SPECIAL NOTICE
Malicious code was found on the site, which has been removed, but would have been able to access files and the database, revealing email addresses, posts, and encoded passwords (which would need to be decoded). However, there is no direct evidence that any such activity occurred. REGARDLESS, BE SURE TO CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS. And as is good practice, remember to never use the same password on more than one site. While performing housekeeping, we also decided to upgrade the forums.
This is a site for discussing roleplaying games. Have fun doing so, but there is one major rule: do not discuss political issues that aren't directly and uniquely related to the subject of the thread and about gaming. While this site is dedicated to free speech, the following will not be tolerated: devolving a thread into unrelated political discussion, sockpuppeting (using multiple and/or bogus accounts), disrupting topics without contributing to them, and posting images that could get someone fired in the workplace (an external link is OK, but clearly mark it as Not Safe For Work, or NSFW). If you receive a warning, please take it seriously and either move on to another topic or steer the discussion back to its original RPG-related theme.

Any mythology experts or lovers

Started by Arnwolf666, July 26, 2020, 09:05:42 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Arnwolf666

I been trying to find some old Mythologies where order came before chaos. Does anyone know of any such old religions or myths?

LiferGamer

Lover, not an expert.  :)

Indian mythology is very cyclic; the Gawds destroying everything so they can rebuild it 'correctly'.  

Buddhism (I am not a Buddhist, so grain of salt):

All Buddhist practice is about returning to the unified, ground-of-being state, before the formation of the dualistic split between self and other.

Boiling it down, existence is chaos, pre-existence is order (?)

I think you'd find most mythology has an order-chaos-order cycle - not sure if that helps.

Ragnarok is the war of the gods and a watery apocalypse on Midgard (eventually leading back to order with two surviving humans post-flood)

Christian original sin, the fall of man, we went from a state of perfect harmony and easy communication with God, to being driven out into the world to struggle.  

The Mayans, Egyptians, and MOST religions have apocolyptic traditions, which is the closest I can come to an Order then Chaos comparison.
Your Forgotten Realms was my first The Last Jedi.

If the party is gonna die, they want to be riding and blasting/hacking away at a separate one of Tiamat's heads as she plummets towards earth with broken wings while Solars and Planars sing.

FelixGamingX1

#2
I specialize in the European Middle Ages along with Greek mythology. But have been studying Inca mythology as well. Peru holds important historical connections to humans and aliens coexisting centuries ago. If you need help feel free to reach out.
American writer and programmer, since 2016.
https://knightstabletoprpg.com

LiferGamer

Quote from: FelixGamingX1;1141833I specialize in the European Middle Ages along with Greek mythology. But have been studying Inca mythology as well. Peru holds important historical connections to humans and aliens coexisting centuries ago. If you need help feel free to reach out.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4713[/ATTACH]i
Your Forgotten Realms was my first The Last Jedi.

If the party is gonna die, they want to be riding and blasting/hacking away at a separate one of Tiamat's heads as she plummets towards earth with broken wings while Solars and Planars sing.

Chris24601

An important distinction in a lot of myths is that the Chaos in many of these "Order from Chaos" myths is essentially nothingness and not chaos in the sense that many today think of it (i.e. modern chaos is entropy and randomness).

In the sense that you want Chaos following Order I'd suggest looking more at Post-Apocalyptic motifs... you want your setting in the midst of Ragnorok or Revelation where the old order has fallen, but a new one has not yet arisen.

Another prospect would be set it during the Titanomachy where the old order of the Titans is being challenged by the young Gods.

Alternatively, research Medieval views of the Roman Empire and the stories/proto-myths told of it as your basis. One example that sticks with me is a medieval English poem about the ruins of Bath that the writer came across and no one knew who'd built them, but from the scale of the doors and ceilings they could only imagine it had been built by long forgotten giants.

The capacity of mankind to forget its own history whenever an empire collapses is truly in the existential horror category for me, but extremely useful for world-building as it means you don't need tens of millennia-long histories for your setting... you just need a few hundred years of what's happened since the last major collapse or founding. Everything else is just myths, legends and folk tales that need not have any bearing on the actual history.

I mean, imagine a worst-nightmare nuclear holocaust and five-hundred years from now some explorer of the society that's been rebuilt unearths the Monster Manual (and only the Monster Manual) as one of the only surviving written records of the "before-times." What sort of world would they think existed if they had no context for the writings describing hundreds of "extinct" creatures that once lived here.

Replace it with a Star Trek novel or a Superman comic and all the problems of translating those after five centuries of linguistic drift and the assumptions they might make without the context for those things we have today. Imagine if they thought Battlestar Galactica was a documentary and so humans as extraterrestrials who colonized the world (as part of God's plan) is the dominant view of man's history (presuming they don't think the blu-rays are just decorative art because they don't even have the concept of a media player in this future world and so all those encoded 1s and 0s are forever overlooked).

Now make your chaotic setting and consider that as just some of the ways the previous time of "Order" might be understood.