Universal events

From: Olli-Pekka Kantola <nysalor_at_lyyra.kempele.fi>
Date: Fri Jun 23 16:54:25 2000

Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie> wrote:

> But think of all those other 'universal' events for which there are
> lots of contradictory (and/or complementary) accounts of: the
> Dawn, the Sunstop, yadda-yadda.

Olli-Pekka Kantola
>What I think that actually happens is that heroes can bring the GodTime
>back (for a while at least). . . . So I theorise that, even though heroes
>create new things to the world, that act of creation itself brings the
world
>closer to the annihilation that the gods warded off by the compromise
>(or what ever IFWW you prefer).

>So what happens in the HeroWars period of time in Glorantha is, that all
>these cultures start spawning heroic individuals that fight each other in
>the mortal world and in the otherworld as well. They create new myths,
>revitalize and/or abuse the old, and do heroic(or maybe nearing the god)
>level deeds that bring these two sides closer...

This seems to contradict the feel of KoS that (at least in the area described by KoS) the world is less magical than before. I like your reasoning though, as a way to save the "magic-ness" of fourth age Glorantha. And the difference in the "magic-ness" between the _end_ of the second age and the _end_ of the third age seems much less than between the _end_ of the second age and the _start_ of the third age. That implies some sort of recovery. The way I would harmonize the two is to say that:

1. The Heroes "use up" the magical potential of the world in their battles. This works best when you are talking about animist magic, since people literally use up fetishes and the like. It still works well enough in other traditions if you say that the hero wars killed off the greatest priests, teachers, sorcerers, shamans, gurus, and whatnot. Their deepest knowledge died with them and has to e rediscovered.
2. People have to take a while to discover the new paths to sources of magic. For example, if Arkat re-wrote some of the myths such that peoples' old myths no longer paid off at the end of the heroquest, they have to learn the new paths. (I personally think that Arkat is responsible for the division of Humath into Humakt and Orlanth. But you don't have to believe that to accept my point.) The need to learn new paths would help explain why the Stygian empire was so successful. They had the advantage of learning the new paths from Arkat. If Argrath changes the moon from red to white, surely the paths to obtain lunar power change, meaning that lunars have to struggle for a few decades to get good magic back.

An example of both working together would be the Praxians learning animist magic after the death of Genert, the great priest.

Chris Lemens

---