Re: Adept's questions on chaos

From: donald_at_wInkadTYUzAfN97ig7FO4McI2dooN7sFsdrDQ6U4TTlbXt46mXjXhSeQmPg7sS0Tgf3yY
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 13:41:36 GMT

In message <f02575+f66t_at_eGroups.com> "valkoharja" writes:
>
>Hello everybody. Here's a few things I've been wondering about.
>
>Chaos
>-----
>
>We have a lot of examples of chaos monsters and chaos cults. The taint
>of chaos is usually permanent and even gods have been permanently lost
>to this horror.
>
>But what is it like on a more practical level. I have a feeling that
>chaos is something you (usually) have to choose or accept. A spiritual
>and magical phenomenan, rather than pollution or a disease.
>
>The practical thing I was thinking about was that is it safe to eat
>chaotic things, if they are othervice edible? I would assume that once
>the life of a broo for instance has been extinquished, an animal that
>eats the flesh of the broo is only in danger of disease, not of
>becoming tainted with chaos itself. A heortling propably would not eat
>a deer* that had three eyes and a tentacle, but I assume if he did, he
>wouldn't actually be in danger of growing a tentacle him/herself.
>
>*The chaotic deer itself is an interesting dilemma. What has made the
>deer into a chaotic horror? I assume this has to mean that a deer
>god/spirit/essence has been corrupted in the great darkness, and as a
>result, some deer are born with the taint. Again, not a physical
>pollution, or a disease to be passed on, but a condition of the soul,
>if you will.

I don't think we have an objective explanation of chaos in Glorantha. Indeed some cultures don't use the term, many Malkioni divide the world into human and Krjalki. So trolls are lumped in with chaos.

A Heortling wouldn't eat a creature which was tainted with chaos because he would expect it to make him ill in some way. Indeed if one came on his tula he would prefer to drive it off the tula before killing it to reduce the cleanup.

A Dara Happen wouldn't eat a chaotic creature because it would make him ritually impure.

Trolls eat anything but then again they've got a digestive system capable of handling all sorts of strange things.

A Lunar noble might regard walktapus tentacles as a fashionable delicacy one day and absolutely disgusting the next depending on what the Emperor's banquet was serving.

There will be enough cases of people acquiring a chaotic taint due to contact with chaos for all these beliefs to be supported but equally there will be plenty of cases where it doesn't happen. A Heortling who accidently eats something chaotic but isn't affected will attribute his luck to the protection of Orlanth or the herbs his wife added to the meal. Equally he may blame throwing up after a meal on that cow we raided from the Greydogs being tainted with chaos. Although his wife might attribute it to the amount of ale he'd drunk.

Hardly anyone in Glorantha has the slighest idea of scientific method so none of this can be established with any certainty but they will be believed to be true.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/