Comrades!
I've been turning over a few thoughts about troll cults in HW and would be interested in thoughts and feedback.
With the animist/theist divide in HW, I pondered which trolls were. Although they use spirits a great deal, I ultimately decided they worked better as theists, but I still wanted to bring in trollish spirits.
So, for my working write-up of Kyger Litor, I came up with the following:
AFFINITIES: DARKNESS (Summon Darkness, Blinding, Eat Light, Enchant Lead, Extinguish Fire), SPIRITS (Resist Spirits, Counter Chaos Spirit, Talk to Spirit, Dark Spirit Blast), MOTHER (Bless Child, Command Own Offspring)
SECRET: CONTACT ANCESTORS. The Kyger Litori acquires the ability to commune with her ancestors. In effect, she becomes equivalent to a type of shaman, albeit with no fetch. She does not travel to the Spirit World, but part-way towards the Underworld, where she will be met with trollish spirits from her lineage. These she can seek to bind into a fetish (which must be a piece of troll bone, banded in lead), force to carry out a single task, or integrate. Know Lineage counts as the relevant tradition knowledge. She can also take another troll with at least 1w in Trollish Mythology with her for her/him to meet one of her/his own ancestors instead, to bind or talk with them (she/he uses own Know Lineage skill).
TROLL SPIRITS. Typically provide an appropriate skill or personality trait, with a Might of 10-5w. A critical success with Know Lineage would allow the Kyger Litori to contact a specific ancestor or draw on a feat (not affinity) from another trollish deity (eg, Crushing Bludgeon, from Zorak Zoran)
The idea was that I wanted trolls to be able to contact, communicate with
and even bind their own ancestors. It should be relatively unusual (hence
making it KL's Secret), but something that could be found with any trolls
(hence bringing others along). I also wanted to emphasise the
ancestry/lineage angle. The result was that high-order KL devotees in effect
became limited shamen.
I then heard from Ian Thomson that James Frusetta is currently thinking of making KL an 'over-deity' that is not worshipped specifically - instead, every uz effectively worships her, while joining cults of lesser troll deities. Now, the more I think about this idea, the more I like it. It meshes well with the different way trolls think of themselves - worship of KL is not a life choice, it is simply a matter of course, as she is the mother of all. I imagine it is much the same with Mostali - they don't decide to worship Mostal, they may well not even think of 'worship' at all - they just do what they do for Mostal because that is what they are and what they do, end of story. (Or at least, that is how it works for well-adjusted units!)
But it doesn't really help me with my attempts to create a working set of trollish keywords until 'official' ones emerge. I am still torn between different options, and would be grateful for any thoughts from anyone:
(a) Stick with me original idea - why, it could be ages until official troll
cults emerge, and everything might have changed by then.
(b) Make trolls animist instead, so their holy people are all shamen
dabbling in troll, darkness, etc spirits. (I'd imagine this would make
Mistress Race trolls, with their short but powerful bloodlines and long
lifespans in which to build up impressive arrays of spirits bloody
dangerous. Quite right too!)
(c) Give the trolls a 'shaman deity', Kolat-style, to allow the theists also
to contact their ancestors. (I quite like the idea of Hombobobom drumming up
the spirits.)
(d) Give other troll cults similar secrets to my KL version, allowing them
to contact either all troll spirits or only those of their own cultic
tradition. I don't like the option much - it takes away the opportunity to
have different fun secrets and makes spirits too accessible.
(e) Do something completely different!
Any thoughts?
Mark
Mark Galeotti
hia15_at_his.keele.ac.uk
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