>From: "Roderick and Ellen Robertson" <rjremr_at_...>
>
>That's not *quite* the same as enchanting, more like "Borrowing a mythical
>aspect". There's also "Grab a Spirit in that has what you want and stuff it
>into your widget" - also called "fetishes".
I don't want to denigrate the question, but it seems to me that the idea of "enchanting magic items" comes from the rather bankrupt tradition of most fantasy RPGs. That is, if you ask somebody what it means to have enchanted something in those games, you largely get handwaving. "Oh, you do some mystical stuff, and embed some magic power in the item. It isn't until you look at the real source of the magic that you find a rich underpinning.
So, as Rory says, with animism all magic is done with "enchanted magic items" in that it's all actually spirits in charms and fetishes, etc. How does one get a fetish? One goes to the spirit world, and finds the proper spirit, and puts it into the item.
So the question is for other magic types, what's going on there with magic items. Well, for theism, I posit that there are few such "magic items" that are not emulations of some item that belongs to a god or the like. What else would a believer in a pantheon procure? He wouldn't go and get spirits (well, Orlanthi might get Kolating spirits, but you get the point). If they're theists, they're probably getting theist sorts of magic items.
What we're really talking about here is the "western" tradition of wizardry. Having to do with real world legends like the golem, for instance. How does somebody in that tradition go about making a magic sword? Well, sure, there's the case where the school actually mentions such an ability directly. But one gets the feeling that these are mostly temporary blessings. Good for one week, perhaps, or just this battle. That's not to say that such a spell can't be used to create a permanent item, perhaps with a ritual (and cemented with HP, of course). Just that this is only one interpretation of the powers in question. See the write-up of the Black Horse County wizards from HW for a good example of such powers that are probably intended to be long-term.
But even in those cases, and more generally, there's always another way to create a "magic item." Which is to put a guardian in it. I think this describes many magic items well. Obviously it fits in the animism model, since that's very similar to how all magic is done. But think about the magic theist altar, with it's daimone in it.
For wizardry, we're talking about embedding essences in something. An essence being just "magic stuff" if you will, this makes things seem pretty straightforward. Want a flaming sword? Get an essence of flame to be a guardian in the sword. In this case the "hero band" in question could be as small as just the wielder. It's also interesting because to make it flame up, you'll have to "attune" to the essence likely. Could involve a contest something like the ones for attuning to any landscape essence.
Generally speaking, look to the mythic underpinning of what the character is trying to do, and the answer will become more clear. Sure, if you want you can have whole sets of abilities like "Enchant Swords" and such. As part of some artificier school of wizardry. But for a wizard who isn't in such a school, is he out of luck in creating magic items? How do unique items get created? Well, for wizardry, perhaps a wizard finds a mundane world essence, and puts it into what he's working on. Heck, this is what summoning elementals is from the book, just on a more permanent basis. Instead of imbuing some water with an undine, you get the undine to take up residence in a flask, and there you have your everful flask magic item.
Every Adept does this. They go to the Saint plane, and they attune a grimoire to a node there. "Talismans" are magic items, no? If my talisman is a wand, and I use it to shoot fire... that's not a magic item? Just because it doesn't fit the D&D model of being something other than the wizards normal spell casting ability? I mean just rearange your notion of HQ "spells" for a moment, and Wizards do nothing but create and use magic items. You open the otherworld, find a node, connect it to the item, and, Voila, you can use magic through that item.
Some orders make their sword the talisman for all of their spells. Every one of them makes a "magic sword." I'm quite sure that animists are convinced that wizardry is just contacting some very odd spirits, and that they think that talismans are just fetishes. In this way, Animism and Wizardry are very much the same, it seems to me.
Then there's tapping essence... let's take that paragon of bad guys, Sauron, and put the one ring into HQ game terms. Sauron goes to Mount Doom, certainly a source of hellfire essence. He takes that malicious essence (if there is such a thing), and then, unthinkably, taps most of his own essence into the ring along with it. Creating a massively powerful thing, but one that holds his ability to maintain a shell in the mundane world in it.
Take the movie the "Dark Crystal." How did the skecksis power their damaged version of the crystal (no longer able to draw power from the essence of light that once powered it)? They drained the poor denizens of their land. In the scene in which they do this, they even refer to this as draining their essence.
This is vampirism, too, no? Maintaining a mortal shell through draining the essence of others, or tapping, to use the Glorantha term. I'm not sure precisely how the Vivamort cult works, but this sounds plausible at least. How does Delecti animate corpses with his powers of sorcery? Sounds like they're animated with simple essences for the "zombie" type (the dancers seem more like empowered cultists).
Glorantha is already swimming in magic... I don't think that it needs some "extra" unexplained source of magic. Work with what's already there, and I think you'll find what you need. Even if my ideas are wrong, or just unappealing to you, I think that you can find some description of how it works from the loads of magical ideas that already exist. When I started playing, I had this exact same question. After playing hundreds of sessions, I learned that the rules for this are already present and function better than any other set of magic rules for this purpose that I've ever seen.
Mike
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