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I sed: (re. my Humakti chap)
>>Recently, his two brothers were killed and he is currently agonising
>>whether to fully return to his family, or to carry on his devotion to
>>Humakt to the logical cunclusion.
>What is the problem? Just because he severs the Kin relationship doesn't
>mean that he can never see them again,
The problem is that there is no-one to carry on the family line, and if he severs his relationship, that is the end of a long and proud family. Actually, there is a younger sister back home, but she's joined Babeesta Gor, so she's not much use in that direction, not being exactly the homely, mothering type...
>>Additionally, even if the brothers are resurrected, I don't know
>>whether he would consider them the same people!
>Humakti believe in Resurrection because they have seen it. They just
>don't like it. The brothers would be the same people, but the Humakti
He believes in it alright, but he may respect the decision made by Death that his brothers are no longer eligible to breathing priviliges, and should go back to their rightful place in the underworld. After all, those two walking corpses could be some foul revenant with Detection Blank!
+------------+
>The only adamant object I know of (the spear point in Griffin Island)
>destroys all magic around it.
There's a piece in the Rainbow Mounds as well, right at the back, which is the foundations of the Dragonewt plinth, IIRC. This is described as having the same effect.
+------------+
>clever ideas on how to represent a Shade or a Lune in some physical sense
How about a big blob black- or red-dyed cotton wool? Just dump it on top of the figures it is engulfing...
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>is it possible
>for shamans to exchange or trade such names with other shamans in
>order to have a large source of spirits available when needed
I would think so. I imagine shamans being distracted a lot of the time not only by spirits, but by mumbling spirit-names under their breath as some kind of memory aid. Hey, I just thought - maybe those old fakers just *say* that they are constantly distracted by spirits, just in order to look cool, when in fact they are trying to remember all those spirit-contacts!
+------------+
>can someone tell me which deity is the
>source of the following runes: communication, fate, luck?
Could the god-source of Communication have been killed by Prince Snodal? I don't think the Communication rune is necessarily the same as the Issaries rune.
The god who is the source of Fate is probably unknowable by mortal mind
As for the theories of the Trickster being the source of Luck, *was* the owner, lost it, but carried on living his life on the edge, relying on luck that never seemed to come. Bitter and twisted at this, he replaced his lost luck with Illusion, taking on the name Trickster, and stole the luck back. He thus has Luck powers, but they are erratic and unpredictable. IMO.
+------------+
>cult heroes would need to be summoned in order to teach the cult spells.
>However, according to the cult, Humakt promises that the spirit is kept
>safely, and so should not be summonable. Theories?
The hero will have a number of servant-spirits that migrate between the mundane plane and the hero himself. These spirits teach the spell, then return to the source of the spell, as described in the roolz. IMO.
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>Were horses really sacred to Yelm in Dara Happa
I misread this as "Werehorses" and thought - are there any horse-hsunchen?
+------------+
>the ritual used to summon Death in the Ringworld books
I don't remember a ritual to summon Death an *any* of larry niven's books, not even his fantasy bookd, let alone a serious SF story like Ringworld!
+------------+
>> Has anybody got any thoughts on how much space an enchantment takes up?
>Frex, a healing tattoo may be smallish but very intricate. A tattoo for
>strength may cover the entire biceps/chest.
I was more interested in things like MPME, Spell Matrix, conditions, etc. Does 1 POW per sq. cm (about 6 points per sq.inch for you old-fashioned colonials) sound reasonable?
+------------+
>There is a story in Cults of Prax, I think, where some Humakti go
>into Sogs Ruins, I think, and a Rune Lord is made into a wraith or
>other undead,
If the ruins in question were sanctified ground, ie. a temple, then the Humakti
divine protection may not have applied there, in the same whay that Divine
Intervention would have been unavailable.
+------------+
> I'll confuse matters even more by pointing
> out that Greg has said that (IIRC) the West of Genertela represents the
> world's mind, the East her spirit and the central lands her soul. That
> means he sees some difference but I'm buggered if I know what it is.
And the north, ie. the Lunar Empire, represents it's sex drive.
+------------+
>We never lie, but we don't always tell the whole truth. And sometimes
>the truth we tell is worded so as to be, shall we say, confusing. If
There was a great example of this in a game I am playing in. We were trying to get a Lunar spy in trouble down in Carse, so the Hobbit (yes, I know) thief stole a fat merchant's purse and slipped it into the Lunar's pocket. I (Humakti) then grabbed the merchant's arm and cried out "You've been robbed - I saw the whole thing. That man there has your purse!"
After all, the Truth is valuable, and should be given out economically.
+------------+
>Same with "accept no magical healing", yet Heal being a cult spell.
That is *why* Heal is a cult spell - because if you cannot accept magical healing from others, it is down to you or your allied spirit to heal yourself.
+------------+
>Well, according to the rules, if the 'enchantment' is broken, then it
>ceases to work.
Sandy appears to have reversed this rule in his Sorcery rules - there is a Ritual Enchant which allows an enchantment to be broken by matching expended POW vs the POW in the enchantment - why would this exist if you could just hit it with something?
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>> ... people sometimes get het up over certain topics - the
>> Monomyth is one of them. People are either passionately for it ...
>> or passionately against it
>Not necessarily. Remember that people who could give a trollkin turd aren't
>going to post saying so.
I, personally, don't give a trollkin turd. The Monomyth is an interesting idea, it holds some truth and some falsehood, like Newton's theory, which is good enough for me most of the time.
+------------+
>POW must be drained from somewhere. Is it drained from the targeted entity?
No, I don't agree - would you apply that to your PCs? "Those six trolls all
dirsupted you last game session, now they have had a week off, so you lose 5
POW!"
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>A fighter has a skill of 100%... Bladesharp 4 ... does he make each
>attack at 60%, or 70%?
I would say that split-attacks is a skill thing, not a chance-to-hit thing, which Bladesharp gives. As for Strength, I'd say he gets to split the attack. "How does he know?" He doesn't, it's a rules-mechanics abstraction of a dynamic, freeform combat.
+------------+
>if a Detect Truth type spell goes up against a Lie spell, which wins?
If I recall the spells correctly, Lie causes people to believe it until they get
proof otherwise - a Detect Truth spell counts as proof. Sorry, Trickster.
+------------+
Hurrah - I've finished! Now I'm just off back to London for another week, oh
bugger...
+------------+
phibbs_at_csi.compuserve.com
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PHibbs
+------------+------------------------------------------------------------+| Phil Hibbs | What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry? |
+------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #219
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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