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, 20 Aug 1994, part 4 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: T.J.Minas@soton.ac.uk (T.J.Minas) Subject: DP Magic, Rune spells (again!!) general bibble... Message-ID: <199408191431.PAA03193@mail.soton.ac.uk> Date: 19 Aug 94 14:31:32 GMT X-RQ-ID: 5789 Once more unto the Breach, dear friends! OK, first up, Dragon Pass magical units/effects: 3 main groupings here, they are a) The Lunar units; b) The Sartar Magical union; and c) The Independents magical units. a) The Lunars. With access to all the elementals except Sylphs, Lunar magic, Sorcery, and strange Lunar Divine spells, these units are easy to see in RQ terms. They are bands of cooperating initiates in the Red Goddess cult, or special Lunar Cults (eg Crater Makers), who can be sorcerors, Shamans, Rune Priests, or whatever combination of these they want. Anyone REALLY want me to expand on that? b) The Sartar units. Exanmple 1: The Stormwalkers. These are a collection of priests of Orlanth and various other storm/air/rain deities (Heler, Vadrus, Valind? etc) and Elementals and Spirits of the appropriate type. Their special ability is to call a flood, which I posit they do by casting huge amounts of Increase Cloud Cover and then Rain spells as necessary. This, of course, burns up their Rune magic for the period of the game, thus "removing" their spirit. Example 2: The Windchildren. These really are a group of Windchild priests etc of Orlanth/storm deities. Remember that windchildren have an innate +50 bonus to control Sylphs, hence their spirit counter (The Sylphs) literally is a whole buch of Sylphs. Example 3: The Tribal magicians (Flash Jak, And-jay, Krise). These are a load of Shamans, Orlanthi acolytes and priests from the Pol-joni or other nomad tribes. They use lots of spirits and a few elementals. c) The Independents. The earth shaker's Cult. Unsurprisingly, a load of Maran Gor priests with all the cult special spells, as well as plenty of gnomes. Their special ability again "uses up" their spirit, ie they have cast their divine magic for the period of the game. A few notes when looking at all this. The Units with spirits (ie true Magician units) tend to come from elemental cults using elementals and very powerful spells that affect the weather/land etc. The weird collections of people that Argrath managed to arrange into his magical units are a real bunch of strange guys, as it says somewhere, crazed priests, wandering monks, outlawed sorcerors etc. Argrath's leadership abilities and conciliation has obviously allowed some saner minds to work out interesting combinations of how to combine all these effects. Note that there is no suggestion of a Solar magical unit (the Sun Dome Templars have no spirit), and whilst some of the Lunar units may have Solar priests, I submit that they do not rely on Sunspear etc. Ditto the Humakti. The Swordbrothers unit gets to use Defensive Spirit magic, but I doubt that that really includes much Sever Spirit etc. Such spells probably add more to the CF of a unit, rather than its MgF. Generally, I think the MgF represents the level of Battle Magic available to units, their POW and level of stored MPs, availability of spells like Shield etc. Magician units are unusual because they can project their attack across a significant distance, usually via discorporation, sorcery (Or Lunar magic)(or even a proposed Divine spell of Ranging!?) and elementals and spirits. Remember that both sides are pretty well prepared for this war, and so have been sacrificing for the spells they need, making matrices and binding enchantments, summoning spirits and elementals to their bindings etc for quite a while before hand. Then you control a spirit, mindlink with it, send it off to scout around and find the enemy, then use its senses to cast your spells at the targets. To deliver elementals to distant targets, use birds (your familiars?) to carry the binding enchantments nearby, then release the elementals and control them via the senses of your familiar etc. Second up: Rune spell renewal. A couple of related points here, first, Sanctify. Like all Ritual spells, this lasts 1 hr/pt, just long enough to cast a Worship (X) spell if you are away from home, or to do things like cast Spell teaching (which can only be done in a Sanctified or Holy area). It's not really that useful a spell, a temple, IMO, becomes automatically "Sanctified" once it is established with a Worship service dedicating the Temple to the appropriate deity. Remember, Praxian tribes have no fixed temples, and probably make do with a totemic object as the focus (kind of like a drumhead battlefield service, where the drums serve as the altar), and their priests cast Sanctify and the worship occurs. Then, as long as the "altar" remains in place, that area is a temple to Waha (say) until the tribe moves on, and the altar is disassembled. So, although the priests Sanctify ran out after an hour or two, the area remains "Holy" to Waha until the tribe moves. Second point here, on regaining your spells. IMO (and this is an impression gained from reading the rules and from a discussion with Sandy Petersen a few years ago) if the temple you are praying at doesn't offer the spell you want, you can't regain it there. IE it's no use praying at your Humakti shrine to regian your Sever Spirit, all it's got is Truesword and Worship Humakt! This is another argument against Rune Power, by the way. It also limits CA Resurrections. AND means that if, whilst out adventuring, you cast Sanctify and Worship deity to try and regain some Rune Spells, sorry, you have a Site (in terms of temple size) which offers no spells thus you can't renew any. Of course, you DID manage to attend a Worship ceremony on your God(esse)s HHD in difficult circumstances, so He/She/It will probably look favourably upon you. Third up: Issaries/Etyries/Genert. I guess this is mostly for Sandy. How come, if the priest in CoP was Etyries, he had to fulfil an Issaries curse? Is this God Learner monomything imposing equality of Etyries and Issaries? Or real proof that Etyries is a daughter of Issaries, and thus bound by his strictures? Or what? Any answers, anybody? A final comment: Whoever said everything had to be on dice rolls? MGF rules, remember? So, to whoever it was (sorry, didn't note your name) complaining about our 3 heroes coming back off adventure, and only 2 of them regaining their spells at the HHD ceremony (because the 3rd guy failed his roll), why are you making them roll? If you (as GM, and therefore their deities representative in the region) fell they deserve their spells back, let them have them back. After all, the POW x 3 roll is an abstraction to represent the deities attention etc. (Remember, when you become a Priest, you are supposed to make a POW x 3 roll, the "Test of Holiness"? That's a GM call, really, many times I would expect a GM to be able to judge if a player really deserved to become a priest or not, rather than have him roll lucky (or unlucky!) dice) Enough! Bye all Tim Minas (I do not want to be God Learnered with Tim Leask!) ---------------------