> Do I lack Free Will?
> I'd hope the answer is no. I'd hope that people believe that no matter how
>constrained I am by society around me, I can make my own choices.
Aha.. my own view is that everyone always has choice, but never Free Choice. As far as it applies to Gloranthan gods, I favour this view as well. I don't think that Gods sit back and wage a calculated war of numbers and attrition (whether magical or mundane) against their various foes, pulling swifties to get it past the attention of everyone else who is watching avidly. It's just got no atmosphere for me.
The gods embody various features and personalities. Grossly oversimplified, you might say they are super-powerful forces of nature, which have a varying degree of human-like personality. Thus the Storm gods are gods of Storm, not just superheroes who happen to be able to control the weather to inflict damage on their foes. They _are_ the storm. They are violent, uncouth, boastful and (to an extent) lovable. As GodTime progressed, Umath's sons became more refined and developed more variant personalities which had 'more choice' in their actions, but still not 'free choice'. Free Choice is a misnomer which is encouraged by the kind of DnD roleplay where your character has no personality except how to get more powerful (but hey, even that can be fun too...) The problem is clear in Orlanthi society which promotes choice and individualism but restrains it with powerful social bonds and customs of action.
I think the secrets of a god's nature, which might be thought of as part of the nature of Glorantha, are those that worshippers with deep insight find when they penetrate the god's social mask which embodies him or her in the form of Orlanth the Chieftain of the Gods, or Chalanna Arroy, the White Lady. The masks change according to the society. Cultures change all the time, and so the manifestations of the gods and the understandings of those gods change too. I don't think, though, that these gods are merely manifestations of the social consciousness in a society at any point. There is something behind the mask which (although it may not be unchanging) is fundamental to Glorantha. Again, though, people from different societies will interpret what they find behind the mask differently. Indeed, limited by their perception, they will inevitably see only a limited part of a 'god's' nature. That's why various cults of apparently the same god across the lozenge have different customs, rituals and powers.
But... I don't think such a view is definitive. It fits my understanding of the nature of Glorantha (and maybe even the RW to an extent). Mythic paths and the GodTime thing I have yet to work through fully. I do like David Cake's idea that the GodTime was a period of exploration of the 'world'. Beings developed the nature of the world by exploring it and either imbuing or embodying it with their own being, or absorbing aspects of it within themselves, or bits of both.
Pax
Saravan.
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