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Influences and transformations

A Worldview describes the world the Protagonist believes they inhabit. But Glorantha also contains forces and experiences capable of altering that reading without simply replacing it.

These phenomena are therefore not additional Worldviews.

They may bend an existing Worldview, open a breach in its certainties, or durably transform the Protagonist's relationship to the Cosmos.

Three major cases​

  • Lunar Influence modulates certain Worldviews according to the Protagonist's relationship with the Red Moon and according to her phases. The Moon does not replace Theism, Animism, or Logic: she passes through them.
  • Illumination does not create a sixth Worldview. It makes the Worldview the character already inhabited irreversibly permeable: they now know it does not exhaust reality.
  • Chaos likewise does not offer another coherent way to read the world. It opens a rupture in cosmic order and transforms whoever accepts its power.

These three cases are not of the same nature, but they share a function in Glorantha Perspectives: they show that one's relationship to reality can itself become a changing truth of the fiction.

A Worldview answers the question: "in what world does this character believe they are acting?"

Influences and transformations ask: "what is happening to that very way of inhabiting the world?"