Interesting Times

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From: Colin Watson (watson@computing-science.aberdeen.ac.uk)
Date: Tue 30 Nov 1993 - 20:10:40 EET


Geoff Gunner wrote:
>As Gods-time is at right angles to temporal reality, there's a method of time
>travel for you: Step into gods-time, move a short distance and come back out.
>Hey presto, you've travelled in time.

Sounds simple, but I bet it ain't:
If you imagine things spatially rather than temporally it's easier to visualise (we're used to multiple spatial dimensions after all). RealTime/GodTime can be viewed as spatial vectors which are perpendicular like the X & Y axes of a graph.
Assume the X direction is RealTime; Y is GodTime. Now, no matter how far you travel in the Y direction, your X coordinate remains unaffected.
Hence stepping into GodTime is not, in itself, a method of Time travel with respect to RealTime.
Normally when you return from GodTime you will re-enter RealTime at the same point that you left (or thereabouts).

However...
Assuming the mechanism which transports you into GodTime allows you to enter at *any point* in GodTime (I assume that the nuances of HeroQuesting ceremonies determine this), then there might be scope for Time travel: in that if you perform *another* HeroQuest-like ceremony from the GodTime to transport you into RealTime then you *might* be able to pick-and-choose your re-entry point in RealTime.
On completion of your Quest you would return to GodTime again, and thence back to where you left RealTime originally.

Of course, there's nothing to say that a second HeroQuest from GodTime will end up back in Gloranthan RealTime. ie. There might be more than two spacial dimensions...
Maybe that's what happened to Pharaoh (and many of the GodLearners perhaps) wandering around in a Time which is neither RealTime nor GodTime. Interesting Times indeed.


Sandy Petersen wrote:
>Colin Watson correctly points out that we are all traveling forwards
>in time naturally. I was referring, of course, to big jumps in time,
>which are only possible by going into the Past.

The question here is: How big is a "big jump"? I guess the answer is: big enough so it won't screw up your campaign. So long as the players can't exploit the paradoxical benefits of Time Travel then there isn't a problem.
[ Game-wise, I don't have a problem with jumps in either direction. Jumping  forwards is less paradoxical; but jumping backwards might be easier to GM  'cos we've a better idea of Glorantha's past than the future :-) ]

>The Gods live in a Godtime which is the universe beyond time. In a
>sense, it is the universe as it would be if it were still the
>Godtime. They are pre-time, as it were.

Surely even GodTime must have some sort of subjective time, otherwise nothing could ever happen there. I think the Time generated as a result of the Compromise is simply a separate temporal dimension which mortals inhabit to play out the will of the Gods.

>Things can happen to change
>the Godtime, whereupon the Godtime is as if it had always been that
>way (like the creation of the Red Moon's tower on the Godplane --
>this is new, but now has always been there).

As I understand it this is the basis for all things mythomagical in Glorantha. By changing events early in GodTime you can change things for all time. Similarly I imagine that you can change events early in RealTime (ie. Mortal Time) which change things for all time. In Glorantha the reversal of cause->effect is not paradoxical; in fact it's a fundemental feature of the way things work.

___
CW.

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