The Malkioni Bible

From: Nick Brooke <100270.337_at_compuserve.com>
Date: 06 Mar 95 03:24:26 EST


Continuing the "origins of Malkionism" thread...

The Jrusteli God Learners compiled a vast mass of fragmentary source material relating to the Prophets, and using this (and their famous investigative techniques) they distilled out the now-widespread Holy Scripture found in all parts of the world which were included in the Middle Sea Empire.

For convenience, I'll refer to this below as "The Book": if you think of it as similar to the Bible, this should give some idea of its composite nature. The area in which it can be found includes the modern lands of Loskalm, Seshnela, Safelster and Umathela. Churches from these regions of Glorantha share essentially the same Holy Writ, with local additions:

	Loskalm		The Book would include "Siglat's Dream", and a
			significant volume of Talor apocrypha.

	Seshnela	The Book would include the "Life of Rokar", any
			theses he nailed to wherever it may be, the
			"Acts of Bailifes the Hammer", etc.

	Safelster	As well as the orthodox God Learner Book,
			there are vast undercurrents of heretical
			Arkati belief preserving their own texts.
			Like having heretical Gnostic Gospels still
			in circulation in the middle ages...

	Umathela	The "Scrolls of the Seven Sedalpi" define the
			backbone of the Sedalpist Faith; there are also
			the "Meditations on Silence" of the Wordless
			Prophet, read aloud in church every Godsday.
			Plus the orthodox God Learner Book (possibly).

Now, as well as the compilation Book, various of its component texts will be floating around separately in further-flung Malkioni lands: Arolanit will doubtless share most of the lawcodes, while various Prophetic texts also in the Book will be found as far afield as Carmania, Heortland, the catacombs of Nochet, etc.

Modern sects which declare "Malkionism is the Law" are referring to the complete and comprehensive version of the Law collected together in their Book, which was edited by the God Learners. Parts of this Law are to be found among the older, non-God-Learned sects, by the very nature of the selective, reductive God Learning process (which takes in a vast body of comparable material and distills it down to its core Truths).

But this way, while you've got a general commonality among the Malkioni (almost all sects would have the four-caste system, and the three chief Commandments: but not *necessarily* all!), you also have plenty of room and justification for any number of interesting local variants you may want to create.

Either, like the Hrestoli Idealists, the Rokari, the Sedalpists, etc., they are survivals from the God Learners' "Church of the Invisible God" which have subsequently enjoyed their own "prophetic" revelations and developed their own local traditions of Malkionism.

Or else, like the Stygians, Carmanians, Talorians, Aeolians, etc., they only possess a few fragments of what was collected in the God Learners' Book, plus a rich and deep tradition of their own "heretical" scriptures.

To me, this is far more interesting than having "One True Book" which has existed, unchanged and without additions, ever since Godtime: it leads to more enjoyable situations both in our gaming and in our exploration of Glorantha, and is not seriously incompatible (on other than a Joerg-ish pernickety database-punching level) with what's been published about any Malkioni sect.

(BTW, any perceived parallels between God Learner scriptural methodology and Frank Herbert's "Orange Catholic Bible" are wholly intentional).



Nick

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