I think I'll have to agree that Free Will shouldn't be reduced to a number, not only is it a bit tricky to determine how much you start off which and what you loose for what (is getting married a lose of Free Will??? I wonder...) but there isn't much point. In some systems I've seen, Will is an additional stat used for radical game effects, such as increasing a skill on an important roll or using Hero Magics. However, I think that Free Will just defines your power to act.
So, gaining power through gifts is fine, but you lose free will since you can't speak on Godsday, wield fourteen types of kitchen utensils and are required to bath in goats blood (or some other such nonsense). Illumination, therefore, seems to be the ultimate way to gain a so-called infinite supply of free will.
In the case of Heroes, then to gain the Heroic powers, truly Heroic powers, means getting a Hero Cult, which in turn requires you to give something back to them -- unless you are a priest of Xamalk or some other such chaos cult and just have slave worshippers. In giving something back, you are loosing your "free will".
In the case of Godhood, you gain great powers, but in turn must stay on the Godplane, unable to act. I point to Gallegos from Sun County as an example (p.36)
Someone(tm) talked about the extent of HeroQuests, i.e. if you HQ to kill Yelmalio on the HoG do you suceed and destroy the god so that no more Yelmalions anywhere can sacrifice for RUne magic, get DI etc... or do your people just get some cool anti-Yelmalion abilities? IMHO it is the latter in most cases. But, some superheroic people may wish to actually destroy the god by HQing to the deeper portions of the Godplane and facing the *real* version of the god.
Firstly, I think that this does not require the support of your own culture but the "support" of the culture you are attacking. Now, this sounds very odd, but I'll explain. You wait until the Yelmalions are participating in a very magical version of the HoG themselves, such as on the High Holy Day, and then heroQuest to the HoG. Here you will find Yelmalio, except ***far*** more powerful than the otherwise measly shadow you would face on the normal HQ, as this Yelmalio is the sum total of the magical power of ***all*** Yelmalions across Glorantha. Therefore, if you destroy this Yelmalio you are destroying all of the Yelmalions across Glorantha. What the Yelmalions would experience is that at the height of their ceremonies things suddenly start to go wrong, where as they would normally get defeated, Zorak Zoran suddenly starts trying to rip your soul out.
As difficult as it would be, if you timed the ritual correctly, then you could suceed in "killing" Yelmalio. That woul be how it would appear, as all Yelmalions who participated in the HHD rites (in other words, about 99% of them) would suffer greatly. Yelmalio would, for all intents and purposes, be dead.
All IMHO,
Nikk E.
Nikk the Broo Shaman of Thed
http://www.personal.u-net.com/~eff
"If absolute power corrupts absolutely,
where does that leave God?"
-- George Daacon
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