Re: Secrets of the Than

From: donald_at_dVZFPcBEZttB1S80cN2vaQ6lM6u_PS_4I2PDxy5vyCzlAIwiA5VidlDboW5mm9gJC4Byk
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:00:36 -0000


 Peter Larsen

> 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?

AIUI chaos does not have an aim. It just is and does. Intelligent chaos beings will have aims but they are usually personal and often short term. A vampire wants to live forever, a broo wants to fertilise as many beings as possible. They will happily fight each other to achieve their personal objectives.

I don't think most Lunars incorporate chaos into their lives. Many would be just as quick as any Orlanthi to destroy it. What the Red Goddess shows is that there is a way to control chaos and use it to achieve your objectives. The risk is that it takes control of you and turns you into a worse threat to society than the enemy you were fighting.

> 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.

Maran Gor is the trickiest example of non-chaotic cannibalism to explain. I'd suggest it is not chaotic because it is a part of their societies structure. In specific and controlled circumstances it is right to kill and eat other humans. An ogre breaks the rules of the society they live in damaging the agreements made between members. That's what makes it chaotic. Similarly Gagarthi will steal from their kin which to Orlanthi is taboo as a cause of kinstrife.

-- 
Donald Oddy


           

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