Re: Again with undead questions

From: Richard Hayes <richard_hayes29_at_Lbcx3rIZOwpqRv0NQs7l-FdxV2JwAwLi2_Dkx8Q3UPoYAm0YRJjw0VSZ-Aa0>
Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:50:34 +0000 (GMT)


Whilst the cult of Humakt is not in favour of resurrection and forbids the resurrection of its own members, I always understood it to stop short of wanting to kill a resurrected Orlanthi on the basis that they are undead, (perhaps especially if the individual concerned was until recently a friend and kinsman, or a comrade-in-arms). Though they may have other more personal reasons in individual cases.
 

I do not therefore think that a 'properly' resurrected character would detect as undead, if someone used magic to detect whether or not something was undead. In old RQ terms, this means using the Resurrection Runespell, or equivalents like Recover Spirit and Seal Spirit, (but not using the Thanatari Summon Specific Guardian spell, to reunite the guardian's soul with its old body) .
 

Nor do I think that Humakti would hunt down practitioners of ancestor worship who summoned and/or bound the spirits of their ancestors to objects no the material plane on the basis that they were practising necromancy. Whilst I could be spectacularly wrong, I understood that the cult of Humakt was indifferent, rather than virulently hostile, to 'mainstream' ancestor worship.
 

Yet surely they would be hostile to summoned ancestor spirits (and the spirit-talkers who summon them) if those spirits appeared to them to be Undead?
 

>From this I infer that not all spirits of the dead are Undead.
 

My old house rules of whether or not something is undead (i.e. whether it (i) detects as undead if you cast detect undead (or equivalent) on it; and (ii) whether it is vulnerable to the Turn Undead spell, were something like, it is Undead if:

It has its own magic points but does not regenerate its magic points naturally over time (because the hallmark of having a proper soul is that you regenerate your own magic points); and/or It is the spirit of a dead thing in a physical body that isn't alive (it was reanimated after death or its body is otherworldly and was never alive in the normal sense to begin with) Any definition of Undead probably also needs to relate to what is/is not caught by Detect Spirit and what is/is not caught by Detect Life? For example, elementals (and some  'demons' from other planes) have bodies and hit points -- but it seems more intuitive that they should be caught by Detect Spirit than by Detect Life or Detect Undead
 

Spirits of the dead were 'embodied' enough to be undead if they had enough of a physical to form to have hit points, but an allied or bound spirit in an animal familiar was not undead because it was a spirit that regenerated its own magic points that was possessing the body of a living thing. (Possessed people don't detect as undead, do they?)
 

Wraithes are undead, but then in old RQ terms they were corporeal enough to have hit points (but also 'spirit' enough to come under Detect Spirit too). Ditto Redcaps and Whirlvishes. The first limb of the definition also made Lamiae and Hellions undead, (but I don't think this troubled the Humakti in my Glorantha at all).
 

In my games, ghosts were usually spirits rather than undead because they were disembodied and (usually) regenerarted their own magic points. Ghosts were bound to a place or object, but had some freedom to move outside their bidings as long as they stayed close to them. Though subjectively many people could see ghosts as undead (For example, the ghost of Alain, (a fallen Humakti Rune Lord, and therefore something which ordinarily should not be), is described as 'undead' in the Travels of Biturian Varosh, for example).
 

As a kind of bound spirit, a ghost could also be 'freed' by physically destroying its bindings. However individual spirits would not necessarily 'give up the ghost' just because their bindings had been broken. Some would go gently into that good night, whereas others might carry on regardless, or change sides out of gratitude at being released, or act as neutral spirits (willing to serve at a price or leave), or even become Gaki ... Possibly as a result of playing too much Cthulhu, it seemed right to give ghosts this unpredicatble edge
 

My Glorantha also had Gaki (a la Land of the Ninja). These were sort-of ghosts (in that they were the spirits of dead people trapped on the material plane) but they were 'bound' to their ruling insane obsession, rather than to any physical thing. Because they were not bound to a physical thing, they could possess people in order to try (unsuccessfully) to satisfy their obsession . I tended to see Gaki as spirits rather than undead, and I let them be affected by Free Ghost (or Exorcism), but not by Turn Undead
 

Humakti didn't like ghosts and saw ghosts (other than possibly those they had made themselves, using volunteers who chose to serve the cult after death? Never really thought about the deletion of their ghost-making spell after RQ3) as profoundly wrong, but they couldn't usually 'turn' them. I did let Humakti turn Thanatari heads though, because Thanatari heads were the embodied spirits of the dead and because, in terms of the cult's runes, it just seemed right to treat these creations of Thanatari magic as undead.
 

Incidentally what is the Gloranthan myth (or myths) for the origin of the Lamia? In the absence of anything official I know about, I would probably be inclined to write them up as being at the heart of the cult of Seseine (chaos goddess of temptation/seduction), and say that they are mortal women who undergo a ritual transformation upon attaining rune level, rather as Draugr do (in the cult of Urain), or as vampires once did (in the old Cults of Terror version of Vivamort). Though I also wondered about linking them into the myths of the Serpent-kings of Seshnela ... Or why not both at the same time?
 

Though I'm not sure I don't prefer the idea of the Serpent-kings being more like the Lloigor from Call of Cthulhu -- living on as powerful,twisted disembodied spirits that seldom manifest physically -- only with more serpentine motifs
 

Richard Hayes

From: xavierllobet <xavierllobet_at_WrIeY5ERl1LXZgP0fb-kTYenZ9SEfFPZx6ImFqNVPaiFAGzRVp27uplREYyLMJz5rdZEZuMnQ17_tiFV4YASng.yahoo.invalid> Subject: Again with undead questions
To: WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, 24 April, 2009, 11:26 PM

Hi everyone,

Are wraiths considered "undead"? Are they anathema to Humakti? Would they be affected by "Turn undead" spells? And ghosts? What do you think? :)

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