What happens when you're dead

[Zit]

 

On 30.12.2016 at 11:14 AM, Jeff said:

Just wait until you learn it is possible in Glorantha to be at two different places at the same time. Jar-eel can simultaneously be in Glamour, performing the Lunar New Year rites AND be in Boldhome disrupting Kallyr Starbrow's Lightbringers Quest. And she experiences only being in one place which is both.

 

On 30.12.2016 at 11:28 AM, David Scott said:

I'm pretty sure that Campbell talks about bilocation being a sign of godhood in either Hero with 1000 faces or the Masks of God volumes. It's not just a Gloranthan theme. 

Just like the Schrödinger's cat which is simultaneously in and out of the Underworld. And conversely. 

[g33k]

On 12/31/2016 at 9:42 AM, Ali the Helering said:

...  Even the Guide is only a guide. 

[Pentallion]

On 1/1/2017 at 11:47 AM, Zit said:

 

 

Just like the Schrödinger's cat which is simultaneously in and out of the Underworld. And conversely. 

Yinkin was Orlanth's inspiration for the LBQ.

[Darius West]

On 1/1/2017 at 8:30 PM, Jeff said:

Darius - given that I have the original sketch on which this was based, this map works fine as a schematic - which is all it is. But like all cosmological schematics it has its limits. 

Yes it has limits.  The limit is that as the schematic doesn't advance your argument.  I am sure you would consider it iron clad evidence if it supported your case, but surprise surprise... it doesn't.  So now you have to abandon it like the proverbial hot potato and back pedal rather that accepting that maybe I have a point.

I would point out that this also utterly undermines the notion that Baby Giants who are sent to the underworld never die because they remain on the river Styx, and thus between life and death, because as the schematic clearly shows, and as the Guide to Glorantha clearly enunciates on page 10, half of the underworld is the realm of darkness, not the realm of death.  Thus you don't die by entering Rausa's Gate of Dusk, or by entering the underworld.  Clearly Baby Giants would be dead if they enter the underworld if this were not so, and if that were the case, then why would giants be upset if humans killed their babies and robbed their cradles if they were sending their babies to die in the underworld anyhow?

Similarly, there is no satisfactory answer to the point I raised regarding the internal contradiction of Humakti Hero Questers being required to remain in the underworld if being in the underworld is "death".  Let me say with gentle sarcasm that Humakt is a very reasonable and compassionate deity, and despite being a god of Death and Truth, he is always ready to break the rules so that his mortal worshipers can protect their precious lives. Humakt isn't grim and fatalistic, and he understands that not every worshiper of his is as dedicated as others, so he makes special allowances for the less committed members of his religion.  The path back from death for a Humakti therefore allows for them to resurrect themselves and don't worry about those little cult strictures if they get in the way; after all, every good Humakti knows that honor and fair play and keeping both the letter and the intention of your oaths really only applies to other people...

On 1/1/2017 at 8:30 PM, Jeff said:

 But as far as I am concerned, it seems vitally important to you that we have a definition of "dead" that suggests that a hero that returns from the Underworld was somehow alive all the time ("hurrah!").

Oh dear.  No.  Really, no.  That is neither why I am raised this point nor why I am sticking to my guns on it at all. Allow me to explain my motives...

The thing that draws me back to Glorantha is the internal consistency of its myths and the interplay of cultures and their mythologies, and how those myths allow players to interact with that world.  On the other hand, the thing that sets RPGs apart from merely telling a story is that they have game mechanics.  No some people bitch about game mechanics ruining their stories, but I disagree.  The fact is that the real world has physical rules that set hard limits as to what is possible, and in order to make magic plausible, and a mythological realm believable, a fantasy world  has to be consistent or the audience will break their suspension of disbelief, and you plummet from art to farce.  Similarly if the GM breaks those rules in some sort of "Fiat - Deus Ex Machina" way to move the story in a direction the particular GM prefers, they undermine the enjoyment of the game and devalue the achievement and experience of the players.  Good game rules well applied provide the all important consistentcy of context that any audience needs.  In Hollywood for example they pay people good money to read scripts and look for plot holes; in essence that is what I am doing here, free of charge, in order to make Glorantha better.

So you are probably asking yourself "so what is Darius' gripe with people being compulsorily dead in the underworld"?  I will hence refer to this as "The Rule".  It would, on face value, seem to be a good rule well applied.  My position is that this is sadly not the case, and as I have pointed out repeatedly, this point introduces gaping and irreconcilable contradictions in an otherwise beautifully consistent game environment.  I have also, throughout this discussion entertained and frequently conceded points that were well reasoned and well argued within the "Gloranthan Scriptural Canon", something that has been notably and ungenerously absent among those who take the alternative position.

