malkioni golden age

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_voyager.co.nz>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 20:55:06 +1200 (NZST)


Joerg Baumgartner:

>>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.

The Monomyth says they did not die but simply regenerated IIRC. But the topic of discussion is not the Monomyth, it is what the Brithini _themselves_ _believed_ which came before the Monomyth. Quoting little factoids like the above is all very nice but it is largely irrelevant and distracting from the main topic. If I attempt to answer it, I fill the digest with clutter. If I simply ignore it or post a short reply, I look bad. So could you please keep these digressions to a minimum?

Me>>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.

Since I deny that the Brithini believe Malkion was the son of Aerlit and Warara, there is no reason for me to concede or even debate that Malkion had unusual burtae heritage, is there?

>>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.

The Monomyth identifies Yelm as the Second Person to be slain. So there's really no point in trying to find a distinction between Death entering the World and Death proliferating.

>BTW Grandpa Mortal slain: Do the Malkioni apply this myth to Malkion, too?

I would have thought that was what was meant by Malkion fighting Chaos and loosing.

>>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.

I am not going to get into a discussion of what the Kingdom of Logic was really like on that matters. All that matters is how the Brithini remember it. They know that:

        'Before the Gods War, Malkion gave power and ability to
        his sons creating the Castes of the Malkioni and establishing
        the King, the Wizard, the Defender and the Farmer.'
                                        Wyrms Footprint p19

Hence the Classic Caste System existed in the Golden Age and was not a response to the Gods War. If there was anything before Malkion gave the Law to his sons, then Zzabur does not remember it and so it is invisible to Brithini myth insofar as the years before Yelm ruled are invisible to the Dara Happans.

>>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.

But Malkion lived in the Golden Age of the Kingdom of Logic before the Gods War (explicitly mentioned in the Sea of Neliomi writeup in Wyrms Footprints). Thus the two myths are _incompatible_. Claiming that Malkion was born shortly after the arrival of Umath ignores the fact that his father Aerlit is the follower of Vadrus who is the Son of Umath. So Malkion cannot be born 'shortly afterwards' as his ancestry in the myth is explicitly Storm Age and spans two generations. This is roughly on par with Vingkot the Victorious.

Rather than attempting to reconcile the two myths and end up with a compromise solution that is so full of fudges that my teeth will rot, I simply say that the myth that Malkion is the Son of Aerlit and Warera is a late myth that is not believed by the Brithini themselves. Whence did it come from? Probably the Waertagi IMO.

>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.

I'm sorry I didn't recognize the name. I had only heard of Vadel prior to this and assumed it was another name from the Book of Kings.

>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?)

>From the Brithini PoV, there are no problems that needed to be
addressed by the Caste System. The Caste system was the ideal way to live and solved all potential problems. Of course, the universe went to pieces in the Ice Age but that was because nobody else was following the Caste system.

>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...

Wrong. This is the God Learner Cosmology. The oldest Malkioni stream of thought would be the pure scheme of devolution. Before was the reign of the Impersonal Forces. They caused to exist the Perfect Human Race, the highest form of existance in the Cosmos. This marked the start of the Golden Age. It ended when people started going mad and embracing mortality.

It was the God Learners who collected other people's mythology and started filling out the bare devolution scheme with names, places and dates. Such as when the world of mortality came into existance, that was when Death came into the world. Or the Immortals are the Gods.

>>and would not be recognized as immortals by the Brithini IMO.

>Why not?

Because they weren't around in the Golden Age. Mortals might call this sheer snobbery but what would they know?

>>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.

I disagree. The Brithini did not worship Gods. Not then. Not now. Never.

>Immortality for Mortals (i.e. Logicians) was fading, and the Brithini
>stuck to the Laws of Old where the Malkioni turned towards Solace.

But this may be what the Seshnegi experienced, it cannot be correct according to what Zzabur remembers. By embracing mortality, the Seshnegi are mortals whether they are aware of it or not.

>>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.

So Zzabur would not see himself as being the equal of gods-cum- impersonal forces?

>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.

I think it's the case of Rune=Impersonal Force and Owner=Immortal who embodies that Rune and so the Owners are inferior to the Forces.

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