Re: Anamists in Dragon Pass

From: Gavain Sweetman <gavain.sweetman_at_...>
Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 14:29:10 +0100 (BST)

[A great deal of information :-) ]

Me:
Thanks for the info.

I think my thoughts were more along the lines of what can you do with spirits you encounter on your travels rather that what restrictions are there to the practices you can join.

So you are doing the "haunted house" senario and using your spirit face persuade the big bad spirit to stop bothering you. What are your options?

  1. You could banish it back to the spirit plane. What skill is appropriate?
  2. You make it promise not to come back to this place again. I guess a final condition of the Spirit Face contest.
  3. Its just misunderstod and is actually quite friendly and you want to befriend it. Bind it in the fetish using some improvised [spirit] relationship?
  4. Its not friendly, but it would be cool to have a Fear spirit to scare your kid brother with.

for 1) what skill would be appropriate?

>
> >From: Gavain Sweetman <gavain.sweetman_at_...>
> >
> >1) Would you put any restrictions on the profession of a Heortling
> >Anamist?� My
> >thoughts go along these lines: Kolatings are not mainstream and so would
> >have
> >restricted opertunities in their profession.� I would guess that the
> >majority
> >are pure spirit talkers with a few having a nomadic existance following
> >their
> >spirit guides.
>
> From what I've read about it here, apparently whole families are Kolatings -
> this is how the tradition is passed on? Anyhow, I think that there's room
> for a bit more than just Spirit Talkers. But, yeah, I'd think it'd largely
> be based on the occupations those families tended to follow. So perhaps they
> exist on the fringes by doing their own hunting, for example? Or in one
> clan, the Kolatings are the merchant family?
>
> I think you can play around with the rationales quite a bit, likely (though,
> just as likely, what I'm saying is vastly at odds with canon, if that's your
> concern).
>
> >2) Is there any way of harnasing the abilities of spirits that are not
> >connected with your tradition?� The rules only allow you to use Great /
> >Majestic Spirit relationship to create charms.
>
> Again, from what I've gleaned here, the question of adopting
> "extra-religious" cults, like a practice outside of a tradition, is a matter
> of how the individual spirits feel about each other. That is, very
> technically, there's nothing mechanical that stops anyone from getting the
> magic from another cult. There are, on the other hand, two in-game reasons
> why this may be problematic to impossible. The first question is how the
> spirits that you've already befriended or worshipped feel about the other
> spirits in question. If the new spirit objects to the previous one, or to
> the general tradition that you worship, it will not allow you to befriend
> it. If the new spirit does not object, and allows you to befriend it, then
> the previous ones may decide that you're no longer their friend, either, and
> cease to help you.
>
> The second problem is that, given that the people who can teach you about
> these things have an idea of how the spirits feel, they won't even teach you
> how to talk to the spirits in question unless they're pretty sure that the
> spirit in question won't object. So you probably have to get past these
> individuals first, and any other problem that the individual may have with
> your character. So if the teacher in question finds your character
> objectionable for any reason, chances are he won't teach you.
>
> Now, any or all of this may be possible to overcome with contests. They may
> be very difficult, however. That all said, there are definitely cases where
> you explicitly can befriend spirits that are not a part of the tradition
> directly - the "independent" spirits. Independent, in this case, seems to
> indicate that they, at least, don't mind the character having befriended
> spirits of other traditions. Though I'm sure that there are exceptions. I
> think it's more likely that one of your own spirits might have problems with
> an independent spirit. But we know that it's not an insurmountable problem
> for everyone.
>
> Personally, it seems to me that the best way to deal with this is to think
> of the spirits as NPCs in terms of how they feel about the other spirits in
> question. Come up with how they react to each other, and the limitations and
> contests that may be neccessary should become clearer.
>
> But to give you a better idea, in theory, since Kolat is part of the Storm
> Pantheon religion overall, not only could a Kolating practitioner gain
> spirits from other traditions or from independent practices, but he could
> also join a theistic cult. Now, I'm frequently reminded that, while this is
> possible technically due to Kolat not being an enemy, it's unlikely or
> non-existent in Glorantha, since the people who might teach you how to
> worship in a theistic cult would be at the very least leery of teaching a
> Kolating what they know. They might be outright apalled that some spirit
> worshipper would even ask. And even the spirits and dieties in question
> might have reservations about it.
>
> But all of this merely makes it extremely problematic, and not outright
> impossible. For a character who was deemed to have a very pure desire to
> worship both, by both the people involved, and the supernatural beings
> involved, it might possibly happen.
>
> The point is that the restrictions on learning magic from your own religion
> seem to be mostly a matter of in-game restrictions placed by the people and
> beings in question, not really mechanical ones. This means that gaining such
> magic may be extremely difficult - such that nobody ever tries to do it in
> most cases. But that doesn't mean that a character, with the right
> motivations can't at least try. And even succeed. As Greg has pointed out,
> this is the Hero Wars, and having the first character to do something like
> this would just be an example of the world changing.
>
> Put another way, I encourage players to do this sort of thing in play. Not
> frivolously, of course, but if they want to play out their characters'
> dedication in belief across what have always been boundaries before, then I
> think that this is precisely the sort of drama that HQ makes powerful. They
> may well fail, note. Don't make it easy, or simply allow them to get what
> they want - you'd be missing out on some really great conflicts to roll if
> you did. But, as people always say, player heroes are the exceptions to
> rules as often as they are paragons of rules. So, if it's interesting in and
> of itself, to look at such character transformations, then I think you have
> to go for this sort of thing.
>
> Maybe your hero band is all about uniting Kolating and Praxian spirit
> worshippers, and reconciling these spirits to join against the Lunars.
> Sounds good to me. Go with what works for you.
>
> >3) Is there any background material that I can access on
> >Kolat/SevenWinds/Seza
>
> It seems that they're waiting to publish it, though Rory leaks bits out
> occasionally. :-)
>
> Mike
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
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