My point is essentially this...  the notion of being compulsorily dead in the underworld doesn't work.  The more you inspect The Rule, the more obviously flawed it becomes.  If you look at Gloranthan lore it doesn't fit the facts.  Now Gloranthan cultures and their mythologies seldom agree on anything and the notion that all cultures in Glorantha agree 100% on a rule that is obviously flawed is so absurd within the context that it constitues a "plot hole" kind of mistake.

I have also generously put forwards some suggested remedies, if you are of a mind to consider the possibility that a contradiction is a mistake not a mystical experience.  Primarily this consists of relaxing The Rule.  I am not saying The Rule should be abolished altogether as clearly some people and deities need to be dead and in the underworld, but the way The Rule reads at the moment, it devalues and confuses both life and death within the game setting.

So what is death within Glorantha?  Well, it is and remains the point at which your body and your spirit are separated because one or the other has been severely damaged.  In the case of the Brithini who view themselves as perfect expressions of the Man Rune unadulterated by the Spirit Rune, death represents annihilation. For good Hrestoli and other non-immortal Malkioni it represents a one way trip to Solace.  For pantheists it represents the beginning of the reincarnation process as understood by their culture.  Shamans obviously have learned the trick of leaving their body with their fetch, as far as tricks go its an oldie but a goodie.  The point is, you aren't dead until your body has been taken away from you and you can't get back inside it within that seven day grace period of the resurrection spell.  

Heroes like Jaldon and perhaps Jar-Eel and others know how to break that rule, but they had to do something extraordinary to find that secret, and that is part of what makes them exceptional.  When Yelm dies, his spirit goes to the Land of the Dead and only Bijiif (deity IV-24 Gods of Gloranthat p679) remains of his body.  The Lightbringers don't die in the underworld any more than a Baby Giant does, because they symbolize the descent of Life into the Land of Death to resurrect the Sun.  The Lightbringer's Quest is a resurrection spell laid out in mythological form, and it is also representative of the turning of the Seasons from Winter to Spring i.e. from Storm Season through Sacred Time and into Sea Season.  For the metaphor at the heart of the myth to work, there needs to be an unbroken link and association to the Living World, and the Lightbringers while hard tested, must remain unbroken for the multiple levels of the myth to work.

Now the parallel drawn mythologically here to real world myths is to that of Inanna and her descent into the Underworld, where she dies and affects her resurrection (corresponding to the transit of Venus).  Now this is very like the story of the Red Moon Goddess and her various stages, but in Glorantha the RMG doesn't self resurrect, she has Seven Lightbringers to serve as her Seven Mothers who bring her back through their connection to the Living World.  However Inanna is ONLY ONE EXAMPLE in the real world.  The real world cultures that the main played mythologies are drawn from are the Norse, Greco-Roman, Hindu and Celtic cultures, and without exception in ALL of those cultures you have heroes and deities entering the underworld while alive and returning.  A lovely example of this is when Orpheus in his descent into the underworld pays Charon the two obols to get across the Styx, but he knows the secret of also paying a sprig of mistletoe for the return journey, because mistletoe blooms in the middle of winter, which is symbolically synonymous with being alive in the middle of the land of the dead.  The point of this? The Rule doesn't work mythologically either.

On 1/1/2017 at 8:30 PM, Jeff said:

If that definition makes the cycle of Life and Death easier for you to grok, then go for it. But for me, that definition doesn't help and doesn't work (then again that could just be a result of my current writer's vantage point).

 I totally grok it, I grok it so well I know it is wrong.  Please reconsider this entrenched position, it doesn't work within the rule system or fit within the mythology.  I am offering you free plot hole checking here.  I am not saying get rid of it, I am saying it needs reinterpretation. To paraphrase Inigo Montoya "this rule, I do not think it means what you think it means".

On 1/1/2017 at 8:30 PM, Jeff said:

The Underworld is the Place of Death and if you are there, you are among the dead and not living.

 "Among the dead" does not mean "dead".  Being in a Place of Death does not mean you are dead, any more that visiting a cemetery means you are dead.

On 1/1/2017 at 8:30 PM, Jeff said:

If you are in the Underworld you are on the other side of mortality - i.e., one of the dead. That's a definitional thing - like saying that if you are in the Sky Dome you are part of the sky, even if you are made out of flesh and bone. Or like saying the Red God is red.

