From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily) Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 16 Jul 1994, part 1 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk X-RQ-ID: Intro This is the RuneQuest Daily Bulletin, a mailing list on the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. It is sent out once per day in digest format. More details on the RuneQuest Daily and Digest can be found after the last message in this digest. --------------------- From: DevinC@aol.com Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Fri, 15 Jul 1994, part 1 Message-ID: <9407151446.tn467527@aol.com> Date: 15 Jul 94 18:46:42 GMT X-RQ-ID: 5172 Devin Cutler here: Joerg writes: "Devin Cutler's dexperate last stand in X-RQ-ID: 5142" 'Tis only the beginning, dear Joerg :-) "Reading minds is the province of very few deities. I regard the magics deities give to their worshippers as a rough description of the innate abilities of the deity." Key word is ROUGH. "And, if Orlanth is omnipresent in all air, he would carry all spoken information. (A nice Lunar propaganda bit: "Every spoken lie is carried by Orlanth!") I doubt he will listen into all conversation. According to the compromise, he mustn't, carrying sound is something which happens, within his area of influence, but without his direct involvement." Well, then Orlanth must have a recording device somewhere, because when someone casts Divination and asks Orlanth "Orlanth, what took place just south of Pairing Stone three days ago?" I would expect that he usually gets a correct answer. But if Orlanth cannot have his awareness extended into many places simultaneously, how does he answer such Divinations? Is it just lucky that he happened to be concentrating on a specific area. IMO, Orlanth is aware of almost everything that happens in the open air. Yelm is aware of almost everything that happens in sunlight. Xentha for things happening at night, etc. Otherwise, might as well toss Divination, as the answer most lkely to be gotten is "I don't know, I was looking elsewhere at that moment" "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Reading minds is the province of very few truth deities - to wit, Lhankor Mhy, Dayzatar, and maybe their spin-offs Atyar (through the treachery of Treack Markhor), Irripi Ontor (through his own treachery), and Ourania." No, no,no,no reading minds UNBIDDEN is the province of a very few Truth Deities. "What the gods feed on, aren't intellectual processes (those mentioned above excepted), but the life-force ridden emotions. These are what they understand, and what they want." Betrayal is often an emotional process. "However, the god won't step down to check all. Not in my Glorantha, and I doubt in many other people's Glorantha. The act of opening is essential, I agree, but in general the fact that the worshippers open themselves is sufficient proof for the deity. Even with priests, who are to act on behalf of, but not like the deity. Only Runelords with a direct link to their deity (1d10 DI...) who are avatars of their deity might be subject to greater attacks of divine invasion." I Disagree. I think the deity quickly checks anyone for suspicious emotions, then investigates further those who don't pass muster. "Because your viewpoint is extreme, as the numerous reactions indicate. (I got as much response only when I stated that Praxians were Hsunchen sitting on their totem animals...)" I think gods are extreme beings (and sorry I missed the Praxian Hsunchen debate....would have been fun!) "You'll be surprised: I don't. Worshippers do not create the deity IMO, but they give it the essence to work with." "I view the deities as self-sufficient Godplane entities who exist there, possess a number of innate powers, most of these shared with other deities, one or two powers which give them a special purpose, and if they are lucky a special power unique on Glorantha. These powers are somewhat skills to them, but they may exert these powers only in their given place, and under their given conditions. They have no "free will" to change this. This is where worshippers step in. The worshippers do two things to a hitherto unworshipped deity. The first is to give the deity additional power, which allows them to do the second step and expandthe deity's area of influence." Example of Firshala deleted "The worshippers form the deity, not vice versa (not any more, that is...)." I agree that worshippers DO give something to their god, and I agree that these things are the two things you mention. However, I do not believe that that it is an even exchange. I believe that what the gods give to their worshippers, by direct means (like DI or Divine Magic) and by indirect means (e.g. Yelm gives sunlight) far outweighs what the gods get in return. Therefore, the difference in this equation is filled by devotion. The gods give out their powers and demand not only MP but devotion as well. It seems a bit as if the system you are arguing for places gods more in the need of mortals than vice versa. I just do not see the gods as emasculated and beholden to mortals in that way. "Emotions. The Pendragon Pass trait system apparently is something of a playtest for the "next year