> I've been trying to follow this since I play a shamanistic character
> in a Lunar campaign (and, as such, I try and figure out how they
> relate to the theistic Lunars all around).
Well, you'll discover that the Lunars aren't really thesitic at all when ILH2 comes out...
> Now I had figured that it was a matter of scale and approach. Gods
> are seperated from spirits by power level and thesitic worships
> accept gods in a master/servant kind of relationshihp while shamanic
> practitioners deal with spirits more as equals. So, to a shaman, a
> god is a really big spirit that ones deals with as one would any
> powerful entitity.
No, your basic premise is wrong; there are huge spirits just as there are huge gods (power-wise). Kargzant isn't less powerful than Orlanth, the Great Spirits are equivalent to the Great Gods. (and Essences...)
Shamans tend to make bargains with the lesser spirits of the tradition they are in - rather than getting Oakfed into your fetish, you get a subsidiary spirit. That is why they look like they are bargaining with roughly equal beings.
> But here people seem to be saying you can worship spirits as spirits
> and gods as gods and they are entirely different. (What is
> "miss-applied worship", anyway?) But what is the difference?
Sprits, Gods and Essences come from three seperate planes of existence. There are equivalent power levels in all three, but they are worshipped in different ways, and give their worshippers different benefits. At the lower levels of magic, it's pretty similar - you get a bonus augment from your magic. At the higher levels, you get greater power, but are forced to narrow your focus. The restrictions and differences on how magic works xome more and more to the fore.
Misapplied worship is using the rites of one "style" of magic (say, Theistic Sacrifice) to worship a being from a different plane, say, an Essence. The lock and key metaphor has been used before: if you consider the three planes to be Locks, and the three main religious structires to be Keys, you see that you need the correct "key" for the lock - Theism-Sacrificial, Animism-Ecstatic, and Sorcery-Veneration. You can get *some* benefit from using the wrong key, but it's harder (represented by increased HP costs to improve your ability ratings, and the inability to concentrate your magic and reach the higher layers of magic.
RR
C'est par mon ordre et pour le bien de l'Etat que le porteur du pr�sent a
fait ce qu'il a fait.
- Richelieu
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