> I think the "secret" itself was that they knew how to muck with the
> cosmos like that. The fact that the cosmos snapped back isn't a
> "secret," per se, is it? I mean, people remember the GLs, even if they
> don't quite remember who they were. And there are all sorts of
> 'archaeological' evidence of their existence (depending on who you
> believe): the existence of Tradetalk, the Puzzle Canal, the
> destruction of the Waertagi fleets, Zistorwal, etc.
The existence of Tradetalk (and the cult of Issaries) was used by the God Learners, but hardly caused by them.
The Puzzle Canal appears to be an object for mystical insights rather than a Tower of Xud experiment (as I experienced once in a PBEM game). Of course people can go in, dungeoneer, and come out again as themselves. Failures, all of them. :)
Summoning Tanien's fire and Zistorwal are true God Learner achievements (as are the subsequent explorations of the Firebergs).
Besides, the Cosmos snapping back doesn't exactly exclude the possibility of a return of the God Learners. I find it possible that the "mollusk" Glorantha has encapsuled the God Learners and externalized them in "pearls" of short worlds, exposed to the Non-Being that invaded the world and imploded the Spike, but not necessarily destroyed by the exposure. As the nearing cataclysm weakens all borders, why not these as well? After all, "The Old World is Over." Once again, really soon.
I don't really expect them to return unchanged. The Waertagi returning from the seas of the Underworld are hardly recognizable to those stranded on the surface world. There is extreme paranoia about what is going to emerge from Charg in Fronela, and there is more paranoia about who is behind the Kingdom of War (another such externalized, shut off pearl whose borders got weak, and which leaked out something nasty).
(Dissolving pearls was one of the three sins of the God Learners, also called Angbazism, after the East Isle of Angazabo whose denizens eat pearls. This became a fad among the God Learners, too, and served as a measure of their decadence. Unlike the Angazabon natives, the God Learners had no magical requirement for or magical benefit from doing so.)
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