Sez Sandy:
> I suggest that in order to take one of the mega-geasa, you
> must meet fairly stringent requirements. For instance, to take the
> GIFT: "I swear to kill Alex Ferguson, root and branch." not only do
> you receive the rather alarming GEAS: "I shall die, accomplishing
> this task." but also you must first prove that Alex Ferguson is
> dishonorable, a liar, and a non-kinsman. The third may not be too
> tough
Specially as Humakt has rituals whose express purpose is ceasing to be someone's kin...
> but the first two, you might have to work at -- it's not just
> a matter of finding witnesses -- I propose that you must sucker Alex
> into performing a dishonorable act, and a lie, in your presence.
This is broadly the sort of thing I had in mind. Assuming the relevant myth is indeed of the "Humakt expunges treacherous/lying no-account" sort, the important thing is to "get to" the correct part of mythspace in order to establish you have the right target. You can either do this mundanely, as Sandy suggests, or by more ritual heroquest, effectively going back to the mythic echo of some previous misdemenour and incorporating that as one of the sites of your Giftquest. Ritual quests are of course automatically "balanced", due to the principle of equivalence, or whatever it was that Greg called his kludge that you always ended up with a similarly-powered in an oppositional heroquest.
> In addition, some of the geasa might require a number of
> Humakti to take them at once. One suicide bomber may not be hard to
> find, but fifteen might be another matter. Also, perhaps only Swords
> can take certain geasa, etc.
This is good to a point, but would still, taken by itself, have a big Gloranthopolitical effect if it were this (relatively) easy to expunge a head of state, or some other high-heidyin, at the cost of a "mere" sword or a dozen or so initiates.
On Peter M.'s worries about illuminants, I suspect that being Illuminated doesn't (entirely) protect you from the mega-geasa (like "Die."), though they may help ("Die, maybe", or "Die, later"). Though there are doubtless degrees of illumination, too, so it could be that a mega-Illuminant can shrug off a mega-geas.
Alex.
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