(Beautiful Geometric explanation, pure Logician-style)
/// Chris, I didn't know you had such Logic in you :-))!
I love it when you apply your Lore to other subject than grotesque animal lovers running around some sorry steppe. You know my great love of praxians.
So, perhaps the reason that the introduction of air led to such violence is that Glorantha moved from one quantum state to another. It reminds me of the number of electron orbits that an atom can have.
/// Nice analogy.
I wonder whether there were prior cycles of domination that the world has now forgotten.
/// You're totally right. Frex, all young merpeople learn that "at first their was Water. Then some hard thing started growing from the Dark bottom, pushing its way through Fluid etc. etc." To the Dara Happans, First was the One Light.
For example, maybe it wasn't the introduction of air that caused the storm age. Maybe there was a deeper cause: Water started it all, by invading the sky. Water (not air) put out Yelm. who went to hell, displacing the darkness. The darkness invaded up through the earth, occupying its surface and eating its children, like Flamal. Earth and sky gave birth to air to reassert the balance, by creating something that could drive back the waves. Since pre-time is all jumbled up and out of order, who's to say it couldn't happen that way? Plus, you get to blame those weirdos from the water tribe.
/// OK, it's now official in my Glorantha: the water tribe did it.
If you introduce moon as a true element, then you can still have patterns of domination, but it would be two overlapping triangles, like the Star of David. If this happened, I guess it would mean that a lot of myths would lose their potency, and others would gain potency. For example, it would imply that air no longer dominates water, but dominates darkness instead. So "Orlanth beats back the sea" is displaced by "Orlanth seduces the Dark Lady" or whatever. It would lead to some odd results: Moon dominates water: check, because of the tides. Water dominates fire: check, because of how you put out a fire. Fire/sky dominates moon: huh? I guess maybe, if the end-of-age story was about the sky putting the moon into its regular path or something. Maybe there's a secret story we don't know yet. Or maybe "dominion" is replaced by something lesser, like "influence."
/// Or maybe "Purity". Each Element is more refined and "Higher" than the precedent ones. In Logician terms, Matter is infused with more or less Energy, and Fire has the most. Then the unexpected happens : two elements fuse together and Something Else is born, called Air. It does have a LOT of Energy. Matter and Energy are two sides of the same coin to my Logicians.
Or better yet, maybe there are players who believe this claptrap and make it True.
/// Case in point : the cult of Lorion, whom some call Aroka, or Sshorg/Sshorga is still out there. It knows Water started it. It knows the relevant Mythology. It now wants to drown the universe so all is Fluid. And it has set its sight on the Wolf Pirate fleet to sink, first. Let's get going.
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