Gloranthan natural laws: geology and optics (again)

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@sartar.toppoint.de)
Date: Fri 05 Nov 1993 - 08:04:30 EET


One of my main fun activities with Glorantha is to try and explain Gloranthan phenomenons with pseudo-scientific treatises.

One of the problems that occur are the geological "facts" delivered in the Snake Pipe Hollow scenario. The different pieces of strata delivered there would take several hundred million years on Earth, and more importantly the area would have to have been overlayed by sea several times, and the sea would have to have evaporated.

If I look at Gloranthan history I find it hard to insert this time inside the legends. Of course the rising of Dame Earth out of the Sea may have taken longer than the myths make us believe, and the process may have been interrupted by flooding of parts of the area again, but the making (sowing) of mountains is recounted as action of Larnste when he went over the surface.

Then there is the problem of the rivers running in the wrong direction before the destruction of the Spike. In which direction would the sediment have been transported? Why would water have evaporated, when teh sea always procured new water? Where would the minerals come from, if the sea was still fresh water before the chaos intrusion? Minerals picked up on the way upriver?

Oh and what exactly was it Heler did in this time? If rain fell down, where did it go? In reality the rivers are fed by the excess rainfall. If in God-time the Gloranthan rivers flowed uphill, a vast amount of water would have collected in the land, with no reason whatever to evaporate - unless Yelm was a LOT stronger those days, and evaporation accordingly stronger. But then clouds would have hidden the fiery eye of Yelm, and precipitation and evaporation would reach an equilibrium again.

This is the reason why I have difficulties with the sentence "The surface geology of Glorantha is much like Earth's." on page 8 in the Glorantha book of G:CotHW.

When regular science fails, the activities of deities step in. Which deity would be responsible for sedimentation to occur the normal way even though the conditions wouldn't allow that? Would that be an earth deity, a sea deity, or a sky deity?

I think this is as much a can of worms as the problem of the line of sight on Glorantha, which was discussed a while ago by several serious Gray Sages and a certain victim of the Red Moon's lunacy named Columbus Mercator. In my opinion we are called to straighten these problems in an imaginative way, so that we enhance the magic of Glorantha. Purely mundane explanations won't work for the world.

--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:32:05 EEST