> I believe there are many characteristics common to
> magic from different traditions within glorantha
God Learner !!! BURN HIM !!!!!!
> ... it's
> prefectly reasonable to talk about Gloranthan Death Magic, or
> Gloranthan Truth magic, so why not Illusions? Yes there are
> differences in implementation from tradition to tradition,
> and these reflect their different magical philosophies, but
> they are still all operating within the framework of the same
> cosmic laws.
Erm, well yes and no. It's true that Glorantha is a crashed-together world where all Primal Cosmic Essences are implicated within and without all other Cosmic Essences, transcendwhatsitly, meaning that John GL RuneQuestor would recognize Joe Eurmali's Create Mad Cow Feat as "Illusion" magic (and he'd be right, from his worldview), OTOH the "similar" magics from different magic traditions that you mention, work (from an internal Gloranthan POV) according to radically divergent cosmic laws, so that it would seem almost nonsensical to speak of Eurmal's Tricks as Illusions except for one overriding consideration : GL RuneQuest Sight is OUR best tool as Western 21C roleplayers to make sense of the diversity of Glorantha.
A secondary consideration is that, yes, Absolute Truth and Absolute Illusion ARE in fact (extra-)Gloranthan Entities, and DO actually pervade ALL of Gloranthan Reality. But in practical terms, I'm afraid that tha' Maaaaaad Cow on moy laaaaaaand over there is as much Truth as Illusion in strict GL terms ...
Anyways, I can think of several more or less grotesque Eurmali tricks to account for the presence of that weird animal over there, most of which would NOT involve Joe Eurmal sitting in the lotus position and meditating on the Ultimate Nature of Gloranthan Appearance and Reality ... more likely a result of last season's meditating the relative size of Joe Eurmal and Daisy's pudenda, and wondering what, Oh WHAT's to be done about it <giggle> ?! ... ;-)
Julian Lord
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