And no reason not to follow multiple systems. A Heortling who gets a Kolating charm doesn't start worshipping Kolat as a God. He takes part in the strange ritual the shamen has told him to.
>And if you *are* concentrated, misapplied worship becomes even *more*
>useful. That shaman finds Sword Man "spirits" a pain to work with--
>but he couldn't worship Humakt at all.
>
>So since there's no penalty for misapplied worship (for most
>Gloranthans), I'd expect that it happens a lot. Your theistic culture
>picks up a new skill--paper-making, say--from Next Culture Over. The
>neighbors have a saint who teaches useful paper-making spells. But
>veneration just feels weird and stuffy. Well, a heroquester comes
>back and says, hey, you know what? Turns out there's a god who knows
>about paper-making too! And here's his feats! Sacrificing to the
>new "god" gives you as much bang for the buck as veneration does, and
>feels a lot more normal, so why not go with it?
I think that's the point, whatever magic is involved has to be important enough to the community for someone to perform an experimental HQ. Furthermore merely not liking the form of worship isn't enough. A community doesn't take HQ level risks just because a few individuals find something unpleasant. No, it's like with Sword Man. A Humatki introduced death magic to the tribes of Prax and some clan found they needed it so much that when the Humatki was no longer with them a shaman took big risks on the heroplane to connect with the magic.
>In particular, I'd bet the Lunars are very good about coming up with
>misapplied-worship versions of their deities for neighbors (and the
>less-lunarized) to work with. It lets people adapt to the lunar way
>by nice, easy stages.
The Lunars don't seem to do misapplied worship at all. From my reading of ILH2 they convert the local magical practice so that instead of connecting to the god/spirit/essence planes they connect to the Red Moon. Quite how this is done I'm not sure and what the long term consequences of mucking about with Glorantha this way are I dread to think. Remember the Lunars are generally quite happy for the majority of people to continue with their local practices however unenlightened.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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