Gloranthan Metaphysical Ruminations

[Uncle Dark]

So, I picked up the Glorantha book a few days back, and it has cleared up a lot of my questions about the setting.  It has also confirmed my impression that Issiaries really needs to hire someone to do text editing other than running the manuscript through a computer's spellcheck.

But what I was wondering was this:
Is Sedanya bound by the same compromise as the other gods?

Sedanya was killed in the God's War.

As part of the Lightbringers' Quest, the gods agreed to a compromise that, basically, keeps them from directly intervening in the mortal world.

Sedanya was ressurected 1200 or so years after the Dawn, so she could not have agreed to the compromise.  So is she bound by it?

Given that events prior to the Dawn were non-sequential and simultaneous, she could have agreed to it before dying.  But it is never said that she did.

Discussion?

Lon

[contracycle]

Please god no.  OK, OK, if you really wanna, but there are all sorts of confused and contradictory statements, both in print and out.  There are even contradictory statements about which statements are contradictory, in print and out.  I have profound doubts that any such discussion can or ever will be fruitful, even though I know that the game keeps provoking them.  Handle with extreme care and be prepared to walk away.

Edit: if you must, this is the conventional recquired reading:
http://www.btinternet.com/~Nick_Brooke/articles/sobjective.htm

[Ian Cooper]

But what I was wondering was this:
Is Sedanya bound by the same compromise as the other gods?

Sedanya was killed in the God's War.

As part of the Lightbringers' Quest, the gods agreed to a compromise that, basically, keeps them from directly intervening in the mortal world.

Sedanya was ressurected 1200 or so years after the Dawn, so she could not have agreed to the compromise.  So is she bound by it?

No. Two gods have been born inside time Gbaji/Nysalor and Sedenya neither are subject to the Compromise which is why they are able to do many things that traditionalist Gloranthans regard with fear - like incorporating Chaos in their religion and effecting change. The gods who did sign up to the compromise tried to disprove Sedenya's rite to exist but she and her mortal allies defeated them in a two year conflict both in the mundane world and in the hero plane which proved her right to exist.

Try this: http://www.glorantha.com/library/history/timeline-lunar.html

Another quick point Seven Lightbringers/Seven Mothers - notice the connection. The Seven Mothers were carying out a Lightbringers quest in the hope of getting aid to resist the Carmanian Empire. With an imperfect understanding of the southerner's myths and heroquests it went wrong. What they got back, Teelo Estara the incarnated goddess, was with them. It was not what they expected, and the mother's were not originally 'Lunar'. She converted them on their return.





//

[Ron Edwards]

Ian,

Or, if you want to look at it differently, that Lightbringers' Quest didn't go wrong, it went better.

That's my reading of it. I am aware that quite a bit of fan contribution to Glorantha takes a different approach, largely because everyone wants to turn the Lunars into low-grade B movie villains.

You see, the only god I like from before the Great Compromise is Rashoran. I liked Nysalor and think Arkat was a fuckin' creep. And Sedenya, in my opinion, is a nifty goddess. I think the Heortlings, and Orlanth in particular, are way overrated.

Best,
Ron

[Ian Cooper]

Agreed, wrong expresses a value judgement - which is an Orlanthi take unexpected is probably better.

[simon_hibbs]

But what I was wondering was this:
Is Sedanya bound by the same compromise as the other gods?

No. Two gods have been born inside time Gbaji/Nysalor and Sedenya neither are subject to the Compromise which is why they are able to do many things that traditionalist Gloranthans regard with fear - like incorporating Chaos in their religion and effecting change.
...
Another quick point Seven Lightbringers/Seven Mothers - notice the connection. The Seven Mothers were carying out a Lightbringers quest in the hope of getting aid to resist the Carmanian Empire.

The Great Compromise is a Theyalan (Orlanthi) myth, so there's no particular reason why the gods of the Lunar pantheon should feel bound by it, and they don't. Also the Lunars have a very different understanding of what Chaos is, that is very different from the Orlanthi beliefs.

Canonicaly, what the Seven Mothers did was not a Lightbringers Quest, but had some elements in common, more by accident than by design.

I must reply to some of Ron's points too. According to the Lunar religion, Rashorana was an incarnation of Sedenya, so it's not surprising you find both appealing. One of the PCs in my current game worships Natha, another favourite of mine.

All Hail the Mystic Moon!


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Simon!

Let's see if I can run down the sequence here ...

During the Great Darkness, Rashoran was kind of an "enlightened yogi" type god who wandered about telling everyone not to be afraid. He's presented as male in the rulebooks I have. Some gods who listened to him got Schlurped Up by one or another of the Unholy Trio and their spawn, but others - notably Humakt and Uleria - were strengthened.

(Side note: this makes a lot of sense to me regarding how Death and Love have an "uber-place" across various religions, transcendent over pantheon ties within each culture ...)

Anyway, so the babe (whose name I always forget) who becomes Sedenya (I always get mixed up about which goddess she "was" prior to the Compromise, if any) is heavily influenced by Rashoran during her HeroQuesting, as well as by Nysalor (no big surprise, as Nysalor preached pretty much what Rashoran did). Hence one aspect of Sedenya is "Rashorana," apparently having been feminized via absorption into the Lunar scheme of things.

That was my reading, anyway. It's not supposed to reflect any particular text in Glorantha. What do you think?

Best,
Ron

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Ron (or anyone), please reassure me that it's possible to run a great game of Hero Wars without being familiar with all this arcane lore.

[Ron Edwards]

Um,

Well, Seth, it's hard for a Glorantha-head to bite the bullet and admit that, because I'd kind of like it if people did know lots and lots about the place ...

