Foolishly, I thought that Glorantha was a magical place where the gods existed before Time and did many deeds there, only to be bound into relative inactivity by the Compromise. One of the reasons I liked the place was that it was different to Earth, that the gods were well-explained and crossed cultural divides.
However, it becomes obvious to me that in Glorantha, the gods are nothing more than glorified people or extensions of cultural conciousness. Clearly the Brithini were right after all and every god is a mad sorcerer who broke the rules and did terrible things to other people.
Why don't I play AD&D instead where I can play in many worlds without any clear mythology, where I can be a cleric of Set and a fighter worshipping Odin in the same party with no thought as to why they are there?
Because Glorantha is not like that! I am sorry, but I can't accept such earth-dominated arguments as I have heard here. You can argue that the gods are all manifestations of one or two principles until you are blue in the face and I can argue otherwise until I collapse and we will never agree.
However, once you begin to argue that the Spike did not appear in Dara Happan myths or that the Great Compromise was not known, then things get a little silly. The Dara Happans are a very inward-looking people who do not like ideas from outside. Since Yelm is the Emperor, how could he have agreed to become enslaved and bound? How could he accept the rights of Darkness to exist? It is inconceivable. Therefore The Compromise did not figure in their mythology because it was never taught. Dara Happans could never accept stories of the Spike, where Yelm had his Court, because that would have taken away from the importance of Dara Happa - The Emperor had to have ruled from Dara Happa, anything else in also inconceivable. The Dara Happans are so arrogant and self-centered that their mythologies cannot always be taken as completely accurate.
(Throws his hands up in disgust and gives up)
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #648
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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