Yes. My question is not about propitiating the spirits. I constructed, in my head, a 2 x 2 table. The rows are whether the evil spirit has manifested (yes vs. no) and the columns are fight vs. bribe. The combinations are: manifest + bribe = placation, a ritual that is an active magic and results in the departure of the spirit manifest + fight = banishment, a ritual that is an active magic and results in the departure of the spirit not manifest + bribe = propitiation, a ritual that results in a lingering benefit not manifest + fight = ???
The question was specifically about the last cell in the table. Is that combination meaningful? If so, what ritual do animists use to do it? Everything else was intended to follow from there as speculation. My assumption going in is that the ritual should result in a lingering benefit that affects future confrontations with that type of evil spirit.
> > My initial thought was that you have to ask for the
> > great spirit to assist some activity that the worshipper carries
> > out. (So, it kind of works like an augment.) I don't think that it
> > works to say, "Oh Eiritha, make our herds expand this year."
>
> Why not?
Mainly game balance. A lingering benefit can be as big as +9, which says to me that the benefit ought to be narrow. And since (in this particular speculative avenue) it was a benefit from a good spirit, there is no natural limitation of helping only against manifestations of some particular type of evil spirit (normally -- I can construct a case where that would be true).
> > But it might work to say, "Oh, Eiritha, help our women know when
> > our cows are sickly." This kind of makes sense to me because
> > animism relies on a personal relationship between spirit and
> > person. [...snip...]
> > How is the great spirit manifesting? Does she send her helper
> > spirits out to the worshipper? If so, they need bodies and no one
> > has prepared charms or anything.
>
> Why not?
If so, that would be a different thing. You would be creating a charm or a medicine bundle that works for the holder instead of carrying out a ritual that works for the entire community.
> > After all, taboos are mainly about not doing the things that offend
> > the spirits. So, maybe these rituals give you a little Lingering
> > Benefit in your interactions with the spirits of the tradition. But
> > the problem with that is one of game balance: if you got a +9
> > Lingering Benefit most years from making sure you got the annual
> > ritual right, that just seems over the top.
>
> Treat it the other way around (rather like having the tools for a skill you posess).
> An animist who failed to participate in the appropriate annual rites is treated with
> suspicion by the spirits of the tradition and suffers as penalty in all their dealings
> with such spirits, until such time as they can perform suitable restitution.
That is certainly a possibility. The downside to it is that it means players will always make it happen off-screen, because it is uninteresting to play out.
Peter responds to me:
> > Here's how I came to this question: I think that you can propitiate
> > evil spirits in advance, placate them when they arrive, or banish
> > them when they arrive.
>
> This is a bit rulesy in approach.
A fair point. I am trying to encapsulate -- within the HQ rules -- several types of common animist rituals that players and narrators can use easily. There will always be more.
> Why not look at RW animist big annual rituals (like say the Sun Dance) and see what they aim to do?
A very fine suggestion. I'll do some research on that one.
> > But then I was thinking that theists kind of do this. They dress up
> > in fancy clothes and go re-enact the whole "beat up the bad guy"
> > ritual during sacred time or whatever.
>
> And just because theists do this, means that animists can't?
No, but I'm looking for an animist's particular take on it, if there is one. As you might be suggesting, there may not be a particular animist take on this. My sense of the theist ritual is that the power comes from being the good guy -- the fact that the bad guy is beaten is a feature of the good guy. For animists, my sense is that the power from the ritual is focused around the bad guy. The ritual participants can later use the fact that they beat up Mallia, not the fact that Orlanth beat Mallia. (I don;t know that he did, but you know what I mean.)
> > Since animism is about personal relationships, and the big evil spirits
> > are so much bigger than people, animists can't really intimidate Black
> > Eater or Wildfire in advance.
>
> If they were confronting the full power of the big evil spirits then
> they can't but they are not, just as the theists are not.
Hmm. So maybe some sort of ritual where you summon a small disease spirit and defeat it, thus sending the "don't mess with us" message to Mallia? I think I've made that sounds unduly crass, but it does carry the ritual within a personal relationship. Another way to dress it up is that you symbolically defeat disease, thus heightening your community's already existing anti-disease capabilities (things like heightened vigilance, etc.).
> > Instead, what they do is ask for the blessings of the good spirits in advance.
>
> As does everybody else as far as I know.
Sure, but I mean in a way that results in a lingering benefit that can be applied to future contests. (Maybe I should have said that in the first place, eh?)
> So, my final thought was that the rituals make worshippers more
> suitable to great spirits. [snip]
> It also has the major flaw in that it reduces the great spirits
> primarily to actions *through* the worshipper whereas the worshipper is
> being nice to the great spirit in the hope that he *does* something good
> in return.
Very nice point.
> If you really want a personal relationships angle, it might be best to
> have the Big Annual Ritual as making the good spirits *happy* (potluck,
> singing, dancing, banjo duels) so they make good things happen around
> you. As for the bad spirits, some can simply be frightened off (mass
> chest beating and hooting), others have to beaten up so you can exhort
> promises from them that they won't make bad things happen around you in
> the coming year. And then there are the truly bad ones where you simply
> cast concealment magic so in the hope they won't see you.
I'm sure that this is true. I think the part that I am struggling with is exactly how beating up on small disease spirits makes Mallia leave you alone. I guess if you succeed, she got the message that you are strong and she should leave you alone. If you fail, then she calls your bluff.
Chris Lemens
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