Re: Re: Gods verus Spirits, and more.

From: Peter Larsen <plarsen_at_...>
Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2001 22:57:55 -0500

>> There are no theistic river spirits. As for river daimones
>> being different from river spirits, the question has already
>> been tackled in Anaxial's Roster p203 ("The Elemental entities
>> of each Otherworld have different abilities and attributes.
>> However they can appear superficially similar - a normal person
>> usually cannot distinguish between a worli, umbroli and kolati
>> although any magician can tell them apart"). There's also
>
>Sure, but my problem is with the magicians telling them apart. I
>mean, when doing a scene I could tell the player that, but I would
>like to do more showing and less telling. What sort of differences
>would magical practitioners perceive?

        This is just my opinion, but I suspect that even magical specialists aren't going to be too good with "alien" beings. The average god-talker may recognize a spirit, but she isn't likely to be able to tell much about its characteristics. The sense may to even be sight -- perhaps a Heortling godi might be able to see daimons easily and identify them by class and temperment with some authority (obviously, an Orlanth godi will do best with wind daimons), but spirits might be identified only by an odor or sound. Essences are much more alien, if the godi could spot them, it would likely be only as a bad feeling. This applies only to Heortlings; I would suspect that Ralian Orlanthi have much more contact with essences and are probably fairly adept at recognizing them (although they still only deal with daimons as a matter of course). In a game, I'd probably allow non-magician characters to use Heortling Custom to spot likely daimon and spirit manifestations, especially on the tula -- all kids will be taught that the sky looks funny just before wind daimons appear, that spirits live in the woods and, if you hear very faint voices murmurring nonsense, you should run quickly, etc. Godi probably know some tricks for dealing with local spirits ("We leave a sheep in the Haunted Grove on the first Wildday in Earth Season, and the spirits leave us alone. If they don't, we have to get Krazy Knut the Kolat-speaker to deal with them, and he's almost as bad as a spirit."), but it's all lore and old deals set up by spirit-talkers, not an innate power of godir.

Peter Larsen