Re: The Glorantha Digest V8 #48

From: Peter Larsen <plarsen_at_mail.utexas.edu>
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 22:23:46 -0700


Peter Metcalfe chides me:

>Y'know you not helping matters much by these tactics. Not
>only was the original question ask for something completely
>different than the above snippet implies (it actually being
>a question over the detection of a heretic), I also addressed
>your latest question in a segment that you deleted.

        Sorry. It's not so much a tactic as honest confusion. And the fact that I was replying on break at work, and only had so much time. I apologize.

>> That's what I want to know. Since he didn't smite them, >presumably
>>they
>>were OK. So by what authority were they suppressed?
>
>They weren't suppressed by any "authority". They were
>violently overthrown in a civil war by a Yelmic movement
>known as "The New Light".

        OK, I'll try again. I'm sorry if you feel you've answered this, but I really don't get it. I assume both sides in the above conflict called on Yelm for guidance and support. I also assume both sides got it (i.e their Sunspears and Divinations kept coming). What would a neutral Yelm worshipper make of this? Obviously, if they both have divine support, Yelm doesn't care or hasn't noticed. So why should they fight? Are Gloranthan religious schisms really this cynical? RW religious wars often are, or become so, but no one has the option of asking god for advice. There's a whole world of Gloranthan theological post-traumatic stress from religious schisms to be explored.

On another topic:

>Dragon Pass and Dara Happa are a long way from each other
>to such an extent that the Orlanthi and the Pelorians are
>completely different people. As far as can be seen from
>Dara Happan maps, Yelm never ruled over Dragon Pass in the
>Golden Age.

        So why did Orlanth need to rebel? Or is Elmal a remnant of the Emperor's court, the stiching on the graft job from the 1st Council? Which, now that I think about it, could go a long way towards reconciling this Elmal thing in my mind. It raises other questions, but they are not questions I have any great interest in answering.

Graham Robinson says more:

>Yet we know that heresy is alive and well and living in Glorantha. There is
>a clear, and rather nasty, contradiction here. Some people seem to prefer to
>remove the contradiction - I'd rather remove the divination model. The
>current status quo seems to leave all gods in glorantha as either liars or
>so ignorant they must have trouble getting dressed in the morning.

        Yes, and I don't think the removal of divination will make it go away, even though it makes it less obvious. Theism in Glorantha seems to have a kind of nasty, cynical edge with gods obfuscating to their followers and those followers exploiting the gods for magical power. I don't like the image very much. If divination is fuzzy, vague, and limited to priests (maybe like the Bible was, pre-John Wycliffe), it lets most of the rank and file off the hook but makes the priests fairly corrupt.

Peter Larsen


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