But the truth is, you do need to prep fairly extensively for play. The good news is that the subtlety of Lunar weirdness is way, way beyond those immediate needs.

My call? Read the first three chapters of the Glorantha supplement for Hero Wars. Get a basic understanding of the Godtime vs. Time, be passing-familiar with the handful of Ages since Time began, and recognize that the coming of the Red Goddess is pretty much a non-negotiable de-stabilizer of ... well, of reality.

Then grab a favored piece of geography, which for simplicity's sake I recommend be Dragon Pass, and at that point, you're probably all set with just the information in the basic Hero Wars book.

So it's really not so bad. I think, over time, that it will become more and more interesting to read up on all the weirdness and details, especially if you start with something reeeeaally cool like the Uz book or Thunder Rebels. But that level of squinty fan detail (he said, humbly) isn't strictly necessary for play.

Best,
Ron

[simon_hibbs]

During the Great Darkness, Rashoran was kind of an "enlightened yogi" type god who wandered about telling everyone not to be afraid. He's presented as male in the rulebooks I have.

The early stuff talks about Rashoran, but I think Rashoran(a) is a personification of the inner mystical experience, which can awaken in men or women and so has a femal aspect too.

(Side note: this makes a lot of sense to me regarding how Death and Love have an "uber-place" across various religions, transcendent over pantheon ties within each culture ...)

Good point, sex and death are the two most visceral and transcendent experiences most beings can have, and are universal to all cultures and species.

Anyway, so the babe (whose name I always forget) who becomes Sedenya (I always get mixed up about which goddess she "was" prior to the Compromise, if any) is heavily influenced by Rashoran during her HeroQuesting, as well as by Nysalor (no big surprise, as Nysalor preached pretty much what Rashoran did). Hence one aspect of Sedenya is "Rashorana," apparently having been feminized via absorption into the Lunar scheme of things.

The Lunar religion teaches that the godess has worn many masks and lived many lives, but that she was always herself even when she didn't know it. For example, the Seven Mothers didn't go to the underworld and bring back the godess. Rather, they chose an ordinary child on the street, Teelo Norri, and precipitated the awakening of the living goddess within her, so that she became Teelo Estara. This wasn't a shamanic or demonic possession, but an inner awakening. The lives of the goddess are briefly summarised here :

http://www.btinternet.com/~Nick_Brooke/moonie/7moons.htm#verithurusa

Teelo Estara, and he current form as Rufelza, the red moon up in the sky, are both avatars of Natha, the ballancer, which is the current form of the goddess. Her last, as yet unmanifest form is as Zaytenera.

The Lunar religion, which is still being further developed and refined, is IMHO potentialy one of the great achievements in creative fiction. It's possible to learn a lot about real world religious philisophy from it, and its the most 'real' fictional religion I know of.


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Simon,

Many thanks for that link! Most useful.

About a zillion things just mushroomed into time sinks, but I'll be back to chat Lunar with you, I promise. I agree that it's one of the strongest elements in the setting.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

Urgle.  I must say I rather strongly disagree - IMO the lunar "religion" takes obscurantism to a ludicrous degree and also, IMO, has very little relation to either the material practice of historical religions OR their explicit or implicit ideological bases.

As for the prep issue, I would suggest that it is possible to run HW in glorantha with little prep, but I would then strongly advise never, ever to go near any of the online resources.  Draw yourself an explicit bubble and then stay firmly inside it - and ensure that this is explicitly contractually agreed by the players.

[Valamir]

I don't know CC.  I just finished up Robert Graves "The Greek Myths" which takes the myth stories we all know so well (and several I didn't) and annotates them with what was going on historically at the time and how these myths were a reflection of those real world events.  Very very similiar sounding stuff to what is going on in Glorantha...and in some ways just as obscure, but incredibly entertaining.

Which was actually my reason for posting.  I was going to start a new thread, but this seemed to me an appropriate spot.

If you are a fan of the mythology of Glorantha you MUST add this two volume work to your reading list.  The parallels between the replaceing of the Pelgasian people by the Helenes in Greece and the Heortlings by the Lunar in Dragon Pass is amazing.

Robert Graves' annotations show how the often hostile merging of the Pelgasian maiden-matron-crone trinity was usurped by the patriarchal sky-sea-earth (Zeus, Posiedon, Hades) trinity of the Helenes was depicted in the myths and how many of the actions described in the myths had direct counterparts in actual Greek life at the time.

Of course, in Glorantha things work the other way, but you get the idea.  Highly recommended stuff.

[Gordon C. Landis]

I don't want to come across as an expert here - because I'm not - but years back, I did one of those Lit 101 "biographies" on Graves-the-poet.  And his "annotations" are . . . controversial.  A web search yields the following quote: "the explanatory and interpretive notes provided in the original edition, which you may encounter in libraries, present a totally false picture of Greek prehistory (I speak as an expert in the field)", found here.

I've no idea if the author of that quote really is an expert in the field, but I thought it a good example of a not-uncommon attitude towards Graves' scholarly work in the field of historical/mythological studies.

None of which gets in the way of using it in an RPG environment more concerned with interesting things about myths than in "the truth" about them.

Gordon

[Valamir]

Wouldn't surprise me Gordon.  In fact, the forward to the edition I have mentions that alot of it is based on conjecture.  It was written in 1955 which I imagine is before alot of modern archeaological work.  Plus Graves was primarily a poet, so I wouldn't be surprised if he inserted a good deal of poetic license into it.

But as you said, it makes no difference as an RPG reference.