Re: The same good ol' question : what is Chaos ?

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_tc3JY-Ye5PgaEhy2CvoXInPIVu-h7_I_rxR_wg60VCVAHkoYv8sIAU6YdP5vp_Df-VP>
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2012 11:53:39 +1200

On 8/19/2012 8:11 AM, hcarteau_at_hNwaSTm3m0P_36Wp9hkzLlavCbNJT17UwQg6ro5pOXNK5mTr2oWLX-ZZEHAfKEKry-9siEIB.yahoo.invalid wrote:
> Calling ompalam, or the red moon, or gbaji, or malia, or krjalk, "chaotic" seems meaningless. "Chaos" as we understand it is the orlanthi (heortling orlanthi) definition.
There is an objective chaos in glorantha. A broo is chaotic, a gorp is chaotic, anything which when you look at it from Magic Vision and see the Chaos Rune is chaotic. Pretty much all of glorantha was touched by chaos during the Great Darkness and would know what it is even if they have different names for them.

I am of the opinion that the Chaos comes from the Malkioni. The earliest Orlanthi myths speak of the Predark rather than Chaos. Later on in the Gbaji Wars, they became exposed to Arkat and other Westerners and brought this new learning to Dara Happa ("These enemy hated an enemy called Chaos. They said that our Nysalor was chaos" Fortunate Succession p23). The Dara Happans had been fighting the Orlanthi for over seventy five years at the time yet this is the first time we hear about chaos.

The Kralori concept of chaos is likely to be related to Orxili. Cults of Terror (and Cult Compendium) states they worship Gbaji but abjure other chaotic deities so whatever philosophical differences they have with other gloranthans about the origin and nature of chaos, they are opposed to it.

--Peter Metcalfe