You think this relationship is definitional, I think it is symbolic at best.  Also, does Dayzatar who is so very pure look at a mortal hero from the middle realm and think of them as being "part of the sky", no, he thinks "I wonder who this mud footed interloper is.  I hope someone else respects my purity enough to deal with this dirty Earthbound creature".  As to the Red Goddess being red... what about in her black phase?  You may think that is an idle point, but it isn't.  Death carries the seeds of life, just as Life may be viewed as a journey towards death.  As to Uleria not dying, she is the cosmic principle of life and fertility, if she had died, everything would have died.

Now I agree that position is important in Glorantha.  Some Gods are powerfully mythologically linked to some places and have weaker relationships to others, and some are even "dead gods" in some places.  To say that the death implied in The Rule is anything other than a map co-ordinate or a poetic allusion taken as fact is an error.  Yes the underworld is a bad place to be a living person, it is quite antithetical to life, but so is a Haboob dust storm or a savage hurricane, or a massive blizzard.  You can be caught in any of these terrible things and still heroically find a way to stay alive, that is what heroes do, and if heroes do it then so do deities.

On 1/1/2017 at 8:30 PM, Jeff said:

Like most definitional arguments, it doesn't really say that much. 

Well this is low hanging fruit. 

On 1/1/2017 at 8:30 PM, Jeff said:

The Otherworld (or mythology, or the Gods War, or whatever you want to think of the Great Other) embraces contradictions.  

No, I think you have chosen to embrace contradictions rather than correct the obvious mistake The Rule represents.

Edit (noun form):  A change or correction made as a result of editing.

Isn't correcting mistakes the DEFINITION of what Editors do?  

Edited January 4, 2017 by Darius West

[Ali the Helering]

Unfortunately, Darius, the world of Glorantha is not the product of the mind of but one of the fans.  It is the product of Greg Stafford's mind supplemented by a whole host of other people with different backgrounds - including anthropologists and mythologists and theologians - who have all fed into the wondrous melting pot which is now carefully edited by a dedicated few.

Disagreeing with the overall pattern does not make that pattern wrong, nor does it imply anything about the abilities of the editorial staff.  All it means is that you disagree.

There are times when I disagree with Jeff.  That doesn't make me right, and him wrong.  It means I disagree, and it is up to me if I wish MG to V.  It does, from time to time. Accepting that the majority view is not my own is something I had to accept decades ago.  That doesn't mean that I can dictate what Glorantha should be.

 

[Zit]

It is quite weird to argue so much about what is wrong or not in a purely fictional construction.

[Roko Joko]

I'll take a round or two in the mud pit.

"Among the dead" does not mean "dead".  Being in a Place of Death does not mean you are dead, any more that visiting a cemetery means you are dead.

"Mythology's language is metaphor.  I don't mean simile - metaphor.  God is my heart."  - https://youtu.be/_hKrVRTOYpY?t=9m39s

Death is and remains the point at which your body and your spirit are separated because one or the other has been severely damaged.

Going to the underworld the way Grandfather Mortal did is the usual way to go there, but even if you descend the pool or something you're still doing what he did, and are still him.

Baby Giants 

I say baby giants die when they go to the underworld, but so what?  First of all, they're true giants.  Second, they went down the right way for true giants, and they have their full body and cradle when they arrive.

why would giants be upset if humans killed their babies and robbed their cradles if they were sending their babies to die in the underworld anyhow?

Because then the baby would get there the wrong way, and without their full body, and without their cradle.

internal contradiction of Humakti Hero Questers 

Humakt coming back from the underworld is morally and mechanically different from a resurrection spell.   He descended for a purpose and knew what he was doing when he went there and when he returned.  Maybe he paid a price.  That's different from a mortal not honoring death when it comes for you.  And I think resurrection spells specifically go get a spirit while it's on the path of the dead or waiting in the hall of the dead.  That wouldn't work on a heroquester anyway.

The thing that draws me back to Glorantha is the internal consistency of its myths 

There are contradictions there, though, especially about things like the mysteries of life and death.

people being compulsorily dead 

It's compulsory for heroquesters in the sense that it's hard to get back.  It's not compulsory in the sense of losing as much strength and agency as the involuntary dead lose.  The involuntary dead aren't all the same anyway.  Those with better funeral rites are stronger.

game mechanics.  

There are different games set in Glorantha and they don't all say the same thing about the setting.

plausible - believable - be consistent - suspension of disbelief

Verisimilitude in fantasy settings is very subjective.

consistentcy of context that any audience needs

People are diverse.  Not everyone is going to agree about stuff like whether such-and-such constitutes an extreme contradiction.

The Lightbringers don't die in the underworld any more than a Baby Giant does

They do have strength and agency down there, as do baby giants if they descend properly.

there needs to be an unbroken link and association to the Living World

The lightbringers had support from the living.

