<pasted from a separate thread, but approopos>
> I'm frankly still entirely at a loss as to Greg's
> thinking, and indeed his meaning here. If
> the "different" animals don't have to be separate
> species (whatever that means (esp. in Glorantha),
> can evidently interbreed enthusiastically, then I
> can't see how it can be anything other than a
> defeasible, if not outright infeasible, assumption
> that origins in different otherworlds must maintain
> some sort of strictly separate identity. Even
> setting aside the earlier question of their
> "convergence" to similar but doggedly separate
> entities.
>
> It seems to me that of course, in some cases there
> will be entirely different, mythically valid
> accounts for similar-but-different things.
> But equally, it's the nature of myth that there will
> be entirely different, mythically valid accounts of
> the _same_ thing, in some cases. (Be it a species
> of animal, the sun, etc.) If there this were not so
> in Glorantha, I don't see how this can help but make
> it a less interesting place mythically than it
> otherwise would be -- and indeed hitherto appeared
> to be. After all, animals, like humans, are
> creature of the inner world; it's not as if
> they _have_ to be irrevocably wedded to one and only
> one other world.
I think questions like these are what drove the Godlearners to assert that there were "form" runes. Things from each of the separate worlds took the shapes of Man, Beast, Plant, etc. They postulated that something about the inner world caused these disparate entities to take those shapes. It would sort of like the role of quanta in high school physics -- electrons can absorb varying amounts of energy, but only take certain orbits. (No comments from physicists out there: I said _high_school_ physics, which is carefully calibrated for addled brains.) Anyway, I see their attempts at explanation as being similar to the sort of fumbling half-scientific efforts of Darwinism in the late 1800's and of Newtonian physics earlier, with all of the social consequences that those sets of knowledge had.
This does not, of course, help you answer your question from an external viewpoint, if you accept the validity of such. I'd use the phrase "everything is made of everything" to explain any result I want.
On your last point (that animals, like humans, are made of everything, so should not be wedded to one particular otherworld), I'd point out that socially cohesive groups of humans tend to be wedded to particular otherworlds. Perhaps this is true for reasons that are also true for animals. It could be learned behavior, or it could be something about Glorantha that encourages it, depsite any failure of learned behavior.
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