Rich Ohlson
> Ok, to be honest I had never heard that it had been established
> that gods do NOT have free will.
One of the less (poorly?) defined things about HeroQuesting
and Apothesizing (transcending into Godhood), is what it does to your
Free Will. Having absorbed a number of discussions on the subject
both here on the digest, and at cons, the general thrust is as follows:
1. Everyone starts out with a certain ammount of Free Will.
2. You lose a little Free Will when you start participating with
rituals/interacting with the Hero\God\Spirit plane(s).
3. How much you lose depends on all sorts of variables.
- Example 1 - Humakti initiates bind themselves with geases, in
exchange for gifts. If you can't ride a horse on Windsday because
of your (insert gift here), then you have bound yourself and given
up Free Will. Not a lot, and you can duck out on the cult and
break the geas/reclaim your Free Will.
- Example 2 - Harlios in the Last IceBreaker. He Quested, and
obtained a demon-killing sword. He 'paid' for this with the pain
he felt every Deathday and everytime he participated in a YT ritual.
Could the injury have been cured? He didn't even consider it. He
ackowledged the 'price' & gave up any thought of curing it.
Note that this is from a story I made up, but it's modeled
after Arkat, who suffered a Wound That Could Not Be Cured during
his struggle vs Nysalor.
- Generaly speaking, the more you affect the Hero\God\Spirit plane,
the more Free Will you have to expend. Heroes are people who have
more FW, or cultivate more within themselves somehow. But they use
up their stores of it sooner or later, and become bound into the
patterns they have laid down. This is what usually causes them to
withdraw to the HeroPlane, (IMO?).
- Apothesizing to Godhood uses up all/almost all the Free Will you
have left, if you started out as a mortal. Beings such as Orlanth
had far more Free Will in the GodTiem than heroes/mortals do, but
look at the things that Orlanth was doing with it! The first LBQ,
killing Aroka, constant battles with Chaos Gods, etc.
I hope this helps a bit.
Andrew
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #497
WWW at http://rider.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html