Does Dayzatar who is so very pure look at a mortal hero from the middle realm and think of them as being "part of the sky", no, he thinks "I wonder who this mud footed interloper is.  I hope someone else respects my purity enough to deal with this dirty Earthbound creature".  

He does both.  The sky and the underworld are different anyway, though.  The underworld is more of a mixture.

Edited January 5, 2017 by Roko Joko

[Yelm's Light]

"I'm not clear on the whole good/bad thing, Egon..."

I have a great deal of trouble seeing what difference this makes to a game, certainly to my game.  I don't see it troubling players' suspension of disbelief, nor would I expect the view of death to be consistent in all cultures in the melting-pot that is Glorantha, much like the real world.  It seems to me to be a matter of semantics.

Death is a Mystery with a capital M.  While cults might have a stake in defining it one way or the other, or in discovering the 'true state' of things (some sort of immutable law of physics as applied to metaphysics, already a contradiction in terms), I look at it as similar to the Godtime vs. Time conundrum, at least as applied to players and PC's.  Even if they were to ask the right questions of the right being(s), they wouldn't understand the answers anyway.

As far as practical application to my game, this is as close to immutable as it gets:  If you die you die, and once a week has passed nothing short of a Heroquest generally beyond the level of the players is necessary to bring the dead back.  Granted, my game has mostly been below the level of Heroquesting anyway, so more powerful PC's might be more likely to try to abrogate a prized character's death.  As for the corollary of Heroquesters entering the Underworld, it's still a symbolic reproduction of the resurrection myth, whether or not you think they're officially dead when they go there.  What matters is what the Heroquesters did, not how others defined it.

[Roko Joko]

I think if you heroquest to the underworld there will be a pull on you to be moribund and undead-like while you're down there and maybe if you come back too.  There are probably also implications for how magic works with you and how your death mantle interacts with your other runes.  For heroquesters it's a poetic distinction and YGWV as to what its effects are.

[Ian Cooper]

Its confusing isn't it.

But I think the way to think about it in Glorantha is the Great Compromise.

In the godtime death sends you to the Underworld, but concepts like life and death don't really exist before the Great Compromise; you can't really use cause-and-effect or strict separation of binary opposites to describe this at this point (although human imposition of there will gives it this form because they can't understand it otherwise).

So before time 'dead' and 'alive' don't really exist, they are just ideas we impose upon them from within the world of Time.

But IMO the Great Compromise established that things in the Underworld are dead, since Time began.

Now some beings can pass from death-to-life, such as gods and heroes. Gods do it because the Great Compromise established they had roles in both worlds. Heroes do it by heroquesting. Both the scenario in Sartar:Kingdom of Heroes and the one in the forthcoming Eleven Lights have quests to the Underworld that involve the heroes traveling the Path of the Dead and entering the Court of Silence. So they die, but come back (hopefully) by the mechanism of heroquesting (see below).

So are there 'living things' in the Underworld? IMO not since Great Compromise said anything in the Underworld is dead. But anything that emerges is also alive. The exceptions i.e. trolls living in the Underworld occur before the Great Compromise. Are any trolls in the underworld dead? Yes. But if they are heroic and come to the surface world they are alive. Is a demon summoned from hell dead? Only whilst it is in hell, but when on the surface world it is alive; of course the magic used may only violate the Great Compromise for a short window of time, before it snaps back, the creature returns and is 'dead again.'

In Glorantha 'undead' certainly don't die i.e. they don't travel to the underworld. They are folks who purposely avoid traveling to the underworld, because that means death, in defiance of the mortality imposed on them by the Great Compromise.

[Now I think it's possible that in order to return, someone in the  Middle World always has to 'summon' you, but that's my magical speculation i.e. if you are a god you need worshipers (even collateral so great gods don't get forgotten) or community support as a hero. Remember mythically Orlanth wandered lost until folks in the Middle World sacrificed to him, and I think that the Lunar attempt to 'kill' Orlanth depended on this idea of 'removing' his worshippers and trapping him in the Undeworld (remember that Orlanth's Ring enters the underworld). I think if you set out for the Underworld alone, with no community support, you would not return. Remember that Pinching entered Glorantha when someone prayed to a pile of gold. But as I say, that's my speculation.]

 

 

 

[Darius West]

On 1/5/2017 at 9:32 AM, Ali the Helering said:

Unfortunately, Darius, the world of Glorantha is not the product of the mind of but one of the fans.  It is the product of Greg Stafford's mind supplemented by a whole host of other people with different backgrounds - including anthropologists and mythologists and theologians - who have all fed into the wondrous melting pot which is now carefully edited by a dedicated few.

