> The God Learners may have been the only party not to have learned a
> lesson out of the Sunstop consequences, and they repeated that error.
> In the Third Age, yet another culture meddles out of sheer goodwill
> with forces it doesn't understand, even though it seems to control
> them for the time being.
I love seeing that "out of sheer goodwill": proof positive that the Reaching Moon Megacorp missions to Germany have not been wasted. Welcome on board, Joerg!
I liked both the "unChaotic Broo = Satyrs" and "unChaotic Broo = female Broo (not turned inside out)" stories so much that IMHO *both* are true, and are told somewhere. Plus the other one about humans screwing with Goats, etc. (Eric Rowe had an Orlanth/Thed story which is way too good to ignore in the first RQCon Compendium). Three good origin myths: any more for any more?
Sorry I didn't comment sooner, Sandy: I was off this weekend playing in Cruel Hoax's "Cafe Casablanca" in Nottingham. You can take it from me: our Resistance was Useless!
> I apologize for the length of this post.
You shouldn't: it was fun, and thought-provoking.
> The GLs were as close as Glorantha got to scientists, to people who
> expected the world to behave predictably, to derive its complexity from
> relatively simple and understandable laws. I think the GLs were *right*
> in their understanding. (I have to, of course.) I always saw their
> downfall as the result of hybris, not incomprehension.
But even if they *were* right, it doesn't work that way any more. Sandy's mournful piece on the Third Age disintegration of the Second Age Jrusteli monomyth (no longer maintained, or consonant with Reality) hit the nail on the head for me. So going the GL route today is a waste of time. As Loren says:
>> First the GLs were right. Then they were wrong. The universe changed >> the rules on them.
To put it in a nutshell, they were Gregged.
> We know that gods exist in "present day" (pre-Hero Wars) Glorantha.
> They show up. People talk to them. Heck *my characters* have spoken
> to some pretty significant gods. Why shouldn't they have existed
> before?
So say Gloranthan Theists. The Monotheists, Animists and Mystics have other points of view. We are reliably informed that all are equally valid. So what is your point, exactly? The "we" who "know" that gods exist do not make up the whole Gloranthan story: they are our player characters, existing within their own world-view. As a theist PC I'd never doubt the reality, existence or power of the least of my gods, or ancestors, or spirits, or totems; but a good Rokari would dismiss them all as vile demons, lying and corrupting those poor mortals who ignore the teachings of Holy Church.
We shouldn't construct an objective/theistic Gloranthan worldview as if this were the "One True Way", since we know Glorantha doesn't *have* "One Truth" any more. (According to a "Celestial Court Myth" -- but who believes those?)
> I'm no Marxist, but religion in the real world seems to follow his
> dictum -- it exists to support the current social order, and changes
> to match when the social order changes. One of the charms of Glorantha,
> IMO, is precisely that this doesn't have to be so.
"Fortunate Succession", anyone? Dara Happan religion certainly changed to empower the current social order -- but it also provided very real magical and social power to those who controlled it. I think there's a false dichotomy here: you can have a "real" religion which is twisted/abused by the rulers in order to empower them. The God Learners are the most obvious example, but you could also cite the Lunar Way, or the Spolite Empire of Gloom, or the Dara Happan reformulation of Khordavu, as instances of this.
> All Malkioni (save the Vadeli) ...
Nobody claims the Vadeli are Malkioni: not even the Vadeli.
> There is no link between [the Vadeli] and the Artmali of Fonrit and Oronin.
There *are* no Artmali of Oronin. There is, however, a direct link between the Vadeli and the blueskins of Fonrit: one of the reasons Artmali slaves were treated so shittily during the Second Age is that the God Learners of the Middle Sea Empire used all of the Ancient Malkioni Laws on how to treat those Evil-Blue-Skinned-People to justify their oppression. Not very kind, but that's Holy Scripture for you.
> The Vadeli think nothing of commiting incest with their parents or
> siblings. In fact having one set of grandparents is the norm among
> the Vadeli.
Also, generating offspring via your kith and kin concentrates (rather than diluting) the kids' true Vadeli blood, and makes them a more potent Material Component for your own personal Immortality Ritual. Sensible Vadeli keep it all within the family...
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