Re: sea spirits or sea gods ?

From: Julian Lord <jlord_at_free.fr>
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 20:21:54 +0200


Trotsky :

> > part of my game deals with Ludoch and other marine species near the
> > Holy Country (Blue Elves, etc). Do any of you know if they are animist
> > or theist, or if entities like Magasta, Golod, Daliath, Triolina,
> > Wachaza are gods or great spirits ?
>
> I believe, strictly speaking, they are defiant entities rather like
> Storm Bull, effectively being both gods and great spirits at the same
> time.

Strictly speaking, only a minority of these entities would be defiant entities like Storm Bull.

Rather, they have an entirely different cosmology, which means that their magicians are very unlike surface ones.

> That's what they get for being so fluid :)

Well, their fluidity has mythically enabled a few of their broken deities to flow back together again**, the chief of these being Magasta.

But the basic fact is that most of these entities comprise only one or more rarely two magical portions. The merpeoople divide the cosmos into three worlds :

The Liquid
Action / Spirit
Power / Motion

There is also the Dry

These are like and yet unlike the three GL model otherworlds.

The following is 50% speculative, and very much IMO :

To start with, the Liquid is the physical world of the Oceans. Action/Spirit manifests essentially as magical currents that merpeople shamans tap into, but are magically present in the waters themselves, and Power/Motion, while it resembles what humans would recognise as magic, and theistic magic at that, doesn't come from somewhere that humans would recognise as an otherworld, but ultimately comes from the Deep, which is an area that IMO most humans simply _cannot_ understand.

But most merpeople deities do not inhabit the Deep, and are either Liquids, Spirits, or Gods (Liquid deities are entirely immanent, and cannot provide magic to their worshippers, but can be called on to provide physical assistance. Basically, Giant Sea Monsters).

I understand merpeople "shamans" as being moved by the magical currents, whereas merpeople "theists" call upon their deities to move the waters for them. The "shamans", then, have magical powers to affect their own and their allies' bodies and inner selves, whereas the "theists" cast "spells" affecting the environment and adversely affecting their enemies (hopefully).

There is another class of (powerful) magicians, who call upon mixed powers of Action/Spirit and Power/Motion. These are hard to understand, because the "pure" magic of this combination affects "souls" and "spirits", but not the physical world of the Liquid.

These magicians deal with the otherworlds, and practice what ignorant Dry creatures would easily characterise as "demonology". IMO this is how merpeople do HeroQuesting ; well, when it happens in what humans think of as the Hero Planes, anyway. HQs otherwise take place in the Liquid.

Some cults comprise all three elements, such as Magasta, and potential Heroes are naturally attracted to such cults ; not to say that all merpeople Heroes belong to them.

Truly powerful merpeople magicians learn how to derive powers from the Deep, and these people are simply terrifying from a human POV.

Finally, a word on sorcery : merpeople sorcerors are IMO a rarity, simply because the sorcery world isn't part of their cosmology. However, the sorcery world did invade the waters too, and their are some parts of the Water which are sorcerous in nature.

But IMO, most merpeople sorcerors are evil ones who have made magical compacts with evil sorcerous entities from the Dry. The small numbers of blue wizards seek to combat this peril, lest the evil destroys us all ...

> A more useful question perhaps, is whether the ludoch and their ilk
> use theist or animist magic.

More practical, certainly.

Of course, local communities will be based on local traditions, most of which should be easily comprehensible to the average roleplayer ... ;-)

The most useful question is whether ludoch community Alpha uses theist or animist magic.

> Chances are, like trolls, some do one and
> some the other. I'd guess blue elves are similar to other Aldryami,
> having 'Murthdrya Tradition' as their default and mostly being
> animists. As for the others, in the absence of definitive HQ
> information, I'd go back to RuneQuest and see what that said. Magasta,
> Triolina and Wachaza are all clearly gods back in RQ (i.e. they have
> no shamans in their cults). Further, ludoch are described as using
> divine magic, which we would now call Theist. Malasps could be either
> priests or shamans, and so presumably have both Theists and Animists
> in roughly equal numbers, just like trolls.
>
> The truth may be more complicated, but that's where I'd start.

Local shoals or other communities could be so devised without too much risk of being wrong, as these entities can almost always be worshipped as has been described for them in RQ. The fact that Magasta can be worshipped by shamans and as a Giant Sea Monster too doesn't remove those possibilities.

Weird entities like Golod and other exceptions notwithstanding.

Julian Lord

PS Glad to be Gregged if any of the above is wrong.

It is also a merpeople ideal, so that many more merpeople choose not to concentrate their magic than humans, IMO (or should I say "than Heortlings" ?)

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