Time Before Dawn

From: Frederic Ferro <ferro_at_clipper.ens.fr>
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 15:05:40 +0200 (MET DST)

Dave Cake wrote (in V4, #346):
> My own current opinion is that before the Dawn, time did indeed
> work much the same as it does afterward. Cf. GRoY, Entekosiad...
> However as Heroquests do not take place in linear time, this
> explains the difference of opinion : the realm of myth is
> outside time but has a lot in common with the historical era
> when the myth was established.

I have no knowledge of the Dara Happan lore <sigh> but what would be the role of Arachne Solara, if the Time really flowed before the Dawn ?

The Golden Age is the Gloranthan version of the "Illo Tempore" in Mircea Eliade's anthropology books about rituals (e.g. his Mythe de l'eternel retour) : the Sacred Time must be "reenacted" in the mortal (linear, mundane) time. The Godtime can contain in its simultaneity all the "seeds" of the Post-Dawn era, which "unfolds" the myths in History (even the Red Moon).

The Chronology of Golden Age at the end of the (Orlanthi-biased ?) Cults of Prax was only a logical order, not a real series of discrete events. In Dave Cake's version, the Godtime would be only a kind of archetype of the real Prehistoric time, the ghost of the past in the Heroplane.

• -- Frederic Ferro ferro_at_clipper.ens.fr 45, rue d'Ulm tel : 01 46 36 79 20 75 005 Paris "Mobilis in mobile"

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