The point I'm trying to make is this...
A Waha shaman that doesn't want to learn any other traditions still has
access to fire, water, darkness spirits etc. He doesn't need to follow
Oakfed to get a fire spirit.
This leads to..
>>In order to make spirit cults viable the gm has to penalise the shaman if
>>he tries this sort of thing.
>But going outside a tradition is already penalised in the rules.
Hardly.
If you defeat a spirit outside your tradition you get a one-use fetish (a
fair limitation). If you defeat it completely you can go get that type of
spirit again and bind it as if it was in your tradition!
Given the above, it leaves the gm in the position of having to put rules restrictions in place to encourage the use of spirit cults (penalties to finding spirits etc) and dissuade shamans from not bothering with them.
>If the Shaman enters the spirit plane during a real lightning
>storm then he would be entering lightning boy's realm. Since,
>for the sake of the example, he does not know Lightning Boy's
>Tradition, then he is entering a hostile realm.
Not necessarily, from the HW description of entering the spirit plane. "At first they see only the embodied spirits that are nearby outside the circle, so that the forest spirit becomes visible within the forest, and the nearby river spirit becomes visible along with the river. As the ceremony deepens the embodied entities outside the circle also fade away, so that only the spirits of the forest and river are visible."
My impression is that if you don't want to search the spirit plane for ages looking for a particular spirit you can find one easier by entering the spirit plane near a place of its affinity. So if you wanted a water spirit you have a better chance of finding one if you enter the spirit plane by a stream. You don't have to go to a great spirit of water's realm to get one.
>>For me Lightning Boy must offer something more than just easier access to
>>lightning spirits.
>
>Well, he does. There's always the effects in Nomad Gods and
>the effects of contacting the Great Spirits directly.
This is exactly what I've been looking for! A compeling reason to actually use a spirit cult. What would these benefits be?
>>In the HW book Koschei gains the power of hibernation by defeating a >bear
>>spirit. This power is certainly on the same sort of level as the >powers
>>described in previous spirit cult writeups. It doesn't seem to >me that
>>Koschei had to learn a new tradition to be able to do that.
>
>So Koschei just walked onto the spirit plane and caught a bear
>spirit? If he knew where to find it, then he must have had
>some previous knowledge, a tradition in other words.
He doesn't need a tradition.
Bears are common in Sartar, Koschei just needs to enter the spirit plane and
find one (presumably in a spirit wood). Hunting it on the spirit plane much
like hunting one on the mundane plane.
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