The Monomyth with Silver Feet

From: Peter Metcalfe <P.Metcalfe_at_student.canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: Wed, 06 Sep 1995 15:13:30 +1300


Loren Miller:

Carl Fink writes:

>>I think the GLs were *right* in their understanding. (I have to, of
>>course.)

Loren replies:

>Greg has said as much. The GLs were right. Their methods worked.

>>I always saw their downfall as the result of hybris, not
>>incomprehension.

>Greg has also said one day, the GLs' methods stopped working and the Gift
>Carriers of the Sending Gods started catching up with them. First the GLs
>were right. Then they were wrong. The universe changed the rules on them.

My own take of the God Learners doom is rather ecological. The main source of their Magic was the Monomyth. This is not a description of the mythical realm as the name implies but a magical compact of their world view. This makes it no different from the Great Compromise of the Orlanthi, the Web of Righteous Knowlege of the Kralori, Pamalt's Necklace of the Doraddi and Theya's Net of the East Isles. The key strength of the Monomyth is that the God Learners knew the rules of the game and that the Monomyth appealed to their sense of Asthetics. They also incorporated some long forgotten details into its foundation so that they not only believed it to be true, they _knew_ it was truer than anybody else's world view. This increased the magical potency of the Monomyth. Thus when the God Learners entered into magical contests against other gods (Magasta at the Battle of Tanian's Victory) the others invaribly came second best.

They were clever enough to know that the Monomyth did not encompass the entire Otherworld (although they did intend it to eventually do so) and that the more powerful the Monomyth became, the more resistance it would theoretically encounter. The God Learners in their cleverness dealt with this by engaging in efforts to hunt down and dismember local spirits in case they would become acclimatized to the Monomyth and be able to challenge it. Think of insect resistance to pesticides and baterial resistance to antibiotics. This is the origin of the philosophy stated in the Glorantha Book in G:CotHW, IMO.

Unfortunately the God Learners aroused the ire of Zzabur. Zzabur with more experience of Sorcery than any other man alive could comprehend the flaws in the Monomyth. He uses them to screw the God Learners around when he Closes the Oceans. The Empire of the God Learners has become fragmented. Their Monomyth has been broken up into several Submyths. The Submyths are still locally powerful but the synergistic energies from the far off places are gone. The God Learners know from the Closing that the Monomyth has several defects. They could repair this but then they would lose compatibility with their kin overseas. This would fracture the Monomyth permanently and wreck any chances of overcoming Zzabur's curse. So the God Learners resolve to try and establish communications with the sundered lands before trying to repair the Monomyth. To enhance the possibility of compatibility and restoring communications, they halt efforts to patch up the known holes in the Submyths.

New Spirits appear. No problem. These things are a natural by product of the Fertility Rune of the Otherworld. The God Learners send off weeding expeditions as they have done countless times before. However the spirits have grown more resistant to Monomyth. Conversely the God Learners' magic against them is less effective and the God Learners have to devote an ever increasing proportion of their magical resources to combating the new threat. Eventually the Monomyth becomes an oppresive burden upon everybody (much like the tax system of the Western Roman Empire). The God Learners can no longer fix the flaws even if they wanted to. They can only sit and pray that communication will be restored. Then the God Learners will have sufficient power to repair the Monomyth. Unfortunately the Monomyth crashed on them first.

The Forbidden Secret acquires its reputation because it was used in maintaining the Fabric of the Monomyth. It was known by several people in Umathela and elsewhere and used by them to channel the recieved energies into the Monomyth. Now the Umathelean Aldryami have become immunized to the baneful effects of the Monmyth and their Gardeners can begin to percieve its pattern without being subverted. Normally the God Learners would have detected and patched this flaw, but since they have put it off, research has stagnated and they can no longer tell if the Monomyth is secure. The Aldryami percieve that the Monomyth relies on several key nodes. They decide to destroy their hated enemies in one fell swoop by launching decapitation strikes against those who now the Forbidden Secret in Umathela. The Umathelan Submyth shatters and the God Learners of Umatheala perish.

I think the Luatha struck against the Seshnegi in a similar matter. The main error of the God Learners IMO is not that they were blind nor wrong nor arrogant but that they made a few bad decisions and got hammered for it. The Monomyth is not wrong but obslete. Its relevance to the workings of glorantha is only what the God Learners knew about the universe and thought it should be like.

All IMO!

On the subject of the Syndic's Ban, Loren writes:

>Here's another theory that explains the same effect. Zzzabur had actually
>spent a lot of time unifying all the disparate communication spirits of
>Fronela into a single one in preparation for his spell that would destroy
>it. This was an act quite reminiscent of the GLs ancient unification of all
>the communication spirits of Theyala into "Issaries" (spare grain and desert
>tracker, et al) but for a different purpose. None of Snodal's cabal
>understood exactly how many lands the big Z had united with this meddling.
>When Snodal killed the God of the Silver Feet he stopped Zzzzzzzzzzabur's
>spell, with the unexpected (to him) side-effect that communication in a
>surprisingly huge area was immediately cut off.

I like this! Good show!

End of Glorantha Digest V2 #99


WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html

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