>If the above is literally true, that "any" rapist can become a broo,
>then I'm much happier with Glorantha.
First - broo in this sense is used somewhat loosely - the new 'broo' won't necessarily look like what you expect (need not be goat headed or deer or sheep headed, for example), but will be obviously chaotic. Humans who become broo seem to be more likely to turn into some unique chaotic being than a conventional broo - examples 'Ravening?' from Big Rubble and TwistTusk? from Dorastor. There may be no obvious connection to Thed - though Thed will recognise them as one of her own. You aren't exactly making yourself the same thing as the current race of broos - but you are involuntarily repeating the same basic process by which they were created, so the results are similar.
Now, at the risk of upsetting Carl, I think there is a degree of subjectivity in it - after all, it is a self-transformation in some important sense. The rapist transforms into a broo not because Thed sees it and decides to transform them, but because in committing such an act they allow chaos into themselves. And while not all Gloranthan societies will immediately recognise such a person as a broo, they will all recognise them as chaotically corrupted
I think that the rapist must think of what they are doing as wrong and immoral for the change to happen. Now, its hard for us to conceive morally of a society where rape per se is not particularly bad, as rape is a particularly demonised crime in our society - but just as there are/were societies in which what we would interpret as murder was not always frowned upon, there are/were societies in which rape is not particularly frowned upon in certain circumstances, and in such a society the risk of transformation is at least greatly lessened. So really, I'm talking about lessening subjectivity - whats important is not the act of rape (a moral judgement about a particular sexual act, albeit a relatively unambiguous one in most circumstances) but the mindset of the one that carries it out.
(and just to eliminate an objection that might occur to some people - - just because rape is normal behaviour to a broo doesn't mean its not immoral and wrong for a broo to do so. Broo acknowledge that rape is immoral and glory in it.)
Its a sort of counterpart to illumination - if you can be made effectively less-chaotic by a particular state of mind, you can be made more chaotic by a state of mind.
Cheers
David
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