*2. Do the Safelstrans have any myths about Orlanthi Gods that the
Heortlings consider to be strange or wrong?
*
The answer is Yes.
the kind of "yes" that provokes follow up from me
EVERYONE has a collection of erroneous information about their neighbor's religion
Long, long ago I had to decide what point of view to present Gloranthan game
information
It took a while to work it out clearly, so earlier publications do not fit
precisely
I chose the one we use for practical purposes
The point of view is either:
*culture-centric, presented from within the culture
OR
*objective, from outside of Glorantha (example: *Genertela, Crucible...)
These last two erased a large part of reality, which is the finite but huge
amount of misinformation that everyone uses in their (our) daily lives
sometimes we make important decisions on that misinformation
In HeroQuesting it is actually a critical part of the information that is
ignored, because the Orlanthi do not all know, agree, think, feel or suspect
that Malkion is One God, just one god with a tremendous ego problem. Many of
the polytheists know from experience that there is a Malkioni pantheon with
a king god, a priest god, a shaman god, an earth goddess, etc., and that
saints are just like the theist worshiped Heroes. Their stories about their
neighbors presume these facts, and they prepare for heroquests based on that
information. They might have heard the "truth" as we, outsiders like
demigods watching our play of mortals, and might even have read the Abiding
Book.
Did meeting the "hari krishnas" and reading their gurus' books ever convert
a fundamental monotheist, or vice versa?
We as players and gamemasters and observers recognize a negative modifier to success when a theist enters the Mental Planes, and if they prepared and brought the wrong weapons then it doesn't matter how many Dark powers are thrown at the Malkioni Earth Goddess, the negative modifier for that is huge. We see two things, two modifiers. The Ernaldan heroquesters just see it as one: the inherent difficulties of entering the Enclosed Realms. The Monotheist types always waste a huge amount of time and power gearing up their "devil destroyer" weapons, made to raise the internal activity of a demon's souls and contain it within their skin until they implode, because the space they occupy has intensified to the level of their original world, to which they return immediately. *pop*. It works on something like that principle, but the whole "demonic" programming (does this entity hate the One? Know the One? Fear the One? Fear me? *Activate!*) and energy is wasted.
Can't they test it empirically and work out the most effective methods? Yes, of course they can. Everybody knows that the God Learners did that, and were quite effective at it, and isolated principles that could act (unequally) upon almost anything. It might have worked if the Principle of Unintended Consequences wasn't applied to errors!
*It is so ignorant and unfair for those indigenous *mraloti* people to hold
it against us because we gave their women only two breasts! Why can't they
just feed their litters with cow milk like the rest of us? -- *Zenstorfan
the Reconstructalist
One of the reasons that I encourage people to write your theories and ideas from within a clear stance and source is because that's how reality actually is.
and with YGWV your heroquesters just might find out that Ernalda actually IS the One Goddess or that Glorantha is inside a giant volcano that's going to explode and send everyone's souls across the universe (yes, I once heard of that campaign :D ).
Misinformation seems unfair to give to the players, when actually that is the on-the-ground reality of the characters. Since "seeking the truth" is always kind of a part of questing, the obligations required of us to make a concise and understandable game pretty much just jumps a whole level of "investigation".
So it goes.
--- Greg Stafford
Game Designer
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