I claimed that Death had entered the world. Shouldn't have used capitals...
>But the appearance of Death is the sign of the world having devolved
>into mortality. Since Malkion the Immortal is a product of the
>Immortal World, it follows that he would have existed before Death
>came into the world.
Death separated Mortals from Immortals. People died before Grandpa Mortal did, but they didn't leave the world the way Grandpa did.
>Secondly Umath did not slay Aerlit and Warera. You are thinking of
>Choralinthor's parents: Esrola and Faralinthor.
Parallel myths. There is an (unpublished or obscurely published, I'm afraid) source which made me think the same when I first learned of it, four or five years ago.
I didn't claim that either Aerlit or Warera were made mortal by this, but they failed to reappear soon after this happened.
>Thus Malkion had no reason to be affected by orphanage.
There should be a reason for his unusual Burtae heritage among the Logicians, unless you claim that all Logicians were similar in this regard.
>Lastly you ignore the Monomyth
>when it claims that Malkion lived in the Golden Age which would be
>_before_ Death entered the world.
Not really. Death entered the world when Grandpa Mortal was slain. Death proliferated in the world after Yelm had been slain.
BTW Grandpa Mortal slain: Do the Malkioni apply this myth to Malkion, too?
I asked:
>>How sure can we be that the Brithini identify the Creator with Malkion?
>>Semantics alert, but isn't Malkion the Lawgiver only an aspect of the
>>Creator?
>Enclosure #1 talks about the belief of the Fronelans in part.
>In particular "Estrekor stressed that [...] Fronelan Malkion
>was not the true Creator but rather the evil Lord of Matter."
Doesn't sound like a Malkioni belief...
>Elsewhere the God of the Fronelans (this is second age stuff)
>is called FroNalinko and Fron Im Malakinus.
These are part of a dualistic pair, FroNalakino the Evil Sorcerer and Malakinus the Good Wizard. I had the impression that Estrekor addressed the God Learner Malkion as FroNalakino.
>So the Fronelans evidently believed that Malkion was the Creator
>who devolved himself into Malkion the Impersonal Force who devolved
>itself into Malkion the Immortal. I do not believe that this is a
>God Learner Error and was something that the Brithini themselves
>had known.
I assumed that Estrekor was an anti-God Learner propagandist and theologist who managed to press their different teachings as a manifestation of evil into his own teachings before he departed. I don't believe that the Return To Rightness crusaders came before the God Learner missionaries and traders... There would have been little point in fighting a religious war when all which mattered was who would rule (and those Fronelan Malkioni who accepted the Crusaders' message remained as lords, or why else should Syranthir's wife and brother have taken their side?).
>The Caste system was established before the
>Gods War in the Golden Age of the Kingdom of Logic.
Yes. A Logicians "caste" was what he or she did. I doubt that the number of castes was restricted to four. Hereditary castes may have been no worse than the sons of Turos instructed in one of the several talents of Turos, in Entekosiad.
>And the Waertagi do not make an impression until the lesser darkness.
If there is any truth in Malkion's divine ancestry (of level 3 divinities, aka Immortals), then his birth can be dated after the arrival of Umath, i.e. into the earliest Gods War. His father was a Kolating and one of (or who fought with) the Vadrudi who fought against the invading seas. Golden Age, Gods War.
The Waertagi may have made an impression at as early a stage in the streamlined myth as any Logician son or daughter of Malkion. The Logicians cannot have been unaware of their existance, especially not after they split into factions and started to emigrate (e.g. to Pelanda).
BTW, I've come to like the idea of Waertagi (-like) invaders of Pelanda, and will drop the "Veldang" accusation for now.
>>> 3: Immortals embodying those forces: Ehilm, Worlath, Humct etc plus
>>> Malkioni and his sons.
>>Count in Warera, Aerlit, Britha, Vadela, Seshna, Basmol, Ifftala,
>>Pendal and the other deities encountered by the early Malkioni.
