Re: The Trouble with Insravel

From: innerworlder2000 <innerworlder2000_at_cpcIQH46JJFPveOi7S6i_AAyHDH4x6DoE3Uk49TFp8Z5SeDEfN7W8qfmLwC>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:36:54 -0000


Peter Metcalfe wrote:
"Both sides saw each other's god as false, misconceived, a manifest
error etc. But that does not mean that Syranthir saw _Malkion_ as the corrupting God. The Carmanians still rever him in the form of Malakinus."

Peter Metcalfe wrote in Glorantha: Introduction to the Hero Wars
"This doctrine (the Doctrine of the Hidden Mover) reveals the ultimate
identity of God as Irensavel, totally separate from the world. Irensavel precedes the creation of even matter or energy. Five centuries ago the God Learners suppressed this doctrine, but its truth was more powerful than the God Learners. According to the Loskalmi, the corrupt God Learner's god, Makan, was unveiled as an evil demiurge that sought to ensnare the ignorant into the world of matter so that they would never know Solace."

How do you reconcile these two statements? If Syranthir did not see Makan as a corrupting God or an evil demiurge, what was the problem between Syranthir and the God Learners? Why was he at war with them?  Why did they drive him out? What is the difference between the Loskalmi and Syranthir? I thought he was fighting on behalf of the Ecclesiarch of Southpoint. Doesn't this represent a majority view?

It seems to me the fact that the Carmanians in the third age have changed their views concerning Makan has little to do with Syranthir's war with the God Learners. It is not known that Carmanos even had any contact with his father or that the religious views of the 10,000 had any effect on his own divine insights.

Perhaps I shouldn't mention world religions, but I know that if I were a gamer unfamiliar with Glorantha and not wishing to buy a lot of out of print books and search all over the internet, I would like to have a quick resource to help me out. When the name of a religion is mentioned, it gives the gamer a quick clue as to what is being talked about. Just enter the religion name into a search engine and get some information. The religions in Glorantha pull so heavily from real world religions that an easy comparison is made. The minor differences are not going to make a difference in most campaigns. When I first began playing RuneQuest I thought that Malkionism was like the Roman Church (not a good parallel). There was very little info in the Cults of Glorantha (Runequest 3) book on Malkionism. It would have been a great help at that time to know that the religion was more closely related to Zoroastrianism or Gnosticism. If I was actually writing material for publication I wouldn't do this. I would make very sure that what I was writing was consistent with all the available material I could get my hands on. As a recreational gamer, I don't have access to many of these resources.

I am thinking only a few people interested in reading these posts are going to have access to enough obscure or hard to obtain Glorantha materials for the differences betweem real world religion and Glorantha religion to be relevant to them. This is a good thing. You don't really want your fantasy religions to be so different from real world religions that people have to take a course in the fantasy religion to understand what is going on. This is my view on it, anyway.            

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