From: G. Fried (address.removed@nowhere.tld)
Date: Tue 21 Sep 1993 - 20:49:42 EEST
Greg Freid here.
Myth-Makers -- some advice, please!
Instead of fighting trolls and ice-demons this weekend, my players went to
the caves of Snake Pipe Hollow (although these caves are relocated in my
campaign) at the behest of the local Earth temple to recover the statue of
the lost god. Well, not only did they find the statue of Baroshi, they
figurd out the business of placing him in the cradle, and returned to the
astonished priestesses with a living, grain-headed godling!
Now, my question is, what kind of cult would form around Baroshi? My players
are VERY excited about their accomplishment, so I need to work on this, since
I hope to channel their enthusiasm. I take it that Baroshi is a sort of male
version of Barbeester Gor: an avenger of the Earth, whose primary opponent is
Chaos. What should be his runes? Earth and Disorder? What about his divine
magic (assuming he gets enough worshipers)? I am thinking of Face Chaos,
Earth Strength and Counter Chaos -- a kind of Earthen Storm Bull. He has
a head of grain: from this I extrapolate that he is fond of the fruit of the
grain -- grain alcohol. And thus his bull-like battle intoxication against
Chaos.
===
Nick and others:
I have been enjoying your discussion of cult matters. My time is more
limited recently, so I have not jumped in. But I have a speculative
question about what some of you might think (or know?) to be the
evolution of Stafford's myth-thinking. GS was heavily influenced by
Campbell (although also, I now know, Mircea Eliade [see Patterns of
Comparative Religion]) about 25 years ago. The notion of the monomyth
seems to have carried over to the god-learnerish exposition of
Glorantha we have seen in the earlier RQ publications: cult write-ups
with Runic affiliation, standardized religious organization, etc. GS
now seems to have moved decisively away from the monomyth approach in
King of Sartar, where there are manifestly contradictory accounts of
history and gods, and a narrative style that encourages diversity of
interpretation. Is this right, or merely an impression that I get
because I don't know GS well enough? Has there been any radical shift
in GS's thinking on these matters? Has the monomyth fallen out of
favor (as I tend to think it should)?
And here's a question: what stays
interesting about Glorantha after the fall of the Red Moon? (Don't
take this question wrong!) There are cycles of grand events (cf KoS,
270): war against Chaos and the Lightbringer's Quest; Gbaji wars;
demise of the EWF and the GOd Learners; fall of the Red Moon. So
where is GLorantha 'going' next? Is there a GLoranthan eschatology,
in which the events I cited punctuate the development of a grand
life-cycle of the great overaching goddess, GLorantha herself? Or is
there an 'End of History' of Glorantha, too (as has been asserted in
our world by Hegel, and now by anti-communits). Kinda like the
greying of Middle Earth after the end of the Third Age. How many
'Ages' can you have before a world gets tired and drained out? Three
seems about the max. Beyond that, and history begins to seem
meaningless. Will Glorantha eventually 'die' a natural death,
overcome by Chaos (like the entropic 'brown out' hypothesized for our
cosmos) at an End of Time? Or is she immortal, and her death may only
be 'unnatural' ('death' here meaning annihilation, not the myth-death
gods survive)? Or does Glorantha die by being forgotten, by having
myth and magic slowly sqeezed out by secularism, faith and rationality
(which seems to be the suggestion of some of the things I have read
about the time after the fall of the Red Moon)?
OK, that's just about enough wild speculation for now!
GF out.
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