Peter:
> > > Wrong. Malakinus is acknowledged and the Servant of the Lie
> > > is actually Makan. Even the Loskalmi have similar concepts
> > > about Makan "an evil demiurge that sought to entrap the
> > > ignorant in the world of matter so that they will never know
> > > Solace" (Glorantha Intro p78) as the Carmanians do.
Me::
> >I'm afraid you're wrong on that one.
> No, I am not.
Well, you''re doing a very good impression of it, or at least you went a totally different route with what Greg said in Enc to the one I would have take.
> >P.66 of Enclosure states that [...]
> I am well aware of what Enclosure says on this matter since
> I drew on that to describe the changes in Carmanian attitudes
> to sorcery. The "Fronelan Malkion" is Makan, the God of the
> people who expelled Syranthir from Loskalm as I said before.
> You may remember that they happened to be Syranthir's Kin thus
> it is perfectly rational for the Carmanians to describe Makan
> as the Fronelan's Malkion.
And nevertheless, he is Malkion, which is the whole point. They demonised Malkion and thus cannot be Malkioni. If they do not venerate Malkion, they cannot be Malkioni. You're saying that they are the RW equivalent of a person who has demonised Christ but you still call them Christians!
> >Plainly you must have read this piece but how you have interpreted
> >their evident hatred of Malkion to mean that they are still Malkioni
> >is beyond me.
> The Loskalmi hate Makan just as much as the Carmanians do.
> Once again, read the Doctrine of the Hidden Mover on p78 of
> the Glorantha Intro. Yet they are still Malkioni.
But they still venerate Malkion as a prophet, whereas the Carmanians don't even mention him by name and the only use they have of his name is as the servant of Evil. So how does this make them Malkioni?
> >Aside from the Wane Histories and the work in FS, we
> >have nothing on the Carmanians and even those works contain nothing
> >detailed on the actual evolution of their religion.
> I have described how their religion evolved on p120 of
> the Glorantha Intro. They got their butt kicked out of
> Loskalm and then lost a contest with the Logicians. As
> a result of this, the Carmanians discovered that sorcery
> was not a Good Thing as they had thought it was. I even
> described the steps they took as a response to this.
I just reread your piece on the Carmanians, and still can't find any mention of them venerating Malkion, or even a mention of Malkion. So your work does not define them as Malkioni as he is not said to be one of his prophets, so there is no problem with our view that they are not Malkioni.
> Caste Law was not affected by this earth-shattering
> revelation as nothing the God Learners or Logicians
> ever did, struck at the basis of Caste.
Caste law in Carmania has had a thousand years and a plethora of un Malkioni influence to play on it. For it to be unchanged is simply impossible with regard to historical evolution and progress. There is no RW culture that has maintained a system without change in the face of outside influence to the degree that the Carmanians have experienced. In fact, its only because we are dealing with a fantasy world that doesn't obey normal laws of social evolution that I'm at all comfortable with them keeping as much as they have after pretty much 1000 years in Pelanda.
> >It is
> >specifically stated as being dualistic, which the Malkioni are NOT,
> >so again, this leads me to think that they are not Malkioni.
> I don't see anything that says Malkioni cannot be dualistic.
> In early drafts of the sorcery rules, Greg was describing
> Carmanian dualism as an example of the divergent ways in
> which Malkioni understand God.
Yep, I'm sure he did, but I also spoke to Greg at great length about this on the phone, bringing his attention to his article in Enclosure, which he had forgotten about, reread and then agreed with my interpretation. Unfortunately I have based much work on that conversation, while you to are basing much work on your sources. This is the nature of the situation and I suppose we can only work to use loopholes in each others work to save rewrites.
> >I know you and Nick disagree, but the article seems pretty open and
> >shut to me as to how they feel about Malkion, in two places, Greg
> >states that he is the god of Evil sorcery.
> Who then is Malakinus?
After the Magi investigated sorcery for Evil, they did the old soul searching bit, which I know you are aware of. Up till that point they simply had Malakinus as a lesser god under the creator (the demiurge). In the Enc article they began to split sorcery into two, because they found it influenced by the Lie (though this occured _after_ Carmanos had already defined their structure). As a result, they had to define what was "good" sorcery and what was "bad" sorcery. What they came up with was defining it by deity. They used the evil one, Fronalko, as the source of bad sorcery and Malakinus, in his new role as good guy, as the source of the nice sorcery.
Basically, it looks like they found a religious cock-up and used their dualistic structure, they found a means of dealing with it and categorising it. This was one reason why we believed that the Carmanians use their caste system to reinforce their dualistic faith and this is why the caste system survives at all, as a means of defining their faith and maintaining its coherance in the face of very strong religious pressures.
This is Gregs approved piece below for the Malakinus write up.:
"Carmanos the Prophet revealed the Carmanian religion in which Idovanus, the Good, warred eternally against Ganesatarus, the Evil. Carmanos also revealed Malakinus, the source of Good Sorcery, and established the first of its Orders. The Malakinus Traditions are practiced (and occasionally licensed for use by other orders) by the Viziers. Malakinus learned sorcery by studying Idovanus, which is the source of all Good. Malakinus was adopted without hostility by the Lunars after they conquered Carmania, when Carmanos was revealed to be a previous incarnation of the Red Goddess preparing for her own full appearance."
As you can see, it states that Carmanos revealed Malakinus, rather than the Enc version which seems to show Malakinus as appearing or being defined in his current role _after_ Carmanos. We took that to be a cult view that wishes to show all doctrinal changes as being effected at source, by Carmanos, rather than later, by the Magi. But its really irrelevent for the players of HW in the Empire, unless they are really into the religious argument side. BTW, Greg explicitly told me to put contradictions like this in the book, when this one was raised, he said to leave it because he likes the ambiguity. I personally like that myself. Your work, like any other, leaves loopholes, and so will ours.
Martin Laurie
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