>No. They were not around in the Golden Age
Vadela definitely is contemporary with "Malkion's kids". She is a Logician, and stands for a caste system, too, a logical one, but different from Malkion's. To me this seems like the Logicians had a fixed system of each (immortal?) person's position within Logic, and Malkion's Laws fixed first problems when Logic alone wouldn't resonate with the material world. Vadeli caste system probably addressed the same problems (and caused them?)
Golden Age is all the time Yelm ruled the Universe. (There was a "time" before, when the Runic Forces ruled the Universe.) Yelm ruled while Umath battled the seas...
>and would not be recognized as immortals by the Brithini IMO.
Why not?
>What the Seshnegi make of them is
>another story but beyond the ambit of the argument.
The pre-Hrestol Seshnegi and the Brithini were not divided about the nature of the gods, but about the nature of themselves. Immortality for Mortals (i.e. Logicians) was fading, and the Brithini stuck to the Laws of Old where the Malkioni turned towards Solace.
>>> Now does a Malkioni when he thinks of a God, does he think of an
>>> entity in stage 2 (ie impersonal forces) or stage 3 (ie humanoid
>>> immortals)?
>>Your average non-wizard probably won't really see the difference.
>Which is beside the point as we are dealing with what the Brithini
>believe.
>From the phrasing, I wasn't aware of that - I thought we were discussing
original Malkioni. Once again, these are things people outside of the Zzabur
caste shouldn't concern themselves with. A good Brithini Horal or Dronar
wouldn't, a Talar might if confronted with Zzaburi wanting a decision.
>>Wizards which summon deities to do their bidding probably prefer to
>>deal with the humanoid immortal rather than with the Rune power.
>But do they believe that the humanoid immortal is the _same_
>as the rune power? I do not think so.
Neither do I. The materialist wizard prefers to work with a quantifiable portion of a vast power over working with (i.e. against the natural course of) the entire power, IMO.
>>While Zzabur may be deeply into Magic, he seems to retain other links.
>Which are?
Man, and Law. Man is the hallmark for the Logicians, their definition within the Cosmos. Law is what he used, and embodied, against the deterioration of their situation when Malkion wouldn't.
>>Thus your average deity is not that impersonal (no more so than Zzabur
>>himself) to the Malkioni.
>That is not the topic. Zzabur and most Brithini sees the Gods as
>Impersonal Forces and not humanoid immortals. Would Zzabur think
>himself as being equal to the Gods in such a case?
Wizards manipulate the portions of Impersonal Forces claimed by gods. Zzabur's knowledge of (the Power of) magic is innate, that of the wizards isn't, it's aquired. A god may have an innate knowledge how to manipulate a portion of the Impersonal Forces (in the materialist worldview) but usually is not The Force. I'm not so sure about Owners of a Rune (in the God Learner scheme) who might be identified as both the Impersonal Force and the Immortal Being using the force.
>>IMO Zzabur underwent a "lapse" in status following the uncertainty
>>after I Fought We Won, and recovered only when prompted by the havoc
>>Hrestol and his friend wrought in Brithos.
>I don't think so. He alone of the Immortals has resisted the
>degeneration of the Cosmos and stayed true to the ideals of Logic.
>For him to have a lapse in status which would imply mortaloty
>just does not ring true.
He overcame it.
IMO the Logicians claim to be (have been) the pure manifestation of the Man Rune. Immortal as long as mortality wasn't an issue. When it became an issue (at the deaths of Talar, Horal, and other Brithini progenitors) Zzabur showed a course out of it through strict adherence to the Law (when Malkion showed Solace). This course led to the plague of silence, which Zzabur overcame only upon the advice of Kyger Litor (by whichever title she was known to him). This experience may well have tainted him, for a while. If it did, this explains the events in Hrestol's Saga nicely, including his recognition of his error in claiming the role as ruler as a reaction to the actions of Hrestol and his companion, and his abdication, to return to the unsullied existance as sorcerer supreme and magical guide to his people.
In other words, Zzabur recognized Devolution in himself, and reverted it.
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