> **
>
>
> On 11/24/2011 3:37 AM, Peter Larsen wrote:
> > I think that one aspect of what makes an act (or many acts, at any rate)
> > chaotic or not is whether they are done for "selfish" reasons.
>
> Yet Lanbril is essentially selfish but his worshippers are not chaotic.
>
Lanbril's thefts are entirely material though (as I recall; if I am wrong,
I am sure someone will correct me. Quickly.) -- you can recover from
someone stealing your stuff; the real violations come when someone steals
your control over your body, your soul, your flesh, your identity, your
name, for their own use. Obviously simple theft isn't chaos, since Orlanthi
culture is full of thieves.Hell, cattle stealing is a rite!
> I think that some acts are chaotic because they were made so in the
> Great Darkness (ie Ragnaglar and Rape).
>
More on this below.
> Many evil acts are also chaotic
> but an evil act is not intrinsically chaotic.
>
I will agree with you here. I also expect that there are chaotic acts that
are not intrinsically evil, although they may be ultimately ungood for the
universe (assuming the aim of all Chaos is to return the universe to
chaos). This is what would allow the Lunars to incorporate chaos into their
lives -- chaos can't be all cannibalism aand vampires and rape and
dissolving into goo, can it?
> > Ogres eat human meat because they think of humans as
> > animals (and because it tastes good and gives them personal power).
>
> Uz and Morokanth also eat humans yet aren't chaotic.
>
Uz eat everything; it's their nature. Anyway, and Uz eating an Uz would be
cannibalism. A human eating a human would be cannibalism. An Uz eating a
human is either breakfast, lunch, or inner (as I am sure the Uz say).
Morokanth don't eat humans; they eat herd people, who are, by definition,
animals. As I understand it, other Praxians also eat herd people when its
convenient, which must be disturbing for outsiders. The Gor cannibalistic
rites are the ones that need to be explained, in my book.
> Ogres are because
> they sold out to the Devil during the Darkness.
>
This (and the bit about Thed/Ragnaglar above) is the part of your argument
that I find most interesting. If true, it suggests that acts are chaotic or
not (with "chaotic" defined as "detrimental to the universe," I guess)
because some god (spirit/essence/etc) took "charge" of them during
prehistory. As long as that being exists, that act maintains that "nature."
So stealing something in honor of Finovan, Desemborth, or even Lanbril is
not chaotic because those gods are not chaotic. I am not sure if there is a
chaotic thief god, but stealing in the name of that god would be chaotic
*even if it looked exactly the same as a non-chaotic theft.* Hell, maybe
chaos never had a thief god, of it was destroyed somewhere along the line,
or Lanbril would have been swallowed up years ago.
Things are a trifle clearer with cannibalism (maybe because, as 21st C humans, we think of theft as an every day activity while cannibalism is not so common). Eating sentient beings is not chaos for Uz because the Uz eat everything and always have. All their gods eat other sentient beings; it's as much a little sacrament for Uz as breathing is for the Orlanthi or turning their faces to the sun is for Solars. Eating human flesh is not chaotic for certain classes of Gor worshipers (at least at certain moments), because they are consciously emulating their goddess, who is not chaotic. Ogres eating humans is chaotic because the gods they emulate are. A human who eats another human out of hunger or mental illness* or whatever is not doing this devotionally -- there is no mediator between that person and the cosmos. Some being is likely to come and take "charge" of that act -- and, since the human does not know the correct way to eat people for Uz or Gors or whomever, that being is very likely to be chaotic (and, in short order, so it the cannibal).
Is this what you mean?
It's attractive in some ways -- it certainly allows you to wave away any inconsistencies in morality by saying "their gods say it's OK for them, therefore it's not chaos" while allowing another instance to be chaotic as all get out -- but it does lead us into a sort of weird moral relativism, which, I guess, since the purpose of HeroQuest and Glorantha are to tell exciting stories, is maybe just as well. Most PCs, if they existed in real life, would be quickly arrested as murdering lunatics, after all. I am not sure I am comfortable with this, but it does have internal consistency.
Peter Larsen
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Powered by hypermail