Re: Entropy

From: Simon Hibbs <simonh_at_msi-uk.com>
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 12:14:10 +0100


 Julian Lord :

>> >But the LBQ *changed* the nature of death.
>>
>> That's a new one on me.
>
>It's not new at all; it changed the nature of Yelm's death (ie he
>became alive once more) and, since Yelm's Myth was the second
>strongest death story, it gave hope to the dying that they might live
>again, which they hadn't before ...
>
>Ring any bells, re: fundamental myths ... ????

Of course, but I still don't see how this changes death. Discoverign a way to treat victims of an otherwise lethal poison does not change the nature of the poison. The poison is still lethal. I don't see how death itself was changed at all by the LBQ. People struck down by it still died in exactly the same way before as after. Certainly your previous premise that death and True Death by chaos were the same thing before the LBQ is clearly false.

>> >Post-LBQ death being death with an After Life; Golden Age death
>> >being death which leads to some sort of existence in Hell;
>>
>> Er, there's a difference?
>
>I see one ... YGMV

If you coudl explain what this difference that you see is, then at least I could have an opinion on it.

>That isn't true. Death with possible resurrection >< death without
>resurrection; this is self-evident. To suggest that the possibility of
>resurrection is of no consequence re: the nature of death is an
>absurdity ...

It seems to me that it changes the consequences of it, not the nature of it. C.F. my analogy with poison.

>Anyway, if the Devil came from outside Glorantha, then it _isn't_ a
>closed world, contrary to recent suggestions ... :1-)

But it is not a closed world in a completely different sense to the one being used in the Questworld discussion. If it is possible to travell to Questworld from Glorantha, then Questworld has a phsyical existence outside glorantha in the normal everyday sense. i.e. in the same way that my flat exists outside my office. Chaos does not seem to have a phsyical existence outside glorantha in the same way, so I think it's unhelpfull to link the two discussions.

Keith N :

>I get mileage out of the idea that the 'world of now' is like a flat plane
>moving through a 3D space time continuum. The past is what has happened, and
>no longer exists now - it is part of oblivion/chaos.

Except that in Glorantha it is possible to heroquest to the godtime from any point in history. There's also chronoportation, whatever that is....

>Does this make sense?

I think this way of thinking about it has merits and I cans ee why you like it.

bjm10 :

>Let us define "The Universe" as everything that exists.
>
>What happens to anything outside of "The Universe"--it stops existing.
>If existence also extends into the past, then it stops HAVING HAD
>existing. It is "written out"!

Beautifuly put.

Morgan Conrad :

>"Rufelza is very unusual in openly accepting chaos, teaching that it an
>inescapable aspect of Gloranthan reality, better accepted, contained and
>even utilized, than rejected. "

The Lunars in this respect are supremely pragmatic. They do not care whether Chaos is part of the world or not, because their ultimate aim is to transcend the world anyway. From their point of view, the discussion we are having is irrelevent. Not wrong, or false, or disprovable, but simply meaningless.

Julian Lord Re. Openness:

>IMO, any rule can only be a properly Gloranthan one if it has (more or
>less uncommon) exceptions. Now, a Star Trek "away team" beaming down
>to Glorantha would be shoving the envelope... John Carter wouldn't
>disturb the consistency of Glorantha in the same way, because the
>character has less internal consistency of his own, or is already
>defined as a Stranger from Another World ...

I think he would. For John Carter to arrive in Glorantha he must have come via some route. That route must be part of Glorantha. Where do you draw a line between the worlds and say here is where Glorantha ends? Even if you have some stargate-like barrier, the barrier itself is clearly part of Glorantha in order to exist in it. It is also part of the universe on the other side in the same way, so how can you say that they are different universes? What is it that makes them different? Obviously they have some basic physical laws or principles that are the same - not just similar but literaly the same.

I use the Thieves World pack as a resource for gaming in Glorantha, however the town I use it for is not literaly Thieves World. There is no Rankane Empire and the characters are Gloranthan characters that are simply equivalent to their Thieves World counterparts.

To a Gloranthan, Elric is no more real than he is to us in our world. For him to spontaneously appear in Glorantha would have just the same implications for Glorantha as it would have for our world if he literaly popped into existence here, complete with soul stealing doom sword.

Simon Hibbs


End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #594


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