> One thing that seems to have been inferred by other contributors to
>this thread: "sorcery" means "western sorcery". (Am I wrong?) Anyway,
I
>don't think so.
If they don't practice western sorcery, where do their philosophical or
religious traditions originate? Or are you postulating a form of magic
devoid of religious or philosophical meaning? I suppose it's possible
there is some kind of Arkati secret society such as the trolls have in
Halikiv, though they seem confined to Ralios where we have Stygians
anyway. There is no evidence for them in Dragon Pass in the sources
AFAIK.
> If they did, though, I think that their magic would be different in
>many ways to humanist sorcery. It would *definitely* be more demanding,
Where did it orriginate? How did it spread? How do they justify their abandonment of Orlanthi religious and thus social and moral values?
>to address the Ian Welsh's monty haulism remark. In a nutshell, someone
>with theist beliefs would have difficulty with the abstract nature of
>sorcery, although he could, with great difficulty, and little cultural
>support, master the concepts. IMO.
>From what we know of monotheism, pantheism and mysticism in Glorantha
they are founded on mutualy incompatible philosophies. For a pantheist
to use sorcery seem to require that he accept and believe axioms that
directly invalidate his pantheistic religious beliefs. Surely this would
be a dilema for conciencious Olranthi sorcerers?
This is one reason why I am wary of Henotheism. It is a fusion of incompatible doctrines, yet game mechanicaly may potentialy offers the greatest benefits by providing both sorcery and divine magic. I prefer to keep things more clearly delineated in my games to avoid abuse.
I'll be interested to discover how the new game deals with these issues. I suspect it will probably produce a game system which has a unified magic system with variations for sorcery, divine magic and mysticism and emphasizes the cultural differences through appropriate characterisation.
Simon Hibbs
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