From the earliest days of Glorantha, Chaos was not like the other Runes. It first shows up in Greg’s stories with Gbaji. The earliest description of the Chaos Rune places it among the Form Runes, as the Rune describes “those who are descended from the entropy of that Form. They are usually bound to some Form, since even Chaos must obey the Laws of Time, but it might be combined with any other Rune. Nothing is safe from the taint of Chaos.”
Now Chaos is not intrinsically evil (at least according to Illuminates) but it is certainly “evil adjacent“. Wakboth, the greater god of Chaos, is the moral evil of the world, pure and simple. The destruction caused by the gods in the Gods War is reflected in nature – tornadoes, volcanoes, floods, famines, etc. The destruction caused by Chaos in the Greater Darkness is unnatural – bridges of slime, the collapse of the center, transmutation of both armies into shapeless ooze, and spiritual annihilation. The manifestations of Chaos run counter to the normal operations of the cosmos – as is evidenced by Chaos Features.
From time to time, people try to rationalize away Chaos. They try to minimize its dangers. But they nearly always end up huddled in the alleyway, begging or killing for their next fix, or destroyed by it.
