more than children with heads full of mush. 

[metcalph]

All Revealed Mythologies actually says about Ompalam's origins is:

Quote

Oabil may have been a
powerful Vadeli kingdom, perhaps the original home of
Ompalam and Gark.

p49

Now it's a given that the Vadeli had insight into Ompalam that helped them set up their historical Pamaltelan Empire that's not quite the same as creating or worshipping him.  Discovery of these gods might be a better description of what went on because if anything is known about the Vadeli, they would rather commit fraud than do honest work in creating a God.  Through their contacts with Gark and Impalam, they were able to craft spells that could animate corpses and enslave others.  But I think that Gark and Ompalam arose out of mythological developments in Pamaltelan mythology (think of the origins of Vivamort, Thed and Malia) rather than anything the mythical Vadeli said or did.

As for the nature of Ompalam worship and the attitudes of his worshippers, I think the whole situation is immensely confused.  The Fonritans have a cultural god - Ompalam - and knowledge of a philosophical entity - the Invisible God.  The public image of Ompalam readily lends himself to being identified as the Invisible God.  It's only a short step for the Philosophers of Fonrit to say they don't worship Malkion but Ompalam.

So the nature of Ompalam's cult might be two-fold: a formerly secretl chaotic cult of slavers with which are attached to several sorcerous/philosophical schools - such as the Wool Cloaks - that borrow the language of the slaver cult to understanding the Invisible God but are not chaotic in and of themselves.  This being Fonrit, it follows that there are evil sorcery cults perhaps similar to the Borists or the Vivamorti.

If I were to write up a cult of Fonrit, I would make the Masarin the only chaotics within his cult.  Most other people within the cult are really propitiatory worshippers - obeying their masters to avoid bad things happening to them.