The conflict between Cosmos and Chaos is key to Gloranthan mythology. The gods made the Cosmos through their deeds – that is why things like air, the Sun, fish, war, love, hatred, speech, and so on are all innate parts of the world. These powers may not be benevolent – few would consider Zorak Zoran to be a benevolent god – but they are necessary parts of the Cosmos.
Chaos undermines and threatens the Cosmos. Its power is entropic and it is derived from the Void that consumes existence into nothingness. When the Unholy Trio let Chaos into the world, Chaos nearly wiped Glorantha out of existence. Only the Great Compromise enabled the gods to maintain their immortal existence. and that split existence between the eternal gods and the mutable world subject to Time. The Chaos gods – think Thed, Thanatar, Cacodemon, Krarsht, Bagog, Vivamort, etc., – are evil. They nonetheless are worshiped by the mad, the sociopathic, and those cursed by the gods (such as broo).
Not that this is not a battle between good and evil – more a conflict between existence and non-existence, with plenty of evil along the way towards non-existence.
Two significant powers don’t really fit comfortably into these duality. First are the dragons. The dragons were largely absent in the great Chaos Wars, and some EWF sages claimed that they dreamed Glorantha into existence and were thus not threatened by Chaos. The dragonewts did however participate in I Fought We Won and became part of the Unity Council, so once again we are left with enigmatic riddles.
The Lunars worship gods created within Time. They claim to have transcended the conflict between Cosmos and Chaos, and accept Chaos as a part of existence – after all their great Red Goddess is associated with Chaos. At the same time, they also uphold and maintain existence. Only time will tell if the rise of the Red Moon has changed the conflict between Cosmos and Chaos for the better or for the worse.