A fine example of argumentum ad verecundiam.  Clearly you have never been "Gregged".  It is the curse that most Glorantha Fundamentalists most dread as it skews their doctrinal purity. Things have never been as clear cut as you suggest here.

On 1/5/2017 at 9:32 AM, Ali the Helering said:

Disagreeing with the overall pattern does not make that pattern wrong, nor does it imply anything about the abilities of the editorial staff.  All it means is that you disagree.

To quote... "Disagreeing with the overall pattern"...?   No, I take great issue with a single salient point that screws up and contradicts a great many things.

On 1/5/2017 at 9:32 AM, Ali the Helering said:

There are times when I disagree with Jeff.  That doesn't make me right, and him wrong.  It means I disagree, and it is up to me if I wish MG to V.  It does, from time to time. Accepting that the majority view is not my own is something I had to accept decades ago.  That doesn't mean that I can dictate what Glorantha should be.

I am always suspicious of majority opinions.  Jeff is an editor who won't edit.  Your appeal to conformity is not an argument. 

[Ali the Helering]

Having been playing since 1980, trust me, I have been gregged to the maximum.  Yet I rather enjoy Glorantha.  What to one may appear "a salient point that screws up and contradicts a great many things"  to others might appear a minor niggle that is being made far too much of in a self-publicising tirade.  Majority opinions are not, of themselves, correct.  Neither are minority ones, they are simply opinions.

Glorantha is fiction.  It depicts a world across millennia, with peoples, religions, and philosophies living alongside each other in conflict and disagreement.  You might even suggest it is a reasonable model for an internet forum.  It even has Uz. 

What it is not, is a definable absolute reality.  Rather like the RW.  Looking to lay down absolutes for your own comfort is a pointless dream.  Enjoy it instead.

[Darius West]

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

I'll take a round or two in the mud pit.

"Among the dead" does not mean "dead".  Being in a Place of Death does not mean you are dead, any more that visiting a cemetery means you are dead.

"Mythology's language is metaphor.  I don't mean simile - metaphor.  God is my heart."  - https://youtu.be/_hKrVRTOYpY?t=9m39s

Welcome to the mud pit.   I have long suggested that the whole "being dead" thing is merely a poetic allusion mistaken for a fact i.e. mythology's language  is metaphor.

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

Death is and remains the point at which your body and your spirit are separated because one or the other has been severely damaged.

 

Going to the underworld the way Grandfather Mortal did is the usual way to go there, but even if you descend the pool or something you're still doing what he did, and are still him.

Tell that to Flesh Man.  Living flesh in a dead place.  Also, did Arkat hero quest into the underworld as a Brithini?  Because Brithini are spiritually annihilated upon death, and that would include going into the underworld if you believe "the rule".

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

Baby Giants 

I say baby giants die when they go to the underworld, but so what?  First of all, they're true giants.  Second, they went down the right way for true giants, and they have their full body and cradle when they arrive.

why would giants be upset if humans killed their babies and robbed their cradles if they were sending their babies to die in the underworld anyhow?

Because then the baby would get there the wrong way, and without their full body, and without their cradle.

Sarcasm...yes... yes... all parents want their children to die. Perhaps the entire ritual is not what we think, but actually a huge abortion that ends with the baby going down the plughole?

The giants are going through a ritual that would have been fine during the Green Age, but has probably sealed their extinction with the coming of Time.  While this is conjecture, I suspect that the babies are being sent to the underworld to be educated so they don't turn out like the rampaging giants that come down Giants Walk to eat people.  Dead babies don't grow, ergo, Giant Babies aren't dead in the underworld or the entire Cradle story is pointless and the God Learners are utterly correct in plundering the cradles, and Argrath and all the people on the Cradle are merely being wasteful.

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

internal contradiction of Humakti Hero Questers 

 

Humakt coming back from the underworld is morally and mechanically different from a resurrection spell.   He descended for a purpose and knew what he was doing when he went there and when he returned.  Maybe he paid a price.  That's different from a mortal not honoring death when it comes for you.  And I think resurrection spells specifically go get a spirit while it's on the path of the dead or waiting in the hall of the dead.  That wouldn't work on a heroquester anyway.

Resurrection is defined as "coming back from the dead".  A spell is not different from a heroquest in this respect.  Humakti won't do it, it is the defining restriction of the religion.  Go join Yanafal Tarnils if you disagree.

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

The thing that draws me back to Glorantha is the internal consistency of its myths 

 

There are contradictions there, though, especially about things like the mysteries of life and death.

