(Hi : I've some GD catching-up to do, so I'll be raising some old topics here)
> >What I still don't understand, and which I think is worth discussing, is how
> >Glorantha *changes*. What happens to the local otherworld of a culture
> that is
> >shifting from animism to sorcery, frinstance ?
> This questions is not clear to me. "local otherworld?"
Sorry : shorthand.
What I meant was, (in the context of your responses, which have certainly clarified matters), If a Hero (such as Hantrafal) creates some new (therefore local) method of dealing with the Otherworld, how does this affect the entities that are worshipped in the old way ? I'd guess that the most important of these entities would continue to be worshipped in the old way (or would slowly disappear from the culture), but is there a general class of hybrid otherworld entities which can shift from one state of being to another, depending on the nature of the worship that they receive, which would be culturally determined by Heroic Action ?
I'm not really thinking of the Defiant entities, but of a theoretic class of Hybrid ones : the difference being that the Defiant entities exist in several otherworlds, whereas the Hybrid ones would exist *between* two or more otherworlds. Does that sound right ?
> >Basically, is the strict division between the otherworlds a transitional
> > state or an unchangeable cosmic truth ?
> It is an unchangable cosmic truth.
> Except that you characters get to change it in the Hero Wars.
Well, OK : but presumably it has been changed before the HW ?
A shifting state, but a static one : fine.
> >Can only Heroes Change the World, or can Cultures do so as well ?
> In a heroicly oriented world, I'd bank on the former.
OK, but that means that the Cultures themselves are the result of Heroic action.
This raises a lot of questions which would be heavy going even for the GD. Nature of language, economic theory, American utopianism, Michel Foucault, bla-bla-bla ...
Frinstance, are Gloranthan cultures linguistic entities as in RW, or something else ?
If something else, then what ? How then is language produced in Glorantha, and why does linguistic shift occur ?
I'm not sure that the other Digesters would find such topics as relevant or palatable ones for this forum.
Julian Lord
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