>DD> FWIW, I think the now-lost RuneQuest Sight (a specialty of the God
> > Learners) would have been better than any of the current three.
> > Perhaps it layered all three?
I think it was a lot more cooler than that given that it was a novel way of looking at the world. But whatever it actually did is now lost.
>That's my guess as well - one of the recent books mentions that the
>God Learners did something thought to be impossible, i.e. mix all
>three magic types...
Since the Kralori, the Teshnans, the Lunars and the Nysalorans all do this sort of thing (not to mention the mixed worshippers), it's not particularly impressive as something impossible.
The canonical example of the God Learners doing something impossible is making the water burn as they did at the Sea of Flame. Another might be the replacement of Magasta by Wachaza.
As for how they managed to do the impossible, I had the theory that the Great Princes of the Malkioni Church (the Rokari Pope, the Ecclesiarch of Southpoint etc) have long had the power of dispensation, the ability to allow anybody not to follow a certain tenet (or large subsection thereof) of canon laws. What the God Learners did when doing the impossible was to use issue clerical dispensations about following some of the physical and magical laws of glorantha. Thus a dispensation against the law of gravity might allow the wielder to fly at will.
Of course the abuse of created by such dispensations caused the doom of the God Learners and the modern Malkioni either deny the legitimacy of dispensation or restrict it to ecclesiastical matters. Even then, the use is heavily restricted (ie. the Pope could issue a dispensation allowing the study of pagan magic, but he will be wanting good reasons for doing so).
What would be really nifty as a magical treasure would be a blank dispensation, signed and sealed by a bygone pope allowing the ability to defy a given cosmic law. All one has to do to obtain the power is to sign one's name in the lacuna.
--Peter Metcalfe
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