The idea of sacrificing POW for a reuseable/rechargeable runepower pool, and then requiring priests to learn the rune spells they wish to use through rituals has a lot of appeal (to me at least). The problem of using this runepower to stack spells to giddy heights could perhaps be avoided by requiring different rituals for the different stacked levels. In the same way that your battle magic spell Healing 2 has to be learnt on top of Healing 1, you could require that before you can stack two points of Shield (or whatever), you have to complete a more intricate version of the ritual wherein you learnt Shield.
Conceivably, you could require that to stack 2 points of a spell, you must perform the learning ritual on a cult holy day. Performing it on a high holy day might allow you to stack 3 points. Alternatively, only certain temples might have the priesthood in place that could lead you properly through the more involved versions of the "Shield Ritual". If these rituals are in fact minor heroquests, where you act out some part of your gods mythos, then learning how to stack points further could be a heroquest proper (or part of a heroquest)
Apologies if these ideas are old hat - I'm still enjoying the RQ2 rules and have no knowledge of version 3 at all.
A further thought/query. In the Cults of Prax (and elsewhere), mention is made of Yelmalios using Lightbringers in various rituals, often to the detriment of their health. Do other cults do this? For example, do Humakti's ritually kill off token Yelmalio worshipers when re-enacting their god's discovery of death? Presumably you could work these ideas into rune spell learning rituals: your Humakti want's to learn whatever spell it is that turns his sword into a truely fearsome pigsticker, so has to capture a Yelmalio and then defeat him/her on or off the spirit plane as part of the ritual re-enactment of Humakt's death dealing performance. Given that the sun _was_ brought back from hell, you might even allow the poor Yelmalian to be resurrected later (by a Lightbringer you've hired for the job?).
Reagrds Balazar:
It is mentioned in Griffin Mountain that the Lunars moved into Balazar partly in repsonse to a history of successful raids from the Elkoni. I can imagine that a single hairy barbarian equipped with shatter and an idea of the role played by a keystone, could hvae quite an impact on passing Lunar aqueducts/viaducts etc. Then again, it's quite plausable that none of the native Balazarings would have any idea about what keystone's did. (So, a lunar garison set to guarding an important bridge might consider themselves keystone cops?)
Owen Jones, Maths Dept, Univ of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia Ph +61 7 3365 3262 (direct) 3365 3277 (secretaries) Fax +61 7 3365 1477 Home page http://www.maths.uq.oz.au/~odj/
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