>>> This feels wrong to me. Misapplied worship should not be a >>> core of a viable religion as its wrongness makes it inefficient >>> - worshippers won't be able to learn secrets for example -
>>The percentage of worshippers who actually learn secrets >>is very low,
> But their great magical leaders will be handicapped compared to
> everybody else.
Not necessarily. I can think of only a few cases where knowing the secret of one's subcult makes a tangible difference in the noon-religious affairs. Things like Humakt's Sever Soul make a huge difference. Not knowing Hedkoranth's Returning Thunderstone is only a logistical challenge, not a world-moving handicap.
Revealed Mythologies (about the Death of Malkion, footnote 13, p.8): "Such a mystical reality (like all the pure meditation schools) give negligible real magic."
>>and even religions using a misapplied type of magic will >>eventually have heroes whose admittedly lesser secrets will >>be available to the devotees.
> And what religions are these? Even the core of the Aeolian
> religion (the Bishop Saints) is not misapplied worship.
That's exactly the case of cult heroes I was aiming at, and the parallel that can be made for the Gargandites.
> Secrets are important because
> they are representative of transcendental being.
In Fonrit, all this transcendant aspect appears to be channeled via the Gargandites. This is a development similar to the pre-Hrestol Malkioni, who concentrated all magic in their wizard caste, unlike the early phase when each of the six peoples had their own magics spread about the populace.
>>> yet the Fonritans are supposed to have been one of the few >>> peoples to have resisted the God Learners to some degree.
>>Perhaps they did so because they did not go for the greater >>magic, but for the concentration of lots of magic in their leaders.
> The Kralori did almost exactly the same thing but the God Learners
> still kicked their heads in.
The Kralori were overcome from within, with Darudism gone wrong. I suppose that the God Learners failed to corrupt or insert themselves in the Fonritian slavery hierarchy. Perhaps it was the early failure of the Six-legged Empire which saved Fonrit.
>>At one point, Greg said something about wishing that he had >>presented all religions as "misapplied"
> No. What he actually said was that he wished the starting
> religion could have been presented in the HeroWars rules as
> "mixed" (worshipping Gods and Spirits for example) with heroes
> eventually restricting themselves to a purer form (a recent
> post of his called> this "concentrated" magic). Misapplied
> worship is something different (namely worshipping a God as a
> spirit and vice-versa) and is far from common - the Aeolians
> are the only known religion to practice it to any large extent.
What about the Pentan Storm Tribes then? What entities does the Bronze Prophet present to the horse nomads?
A similar question can be made for the natures of Kargzant and Antirius after the Sun Swirl.
>>In case of Fonrit, the sheer number of people inhabiting >>rather limited stretches of land might be a reason why >>animistic worship could be as unefficient as misapplied >>theist worship
> There is nothing intrinsically inefficient about animism.
As long as there is a spirit ecology equal to its task in supporting a spirit-contacting population, I think that animism is among the most efficient methods of contacting the Other Side. In coastal Fonrit, however, the native spirits (or whichever appropriate word there is for manifest animist Other Side denizens) might well be outnumbered by the population.
> The Darjiinians are animists yet have a high population.
Which aspect of Darjiinian religious practices do you mean? Surenslib, Manimat, Yestendos or Suvar? All have been presented as theist.
> Glorantha does not follow the real world model of
> animism -> organized religion -> philosophy.
It offers these in a conflict of worlds instead. Pamaltelan animism has been refined from great urban structures (Tishamto) into structures that work better (modern Doraddi). Fonrit is a reversal of this development, and is using "alien" methods.
>>> Even though the structure of the Fonritan Pantheon is based on >>> the Pamaltelan origin myth, the core entities the Fonritans >>> worship are not Pamaltelan Great Spirits but actual Gods.
>>The core entities are the Garangordites - heroes who portrayed >>these Great Spirits in a theist manner.
> No. The core entities are the ancient deities of the Artmali
> civilization that inhabited Fonrit in the old days.
You leave me puzzled. Unless you are referring to Ompalam and Darleester the Noose as the "ancient deities of the Artmali civilization", I fail to find any prominent deities of noticable Artmali origin.
Is the theist nature of the Artmali a fact, or an assumption? The Three Sky Witches are named and recognized from the Doraddic perspective, although the asterisked entities (Bijiif, Lorion) and Tolat and Annilla are taken from the Monomyth, i.e. from heavily theist influences.
The Artmali are probably the least revised section of RM, making it very hard to get a conclusive picture. (There are very strong parallels to the Modern Age Lunar Empire which might explain a lot for either culture...)
Revealed Mythologies remains unclear in this regard. The Fiwan/Hsunchen may be the real carriers of Animism, with Doraddi and Artmali only the (empire-building, thus historically "more interesting") side show.
> The Garangordites have interposed themselves between the
> worship of the Blueskins and the deities themselves.
> "Instead of allowing the Veldang to directly worship the
> original deities, Garangordos was able to interpose their
> worship through the veneration of the Garandites [...]" RM p43.
And each of the Gargandites is detailed as presenting one of the (Doraddic) Witnesses, i.e. Pamalt and his Necklace.
>>They managed to stand off the God Learners for long enough, but >>they failed to defend against the purer Doraddic magics of >>Kemparana, for instance.
> Kemparana is not a Doraddi but a thief.
True. I was writing away from my sources and confused Kemparana with Seseko the Fire Lord. In fact, Kemparana might as well have been one of the sorcerous denizens of Kalabar, which appears to be the main God Learner invasion into Fonrit, but in that case I was misled by the fact that the tower he stole had the significant Panaltelan/Doraddic number of seventeen stories..
Kalabar is in many ways the Pamaltelan parallel to Locsil, the Clanking City. It's influence on southern Fonrit may have been comparable to that of the Zistorites in Maniria - strong, but not pervasive.
> You are thinking of Katele, the Pure City, which was set
> up after the God Learners were gone.
I wasn't. What I am aiming at is the "seventeen-ness" of the Gargandites, i.e. following the model of Pamalt's Necklace.
Let me see what there is of a bone structure of agreement:
What we have in Fonrit is worship of human intercessors with theist practices rather than direct worship of the transcendent entities. These transcendent entities are Ompalam (probably a theist world entity, thus possibly voiding the need for misapplied worship) and the Witnesses personified by the Gargandites - Pamalt's Gang of Seventeen Great Spirits.
Does one theist super-god accompanied by a coven of interactors with the connection to animist transcendent entities cancel out the "misapplied worship" penalty, allowing "mixed worship" instead?
"Mixed worship" is what we find e.g. in Carmania, Wenelia, and Stygian Safelster (and much of historical Malkionism outside of Brithos as well), as well as everywhere in the Eastern (mystic) Quarter. For some reason, Aeolian Heortland has been labeled "misapplied worship", though I still try to see the intrinsic difference between them and Serpent King Seshnela or the Stygians.
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