A contradiction is not a mystical truth, it normally means somebody doesn't understand something, whether in a mythological or a rational sphere.  Take Xeno's paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise for example.The ancient Greeks knew that an arrow could fly, and could through repeated measures get a sense of its performance, but could not come up with the theory of why it did what it did.  This was eventually solved  by Isaac Newton's use of calculus in determining ballistics.  Through the use of the transcendental function of infinity within calculus suddenly you can keep an arrow in flight, and Achilles can overtake the tortoise.  Normally a contradiction means you have misinterpreted the facts and asked the wrong question and, as a result, reached the wrong conclusion.

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

people being compulsorily dead 

It's compulsory for heroquesters in the sense that it's hard to get back.  It's not compulsory in the sense of losing as much strength and agency as the involuntary dead lose.  The involuntary dead aren't all the same anyway.  Those with better funeral rites are stronger.

"Hard to get back from the underworld"  is not my issue.  The underworld SHOULD be hard to get back from.  My issue is that... despite the fact that Gloranthan cultures agree on very little, and despite the many examples where it obviously isn't and can't be true, that 100% of Gloranthan cultures somehow believe that you are "dead" if you enter the underworld according to one foolish and ill considered misinterpretation of the evidence.  You Roko Joko quite reasonably want to draw suggest that agency and voluntary vs involuntary death play a part, but the point is that according to the prevalent and jaundiced reading of the canon, nope, if you are in the underworld, you're dead matey, and 100% of Gloranthans agree, not the usual 85% Orlanthi version of "all".  My argument is that not everyone who goes to the underworld is dead, but I happily concede that most who go there are dead, but not all.

 

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

game mechanics.  

There are different games set in Glorantha and they don't all say the same thing about the setting.

plausible - believable - be consistent - suspension of disbelief

Verisimilitude in fantasy settings is very subjective.

consistentcy of context that any audience needs

People are diverse.  Not everyone is going to agree about stuff like whether such-and-such constitutes an extreme contradiction.

A rule, once established, is better adhered to and kept consistent.  There are repeated examples where "the rule" is broken, and yet somehow people still pretend it is "a thing".  Nothing breaks suspension of disbelief more woefully than contradicting the established facts of a narrative.  It is one of the major differences between good and bad writing.

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

The Lightbringers don't die in the underworld any more than a Baby Giant does

 

They do have strength and agency down there, as do baby giants if they descend properly.

So despite all the contradictions, you aren't prepared to wonder, even for a second, if they have agency because they are in fact still alive, like say, trolls, who still live down there.  The dead in the underworld are undergoing a process, it is the living who have agency.

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

there needs to be an unbroken link and association to the Living World

 

The lightbringers had support from the living.

They are also alive.  Flesh man dies eventually in some versions I believe.

On 1/5/2017 at 11:30 PM, Roko Joko said:

Does Dayzatar who is so very pure look at a mortal hero from the middle realm and think of them as being "part of the sky", no, he thinks "I wonder who this mud footed interloper is.  I hope someone else respects my purity enough to deal with this dirty Earthbound creature". 

He does both.  The sky and the underworld are different anyway, though.  The underworld is more of a mixture.

Being in the sky doesn't make you part of the sky any more than being in the water makes you part of the water.  As above so below.  There is a very important geographical relationship between the pantheons and the landscape of Glorantha, to the point where death can be considered a direction, but being in a cemetery is not the same as being dead.

[Darius West]

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

Having been playing since 1980, trust me, I have been gregged to the maximum.  Yet I rather enjoy Glorantha.  What to one may appear "a salient point that screws up and contradicts a great many things"  to others might appear a minor niggle that is being made far too much of in a self-publicising tirade.  Majority opinions are not, of themselves, correct.  Neither are minority ones, they are simply opinions.

Glorantha is fiction.  It depicts a world across millennia, with peoples, religions, and philosophies living alongside each other in conflict and disagreement.  You might even suggest it is a reasonable model for an internet forum.  It even has Uz. 

What it is not, is a definable absolute reality.  Rather like the RW.  Looking to lay down absolutes for your own comfort is a pointless dream.  Enjoy it instead.

I am not laying down absolutes.  You have utterly failed to understand my argument if that is what you think.  My argument is the one in support of diversity, and is against absolutes.  I do not accept that 100% of the time you are dead if you are in the underworld.  I do not accept that 100% of Gloranthan cultures accept that you are dead if you are in the underworld. Those 100% arguments are my opposition's contributions, not mine, and every 100% argument is an absolute. They are two absolutes that people have misinterpreted about "the canon".  One bad reading of "the canon" has introduced "the rule" and I am pointing out that 'the rule" contradicts so much about Gloranthan lore that it must be wrong.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Darius West

[Martin]

Excuse me if this has already been said...

