It's almost painful to have to discuss this again. The only sources that I know that *notoriously deny* a god's "free will" are not authoritative enough, or not anymore. Why not?
First: your sources neither deny nor confirm god's free will. Notice that
your sources are meta sources. They're writen from our POV, the POV of RW
humans thinking about Glorantha. They are not writen from the POV of
Gloranthan people. In fact, if we look at it from a Gloranthan POV, we see
people that sustain and present proofs that their gods have free will; and
we find people (usualy those that don't worship the god in question) that
sustain and present proofs that god's (or a particular god) don't have free
will.
At the meta level, we cannot reach a conclusion. We know that there are
different perspectives (usualy discussed under the terms subjectivism and
objectivism). But we don't have (or at least I don't know about it) a
formal statement from someone authoritative enough (yes, neither me nor you
cannot qualigy for it) saying if or if not gods do have free will.
Second: The most authoritative source we know is Greg. But Greg is famous for keeping vague about such things. And he changes his mind from time to time. Besides, most of what I've read writen by Greg cannot be used for or against god's free will. Why not? Because to be sure that gods have or have not free will - which would be a basic characteristic of the game world - requires a formal statement at a meta Glorantha level. The problem is that Greg tends to write from within Glorantha, not at that meta level. Since statements made at the inside level only tell us what Gloranthan people believe, they proove nothing.
Third: Formaly nothing published to date, not even if writen by Greg himself, is authoritative. Why? Issaries Inc. made it clear that there is going to exist an official Glorantha. Until we see publications coming out with the *Designed for Glorantha* seal, we don't have official, authoritative sources. IMO Issaries should start by publishing a list of the existing Chaosium, AH and fan sources that are to be considered official. Until they do it, we cannot say that this and this is certain about Glorantha. Issaries might just change it all when they start to publish the new, official sources.
Fourth: the discussion of god's free will is useless. In the RW people keep (and kept for thousands of years) discussing if or if not there exist something like a free will. They didn't reach a conclusion so far, and I doubt we ever will. I just don't see any reason why Glorantha should be different in this respect. In fact, we should not be discussing whether Gloranthan gods have or have not free will. We should discuss whether they are or are not individuals; and whether they have or have not personality. But I guess that, like what concerns free will, we would go nowhere. Once more, answers writen from an insider POV cannot provide the answer. And the maximum authoritas of Glorantha Issaries Inc., aka Greg, would not want to make a definite metal level statement about such issues (or so I think).
Sergio
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