> I would say that Chaos and the Gods are polar opposites, as Black is to
> White, and that the Devil is 100% *anti*-divine in essence: not that he
> is wholly mundane, powerless, or something poxed like that.
OK, I'll accept that.
"antithetical" isn't the same as "opposite", hence my disagreement. (although my *own* post _was_ a bit hasty ...) "man" is the opposite of "woman", but not the antithesis of a woman. White is, however, the antithesis of Black.
Yin is the *opposite* of Yang, not its *antithesis*.
However, let's drop the vain semantic quibbling, and leave the straw men in peace.
> I don't see
> what makes this position absurd, and I can't see how it contradicts
> what we are told about the Devil and Chaos in our usual sources
> (like CoT, ItG, UL, Prosopaedia, etc.).
Our interpretations obviously differ somewhere along the line ...
My a priori position would be that the Devil is a divine entity; this makes your idea that the Devil is antithetical to a god absurd from my POV.
This suggests that, while the Devil is indeed in opposition to the gods who entered into the Compromise, he nevertheless participates somewhat in the essence of godhood.
> this suggests to you that there is no
> difference between being "killed by a god" and being "destroyed
> by Chaos" (i.e. that the Devil is "just another god", in no way
> antithetical to the gods)?
>
> I am again confused. Perhaps there is a language barrier?
No.
I was trying to suggest that entering into the Great Compromise fostered protection against Cosmic Entropy. That is, the appearance of the Devil = the destruction of the world. (This idea is present in various sources.) The gods of the Compromise managed, then, to trick their way out of this Cosmic destruction by reorganising *themselves* as the basis of a new Dawn Age Glorantha. Those portions of the universe which were not included in this agreement have no existence in this new world. This is Entropy.
Hence, my inference :
not having your Arachne Solara Club tie
gate-crashers notwithstanding ...
Remember, one of the effects of the Compromise was a *radical* change of the nature of Death. It is, I think, valid as a hypothesis (but not necessarily as a final conclusion!) that before the Compromise, but after the appearance of the Devil, there was precious _little_ difference between Death and Annihilation. Hence the LBQ, which set out to create a path of Return for the Dead, and was possible because Yelm was killed *before* the Devil appeared inside Glorantha.
So yes, maybe the Devil *was* just another god, albeit a very powerful, and a very hostile and destructive one.
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