Ingvi Garhound, Storm Voice (via Bryan Maloney) triggered the idea:
>Before there was Time, everything that happened was done. After there was
>Time, not >everything that happened was done.
This quote pretty much sums up the differences between pre- and post-Time for me. Before Arachne Solara created the Web everything had to be done by an active agent to happen. If nobody did it, it didn't happen.
Arachne Solara took all the previous events and bound them into a Web wherein they acted themselves out indefinitely in interaction with the other events. And as every interactive system reaches a balance, so did her Web stabilize itself into a repeating pattern. That is why the progression of the seasons is now orderly in nature - the events of the God Time which they reflect happen over and over again without having to done again because Arachne Solara tied them in the Web of Time.
The Web is internally stable but is definitely not safe from 'external' innovations like the Sunstop, The Trollkin Curse or the apotheosis of the Red Goddess. The Web isn't destroyed by such events, it is merely cast into a state of flux as it reaches a new equilibrium. And so the innovation effectively becomes a new God Time event.
Everything done by an active agent within Time influences the Web. "Every worship ceremony is a heroquest" and thus has an impact on the Web. If the doing is greater, its impact is likewise greater. The Ice-breaking Quest interferes with the equilibrium of the Web, but is not great enough to reforge it, and so the stability of the web will reassert itself, especially since a lot of uzhim and ice demons will work to strenghthen the reality of the Web in this respect.
This ties in with questing in general: it is much more difficult to undo event X than to create a new event to evade the consequences of event X. It is much easier to make yourself (practically) immortal if you quest for healing powers, than to defeat Death itself. The only downside with the evasive approach is that you may be immortal but not unkillable, which you would be if you defeated Death.
So the linear, or cyclical, sequence of Time is the equilibrium of God Time events interacting in the Web of Arachne Solara. If a new event is strong enough to make itself a place in the Web, it will force a new equilibrium, but it will not break the Web. If the Web is not influenced, it will continue to create the pattern inherent in its equilibrium.
In short, the difference between God Time and Time is that Time is a passive pattern that imposes itself continuously, making things happen, whereas nothing in the God Time happened unless active agents did something.
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