[Glorantha] Re: Benefits of Illumination

Post initially from a thread of HeroQuest Rules. I am dual-posting this to the Glorantha Digest because it's really more appropriate there. I would suggest that any replies to this should be directed there.

• In HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com, "Roderick Robertson" <rjremr@...> wrote:

> Lunar Illuminations is not Nysaloran Illumination (even though they both
use
> the "I" word). As stated in ILH2 (Nysalor writeup, page 84) , Nysaloran
> Illumination is (according to the Lunars) like modern "Neo-paganism": made

> up from bits and pieces of scraps of half-remembered myths. When Greg and
I
> were working on Lunar illumination we agreed that Nysaloran Illumination
was
> Occluded (according to the ILH2 definition).

I'd certainly agree with this in the context of the Third Age. What remains of Nysalorian Illumination is a fragmented parody of the orriginal and most (but I would argue probably not all) 'modern' Nysalorian Illuminates are Occluded.

However they are still aware of the All at some level and hence are still Illuminated.

Olli Kantola:

>You can't be a morbid follower of death and a pacifist for life
>at the same time.

An Illuminate is aware of the Al and therefore knows that pacifism for life and total devotion to death are false choices. A person could be a Humakti in one life and the reincarnate and become a Chalana Arroy priest because such choices only have meaning in the context of a single moral life. However Illuminates are freed from such limitations and can see the cycle of life and death in the round. They are merely fragments of the All, masks that are part of transient personality and not the Great Self that include all potentials.

However that's not to say that every Illuminate is capable of transcending every limitation. An illuminated being has that potential because they are aware of the All and have awakened the Great Self but they have not fully realized it. They have the potential to transcend such limitations, game mechanically through contests against the All (page 36 of ILH 2).

Simon Hibbs Received on Sat 03 Feb 2007 - 17:58:48 EET