Peter Metcalfe:
>> But when an Orlanthi does the same? Some do take human heads after all.
>> Or is the action of making a ghost chaotic? The journey to the afterlife is delayed which seems to me to be a feature of an unnatural death. I prefer to resolve this conumdrum (and others) by saying that the Thanatari severed heads are chaotic because chaos magic is used in their creation which gives them some bonus not available to the Orlanthi when they make severed heads.
I find myself in agreement with Peter here. The Thanatari Head Rituals would create a chaos taint, possibly on both user and victims' heads.
Simon Hibbs
> Agree completely, but would just add that chaos magic by definition is magic that annihilates the soul. That's what chaos is.
Getting cosmologically here, dealing with Chaos as a source of magic erodes your soul, unless you are able to face the Ultimate (i.e. you use some type of mysticism) and maintain some integrity.
There are other ways for a soul to get destroyed - being eaten by a True Dragon, for instance. Or achieving true mystical ascendance of whichever kind. As far as Orlanthi are concerned, conversion to Malkonism probably does the trick as well. But these are transformations rather than annihilations.
> I think most modern Orlanthi don't take heads because over time it's turned out that those that do take heads occasionally discover 'advanced' rites that enable them to get even more benefit from their heads more quickly. Spirits and visions come to them that reveal even more brutal and abhorrent practices, and before long they're making darklight candles, avoiding headgear and such. It's not that taking heads per se is against the traditional laws, during the darkness it was a useful if icky technique that enhanced some communities chances of survival, it's just that it's proven to be a very slippery slope indeed. And it is icky, after all, but I wouldn't put it on the same level as cannibalism.
Probably depends on how you take that head. I'd assume that a headhunting Orlanthi would challenge his future head-thrall to more or less open combat or rather a heroquest challenge. Two people enter the fight, the winner gets the head and the ghost of the loser. (If the opponent is minded to go for that reward after defeating the prospective headhunter.) Under Orlanthi law it is not murder, it is an announced manslaughter. (Chances to resolve this with weregeld are low, though, while the ghost remains bound to the head.)
There are almost always and everywhere short cut rites using bad magic. Not all of those are necessarily chaotic.
The Orlanthi in particular have a tendency to make bad magic chaotic, though. When they demonize, they invoke indirectly the magics of the Unholy Trio, by identification of the evil with chaos. The Summons of Evil in Orlanthi rites is a chaos invocation, after all.
(The Praxians are as dependent on Chaos as the Greater Evil... if one wanted to cleanse the Devil from below the Block, the first step would be to remove the Praxians from re-establishing chaos there with their Khan-making chaos hunts.)
I'm convinced that the Aldryami (and the Mostali) have it right with their myths about Growth (or rather Creation) going on a rampage and causing Reality to cave in, allowing Uncreation into the world. The actions of Ragnaglar and Wakboth only accelerated the inevitable collapse of a critical mass of Creation. I sort of wonder how the concept of colliding worlds is tied into this.
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