This is Good Plan, and should (especially) apply to shamans, too. This might help encourage the sort of (mundane) pilgrimage someone was peeved at the lack of.
> > > Why don't the spirits of the newly-slain attack their killers to posess
> > > them? Or is this a common practice?
Me:
> > Not very common, I don't think; I reckon it depends on just how peeved
> > the spirit is
> I think many folks would be Very peeved under the circumstances (having just
> been killed an' all).
But seemingly, only people who are Really, Really Peeved (due to being killed by treachery, or in a particularly gruesome way, being improperly buried (or whatever), or being a particularly vindictive bugger in the first place) form as Ghosts. Maybe being dead gives one a new philosophical outlook on such matters.
> I'm still not too happy with the idea that every human spirit has the
> spirit-combat/posession abilities of a ghost.
I don't think anyone has suggested this. While they are the same sort of "thing" as a ghost, it doesn't mean that they need be in a position to go around posessing things right after they've died. Frex, a newly dead dude may be at MP 0, from the trauma of being severed from his body.
> > But the very act of binding such a spirit probably _would_ force the
> > spirit to become a ghost;
> Not a function of the binding enchantment per se, just one of those abilities
> which becomes available when the spirit is bound?
Hardly an ability, more of an unfortunate side-effect. Since we were talking about binding _to a fetch_, I repeat my previous query: if binding enchantments are to be "individualised", what about fetches? In any case, I think any spirit of the dead forced or inclined to remain behind on the mundane plane will "turn into" a ghost (or rather, start to exhibit the characteristics of the rule book ghost), so bindings are not really an issue.
> > I think spirits are in fact compelled to Go West, and
> > must have some strong reason to be willing and able to resist this.
> Why do the dead have to leave their self-determinism behind with their bodies?
Given that most spirits _do_ depart from the mundane world, and pretty much asap, according to most belief, they must surely either be being acted on by some external force, or simply behaving according to cultural preconceptions of what they should be doing. An Orlanthi, say, thinks he has an appointment with Daka Fal in seven days time, and a long way to walk. (And he knows what a stitch-up in absentia trials usually are...) Trying to possess someone is prolly an Evil act to most, so yet another predisposition to overcome.
Alex.
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #25
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