>So, from the POV of anybody in Glorantha, chaos is pretty unnatural stuff.
>Metaphysically it may be natural, but it ain't supposed to be *here*, and
>that's what unnatural about it.
Oh, it's much worse than that.
The problem is we're talkign about different mental frames of refference. When I say 'Glorantha' you might imagine a sphereical globe of the created world, with the underworld at the bottom, the sky world at the top and the lozenge floating in the ocean in a layer inbetween. Chaos, or the pre-creation firmament, somehow surrounds it. This mental picture assumes a viewpoint outside of Glorantha. The conceptual cosmos thus encompases the surrounding firmament as well as Glorantha itself. The problem is that in reality (Gloranthan reality, not our reality) it simply isn't so.
Fortunately, the modern era has given us a usefull analogy not available to Gloranthans. We are all familiar with three dimensional physical space. Our universe only has three physical dimensions, and one non-physical dimension - time (and possibly several 'curled up' microdimensions that aren't realy relevent to this discussion). However when we imagine an event such as the big bang we inevitably imagine it happening as an event within a conceptual space. In fact, the big bang itself consisted of all spacetime. There was no 'outside' from which it could actualy be viewed, anymore than the real universe now has an 'outside'.
So it is with Glorantha. The precreated void is not outside glorantha in a physical sense. Nor does it exist in any kind of physical space.
The problem is that this 'less than nothing' (antinothing?) has actualy manifested in Glorantha, which is of course impossible. The essence of uncreation and unbeing actualy walked the earth in the form of Wakboth and is even now unpicking the stitching of the universe, which is of course ultimately doomed to utter oblivion as a consequence. That which is utterly consumed by chaos not only ceases to exist, it ceases to have ever existed.
On the other hand, Glorantha is chock full of immovable objects and irresistible forces, so who knows?
Simon Hibbs
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