Jonas replies that "Events didn't follow each other in a temporal but in a
contextual
way." I think this is right. The way to think about pre-Time is simply to
eliminate references to time in your normal thought processes. Easy, huh?
;-)
Looking at what is left may help though, and here is where I disagree with most everything else said on the subject.
Nick Thed-Shaman:
"I imagine that the original conception was that Before Time ran underneath
different rules of reality -- such as fatigue and hunger didn't exist, you
could only die if someone used magic in the form of a copy of death to kill
you etc. [snip] Whereas [Orlanthi] don't believe that time had any true
meaning and that linear relations such as cause/effect don't apply, other
cultures have a different view. The Dara Happans believe that everything
from after the point of creation can be measured in years, and neither do
the Malkioni believe in Time."
Similarly, Lewis Jardin:
"People do not age (normally) and linear sequences do not occur. [snip]
[T]hings are location based and sequences are determined by the order of
visiting locations."
This seems wrong because it confuses temporal order with logical order. The
older (RQ2) materials say that the God Learners came up with a "logical
sequence of events" pre-Time. This clearly implies that logical
relationships such as causation still apply. So, as I said before
"eliminate references to time in your normal thought processes", but leave
causation intact. (Phillip Hibbs' idea that there are no causes pre-Time,
but only Powers is an interesting twist that the God Learner in me loves.)
Hence, you can still be hungry, fatigued, or dead because all of those
conditions are effects of causes. In fact, we know that people did die in
pre-Time, or Larnste and Daka Fal would not have needed to separate the
spirits of the dead from this living.
Because people could die (at least after the advent of Death), it makes sense _retrospectively_ to measure events in terms of generations. Hence we have reference in TrollPak (or so I hear) that generations passed between I Fought We Won and the Dawn and in other sources for Dara Happa and Kralorea that the imperial lineages are traced directly back to Yelm. Likewise, we have the source that Nick Thed-Shaman pointed out: "From the conclusion in KoS it appears that Fourth Age Orlanthi also measure Before Time in years as they talk about the LBQ having taken place at -150 ST." Likewise, in pre-Time, one could measure causality (not Time, which did not exist) per Peter Metcalfe's examples--turning the Red Sands of Time and the Plentonian Year Count (which surely got their names after the fact) could each lead to an estimate of the number of years that had passed during pre-Time. The way to think about it would be that the sands running out of an hourglass causes its owner to turn it over, which causes the sands to run from top to bottom, etc. Note that there is not necessity to ascribe a quantity of time to such causal chains. However, after the advent of Time, it would be natural for people to go back and measure pre-Time as if Time had existed by multiplying the number of turns of the hourglass by the amount of Time it takes post-Time for the hourglass to run out. I would take this as a post-Time attempt at imposing temporal concepts on non-temporal events based probably on the number of generations that passed (probably drawn from accounts of who was on various thrones). Since the God Learners ordered things logically and not temporally, I'd say that imposing Time on pre-Time sounds like a misperception of a God Learner project. I rather like Oliver's second post about the advent of Time being a transition from three to four dimensions and challenging us to measure our existence in five.
A tangent:
Similarly, a few people talked about years, days, and seasons in pre-Time.
E.g. Peter Metcalfe: "[T]he Malkioni, Dara Happans and Kralori all have
year counts that go back to before the Great Compromise.") This is clearly
incorrect. In pre-Time the sun was either stuck in the center of the sky or
stuck in hell (at least from a non-Malkioni perspective). Neither would
require years or days. Seasons might still be viable as a mystic
progression of dominance of the various elements, but might be distinctly
different from post-Time seasons. IMG, there would be no seasons pre-Time
apart from the "Eras" that Pam Carlson et alia propose. After all, much of
the mystic significance of seasons is related to the death-rebirth cycle
associated with the Light Bringers Quest and the Dawn. However, there is an
interesting questions about when Time began. Did it begin with the Dawn or
sometime before the Dawn, with the Compromise (or some other event in other
mythic structures)? Was there a delay after Time began before the Dawn? If
so, how is Time measured during that period? Was the gap substantial?
Pam Carlson talks about pre-Time Time being "plastic". I disagree. There was no time pre-Time. That said, I would not quarrel with her categorization of the logical sequencing of events in pre-Time.
Consequently, I pretty much agree with Saravan Peacock's comments about causality still existing and with David Weihe's comment: "[B]efore the Sunrise Event, one could perceive the Future directly, with the appropriate effort, rather than just predicting on the basis of the current pattern." (My one quibble is that it is not the "Future" because there was no Time pre-Time.) This leads David to his other thesis: if pre-Time everyone could perceive the consequence of their actions because they occurred without reference to time, why would the Gods do the things that caused the Darknesses? David's answer is that the advent of Chaos clouded their perceptions. Since everything happened "all at once", as it were, their perceptions were clouded from the "beginning". In terms of pure causation, because their actions led to the advent of Chaos, they were not able to determine that their actions caused the advent of Chaos. Because they never had the benefit of clear "foresight" (i.e. understanding of the consequences of their actions), they did not know to take actions which would eliminate the advent of Chaos as one of the effects of their actions, and thus gain a perfect understanding of the consequences of their actions. What lovely circularity. This seems right logically, but does not feel satisfactory; I don't know why.
Saravan Peacock offers that thoughtless, passionate action is the storm gods' contribution to the world and that their thoughtlessness was the cause of the Darknesses. This has some symmetry to it, since Orlanth then rectifies his mistake. It still sounds rather Yelmie/Lunie.
David also offers an interesting comment: "I have always assumed that the Compromise was the straw that broke the GodTime's back, forcing a symmetry breaking in the Time dimension." I'd like to know what cosmological symmetry he means.
Finally, on an unrelated thread, we got comments on the subjective nature of myth from Greg. I think they say that Glorantha is the only post-modern RPG. In most RPGs, there is Truth; in Glorantha, there is only truth. This makes me think that everything I've written above is wrong and that Richard Fenner is right when he says that the Compromise (or presumably some other event depending upon your mythos) caused observers to perceive Time (although I do not think it had to do with the perception of mortality because post-Time, the gods also perceive the existence of time on the mortal plane). Only the perception of Time causes Time. The logical consequence would be that Brithini, Kralori, and (amazingly) Trolls really were measuring time while us Jrustelans were sitting around unaware of its existence.
Chris Lemens, God Learner.
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