> Should the darkness of night represent merely the absence of Yelm's light
> as in the RW, or (as I would imagine *should* be the case) is there a
> tangible presence of Darkness involved?
A tangible presence.
> If there is, *how* is it involved? How does it interact with Air, the Sky
> Dome, etc.
She's called Xentha, Queen of the Night; her cult write-up is in Troll Gods. Nowadays (post Compromise) she doesn't fight against Air, the Sky, etc: they've agreed she'll have the hours of darkness to herself as part of the Compromise. In the Lesser Darkness and Great Darkness, they used to fight against her: see the Blue Moon myth in the Troll Gods Jonstown extracts for a spooky description of the eternal twilight of the Gods War.
> I'm aquainted with the notion that (perhaps, depending on whose view of
> Glorantha you subscribe to) Yelm chases Darkness out of Hell at night and
> chases it back to Hell in the morning, but is there any more to it than that?
Probably many Gloranthans (including Trolls and Spolites) would see it as the reverse: Xentha hounding Yelm around the Lozenge!
> Making an assumption for the moment that in a magical, non-scientific way,
> sound is transmitted through various elements, does a Troll's darksense work
> better at night, than if the same Troll were just blindfolded...
I'd have thought so. Whyever not?
Speaking for myself, I have no time for the "HeroQuesting = Time Travelling" lobby: it creates *far* more problems than it's worth to approach mythical evolution in this way (cf. the Elmal fiasco). Or, indeed, for the "Belief = Mythical Reality" lobby. Various peoples' myths and belief-structures will be determined by "What Really Happened", but they'll interpret the events in different ways. Look at the Cults of Terror cosmology for more on this: four completely different interpretations of Gloranthan "reality", all of them correct and overlapping.
Otherwise we're moving perilously close to saying that *all* Gloranthans (whether victors, vanquished or uninvolved bystanders) remember every significant mythic and historical event in *exactly* the same way, regardless of their own interest (or lack of it).
(Example One: the governor of Bikhy says, "It was through my firm action in subtly encouraging the development of lawless adventurers on the streets of my city that the Chaos Incursion was turned back." Example Two: the Emperor's Spoken Word says, "What Chaos Incursion? Anyone with evidence of a Chaos Incursion is invited to present it to the usual authorities. Scurrilous rumour-mongers will be dealt with appropriately." Example Three: Orgrol Storm Khan says, "Bikhy's a Lunar City, right? Lunars are Chaos, and Cities are Evil. They should have let it be destroyed." Example Four: Confucius the Mystic says, "What is this Biccy you speak of? Is it that biscuit which goes so well with the Heavenly Infusion, the Rich Tea Biccy? I feel another Insight coming on...").
IMG, PC HQers would *not* go off to "change" myths to suit their powergaming fantasies ("I wanna be a resurrectable Humakti!" "I wanna win at the Hill of Gold!"), but to reinforce the myth-interpretations of their own cultures ("We must bring the True Death to these Lunar apostate traitors!" "Stand firm and endure this assault: our God suffered worse upon the Golden Hill, and he stands with us this night!").
I don't think the (documented) myth-fucking actions of Harrek, Argrath and the like justifies such an iconoclastic approach to Gloranthan "truth" being taken by every Joe Player Character. You (the player) can't simply stand there and say "My character thinks his entire culture has misinterpreted the basic facts of myth, which I will now expound..." (unless he's a complete loony). Sure, you could play a game of cult-founding and evangelism and missionary proselytising (the White Moonies surely do!), but you do this by acting within the established mythical structures of the world, not by solipsistically refusing to go along with them.
(Yep, I know that's not very well thought out or serendipitously phrased, but so what?)
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