Hopefully I can collate a fair bit of the details on Death, Humakt and
Heroes
that I duscussed with Greg into a couple of treatises for Enclosure II in=
May. =
I felt for the first time I understood what Death was and how a person
could
be dead but in the world of the living after those discussions.
>> I think you are right. They ARE dead, and their initiation
>> rites are probably funeral rites. But they are the dead in
>> life -- hence their hatred of the wrong type of living dead,
>> the undead.
>We played a Sword-making among the Lismelder as a funeral rite,
>years ago, in David Hall's Greydog game. Since the Lismelder
>live next to the Upland Marsh and Delecti's horrible minions,
>anything we learn about the Humakti -vs- Undead thing is of
>interest to me.
Its makes perfect sense that the Humakti hate undeath as it is a perversi=
on
of their fundamental faith - in the sanctity and purity of Death. =
>When Martin writes,
>> they would have a poor link to life and its positive effects --
>> they might heal more slowly than a normal man, have a lower
>> chance of childbirth, be very, very bad farmers, be unappreci-
>> ative of beauty in the natural world and be poor at socialisa-
>> tion, being unnaturally grim and "awkward" to those still conn-
>> ected to life
>(and Greg agrees), I think that, while true, any such effect is
>visible along two axes. One is that the Humakti is specialising
>in death and killing while his peers are learning about life,
>love, farming, families, clans, leadership, and other "social"
>skills. Thus they are naturally backward, simply because they
>aren't practicing what other folk do when they go for their LH
>Bastard Sword Parry training down the Temple.
Yes, this is the "Material World" side of it which relfects the changes i=
n
the spiritual world. So a Humakti who practiced endlessly with his Sword=
is certainly sending his spirit further into the secrets of his cult. An=
d
of course
by having their spirit following such a path, they improve in the materia=
l
world =
aspects of their faith too. =
>The other is that, in proportion to the increase in their power
>as Humakti, they may develop these grim, taciturn, infertile,
>obsessive, etc. tendencies. Joining the cult of Humakt may not
>require a funeral, a divorce, a clan-leaving, or a personality
>warping. But staying in it, devoting yourself to it, progressing
>in it, etc. almost certainly *will*. Except, of course, for those
>individuals who are so well-balanced, so well-adjusted, (so Illu-
>minated??) that they can stay cheery and rosy-cheeked and loving,
>even while in the midst of death, war and slaughter. But they're weird. =
>Humakti, among Humakti, act Humakti: it's the done thing.
Agreed 100% I think there are very, very few illuminates in Humakt for this reason. The cult is so singularily basic in its functions that at the higher levels such discrepencies of spirit would be highly =
noticable. =
Martin Laurie
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