Heretics of Vitality

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_bigfoot.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 12:17:35 +1300


Apologies for the doubled postings:

Michael Beggs:

>Back in the days when Glorantha was funny, there was mention of a group in
>the Heartland called The Heretics of Vitality (I think). They did things
>like release zombies into the streets of Glamour for some deep philosophical
>reason (or for fun). I remember reading this in G:CotHW, in the excellent
>'regional activity' boxes, but is there any other mention of this group
>anywhere? Any info or suggestions about them are much appreciated.

Actually I tried to include some information about them in the Glorantha: Intro but sadly it was cut. The otherwise unknown "Send Valu" p100 was associated with them but I don't know if this is still true (and in any case this association was not the whole story of Send Valu).

My thinking on them was that they were known as the Surgeons of Vitality. They had a philosophy of replacing their imperfect or damaged body parts with better ones taken from other people (either through grave robbing or organlegging - which, surprise!, also appears in the regional activities chart "Bodyparts merchant visiting"). They are continually improving themselves and so they are covered with stitches and old scars. Also by swapping bodyparts with each other, they managed to obtain some form of a shared consciousness.

The imperfect bodyparts and other left-overs, they stitched together to create frankestein monsters for bodyguards. Occasionally they run amok and that's what the reference is to.

Now there's an old chaosium developed plot for the Hero Wars (mentioned in one of the Con-compendiums) about how the lunars are trying to bring Nysalor back to life but in some cases have duplicate bodyparts (the other belonging to Gbaji) and even in one case, triplicates. The surgeons would be the magicians stitching the pieces back up.

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