There is a mind bending paradox at the heart of the Clanking City which I would like to share.
The purpose of Zistor, the mechanical god at the heart of the Clanking City, was to catalogue, categorise and comprehend everything in Glorantha.
QuoteBeneath the surface of Locsil Isle, which is increasingly becoming known as Zistorela as the infamy of the city spreads, the real city lies hidden from sight. Here in the subterranean darkness is the massively complex, sprawling World Machine. This is Zazistor, the True Zistor, a city-sized engine built to catalogue, categorise and comprehend everything in the world so that it could later be broken down and restructured along more perfect schematics. It is the ultimate aim of the God Learners to use the power of their created god and the lost rune they believe they have discovered – the Zistor Rune – to remake the world in a harmonious image.
But a draconic spy sent into the Clanking City found evidence of chaos, somewhere deep inside the bowels of the machine - though afterwards he couldn't remember exactly what he discovered.
Quote...
One aspect to your scrawls interests me, though. Are you aware that you wrote CHAOS IS HERE eight hundred and eleven times in your notes? Intriguing.’
Delecti the Inquirer
To catalogue everything, Zistor has to also catalogue itself. But the new catalogue entry describing Zistor is always incomplete.
The new catalogue entry describes Zistor as it was before it attempted to catalogue itself. But with the addition of the new catalogue entry, Zistor has changed since the original catalogue entry was created, it now contains a catalogue entry describing itself as it was before a new catalogue entry describing Zistor was added.
So an amended catalogue entry is required - the catalogue entry has to be updated to reflect a version of Zistor which contains a catalogue entry describing itself. But this catalogue entry is out of date as soon as it is created - Zistor now contains a catalogue entry describing a version of Zistor which contains a catalogue entry describing itself, not a version of Zistor which contains a catalogue entry describing a version of Zistor which contains a catalogue entry describing itself.
This recursion is infinite - every update to Zistor's catalogue entry describing itself creates the need for yet another catalogue entry which describes a version of Zistor which contains the latest self describing catalogue entry.
To truly catalogue everything Zistor has to do the impossible - and in Glorantha, attempting to do the impossible leads to Chaos.