RE: Hshuschen-esque Spirits/Totems

From: Richard Sands <richard.sands_at_...>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 10:30:20 +0100


On Monday, June 19, 2000 10:26 PM, Clay Luther [SMTP:claycle_at_...] wrote:
> We started our HW game last Saturday and I immediately ran into a
small
> problem with one of my player's character definitions simply from a
> rulesy point of view. We all agreed to use Heortling as the base
> culture and the players set off to write their character descriptions.
>
> Oddly, the player who knew nothing about Glorantha both wrote the best
> character description and the most troublesome one for me. Basically,
> without knowing it, his character is a Telmori foundling that was
> adopted into the clan. He wanted a orphaned character, raised by
> wolves, but found and adopted into the clan at a very young age. He
> wrote that his character has strong connections to a wolf-spirit,
> perhaps even could shapechange into a wolf if he had to.
>

I have a very similar character in my soon to start game... He wanted to be able to shapechange into an alynx. Now I know this is Yinkin's secret, but I didn't want to force him to wait forever for what doesn't seem a grossly powerful ability...
Basically, I decided that he had blundered onto a lost Yinkin sanctuary, and actually met Yinkin and been taught by him (he has partly rediscovered the heroquest of learning to hunt from Yinkin, but doesn't realise it yet). I decided to apply the same rule as for Hsunchen people, and effectively gave him three integrated spirits for alynx related abilities (he doesn't know they're integrated spirits, he thinks he just learnt them). Since he opted to make these three abilities his primary and secondary skills, I allowed him to also take Shapechange in his background, so that he starts the game with a weak shapechanging ability.
I will have to reveal later on that he has rediscovered a Yinkin subcult, which may well (I haven't decided yet) use misapplied worship to cat spirits, or may originally have been a misapplied spirit cult to Yinkin...

I can see that your situation is a little trickier, since wolves have no tie to the storm pantheon, whereas alynxes are loved and respected. Perhaps your character could be trained as a Kolat shaman, but take an extra link to wolf spirits; the rest could be developed over time, possibly.

Richard
  richard.sands_at_...
  richard_at_...

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