Fourth Age Glorantha from Jane Williams on 1998-05-04 (Glorantha Digest Vol 05)

From: Jane Williams <jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 21:33:11 +0000

Mike Cule said:

> When I asked Greg at a Convulsion what the world of the Fourth Age,
> after the death of the Gods and the end of the Sacred Time, looked
> like he pointed with a sweeping gesture out of the window to our 'Real'
> world.

Well, that isn't the world's most precise definition. But to attempt to fit it into the model so far: in the RW, Mythic Law is much weaker than it is in Third Age Glorantha. (Given that Greg is a pracising shaman, I doubt if he feels it's been weakened to the point of non-existance).

In the Fourth Age of Glorantha, Mythic Law has been weakened considerably, at least in part due to some careless idiot killing off all the gods. Whether Fourth Age Glorantha is still a lozenge rather than sphere, I don't know: but I have my doubts.

"Lord Julian" describes the ultimate in rules-lawyery nightmares, and then says:
> IMO your Mythic Law would work along these lines, provided Mythic Law
> were governed by itself as well as governing heroic action.
Aaargh! No, no, no!
First meta-law of Mythic Law: two or more contradictory facts *can* be simultaneously True. (Could also be phrased as "everything depends on your POV", perhaps).
Second meta-law of Mythic Law: changing or inventing new Facts is hard work, and the more other facts it contradicts, the harder it is. I hope those two between them squash the "let's re-write the rules every day" approach as hard as it deserves.

> Heroquesting doesn't work like this in IMG.
Nor mine!

But he brought up a point I'd missed:

>> Without someone deliberately concentrating on one set of laws or the
>> other, which controls things, Mundane or Mythic? =

> The Dragon does, in Glorantha, from a mystical perspective.
Of course it does. The whole of Glorantha is a dream of the Cosmic Dragon. (And "mystical" is a sub-set of "Mythic"). Or is that oversimplifying things a bit?

How about Mythic Law is a dream of the Cosmic Dragon? The whole way the HP and so on works is pretty dream-like, after all. Maybe the "fact" of Glorantha being a lozenge is only true as long as the Dragon dreams it that way. And when the Dragon was woken up to commit a bit of deicide (is there a word for "destroying the race of gods"?), it stopped dreaming.

Jane Williams jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/