Uh, ordinary? I'm suggesting that it looks the same from every place. Whether one is directly under the moon (in glamour) in Sartar or in Thrice Blessed, Rufelzas face is the same, and the shadow crosses her face at the same time. That doesn't sound all that ordinary to me.
All are equal under the face of the moon. (And it does away with the hugely complex physics experiments that people are using to "fix" the moon.
> > but the phase of the moon was (in that most Gloranthan way) tied to
> > days of the week.
>
> And as I say, have you any evidence for this claim? I can think of
> none.
Come on, man. We had a table telling the phase of the moon in relation to the day of the week. No exceptions vere given. Simples explanations are still the best.
> > The searchlight model creates more problems than it solves, and creating
> > complex patches to a complex and unsatisfying model doesn't seem the right
> > way to go about this.
>
> Are you implying that's what I'm doing? That would be a wholly
> unwarranted characterisation; I suggested no "patch" to the searchlight
> model, I merely pointed out why your model was a) not 'the old model',
> and b) has its own issues with consistency of explanation. The
> 'searchlight model' proposes that in each 'septant' of the mundane world
> one sees a progression from black to crescent to half to full moon, and
> so on; supposing you'd see something else, requires an appeal to optics
> on your part that you're accusing the proponents of the idea of making.
> (_Why_ you'd see such a thing is another matter, and I make no
> suggestion on that.)
If you refuse to see the problem, that's ok. The model given (for instance in the Reaching Moon magazine) with the searchlight, and it's explanation, leads to the moon behaving like I described. Never full and never empty, and always a half moon directly under it. Also, since the moon doesn't turn (it's the shadow that turns) Rufelza's face is different in every part of the empire.
> What one'd see in Silver Shadow is another matter again, but it might be
> well to get some rather more basic issues straight before venturing too
> far down that line of thought.
The problem is most accentuated in Glamour. It's a good example.
<snip>
> > Sorry? I added an underline incase you misread the above. I don't mean
> > that terra has a moon rotating above, but that the searchlight model is
> > trying to create a "terran optics" solution to a Gloranthan miracle. Much
> > like the horrible stuff about curving light and so forth trying to create
> > a horizon on a flat world.
>
> Optics and astronomy are rather different matters. And either
> comparison still seems to me to be mistaken: the 'searchlight model' is
> nothing much at all like the behaviour of our moon (your suggestion
> would be much moreso), and it assumes nothing at all like RW optics.
I didn't claim it was, it's just the result of trying to get a "physics" model of how the moon vaxes and wanes, instead of just accepting a simple mythic explanation "The moon's face is the same everywhere".
You speak of cheesyness lower down. I think bad "scientific" and "rational" explanations like the shadow rotating around the moon are much cheesier than just keeping it simple and mystical.
> I agree that 'bendy light' is a horrible account, but are you seriously
> suggesting that Glorantha ought to simply not to have a horizon?
Yup. It's not like there's even a practical difference in most situations. Vision get's blurry with distance. The existance of a horizon is not readily apparent even on Terra. Look how long it took for people to universally accept that the Earth is round.
> I
> suppose this comes down to whether one thinks Glorantha is a place where
> mythic accounts are compellingly true, or one with assorted cheesy
> magical special effects to underpin the idea that it ultimately has nothing
> at all to do with our world. (Discworld with more fights between the
> jokes, to heavily paraphrase the old saw about ice hockey?)
I think you are wrong about that. I think we could be dropped into a world with no horizon, and not notice it for a long, long time. No rulerstraight highways in Glorantha. Visibility is obstructed by the landscape in most places, and blurred out in the distance in the high places. Just like here.
-Adept
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