Patrik Sandberg here...
A few Digests ago Nick Brooke wrote some very fine things about the polytheistic religion's holy day- and Sacred Time cermonys. Opinions which I very much agree on.
> Yep. I was chatting over suchlike matters with Greg at the
last Con, and
> *hope* to get round to writing something about Gloranthan
rituals (inc.
> holy days, initiations, sacred times and heroquests) some time
soonish.
Yes, yes! I hope we're then gonna see write-ups on the more normal PC-cultures (i.e. Orlanthi, Lunar, Solar). As the situation is now, we know very well how the trolls do their sacred rituals (Troll Gods gave us that), but we have never seen a cool description of an Ernalda earth ritual or a scene with holy hymns and sacred fires devoted to the Emperor of the Sky - His Mighty Sun-Father Yelm.
>
> (There was one odd time when Greg said that only the Rune
Level HQers
> got to participate in the Lightbringers Quest ritual in Sacred
Time --
> the rest of the clan see them fly off and then hang around
hoping they'll=
>
> get back safely -- but that sounds like what happens in a
"real" re-enact=
> - -
> ment like Argrath's, not the annual Shorter Lightbringers
Ritual [cf. KoS=
> ].
> Otherwise, how do normal initiates and laity learn the myths?
Answer:
> through temple reenactments and ritual dramas, which is to
say, through
> temples' static, ritual heroquests).
I propose that the actual roles of the gods _can_ be shouldered by mere initiates as well. You can have a special gift, you can have done something important for your clan the last year, you are very devoted, etc. I also think that in some clans there might not even be enough Rune levels to fill all the major roles of the Short Lightbringer Quest.
I once tried to do a sort of scenario for my players based on the Orlanthi Sacred Time SLBQ. The tribe the PCs belonged to had a problem to solve which involved four mysterious dumb-struck humans with earth associations. No one was sure of why the tribe had come across these figures, what malignant purpose might be behind their appearance.
But there lived in the near vicinity of the tribe an old oracle. Deep in a smoking cave in a hillside one could seek her answers. The tribal king emulated Orlanth, descended into the underworld via a SLBQ. The smoking cave was symbolically equated with the Underworld, so to succeed in the Quest was to return to the surface with the oracle's answers regarding the four mysterious figures.
I engaged the PCs as either one of the other Lightbringers (Flesh Man is always an opportunity - I think he is the one to represent Joe Everyman, not some Rune level), or as their assistants.
I copied handouts of the relevant parts of the LBQ to be read out aloud by one of the players before each of the fourteen stations of the quest so they should have something to act upon. I connected various traits to various stations, I let them fight, I tried to get them into roleplaying, etc.
But the feeling was just quite not there. It was hard to pick the players interest. A strong feeling of pre-determination set the mood for the session. It was as if the players felt that they didn't control their own characters, they had no choices. This was pre-arranged and stiff.
The overall feeling the session left was that it is very difficult to make this ritual stuff into interesting role-playing challenges for the players. I wonder if this is not also a potential problem for HeroQuest and its playability...
>BUT, an Orlanth hill-temple on Orlanth's
Holy Day in
> Storm Season is "outside of mundane time" in *exactly* the
same way as it=
> would be in Sacred Time.