edition" of Heroquest, so personality traits and emotions seem to be the essential copmonents in worship, not intellectual considerations." And betrayal is a very emotional item. "Maybe the god will investigate further, but ONLY WITHIN ITS POWERS! And no deity but Lhankor Mhy or Dayzatar can actively read the mind of a mundane creature, else all deities would have access to Mindread or Truespeak (or whatever this Dayzatar spell was called)." These spells allow the deities in question to read UNBIDDEN thoughts. Different from bidden thoughts. I find it ridiculous to say a deity can't do something simply because he doesn't have the runes for it. Orlanth's Thunderbolt and Lightning Spells can kill someone, but he does not possess the Death Rune. If many deities can kill without possessing the Death Rune, then why can't deities read the minds and emotions of people who invite them to do just that without possessing the Truth Rune? " The worshipper would have to provide this information willingly." That is what I have postulated all along. "If he does, ok, the god can act, if he refuses, the god may become suspicious, and might send a lesser retribution, but to make an initiate inactive is to deny oneself necessary life force, and the deity only gets so much..." If he does not, the god will make the initiate inactive. I don't see the deities as so beggered for MP that they must plead with their worshippers to get it. Maybe a new deity like Firshala must be less picky, but Orlanth can certainly afford to make inactive initiates who won't open themselves to him. "A hindrance to the cult? Maybe. A hindrance to the deity? Not at all. The deity would be provided with much more appropriate life force than it would otherwise, the worship would become more effective, the deity would become more powerful, the benefits it could return would become greater." I have trouble with this sort of "fire sale" type situation, where the deities need to scrape up every last MP from worshippers. The gods, IMO, can afford to be choosy. If the gods were that desparate for MP, why aren't they competing to give their worshippers tons of powers and goodies, which not only increases the power of" your worshippers, but gets you a whole bunch of new ones? Why make it so hard to become an initiate (i.e. those without parents in the cult must pass 3 of 5 skill tests)? Why not welcome in anyone who wants to join the cult? " To be mortal means to be fallible, and this is an accepted fact among the deities. Rather than to be cut off their constant feed of life-force, the deities prefer their worshippers to cleanse their mind before sacrifice, and deliver untainted emotions. I'd rule that a lay worshipper in the right frame of mind is more effective than an initiate with troubled emotions due to lacking preparation for the ceremony." Yes, deities recognize mortal fallibility. And a deity won't care about a minor transgresison, other than sending a minor reprisal ro simply informing the priest of such minor transgression (if that). It is major stuff, like Cacodemons in the Yelmalio service that bother me. "If this enables slackers or even traitors to partake in the benefits the deity provides, that's life, but the cult is concerned with the welfare of the community, not with doctrine. If the latter was the case, the cult hierarchy itself would become guilty of betraying the deity, and would contract the wrath of the deity. No god is interested in detrimental over-zealousness." Letting traitors gain cult powers is not a mundane concern. It is a highly significant concern and likely to get cult relics stolen, altars desecrated, and priests assassinated. These are bad for that selfsame community. "Compare e.g. Yelmalio's (or whatever his name was) dim view on the failure of the True Golden Horde as related in Sun County, p.112." A deity can certainly forgive failure. I am not talking about failure, but scienter (with malice aforethought) "Is such exclusivity really in the interest of the deity, and won't the deity be most generous towards those who serve its purposes best?" Loyalty and devotion do serve it best. "Yeah, sure, if the GM is willing to take the edge from a contracted disease. If the GM wants the characters to suffer, he will keep harrassing the players - a pack of hyenas attracted by the sick smell of the victim would do the trick to keep the disease victim straining itself, and keep the CON-rolls at CON*3 or less. Add in insects, vultures, and other threats, and prospects are bleak if the GM knows his trade. If the GM wants to make disease a threat, it's up to him, if he allows the unmolesed rest, then he decided to let the disease pose no real threat. It's GM decision, really." The problem with this approach is that experienced players can easily see through this. "Oh no, Reginald the Thief has caught Soul Waste. If we rest here, Devin will attack us with monsters or something." Your approach works the first time or two, then gets old. "Agreed, this is illogical. Simple fix: a succeeding roll just lessens severity of the disease by one level." Better fix: You roll once per day to shake off any and all diseases. Let's make a terminal disease live up to its name. "Again, GM decision