For an Orlanthi, I'd describe this as his breaths weakening to the point where his body cannot continue to operate. A body still moving without any breaths in it would be a zombie, and that isn't what you're after. Life is a binding of something in the mortal world with something else, and if that link weakens, then life goes away.
As others have said, some cultures can produce immortals, apparently through the stasis rune (Britini, Mostali, etc). My guess is that they are still very much mortal, but with stasis they've slowed things way down.
BTW: Your resident CA super-healer isn't going to change something as fundamental as this. There are myths about bringing folks from the dead (resurrection) but that is after the death already has happened. I guess there could be some localized myths for this, but clearly it isn't common place.
Maybe this body/soul connection is a blind spot for CA. She became a lightbringer to learn how to put souls back in bodies. Maybe she hasn't yet learned how to strengthen souls. Her focus is on the body, and perhaps the mind.
Or even worse, there are myths for this, and CA prohibits her followers from keeping souls healthy and in bodies. Mortality is part of the Cosmic Compromise, and a Lightbringer like CA doesn't want to increase the chaos in the world. It is tempting, but at some point helping an individual at the expense of hurting the world is a bad thing. I think the Doaist in China have recently come down against using endangered species in traditional healing techniques with a similar justification. Not that CA is into yin and yang or anything.
On 12/17/2010 10:01 AM, differentcomputers wrote:
> Here's a happy holiday topic for everyone.
>
> Let's assume some Gloranthan guy is, say, the mayor of a prosperous, peaceful, good sized town in a country that doesn't have a big war going on, in a political situation that doesn't cry out for assassinations. Someone reasonably important, money to spend... and 97 years old.
>
> He has a healer on his staff. A good one. He may have paid for a wing of the Chalana Arroy/Deezola/whatever hospital, so you bet he has the connections to get the healing he needs.
>
> His ancestral spirits and family wyter are strong. Bad spirits are kept away. If a particularly nasty one gets in, he knows how to contact a shaman.
>
> Assuming no violence and that he doesn't trip, fall down the stairs and break his neck, ***how does this guy die?***
>
> Anything taking more than a day or two to kill him would be handled by the healers. Disease spirits would get banished. Infections would never set in.
>
> Many of the difficulties of age in this world come from things that never healed right: Bad back, broken hip, torn up knees. These lead to sedentary lives which bring their own problems. Such would not be the case where there is magical healing for those who can afford it.
>
> But does a sedentary life bring its own problems in Glorantha, where a bad heart isn't caused by clogged arteries and high blood pressure, rather by being elf shot by a fairy?
>
> All I can think of is a stroke or aneurism. Both are fast enough to make the healers too late. (Though an aneurism, being a wound, would be easy for a healer to cure if quick enough.) But what causes those in Glorantha?
>
> Remember, Chalana Arroy (at least) takes the attitude that being alive is always better than being dead, so her followers would have no qualms about working magic on an old, worn out guy, even if they can't make him young again.
>
> Mike
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