Gloranthan time / Godtime

From: Simon D. Hibbs <simon_at_fcrd.gov.uk>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 10:31:00 +0000 (GMT)


I have to throw in my lot with David Cake et. al. I don't think the average gloranthan's experience of time and causality changed significantly with the Dawn. The Uz are perfectly aware of this. One of the sidebars in Trollpack says that (I paraphrase loossely) things have not changed as much as the hoomans say they did - 'Uz know, Uz seen it'.

David Cake's sugestion that the compromise changed the heroplane more than it changed the mundane plane is prety close IMHO. I think that it was more of a change in the relationships between the three planes (mundane, heroplane and godplane) rather than a change in the planes themselves, at least in the sense that the GLs certainly did change the heroplane.

Some things were very different in the Godtime. In a sense it was possible to remake the psat in the image of the present. We have all heard the old adage that the victors write the history books, but I think that in a sense the victors created history in their own image. It was possible to make a discovery or prove something that became retrospectively permanent, probably beacuse it became permanent on the heroplane.

David Cake :
> Think of the myths as chronicling the discovery of the Heroplane powers
>(this comes across fairly accessibly in the Entekosiad IMO). When Humakt
>discovered death, that was not really the first time people died. But it
>is a memory of the first time people realised that Death was a primal
>power, that could be invoked in their magics. Humakt is not a real
>person, he is just as symbolic as Grandfather Mortal is. But the tale
>made a simple fact of existence (growing old and dieing) into a great
>mythic truth (Death) (and furthermore one owned by Humakt). And its not
>just a story either - 'true' myths like this one are the geography of the
>heroplane, and quite real to heroquesters.

Also, when Orlanth proved hist superiority over Yelm (yay Orlanth), he proved it not just from then on. He proved that he had always been superior.

I think this is what Greg means when he talks about heroquesters or gods "proving" things to be true. In our world we would say that they are making a change and understand that things may have been different in the past. Many gloranthans would not understand the distinction. To them, something is simply true or it is not - if it is true then it must always have been true. Thus in the godtime the past is influenced by the present in a way that goes beyond mere re-interpretation.

Perhaps it is that there was no distinction between heroplane and godplane? That might explain a lot.

I'm afraid I have no time(!) for the pseudo-relativistic 4-to-3 dimensional mumbo jumbo theories. IMHO they are completeley and spectacularly missing the point. Glorantha just is not suceptible to that kind of analysis.

Simon


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