Glorious Replies

From: clay_at_Incite.com
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 15:30:49 -0500


Ah! Thank you for the Glorious Replies to my questions and ruminations (although I think Peter Metcalfe took them a little too seriously! He sure sounded offended.) It's nice to be back on the Gloranthan path again after wasting time in less satisfying pleasures.

My questions were generated because I have a serious lack of understanding of Lunar culture. My playing companions have a strong bias against the Lunars (having only seen them at worse as conquering enemies, and at best [in the case of Sor-Eel] as manipulative, "aren't the barbarians entertaining?" overseers.

Against these prejudices and biases, I was attempting to formulate an argument in favor of the LE, perhaps out of some displaced sense of fairness. Still, fighting the bias is difficult. My playing companions have access to KoS and take it very literally: that is, the Lunars are *bad*. Of course, they overlook sympathetic Lunars like Fazzurson and Estal Donge. I happen to think Fazzur himself is sympathetic, a career military man just doing his job to the best of his ability. I'm of the opinion that any right-minded Orlanthi would accept him as an honorable enemy worth fighting with joy and vigor.

So, I am attempting to edify myself, preparing for this weekend when I must display some rational knowledge of Lunar religion, motives, culture, values, and worth. Sigh.

So, this week, I've been studying. I laid out KoS, GRoY, TFS, TE, and the recent Lunar TotRM and read for *hours*. I read so much that when I stopped reading to go to sleep, I couldn't...and thus to get things off my mind, I posted my thoughts as a Zen meditation and went to be bed clear-headed.

On to the replies!

Nick sez:

>"In your structure, the Only Old One might literally be the Pharaoh's
>"shadow". But reducing all of Glorantha's mythic diversity to a
>limited set of common themes ("The ruler must have a Shadow", etc.)
>would be a shame."

Oh no! I wasn't attempting to reduce the diversity at all! I hope it didn't come across that way. It was that during my reading I found Yelmgatha a much more fascinating character than the Red Emperor. At the same time, I found immense humor in the author's attempt to prove the Red Emperor was "immortal." On a purely "Gloranthan" level, I understand and accept it. Someone earlier posted that in Glorantha there's a difference between being killed and being dead. I agree! We see it in our world today all the time. People invoke past "heroes" and their accomplishments and personalities to describe or classify modern acquaintances. Every time I read "The Red Emperor is Immortal" I chuckle because I also hear in my head "Tom Hanks is the new Jimmy Stewart." It's the same song. The little God Learner in me says "He's not immortal, but there is something immortal, or perpetual, surrounding the personage."

My good friend Chris, who has a very different opinion about things Gloranthan than I do and who I use as a sounding board for all things Gloranthan that occur to me brought up an idea about shamanistic immortality: could not a shaman in Prax take a young able-bodied Herdman with Fixed Int and possess him, thus gaining immortality? When that body grows old, he could repeat the ritual and possess another. I said, "Well, I think that is what happens when a DH Emperor takes the Ten Tests. He is committing a ritual that allows some piece of the Emperor, that part which makes the Emperor, into him. But duality remains. The new Emperor is himself++."

But do rulers/must rulers have shadows? I don't know or I don't think so. It certainly seems that a shadow makes us more interested in the ruler. Sometimes the shadow itself is more interesting. And duality/shadows pervades Gloranthan. So, I'm not sure pointing out shadows, parallels, or dualities is reductionism...just pointing to the obvious :).

Nick sez:

>it's well known that Pelorian myth was "virgin territory", untouched by
>the God Learners to any significant extent; and that the ritual of the
>Seven Mothers was a dire magical conspiracy.

Surely the God Learners entered Peloria. They spread like the plague. Of course, you equivocate "to any significant extent." How can I argue?

Here's some questions and statements. I have no idea how correct they are:

The Seven Mothers are all flawed (flawed Lightbringers?). The Seven Mothers attempt a Light Bringer quest, which allows them, among other things, to bring a god back with them. They bring back the Red Goddess, a new god, or was she just a hidden god? Is this similar to the ritual used to create Osentalka/Nysalor/Gbaji? What were the 7Ms trying to do, repeat the same mistake or do it right? Did they do it right? In the end, if KoS is to be believed, wasn't the creation of the RG an evil on the same order and with as dire consequences as loosing Nysalor/Gbaji into the world?

Peter sez:

>Why? The God Learners have made only one god up and that was
>in a far away place (Umathela). What the God Learners routinely
>did and are villified for is something completely different. They
>put Gods into procustean beds and chopped heads and legs out of
>them to make them fit their idea of how the world should be.
>How would Rufelza find this useful in her quest to discover
>herself?

Hmmm...but isn't this what she did to herself? Did she change herself to fit into the world or change the world to fit her, or both? How does that differ from what the God Learners were doing? I don't have the language to express what I'm trying to stab at here yet. I have some vague thought that in Glorantha one can see chains of effect...or ripples of effect...causalities and repercussions. For example, would there be a Red Goddess if there had been no God Learners? If there had been no Gbaji? (To the last question, I'm confident of the answer 'No' - -- Nysalor was instrumental to the formation of the RG. To the first GLer question, I have *no idea*.)

Clay Luther
clay_at_incite.com

Hello, hello! This is Monkey Wrench calling Bunny Hutch Headquarters...


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