I'd appreciate it if you'd try to insert some white space every other couple of lines... New-lines are cheap... Look at the following rehash of the three examples from your message, and comment on its readability...
Some comments on the term "spirit combat".
This is a way of gamemechanically express a competition between two spirits, a contest. Although it seems like a duel in game terms it may not seem like that within the context of Glorantha.
A Humakti wanting to learn some spirit magic may perceive the event as a duel - a duel with a silent stranger he never has seen before, that seems to go on forever, time looses it meaning, and the pain of his blows...it is a CLEAN pain, not like any pain the Humakti has felt in any mundane duel.
And at the end, when the stranger falls, seemingly unable to fight, he speaks for the first time. "Take my shield" he wispers. Dazed, the initiate obeys - and is shaken up to reality. The Sword presses a shield-shaped amulet in his hand..the focus for his Protection-3.
An "Asrelia" initiate in my version of Esrolia may feel it quite differently...
She has just resently succeeded in becoming part of the Esrolian version of Rotary... she boldly asks the priestess to be able to learn some magic, and she nods, takes the fee while the initiate, following custom, explains that this is too small a fee for such a great service, but subtlely indicating the opposite.
Well, they go together into the shrine, and the initiate is dumped in an antechamber, told to wait while the priestess speaks to the Earth Mother.
After a period of listless waiting, while the priestess is first chanting, then talking normally, almost chatting, in Earthspeech (which the poor initiate does no, altogether not too well), the drapery to the antechamber is drawn aside and a small wrinkled woman, looking more than anything else like a shrunken troll-hag, enters. She stares down on the initiate and asks if she is the one who wants magic. When the initiate stutters "yes", she starts to speak about prices, the initiate replies she has already paid. "Not to Us" the hag replies, and states a ridculous sum.
And the two start haggling. Like most Esrolian bargaining, it consists to 90% of Avoidng The Subject, speaking about grandchildren, the prospective harvest, the political situation, etc. The initiate gets more and more exited, at least when she finds herself in the position that it seems like she will be able to convince the little lady that she already has paid for that magic to the priestess and finally get out of this mess. She struggles, she does all she can, but the tides turn.
Finally, the little hag rises, dusts off her dress, and says:
"Thinking more closely of it, I have another business to attend
to. Goodbye" and leaves. The initiates slumps, dazed... and
when she is awkened by the priestess, she is politely told that
she has failed....better return another time.
Consider, at last, a merry young
Orlanthian lad from up that country above Esrolia, where all good guys
come from :-), who has a hard time getting any girl to pay any attention
to him, since they do not seem to understand that beauty is on the inside.
Well, he hears someone talking about this wee magic that makes a man beautiful, and having ensured that it has nothing to do with the Trickster, but with Drogarsi (hope'm getting the name right here), God of Wardances, who taught a similar trick to King Orlanth in Godtime, he goes on to ask his Storm Voice about he would like such a spell.
The Voice frowns and says that is really for lawspeakers and chieftains and other thanes, not for farming boys who does not even think of bringing something to their priest who spends their precious time explaining ancient lore to mentioned farming boys. The lad turns scarlet and adds that actually there was that calve he received as a gift from his uncle on his initiation -it has just begun to give milk and it is such great milk, and he had just forgot that his mother sent a cheese of that milk to the Storm Voice's wife, and will he not taste it? The priest brightens, asks the lad to produce the cheese and asks his wife to get some bread and apples to go with it.
Now, the lad fumbles on stating that he thought of giving that cow to his mother-in-law when he gets one, but currently it seems like he will have no wife, so why not use the cow as a gift of forgiveness to the priest? The Storm Voice does justice to his name and laughs aloud. "The cow is almost too much, but I would not mind its first offspring - and some cheese now and then. When I think of it, there is this godi named Tylle the Red among those folk up the vale - yes, I know they sometimes steal our sheep, but they never hurts the shepherd likes those damned Rangvars. He may tell you how to get the spell - say hallo from me, and you better show him any godi-gift at once."
After much painstaking negotiation he succeeds in entering the neighbours lands and presents the godi with a sheep: "with compliments from Asjon the shepherd for his preserved skull". The godi keeps the lad occupied by talking sheeps until he feel he is tender enough to slink out of his presence, and goes to the temple.
A little sooner, when the lad is eating his porridge-gift (no meat in the house at the moment) and nervously wonderng whether this Tylle will cheat him,the godi puts in his head and says "Come here, young man. There is a sound my old ears cannot quite hear" When the lad gets to the door he thinks the godi must be deaf if he cannot hear the sound of bagpipes from the forest. "Get to that piper, lad. There is magic there, of the kind you wnat".
The lad goes out in the forest, and soon finds the piper, a warrior fully armed who stops playing when he sees the lad. "Aha, you want to dance? Come, my brother, someone wants to dance you out of this forest!" He laughs, and a young man with a evil grin, only wearing warrior's woad, comes out of the forest. "Like to jig with me? he says, and our lad grimly nods. And they begin to jig. The lad has never got much training in dancing (guess why) but puts his whole self into it, and somehow succeeds to reduce the dancing imp to a panting heap. "Well done!" the brother says and stops piping.
"Remember the tune you danced to! It is magic indeed." And after
that, the lad knows Glamour-4 - the focus is no physical tune, but
he must sing, play or whistle that tune to cast his spell (and,
short gamespeak break, succeed in the skill used).
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