>> This mechanic also allows organizations that have single leading >> people (Humakt, Sturm Bull, Yelorna) who are rune levels to pretty >> much run the show in any way that they want. They just have to >> respect the basic ideas of the god, modification to non-core >> activities are fine. To quote Greg: "If you are a Humakti you >> have to be willing to kill and you have to be willing to die. >> Everything else is cultural."
> I have to disagree somewhat with the above: note he said everything
> else is 'cultural', not 'cultic'. You couldn't simply, by an act of
> will, change your friendly neighbourhood (?) Humakt temple to have
> such-and-such magic or practice, just because "Humakt" worship along
> such lines exists elsewhere (much less, because it seemed nifty at the
> time). Rather it's in significant part conditioned by a whole set of
> cultural and religious norms, set of knowledge, etc. You could perhaps
> in principle change it, by a Sufficiently Large HeroQuest (TM), but
> in general it would be no small matter.
Well, yes. But Humakt doesn't care about that stuff. If you are all good, honest death worshipers who think that the proper way to worship humakt is bloody handed butchery, well that just fine. If you want to use complex strategems that result in more precisely targeted violence, well that's just fine too. Everybody dies, eventually. This means that it is perfectly possible to have a Humakt temple where you can't tell the members from Zorak Zoran without a score card, but that's OK. In the same way, Humakt doesn't seem to care if you use sorcery or other magic.
Now, this doesn't mean that there are going to be many temples of Humakt with bloody handed butchers using damage boosting in Sartar. Cultural norms are different there. But if there were, Humakt would not care and they would not have any problems with the leaders' "personal realtionship with god". There is no "one true way". Of course, the fact that Huamkt is perfectly happy about this temple doesn't mean that they will have good realtions with their local co-religionists. But that is not a problem with Humakt.
To use a different place as a non-canon example, a Carmanian Humkti is rather unlikely to have the same cultural baggage as a Sartar Humakti. They seem much more likely to be more of a Samurai or Waffen SS type of totally loyal and remorseless weapons of their rulers, where Honor equals Loyalty. But that works also, though it will not exactly make Sartarite Humakti happy.
Kevin
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