The question of what happens when Peaceful Cut is used on sentient life was raised recently. My opinion seems to differ from that of most (well, any) of the other replies. I think PC works only on beings with fixed INT, and that the spell/ritual would have no effect on humans/trolls/elves etc. By the same reasoning, it _would_ work on herd men.
The purpose of PC, IMO, is to allow the spirit of the deceased animal to depart peacefully and to go to wherever it is that animal spirits go to. Frex, dead herd men are sent to Herd Woman-Eiritha to be reborn as scrummy herd men babies. But the spirit of a sentient being doesn't usually need any help to get where it's going. I think it gets collected by the relevant psychopomp more or less automatically under normal circumstances. Or, if you live on God Forgot or have no god for some other reason, you probably just wander around the spirit plane moaning, clanking chains and generally making a nuisance of yourself...
The example quoted was trying to escape from a Thanatari. This is one of those things that would prevent the psychopomp being able to pick you up. But I feel that PC won't let you bypass the Thanatari spell, since it is geared towards sending animals to _their_ special places. IMO, you would need a new spell to escape from a Thanatari (or to avoid having your dying spirit caught in some other way), just as Food Song and Peaceful Cut are separate spells.
Basically, where the fixed INT being can be confused by being killed by a
hunter, a sentient being has the free will and comprehension to work out what
has happened and not to get stuck haunting the corpse and pestering the
hunter. The down side is that sometimes he can be grabbed and imprisoned
before he has time to work out where to go. Whereas the animal has
(presumably) only one place it can go to, and has less of a problem in that
regard. After all, humans and other sentients worship Yelm, Pamalt, Kyger
Litor, the Invisible God etc. etc. all with distinct beliefs about the
after-life, whereas animals don't really think about it, and can take the
express train to wherever they're headed.
That's my #0.02p, anyway. Flames, anyone?
Poll
===
(a) discovering Glorantha
I've forgotten the date, to be honest. Early 1980s, though, I'm sure of that. Not being able to acquire much Gloranthan material at the time, I ran a rather successful non-Gloranthan RQ game for a while at Uni, but I much preferred the Gloranthan game I was in as a player. Anyway, I didn't really get hold of any Gloranthan material until RQ3 came out.
(b) still play Gloranthan RPGs?
Not at the moment. I did try running RQ3 with my current gaming group, but they _really_ hated the system. Sadly, I think some of them now regard Glorantha as 'fruit of the poisoned tree' but I am doing my best to encourage them to game there using my home-grown system (essentially the GURPS character generation system with some Pendragon-like combat rules and other stuff grafted on).
(c) write Gloranthan fiction?
Too busy at the minute. Probably some day.
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
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