Re: Cosmic Compromise

From: Charles Corrigan <charles_at_...>
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 07:50:24 -0000

> I don't know Greg's current thinking
> on the Compromise

<snip>

> So Orlanth can manifest to defeat the
> Crimson Bat, since he had already
> done so by defeating Artia. But
> Orlanth can't be killed without the
> agreement between the gods fraying.
> The Compromise is what ended the Gods
> War and kept the world from being
> destroyed by the Chaos Age. By
> killing Orlanth, the Lunars have
> brought back the Darkness - which is
> exactly what the Emperor planned.

God Learner speculation alert!

I am pretty certain that the Cosmic Compromise is an Orlanthi only myth. For example, Waha continued to manifest in Prax until defeated by Pavis in the 2nd age. Other cultures have different explanations of why the Gods no longer manifest on the Mundane plane. I think that the Darra-Happans believe that the Gods withdrew to avoid contamination from mortals. At the same time, there has been a lot of cross-fertilisation between Darra-Happans mythology and Orlanthi mythology (their mutual identification of Rebellius Terminus/Orlanth and Evil Emperor/Yelm is a late 1st age thing).

Anyway, Tatius, Moonson and their advisors do know that by incorporating elements of Orlanthi mythology into their huge ritual, they will make it more powerful. What they don't necessarily fully understand is the side effects of those incorporations. By attempting to kill Orlanth and by using elements of Orlanthi mythology in the ritual, they unwittingly submit to other elements of Orlanthi mythology and, in particular, they empower the later Lightbringers quests - Kallyr did 2 lesser versions and later Argrath (s) did at least one full version.

One possible implication of this speculation is that Orlanth (in the guise of Broyan and/or Kallyr) eventually must have realised that Orlanth would die and, to fully empower their side of the myth, Orlanth must voluntarily enter the land of the dead.

regards,
Charles

Powered by hypermail