I read some of the statements here and they seem to reveal to me a fundamental misunderstanding of culture/anthroplogy of what being "dead" is...

just like some will say to another "you are dead to me"...the person is still breathiongh heart beating so not "dead" but dead to the othger persona non grata....or in some cultures individuals remove themselves from the village or community and are said to be dead, or they sever links to family and kin and are seen as dead (humakti?) and treated like it...

so those that go ino the Underworld include the "real dead" and those that are said to dead to their community or treated as such (including i would argue heroquesters) who on return must undergo a welcoming  back to the world of mortals (even  though thy are not actually dead and still  alive, they are seem as being dead until they do this)

so also ... you can be "dead" in the underworld but still die in the underworld ("really" dead)..

[Zit]

All this is a question of well defining a word. Death in RW doesn't have the same meaning as in Glorantha. Arguing about who is dead or is meaningless as long as everybody does not speak about the same thing.

In RW, "Death" means that the body definitely ceased to function.

In Glorantha, being dead means that you, or at least your spirit, are in the Underworld ? OK, accepted. Period. It is not like in RW. It does not have the same meaning, consequences, laws, implications and so on. Being dead does not mean ceasing to function or being trapped in a Hell. It is just being in the Underworld, even as a tourist. I'm fine with this. If this disturbs anybody, call it with another name.

So discussing about Death in Glorantha while comparing it with Death in the RW does not really make sense. In Glorantha, RW Death does not exist. Forget RW Death. I'm fine with this as well.

[Ali the Helering]

As long as somebody insists that they are right, for me that makes for a 100% absolute. 

If their argument is supposedly in opposition to this, and is not immediately and obviously so, I would suggest that it is the author who has not understood their own argument, not the reader. 

[Darius West]

On 1/6/2017 at 3:05 AM, Ian Cooper said:

Its confusing isn't it.

But I think the way to think about it in Glorantha is the Great Compromise.

In the godtime death sends you to the Underworld, but concepts like life and death don't really exist before the Great Compromise; you can't really use cause-and-effect or strict separation of binary opposites to describe this at this point (although human imposition of there will gives it this form because they can't understand it otherwise).

So before time 'dead' and 'alive' don't really exist, they are just ideas we impose upon them from within the world of Time.

But IMO the Great Compromise established that things in the Underworld are dead, since Time began.

I think when Humakt kills grandfather mortal, and then Orlanth kills Yelm, that death gains a pretty important place in the world before the Great Compromise.  Before that period of the Lesser Darkness however death was a strange thing and I agree with you on that.  In fact Kargan Tor, the holder of the Death Rune doesn't seem to have had much meaning, and is best know for fighting himself in that weird period of pre-temporal contradictions, and  deserting his post and allowing the Devil to destroy the Spike.  The old death seems silly and weak, being merely a sort of guardsman.

Now before time, Death and a Life exist side by side AND at the same time with the same entity, because without time such paradoxes are possible.  So how can we understand death pre-time?  Death becomes geographical.  If you died in Prax, your story there is about being dead, though you might be alive in Dragon Pass and also dead in the Holy Country.  Of course part of the story is now about time in the underworld, because that is where you go when you die, hence the notion that death can be a direction you head in.

On the other hand, there is good evidence to suggest that you don't die just by stepping through the Gate of Dusk and wandering into the Land of Darkness, despite it being in the underworld, and as I have said before, Humakti would have to stay in the underworld forever if they Hero Quested there, because if the underworld were truly the land of the dead, then they are forbidden to return from it, for that is by definition resurrection. There are lots of other precedents that cast doubt on entities always and compulsorily being dead in the underworld that I have enumerated elsewhere.  By suggesting that 100% of people in the underworld are dead, you introduce some big contradictions into your game.

Now as time travel isn't possible in Glorantha, despite Lunar experiments, when you hero quest you are not stepping back in time, you are stepping into a particular story that is held in a form of immortal stasis like the gods themselves.  It is the hero quester's movement within time that makes things appear as if they are moving in the myth; a sort of "paramythic relativity".  That is how deities can be dead but alive at the same time in different places.  Seen as a whole from outside of time, the whole of Gloranthan mythology could be viewed as a series of coexisting "vapor trails" (like the blur you get when you move your hand really fast, but co-located back through time to all the places you have gone) worming around and through each other.  When a vapor trail ends, it goes in the "death direction" of the underworld, or sometimes the entire trail is erased by chaos, leaving only tiny spotty agglomerations and hints of what may have been, such as with Splendid Yamsur.  Now this entire paragraph is not in any way part of my argument, it is just how I speculate that Hero Quests and Myths Before Time work presented for, hopefully, your entertainment, but based on all the evidence I can find.  I also provide a link to a truly unusual video game that is under development called Miegakure that deals with travel inside 4 dimensions  to give everyone a sense of what that might be like 

 

 

 

[Darius West]

A quick observation.  According to "The Rule" Brithini cannot be in the underworld, as, being dead, they would cease to exist.

