I'd have hoped you'd be at least sufficiently pre-annoyed about most of the things that were going to be, and hence the some/lots balance might have been reversed... Oh well, my sympathies. (Hrm, for some reason I seem to be first-listed Rules Consultant (Futurama joke springs to mind...). Does that mean I get to be a leading scapegoat? Mea non culpa!)
> I'm really finding the determination to Pin Things
> Down in the magic system a bit irritating.
That's an odd complaint. HW is about as un-pinned-down as you can get, and still even call it a magic system, IMO. Which is good in some ways, and bad in others, but more likely to provoke the opposite objection, I'd have imagined.
> Sorcerers (it say here) do not send their physical bodies to the Other
> Side. Sorcerers (it also say) perceive the Other Side as a mass of
> energies and potentialities.
>
> Does this not
>
> a) make running a sorcerer's visit to the Other Side well nigh
> impossible since there is nothing describable in human terms for them to
> see?
I don't think it's beyond the wit of man to describe energies and potentialities, myself. It doesn't mean describing (say) Hedkoranth as foot-pounds and megaJoules, just describing him as such and such sort of unruly, violent-seeming storm. (A dark and looming thundercloud supercell, I imagine.)
I personally like Nick's idea of more anthropomorphised HQing for (some!) Westerners, though. It's not really so very different: you're still trying to 'reduce' a god to more abstract, less divine notion, but instead of seeing Heddy as an actual storm, he'd be a sorceror chucking thunderbolts, or an angry, dark-faced warrior. Refusing to name him, or acknowledge him as a god still helps force him into a more materialist worldview. This fits best for the Loskalmi, I think, partly as it gives the 'Arthurian' feel that Nick describes ("Fight the Red Knight at the crossroads. Take the left path, and ride circle around the well three times."), and partly if it's 'soft on theism', personalising entities more than would certainly the Brithini, and even the Rokari, that fits because the Loskalmi seem to be that, much less bothered about theistic paganism than the Ralios-paranoid Rokari, and with a somewhat GLish magical outlook...
> b) completely crap all over the long-accepted description of How Arkat
> Discovered HeroQuesting? How the hell anyone can recognise elements from
> the sorcery Realm reflected in the Theist Realm?
Because to a theist, they look, well, 'theistic'. (At least, unless some sorcerous entity has just imposed its worldview on you, and you can't 'rationalise' it theistically any more.) When he did the discovering, he was certainly a theist (or theist cum animist, perhaps). Some of his earlier experiences he may have had to 'reinterpret', later, which likely isn't easy, I agree, but Arkat was obviously no dunce.
> (Mind you, he's also a mystic so....)
Ahem. Moving quickly along...
Cheers,
Alex.
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