From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 10 Nov 1994 - 20:01:14 EET
Michael Hitchens:
> Conservative Dara Happans seem to be trying to deny that Yelmalio is
> the son of Yelm. Does the fact that Yelmalio gets a sunspear from
> Yelm (as per associate cults in his description in Sun County)
> indicate that they have little chance of proving their point?
It is fairly strong indication that Yelmalio worshippers grovel in front of antesmia statues, and Yelm, or some reasonable facimile humours them to the extent of the occassional spell. Hence they do acknowledge there is some ("perverted") Yelm worship going on. That doesn't mean they have to buy their dogmatic spoutings, like their god being Yelm's son.
David Gadbois (one of Tarski's biggest fans):
> Myths
> can be false (and fall more in the category of urban legend, I suppose)
> if there is no correspondence between the mythic statement and the
> Godplane.
I don't think this is true. If a significant number of people believe believe something to be true, it is reflected in the Godplane. This could still be an "urban legend" in the sense of not corresponding to a historical truth, but I tink you can still get magic'n'stuff from such things. Though if a myth isn't generally believed by some large wodge of population, it'll only have local and minor power (whether "true" or not, come to that).
> There is also the not inconsiderable twist that changing the Godplane
> can change the mundane one, too. For example, one could heroquest to
> prevent Grandfather Mortal from getting the first taste of Death; if you
> were successful, no one would die anymore.
Obviously, you'd need to do this quest at a "very high level" in order to achieve this affect. A more modest effect might be achieving personal, familial, or racial immortality...
> Glorantha's myths are continually being acted out on the Godplane.
> (YES/NO)
> No. To be pedantic: The Godplane is the events and their
> interconnections that the myths talk about. I guess you could say that
> the events are being continually acted out, in the sense that they are
> just there and don't change by themselves.
And they are also being acted out in the sense that Heroquestors keep going there and dashed well doing it. And furthermore, this is how the worshippers tend to think of the Godplane, as the place where the Gods sit around (re)doing stuff, rather than the neatly graph-theoretic terms we God Learners like to model it as.
> Remember Dunham's (one of the many false Davids) famous quote:
> "Don't believe all that Dara Happan propoganda. After all, it was
> written down, and thus can't change with reality."
Also a problem with good comedy, sadly.
> As I understand it, there seem to be two vitally different forms of
> heroquesting, one where the participant simply re-enacts the actions
> of the god, thereby reinforcing the current state. The other form
> is a conscious attempt to *change* the state of the godplane. The
> second form is much harder. Am I correct on these two points?
> Yes. There are also the unintentional heroquests that sadistic GMs like
> to inflict upon their players.
I don't think these two are fundamentally different. I don't think David's is different at all. (Well, funnier, maybe. }B->) I think that the current state is so fluid, not to say unknowable, that it's impossible to say whether it will be changed by a particular act, and I don't think intent is critically relevant.
Alex.
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