From: Joe Lannom (jclannom@mathlab.mtu.edu)
Date: Fri 01 Jul 1994 - 18:25:41 EEST
Look out, here comes some more hypothesizing.
>Alex Ferguson writes
>>but I don't see why people would believe it to be "not time",
>>unless they have some reason to.
>
>Why? people can believe some really strange things. As for as
>I can see, they don't believe it to be "not time" (ie they think
>it's causal), but not Time ie the Gods were unbound. Why they
>believe Time should bind gods is another matter.
>
Um, after some reading on the compromise I found a passage that claims that:
"The gods agreed to be bound by time, and thusly no one could avoid things which they did not like."
If you tie this together with another passage that states "Imagine when gods were forced to face themselves in battle, as when Kargan Tor..."
So, here's my theory about brontosa^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H time.
When the Gods were not bound by time, they were able to curlique around in the causalities. Thusly, things COULD occur more than once because the god could simply step back to before it happened and do it again. If something bad occured, they could either jump over it, or go back and divert whatever caused it to happen in the first place.
Confused? You won't be.
Time still progressed sequentially, for them teeny little folks like the Dara Happans, but the Gods had the ability to leap around the time line... and when they leapt into a period that they already occupied, we obtained more than one of a god in existance at the same time.
This would explain gods with several names, different actions performed by the same god in different myths about the same occurance, etc.
Now, the compromise has bound them into one spot. There is now only one occurance of each god. No more duplicating yourself by jumping back in time 5 minutes. If you want to play bridge, go find yourself a partner.
Therefore, the sequence of events in God Time is preserved, for the most part. However, the sequence as experienced by each god is probably different than that of any other god, which explains a few more things. (Each cult having their own version of a myth, etc.)
A web, therefore, is the .only. way to correctly represent the sequence of events of the god time. They twist around each other in so many ways it HAS to be at .least. a 3 dimensional representation.
Weird.
Maybe you can get more than one of you (eg: Arkat the Odd) if you heroquest REAL close to the compromise and wander to the God Time in the hero plane. If you could avoid Arachne Solara long enough, you might be able to create a couple duplicates and bring 'em back.
To sum up: "Not time" is just that period in which it was way too confusing to try and sort things out in an orderly fasion. In typical primitive fasion, the peoples of glorantha just swept the details under the carpet and said that time didn't exist.
And, for those groups that believe that time started at different times.. they probably just didn't notice that the gods were acting "normal".
HMmm. but what about being "outside" of time? That would probably sift down to mean being removed from the causality of the universe. They don't exist, for purposes of being able to physically perform actions, within the universe, therefore, they are "outside" time.
Weirder. I'm gonna stop before I confuse myself.
joe lannom
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