Re: Animists and their religious beliefs

From: Wulf Corbett <wulfc_at_...>
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 09:48:50 -0000

> David posted Wanasgard on the rules list, but it raises a
> cultural problem I'm having with Animists in Hero Wars.
> Wanasgard is a fun character but if you look at him,
> there is hardly any mention of his religion and
> this seems to me the general feeling with animists.

Problem with Animist writeups (as opposed to characters) is that most don't have to state what Tradition they belong to, they get no real choice - saying Wanasgard is a male Grazer tells you what tradition he belongs to, stating it explicitly would waste precious words (although personally I'd prefer it was stated), and they get little extra benefits (no Initiate/Devotee status) unless they're shamans. Praxians will worship Waha/Eiritha unless they're unusual, so you could assume that, with your narrator's permission. Animists, anyway, in my mind, tend to be less 'religious', more 'as one with' - they treat spirits as part of everyday life, not wonders & mysteries - most Grazers & Praxians travel regularly to the spirit world and deal directly with the powers they will be using, they are friends and allies. The Great Spirits, naturally, are another thing, and, yes, maybe a few words of dedicated reverance (wrong word for an animist...) would be suitable.

> on Waha and Eiritha in Tales of the Reaching Moon where
> the whole life of the Praxian tribes revolved around
> their worship of Waha and Eiritha.

But they didn't exactly revere their battle magic spells, did they? And those are the spirits they now interact with on a daily basis. But Waha, Eiritha, etc. I agree should be given some due respect - personally I haven't seen a Praxian writeup so far, nor a Hsunchen one, and those are the animists mose dependant on their Great Spirits (Grazers have a pretty good chance of survival without magic, barring dealing with enemies).  

> Now I'm sure that it's not the intention of Hero Wars to
> turn animists into simple consumers of spirits, but how
> do people play the religious relationship between
> spirits and their worshippers to emphasise how important
> they are in their lives.

I'm also of the opinion that animists have been given a very raw deal so far, but mostly just due to lack of raw material. We never had animist cultures in RQ (sure, they had shamans, but they just used the same rules & writeups as any theist), and we haven't yet got a good, Gloranthan, handle on them yet. Kolat will probably be the first fully-described HW animistic tradition, but even that isn't a culture, just an anomoly in a theist culture.

Wulf

Powered by hypermail