Nick on Carmanian Religion; Sorcery & Disease

From: Graeme Lindsell <gal502_at_anu.edu.au>
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 15:29:11 +0300


 I liked Nick Brooke's stuff on Carmanian religion and magicians; my one real reservation is with the religion of the viziers. They seemed a bit close to being standard RQ3 "unaligned sorcerers" for my taste, though the viziers obviously have much more of a social base than those delights of powergamers. Perhaps viziers chould be considered to be enlightened worshippers (but not priests) of the Invisible God?

>with Light and Dark embodied in the Goddess's balance and phases,

 Did the Carmanians consider balance to be an important factor before the Lunars arrived, or like the Zoroastrians did they consider themselves to be allied with one side against the other?

>vizier is a vizier... and most of them are "evil"

 Most?! "Evil vizier" is redundant, isn't it?

>Priests are, by and large, for "common religion"

 I was under the impression that the nobility tended to worship these outside cults rather than the IG, which you've said they can't anymore. I can't see a Carmanian noble respecting a peasant as a priest. Or would nobles tend to join exclusively noble mystery cults?

Matt Thale writes:
>Nick, no wazir's? Gee, I've spent several years of my life learning
>Arabic, and keep hoping that I'll find something in RQ that I apply my
>language skills to. ;-)

 While I do like the West=Islam rather than Christianity scenario, I'll have to agree with Nick. Most RQ players will recognize "vizier", very few will understand that wazir is the same.

 I've spent several years of my life studying graphite intercalates and Rietveld analysis of powder diffraction patterns, but I suspect it'll be a long time before I can find anything in Glorantha to apply this knowledge to. :-)

 Sorcery & disease. A bit of rulesism

 I don't think there's any reason to believe that the list of sorcery spells provided in the RQ3 magic book are the entire available list, anymore than the Divine magic list there is complete. I could easily give the Blessed Order of Saint Xemela some Recover (Characteristic) Ritual Enchant spells, with a requirement of 1 POW per point of characteristic healed, without thinking I've broken some essential balance.

 I'd probably give some similar options for purely shamanic cultures as well, and/or the Kralori. The theists believe that everything comes from particular gods, such as CA, but I don't see that the magic available to other cultures has to agree with them.

As far as the RQ3 book goes, the Restore (Characteristic) spells are one-use as well: has this been changed in other write-ups?

Graeme Lindsell a.k.a Graeme.Lindsell_at_anu.edu.au Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University "I was 17 miles from Greybridge before I was caught by the school leopard" - Ripping Yarns


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