From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_pZ_EaSSm0GBQdGt70KLCsLOhSeAqL0dbWl1BgJRO00nIiBrPx3VsEDgDz31N9KOOaJCiW02iv9bGjGOUtps0x205.yahoo.invalid>
Subject: Re: How best to learn about God Learners
To: WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, 26 May, 2008, 9:39 AM
At 06:41 a.m. 26/05/2008, you wrote:
>One possibility is within the Lunar Empire. Some have argued (I
>think it was at a Gloranthan
>Lore Auction at a convention during the Runequest Renaissance of the
>1990s) that the final
>tragedy of the Lunar Empire was that it had incorporated Chaos
>instead of Disorder (the
>natural opposite of law). So maybe there is some potential there.
The natural opposite of Disorder is Harmony. The Lunar embracement
of Chaos is not a tragic
mistake but a necessary consequence of its philosophy of striving
towards the All. They can't
refuse to embrace something because it looks bad.
The Borists of Ralios - they believe they can control chaos through
their lawful mysteries as
law is better than chaos. Everybody else thinks they are chaotic
slime and tries to wipe them
out. To defend themselves, the Borists resort to their strengths,
which just so happens to be
mastery over chaos. Are the Borists evil?
>The other possibility which occurred to me (and I am sure there are
>plenty more -- YGWV)
>would be somewhere where Illumination and the struggle between Arkat
>and Nysalor/Gbaji
>was still ongoing, even if only in a 'shadow war' between obscure
>occult organisations, of
>which the rest of the lozenge was barely even aware.&nbsp;
The best place for that is Ralios where the Arkati are feuding among
themselves and
accusing each other of being dupes of the deceiver.
>In particular I am thinking of a passage in Cults of Terror which
>suggested that the dark side of
>Illumination was not about alignment with Chaos so much as the abuse
>of Illumination (and
>;the ability to break cult taboos it confers) for selfish ends?
That's not quite the quote. The dark side of illumination was to
reason that since there
was no difference between law or chaos, the illuminate could draw the
false distinction
that there is no real difference between his ethics and his
desires. I really think that
the pitfalls of Nysaloran Illumination (as opposed to the Lunar or
Arkati kind) is a lot
more drastic than acting selfishly or making a false inference.
>Did it not then go on&nbsp;to suggest that the most committedly
>lawful being could
>become as much of an agent of the Dark side (for me the analogy of
>Illumination with
>the Force, and the Arkati as a kind of long-fallen Jedi, always was
>the best parallel
>between Star Wars and Glorantha, but that's another story) as the
>worst Gbaji prophet.
Except that we don't really have an example of a lawful illuminate who is
an
agent of Gbaji or even any agent of Gbaji other than some RQ character who
is illuminate and evil. It's an interesting thought but something
which doesn't
actually work.
--Peter Metcalfe
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