[Ian Cooper]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

On the other hand, there is good evidence to suggest that you don't die just by stepping through the Gate of Dusk and wandering into the Land of Darkness, despite it being in the underworld, and as I have said before, Humakti would have to stay in the underworld forever if they Hero Quested there, because if the underworld were truly the land of the dead, then they are forbidden to return from it, for that is by definition resurrection.

No they are a hero, and as such they are defying the rule that entry into the underworld and emergence is forbidden. That is what heroes do. Even Humakti heroes.

[Ian Cooper]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

A quick observation.  According to "The Rule" Brithini cannot be in the underworld, as, being dead, they would cease to exist.

Only once the pass into their afterlife, which happens at the Court of Silence, where heroquesters refuse to go to the afterlife and are cast into the pit. See S:KoH. I think that any heroquester who does not refuse their god's help at this step, will never return, instead passing on to their after life. Of course, I don't think this is exactly how Brithini experience it, they have thier own 'perspective' of how this process looks, but it is equivalent.

[Jeff]

Unless the Brithini in question uses powerful sorcery to ward themselves, they would agree with you. Just as they would say that a Brithini that enters the Void ceases to be. What you encounter in the Underworld are but shades and fragments, and not the Being. But with powerful enough magic, it is possible to enter the Underworld and re-emerge intact (although I am unaware of any Brithini actually doing this - whereas I know that the perverse Vadeli have done exactly that).

 But to make things simple, if you go into the Underworld you are dead, unless you somehow manage to return. One's status in the Underworld certainly varies (indeed there are plenty of entities who naturally reside in the Underworld and can be said to "live" there), but you are subject to different laws there than as a living being in the Middle World. Unless you somehow find a way out of the Underworld or have enough of an immortal existence outside of it (often gained as a result of finding a way out of the Underworld), you are going to stay there - at least until your soul is directed to an afterlife by Daka Fal and then recycled into the world (in itself then normal way "out" of the Underworld). Now I don't expect to persuade you of this, but that is how I see it, what my writing is likely to reflect, and the advice I am likely to give to writers. 

 

[Charles]

I have a perhaps heretical view on the Underworld, perhaps no longer canon but definitely formed while I was working with Greg to help document the structure of Glorantha to be a bit more understandable while allowing all the stories he wanted to tell. Of course, the structure has moved on since then, and generally for the better...

The Underworld is the illogical ancestress and progenitor of all of Glorantha;  everything that is in Glorantha, in the mundane or in the otherworld, has its roots in the Underworld. The parts of the Underworld that are best explored, both by Gloranthaphiles and also by human Gloranthans are the many Hells, where Darkness and Death are prevalent. But there are other less well known parts of the Underworld where other illogical powers are prevalent: Fertility, Fate, Disorder, Movement, Illusion and all the others, all of which in their raw state are as equally inimical to humans as Death and Darkness.

I'm of the opinion that when a living being goes to one of the Hells in the Underworld, then they are dead, though perhaps only temporarily. I'm less certain that's true in other parts of the Underworld, but the other dangers can quickly lead to a similar outcome - you ain't commin back!

Going and coming back on the path of a well defined and ritualised Quest is (relatively) easy, particularly with community support. Getting blown off course, or going without a well planned myth (or string of myths) to navigate from event to event makes it harder and harder to return. Performing a Quest always marks the Questor and the deeper and more difficult the Quest, the more obvious the mark. Fighting or otherwise finding one's way out after being mundanely or magically killed leaves the deepest marks of all.

And of course, trying to fully define the Underworld is an impossible game. At its heart, underneath the deepest Hell, is the Chaosium.

[Jeff]

Actually I generally agree with you Charles. Part of the difficulty comes from trying to apply consistent definitions to the Underworld - that's a self-defeating process! But the Underworld is not part of the Middle World and is not subject to the same laws. In the Middle World, Death and Life are strictly defined and dead things that act like the living are abominations. The Underworld is where the dead live and the living are dead (among many other contradictions). Suffice it to say, when a living being enters the Underworld, they become subject to its laws and cannot get leave without great magic or secret knowledge. That's just another way of saying that they are dead as far as the living are concerned.

[Darius West]

23 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

No they are a hero, and as such they are defying the rule that entry into the underworld and emergence is forbidden. That is what heroes do. Even Humakti heroes.

Even Humakti heroes have to abide by cult strictures.  Coming back from the dead is strictly forbidden.