to let the characters go off lightly. Why do you complain in the first hand, if you don't want to make disease a problem?" I complain because I don't want to have to go through these hoops and gyrations to make disease a thing of dread. Why attack the problem, indirectly by making the GM have to throw extra encounters, et al at the party? Just fix the disease rules. Simple. "The rules don't state anywhere that you can't learn spirit spells from temples. They don't state explicitely that you can, either. I guess that comes from letting people who knew Glorantha playtest the rules... No mention of initiates." Yes, a problem. I will check my copy of RQAiG and see if this was corrected. "Fine. To make the Control spell effective, you first have to bring the spirit in question to Zero MP, however. How it should initiate spirit combat in that condition is beyond me." Nope. Rememebr, I play that the Control Spirit spell allows one to initiate combat. I.e. it is cast at the commencement of spirit combat, and require sthat you beat the spirit down to zero MP before the Control Spell runs out. "They cannot do anything with the possessed body, and are as unhappy about this state as is the victim. Which is why they usually don't attack in spirit combat..." Amounts to the same thing pretty much. "Such as Malia's Command Disease Spirit? Subere's Attack Soul? Or what?" No, Spirit Block and Spirit Screen. Mistress Helga, my comrade here has been taken over bya foul spirit of Soul Waste. Help him Helga summons a Healing spirit. The Healing spirit has a POW of 13, the Disease Spirit a POW of 16. Helga casts Spirit Scree 6 on the Healing Spirit (I won't even use Spirit Block, since you will argue that it is not always available). The Disease spirit now has a 5% chance of affecting the Healing Spirit. The Helaing Spirit has a 35% chance of hitting the Disease Spirit. Not much doubt who will win is there? "ALso in the temple the Spirit Block must be ready. It's a Common divine spell, so only available at major temples..." Fine, Spirit Screen will do nicely. "> I seem to remember an old WF that stated that gods do know the minds of their > Runelevel worshippers. I think it may have been in the same issue that spoke > of DI and Divination. Please look this up." OK. WF Issue 12 page 19. "DIVINATION & DIVINE INTERVENTION" by Greg Stafford. "The god is incapable of invading a person's mind [d.c. - invading is different from being invited in]. The knowledge which the Rune Lords and Rune Priests give to the god must be volunteered by the Rune level. It is possible to keep private thoughts private from the god." So far seems to favour you...but: "IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO KEEP ONE'S THOGUHTS ABOUT THE GOD PRIVATE, FOR POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE. A deity will know when a Rune Master loses faith, plots against him, or whatever" Capitalizations are my emphasis. It is possible that Greg only thinks RUne levels are subject to the kind of scrutiny I am suggesting. I believe that the gods would give a cursory look at all Initiates. But in any case, the argument that only Truth Cults can know such information is put to paid by Greg's writing. "Yes. Look who has them, and more important: look who has not. And Lhankor Mhy is the cult which has the most famous traitors (Irripi Ontor, Treack Markhor, uncounted God Learners...). Proof against your rabid devotedness, Devin." Greg's writing certainly implies that other non-Truth oriented gods CAN read the minds and emotions of Rune Levels at teh very least, which is a giant step beyond what you have proposed. I choose to carry that step one step further, which seems logical IMO. Proof for my rabid devotedness, Joerg. "What he reads in the minds will hardly be different from that..." But he ignores gossip and rumours. "How would he find these?" The god is especially attuned to thoughts and emotions conerning him. These are the only one's the initiate is required to set forth. Greg's writing supports this sort of selectiveness. "Why should he, as long as the person in question faithfully fulfils its cultic duties, and feeds the deity well?" Because the Illuminate might be plotting to perform some nefarious deed. "The deity has lost the free will to reject any worshipper who obeys all the rules, whatever the worshippers mindset." I refuse to believe the deities are hobbled THAT much. I may be swayed to say that the gods are nothing but big spirits, but I refuse to believe they are nothing but big BOUND spirits. "So the god only would sense if the worshipper seriously resented the deity? Such a worshipper wouldn't turn up at the service..." If I'm a Krarsht worshipper, and I need a Flight Spell (or two) to assassinate someone about whom I have a contract, and all I have to do to get such a spell is become an Orlanth worshipper and do all of the mumbo-jumbo correctly, then why the heck wouldn't I turn up at worship service? "Devin seems to think that the worshippers would call upon the deity to read their minds. A strange thing to do, IMO." Not so strange if the worshipper IS devoted and has nothing to hide AND wants somethign in return from the deity. In this case, what has the