Malkioni musings...

From: Mike Cule <mikec_at_room3b.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 95 23:57:42 GMT


The Blessed Alex Fergusson asks me about my Even More Reformed Malkioni sect. They dwelt in the area to the north-west of Oral-Ta marked as 'still under the ban' on the map of Western Fronela in the Genertela book. (They are alas no more, unless I decide to restart the Western game at some time.)

All the stuff about their having been created by contamination from the Loskalmi you can forget, because you see, I believe in the reality of Revalations.

At least I believe in them a hell of a lot more than I believe in Logic leading you to transcendent truths. I wrote it so that Juliana went on Heroquest beyond the world and came back with an new aspect of the Creator's truths. She didn't just sit down one day and say "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if we organised ourselves like this? How can I get people to believe in it? I know I'll claim I had a revalation! I'll make like I'm a Prophet!" She went Out There and she came back.

This ties in with the way I see the Revalation to Malkion.

Logic by itself is barren. (Feel free to argue with this, but I think it's true.) It is just a technique for reorganising and refining what you already have and it is a zero-sum operation. You can't get from a particular set of information anything that isn't already there.

Garbage in, garbage out.

And I feel that the spiritual deadness of the Godtime Brithini culture was such that only a direct intervention by something outside the world could break it. Look at the surviving Brithini and tell me it wasn't.

It isn't the fact that any proofs of the existence of God known to me or anyone are 'a load of dingo's kidneys'. They are but it isn't that. It is that Logic can't give you anything you don't already assume. St Thomas did a wonderful job of showing that what he believed (miracles and all) was reasonable and consistent with the rest of our experience. But he had to operate from unproven assumptions, from sheer personal faith. And I believe that is what happened to Malkion. Not logic, not deduction. But the burning bush and the light on the road to Damascus.

(Oh, and the proof you quote is in fact not original to Aquinas but came from St Anselm. Although there has been a certain ammount of interest in it in recent years, most philopsophers agree that it is a load of dingoe's kidneys. But subtle kidneys. The error in the reasoning is very hard to put into words.)

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On a slightly different tack: I've got the chance to buy a copy of the old Thieves World supplement with all the maps. I know that Refuge in God Forgot is the Gloranthan analogue of Sanctuary. Has anyone worked out the history and culture of the place in any detail?


Mike Cule

The author of this article is an agnostic and very grateful to God that he has never been chosen to be a Prophet....


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