Some people (to make it clear, this group includes myself) take some sources at their word that Time did not exist before the Compromise. What the world would be like "before" Time is a hotly debated subissue. My position is that causality can still exist without Time and the histories to which Trent refers are based on causal, not temporal, sequence. Other people say that not having Time means that people did not feel the effects of Time (or perhaps the effects of entropy, since Kajabor (the chaos god of entropy) was what Arachne Solara digested to give birth to Time). Other people say that for things to happen that would now happen as a process of the Compromise (to use Trent's terms) had to occur previously as an invocation of a power. This camp explains pre-dawn references to time as due to post-dawn biases of writers, translators, etc.
The other camp says that time not existing before the Compromise is hogwash. They point to other sources that refer to period of time. For instance, that it took Orlanth 40 days to do whatever. There seemed to be a lot of these references in GRoY, TFS, and Entoskiad (sp?) (none of which I own, though Wizard's Attic says I'll get them next week (yeah!), so I can't confirm it). Some of this camp explain the idea that Time was a part of the Compromise as a God Learner (and hence, unreputable) idea. Other said that, after the long Darknesses, the periodicity of the sun certainly seemed like the rebirth of time. Other said things that I frankly didn't understand, so you'll have to ask them. :-(
This is definitely a subject where your Glorantha may differ.
For once not talking about wood-heads,
Chris Lemens
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #345
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