I agree with Peter that there is a big difference between the philosophy of the Gark cult, and a school of sorcerors who specialise in making zombies. Presumably there must also be a big difference in the way the two cults operate.
Equally I quite like the idea of a Second Age society of sorcerors in Pamaltela which made zombies for manual labour, which may or may not still be around in some form in the Third Age. (The idea was triggered by the posting a few weeks or months ago about using the Nontraya cult in Pamaltela as a campaign villain).
Whilst other explanations are certainly possible, a Second Age cult could credibly be the work of a Godlearner sorceror who researched and reconstructed the magic of the existing Gark cult and manipulated it to his own ends. However for the cult to be convincing it needs more depth.
I don't think the existing St Gark cult mixes Divine Magic and Sorcery like some Stygian Sect (indeed I'm not even sure that Stygian or other henotheist sects still do this). It would therefore make more sense for the school to venerate the sorceror who cloned Gark's magic rather than Gark himself. Apart from anything else, surely the person debased enough to come up with this kind of idea would also want to take the credit for themselves, rather than to confer all the glory upon the pagan god whose magic he cloned?
Secondly the cult probably needs some of rationale to justify itself to itself. Maybe it teaches that the zombies feel no pain, hunger or thirst, so it is a kindness to put the worst sort of menial back-breaking labour into the hands of the mindless undead. Given its Godlearner origins, maybe this cult justified itself by saying that the early Godlearners in Pamaltela needed conquered locals as labour-- the higher castes need a lot of 'farmers' to support them -- and maybe easy-to-control zombies were one way of squaring the circle?
Or maybe the school teaches, in terms, that zombies consume far less natural resources than living labourers which enables humans to live, and thrive, in harmony with nature in environments which might otherwise be too poor or hostile to support them in the style to which they had become accustomed? (I even wondered about people using zombies to minimise their impact on the environment so as to appease the powerful Pamaltelan Aldryami, but as undead are anathema to Aldryami I couldn't see this working)
Alternatively maybe a cult could use zombie-making sparingly, as a harsh tool of justice like the Sable rite to turn a human into a Sable that is documented in the Praxian issue of The Book of Drastic Resolutions? Though this would be such a departure from the spirit of the original cult that it might work better for another zombie cult entirely?
Particularly in the time of the Six-legged Empire, I could even see such a cult justifying its actions in racialist terms. though this is quite an unGloranthan thing to do.
I don't think this kind of thing could never be handled appropriately in a game setting -- I do not, for example, believe that Pagan Publishing in any way endorsed Nazi ideology through their write-up of the Karotechia in Delta Green (Call of Cthulhu meets the X-Files) -- though not everyone sees "stomping Nazi butt" (a phrase which I believe was used in Delta Green's write-up on the Karotechia), even in a fantasy world, as good, clean fun. A non-racial rationale would probably be preferable. Cue last year's debate on Social Darwinism ...
Richard Hayes
From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_eGuNiHNjyYAS4NIfZ7KlNUmapmtsW6b-WnVN1qxJEArxuYPf1HVxo3u2Ji_zQUZ_l3eRMepvh-bxQ7Z63HGPA1fqGWHtTA.yahoo.invalid>
To: WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, 1 December 2011, 18:54
Subject: Re: chaos mages/sorcerers
On 12/2/2011 2:32 AM, Richard Hayes wrote:
>
> FWIW MRQ suggested that Gark was a theistic cult, but that in the Second Age there was also a sorcerous society which had replicated much of their magic. So whether or not Gark's cult is sorcerous, one could certainly create Gark-esque magic from the Essence Plane.
>
I didn't find the MRQ treatment of Gark to be at all convincing.
There's a huge difference between the philosophy of Gark and just
creating a zombie for general labour.
--Peter Metcalfe
Yahoo! Groups Links
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]