> And an intruder arriving at that hill-temple would *either* be
"sucked
> into" the ritual (perceiving the re-enacted myth as
participant or adver-=
>
> sary), *or* would see it "from outside" (a bunch of
worshippers in funny
> costumes, holding strange ritual items and declaiming
portentuous chunks
> of scriptural or oral-traditional verse). If you start
*interfering* with=
>
> someone else's ritual (mundanely or magically), you're bound
to be drawn
> into it, in the same degree that you mess it up. But if you
passively
> observe, as a "visiting lay member" or GL cultural
anthropologist might,
> you're "not involved" and can watch the amusing details of
what goes on,
> see how the worshippers represent their deities and foes in
costume, etc.=
I tried to portray something of this when I wrote my "An Orlanthi Holy Day" which appeared on the Digest in August or so. If somenone with web access wants to read it, I've put it up on my homepage at http://home5.swipnet.se/~w-59453/
The Point of view taken there was that of a Lhankor Mhy initiate Geolgar Harefoot. He was born in the Culbrea tribe but on mysterious ways ended up in Holy Country joining the Lord of Knowledge in his early years. He had already been initiated to Orlanth by that time, but converted to Lhankor Mhy with no ill effect (as they're associated, and he had got his Storm Voice's blessing before leaving home). But he always kept contact with his kin in Sartar, and the account undoubtely hails from one of his visits to old kin and friends. I think his background explains his ability to _see_ things normally hidden to a mere Lhankor Mhy. Geolgar is, or becomes, what could be called "emotionally involved" in the ceremony. He is in a border region between "lay member" and inititate, because of his background. Therefore, he can observe both the ceremony's mundane ritual parts (with masks and implements etc), and parts of its actual God-time contents (the voice of Orlanth, Flintslingers on the horizon, a brief glimpse of Aroka etc).
I think this is true of the observations in Troll Gods as well. They are not *just* God Learner observations. Think of the mysterious song of Aranea ("I was transfixed with visions of the cosmos in a myriad of images: some were of the universe as pearls on a necklace /.../ I think I saw Cragspider metamorphosize into a great spider unlike any I saw before /.../ I thought I could see the stars through her body") and the grinding teeth in the cave of Zorak Zoran ("It felt like the cave itself, with its stony fangs, was gnashing us like we were a great godmeal." and "I could see their cult memories dancing and swirling overhead, huge and oppressive...")
In my Orlanthi ceremony a common initiate is clearly gripped by ecstatic vision. He gets a chance to incarnate a divine power (unclear if it is Orlanth or Aroka; the latter then intruding in the ceremony), but as the tale tells us there is a greater danger in this for an initiate: he is ripped asunder by divine power and energy. I based my interpretaion on the paragraph in Genertela...Players Book:
"Observers see a ritual drama. Participant lay members experience an energetic thirill in their souls and in their contact with the world. Initiates typically report transportation to the mythic realm, sometimes aiding actively in the drama, perhaps even possessing Orlanth himself."
I agree with Nick that it would be a shame if the intimate experience with the otherworld deities per definiton were the domain of the Rune Levels.
> We see this in e.g. the Daka Fal and Yelmalio chapters of
"Cults of Prax",
> where Biturian Varosh has no real connection to the
myth-patterns he's
> witnessing, and so can only perceive their mundane/magical
manifestations=
> rather than the mythic reality that underlies them.
Maybe it is also because Biturian is such a Wordly character belonging to a (in my opinion) very Wordly cult - Issaries. The different observations by Geolgin Askarios in Troll Gods may be explained by him becoming too much "involved"; he could not help being engaged because of his feelings (terror and fear). I think that the more you invest of strong emotions and feelings in a cults holy day ceremonies, the more you're likely to be "sucked in".
> I would prefer to generalise (talking about Holy Days, High
Holy Days, and
> perhaps taking Sacred Time as a specific, extreme example),
rather than
> paint myself into a corner by saying these things *only*
happen during
> Sacred Time. Obviously, some myths are only performed then --
the LBQ is
> the most obvious example.
In the case of Orlanth (which is the god I feel I have the most knowledge about), I once tried to tie, or correspond, the various mythic stories in Orlanthi mythology in KoS, to one or the other of the Theyalan seasons. Those stories could provide the framework for the the Holy Day for the relevant season.
Well, inspired by Nick's comments on the subject I will - hopefully in the near future - try to speculate a little about how a Holy Day of Ernalda, or Issaries could appear.
Thats all for now,
Patrik Sandberg
kaselov.sandberg_at_swipnet.se
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