[Glorantha] Re: Gloranthan Souls, etc.

A long time ago a friend of mine had a theory that his Gloranthan PC should be able to fix birth defects such as a club foot. The method he came up with was to first break the foot (presumably using some form of pain relief), then heal it (using RQ Spirit magic heal spells, as it happens). The idea being that the foot would heal into it's proper, healthy shape.

I was doubtful about this then, and I'm even more doubtful about it now. The problem comes with the terms 'healthy' and 'proper'. It's arguable that the foot was perfectly healthy before, and was already it's proper shape, it's just that the proper shape of it happened to be different to that of other people. Therefore ordinary healing magic, the sort commonly available to most people, would not be up to the task.

This belief doesn't come from any Politicaly Correct notions the the effect that we are all equal rely, differently abled, accept us for what we are, etc. Rather, I'm wondering what the causes of such differences might be in Glorantha (I don't think the real-world causes of such conditions have any bearing on this discussion whatsoever). IMHO fixing something like a club foot is not merely a matter of physical repair but of transformation, which is much more potent magic.

Similarly, merely using mundane methods such as demonstration and education on the Great Darkness survivors to persuade them to change their behaviour would not be sufficient. Their experiences during the Great Darkness had changed who they were, not merely what they knew, and it was a close run thing whether or not it had changed what they were as well. We can argue about the terms we use for the changes they underwent - Damaged, Twisted, perhaps Devolved would be the most accurate. Where the Green Age was an era of Evolution, the Great Darkness was one of Devolution not merely in an abstract sense, but directly and for every individual that went through it.

I suspect that the Great Darkness wasn't an external event that changed the world around them, and to which they responded. It was a change in the nature of the whole world, and since people were a part of that world, it was a change in people too. The example of the laws of physics changing so that electricity stops working was on the right track, but didn't go far enough. If the laws of physics change, then they change for the workings of our own bodies and minds just as much as they change for the world outside them. If we consider living Gloranthans to be complex systems that work according to the 'laws of Gloranthan reality', when those laws change in the way they did during the Great Darkness even the very identities and innermost natures of every being in the cosmos will experience that change in the most personal and subtle of ways. Recovering from that isn't going to be a trivial excercise.

There are a whole grab-bag of issues related to this that I just don't have time to fully consider and theorize on right now. For example the idea that in some parts of Glorantha the GD is still happening
(Alkoth?), and that some magic can cause localised GD-like effects
(Zombie magic) which imples that the GD is a mode of being as much as
an event so the survivors actualy were still in the GD when (most of) the rest of the world had moved on. Maybe there still are people out there trapped in the GD. Imagine a small eyote in a deep ravine that is perpetualy in the shadow of the surrounding cliffs, so that the sun has never shone on it. What ancient terrors might lurk there? What happens if the river dries up?

Simon Hibbs Received on Wed 04 Jan 2006 - 15:16:47 EET