worshipper to lose? Bryan writes: "Question: What evidence is there that Orlanth personally manages every aspect of his cult? For all we know, it's a sort of autonomic function of godhood that a deity can intervene in if he so wishes, kind of like breathing or having to piss. Can it be proven, objectively, that this is not the case?" Can it be proven vice versa? "Orlanth can answer weather questions 100% of the time. This is because he is the big weather god. That doesn't necessarily mean he's any damn good at anything else." Quoting from WF Issue 12, Greg's article on page 19: "Gods are able to divine where their worshippers are and also general trends atking place within their own realms. In this case the air is the realm of Orlanth...However, even this ability does not mean that Orlanth can tell you everything which is happening that is in contact with the air. He may be able to tell your character that an army is approaching but not necesswrily whose army, how big it is, or how fast it is moving." Thus, while Orlanth may not be able to know fine details about a thing, he can pretty much sense things anywhere within his realm (i.e. air). This implies not omniscience, but at least a widespread and even scattered consciousness. In any case, I did postulate that during HHD, Orlanth might also send spirits, servants, the Air equivalent of angels, Windfists, Flintslingers, et al to enter the souls of Initiates and check for devotedness. Regards, Devin Cutler devinc@aol.com --------------------- From: JARDINE@RMCS.CRANFIELD.AC.UK Subject: Sick Sorcerors Familiars: Message-ID: <9407150902.AA03938@Sun.COM> Date: 15 Jul 94 09:00:00 GMT X-RQ-ID: 5168 Hi All Here's a horrible stunt I pulled in my RQ campaign. At one time I ran Griffin Mountain, but for RQ3 and using Griffin Island quite a bit. Anyway for a quick history: 1) Lots of trivial things like the Orlanthi showing off an flying over a gorp geyser just as it went off! 2) Meet Firshala and only the non-aligned sorceror in the party would have anything to do with her! Thus, Firshala's religion now allows sorcerors... 3) With the aid of the SIZ 1 (reduce SIZ spell) flying sorceror they climbed Griffin Mountain and looted a certain gross sword (aka Stormbringer) off a bunch of Griffins. 4) Get bored and get involved in a very nasty seige with the attackers using magically controlled Gorgosaurs (a naughty sorceror did this). In the end the characters were forced to flee the city riding sylphs. This looked fairly impressive since one of them was on a Bison and another on a rhino! 5) Decide to get revenge on the .... sorceror who caused all the trouble. This sorceror was known as Halcyon Var Encorth (he also happen to be the Lunar ruler of the region). 6) Small 6 man hit squad murders everyone in the Lunar Temple and then goes on to kill Lunar ruler. The PCs used every dirty trick in the book including truestone tipped arrows and an adamentite spike (they were asked to give this to the dwarves later as it was needed to hold a cog wheel in place!). It was a close run thing but the Orlanthi butched Halcyon's Stoor Worm familiar using that bloody sword (the Humakti put truesword on it to complement the bladesharp 10!). The elf stuck Halcyon full of Truestone arrows, and the others ran interferance desparately trying to parry Halcyon's Staff. So the victors lootedhis Palace and legged it again on Sylphs. Unfortunately they were a little slap dash and neglected to take Halcyon's head or heart with them. He was resurrected... Much later he appeared riding his new familiar and gave the party a really rough time. His new familiar was a Dream Dragon. Idecided that he found one with fixed intelligence (10) so for 1 point of INT he got quite a cute familiar. Well I wouldn't have allowed a PC to do it and obviously it was tough for even and arch baddy, but it was all worth while for the looks on their faces. There were a number of DIs used that day and even so at the end there were two dead PCs and one ressurrection spell and they were in the middle of nowhere! Lewis --------------------- From: goroh@fee.unicamp.br (Andre de Oliveira Fernandes) Subject: 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 times the World Champion Message-ID: <199407151135.IAA01852@diamante.fee.unicamp.br> Date: 15 Jul 94 05:35:34 GMT X-RQ-ID: 5169 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 times the World Champion That's it! Shut up Italia, we're coming for it!!! World Cup USA is OURS!!! BRAAAAZZZZIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLL !!!!!!!! ooooopsss... Sorry guys... Gotta go to Rio for the weekend. See you all later. BTW, Can somebody explain me how is Trollball played? --------------------- From: SYS_RSH%PV0A@hobbes.cca.rockwell.com (Like, I wanna be a veterinarian, coz I luv children...) Subject: Firshala Message-ID: <01HEQGN42KWI8Y52UC@hobbes.cca.rockwell.com> Date: 15 Jul 94 07:07:52 GMT X-RQ-ID: 5170 Arg. Well, Joerg's Firshala example has prompted me to ask you all: What have *you* done with Firshala? I'm curious as to what your fertile little minds came up with in the course of campaigning in the Elder Wilds. Feel free to reply by E-mail if you don't wish to clutter up the daily. --Scott