On 01/12/2011, at 9:32 PM, Richard Hayes wrote:
> Following on from David's posting, here are some further ideas as to where Chaotic sorcerors might be found in my Glorantha:
>
> Gark and Seseine
> Don't know anything about Seseine, but would like to know more.
>
> FWIW MRQ suggested that Gark was a theistic cult, but that in the Second Age there was also a sorcerous society which had replicated much of their magic. So whether or not Gark's cult is sorcerous, one could certainly create Gark-esque magic from the Essence Plane.
My crazy theories in a separate message.
> Kingdom of War
> The magicians of the Kingdom of War must be sorcerors in Gloranthan terms -- they are seen as evil magicians by those who oppose them, and thery perform powerful and complicated ritual magic that outsiders don't understand. However I don't know whether their magic tainted by Chaos? It is destructive and nihilistic enough that it might be -- but Gloranthans don't need Chaos in order to be evil.
The magicians of the Kingdom of War are a lot of things. They include sorcerers, but also spirit magicians and worshippers of war gods. There are undoubtedly some Companies of the KoW that worship sorcerers, and it certainly wouldn't be unreasonable for that to include some chaotic magic. But there are also divine and spirit magic users. I figure that the KoW don't worship that many chaotic deities, because most chaos deities simply aren't warlike enough. A well known bit of really powerful chaos sorcery, btw, is the creation of a basilisk, and basilisks are extremely dangerous things. A cockatrice is less well known, and I think quite likely originally a chaotic perversion of Mostali sorcery, rather than Western. Of course rituals for both could now be known to chaotic sorcerers any where. And Tapping, of course.
> Vampires
> Are some/all Gloranthan vampires still tainted with Chaos? Do they still practice sorcery?
I think most vampires practice sorcery, and that the Vivamort 'cult' is mostly sorcerous. Vampires seem to have begun as a Western perversion, such as in Tanisor in the first age. I personally think the RQ3 (and HW) presentation of vampires as predominantly sorcerers is correct. If there are divine magic using vampires (whatever the mechanics of that are) they would probably be associated with Nontraya rather than Vivamort. The God Learners thought Vivamort and Nontraya were the same being, but the God Learners would say that, wouldn't they? I'm not even sure that Nontraya is particularly a vampire god - ghouls and zombies seem more his style. Though vampires as well, perhaps.
> Atyari
> I don't think it would be that great a stretch for some Atyari to dabble in sorcery either, possibly via fragments of the Book of Drastic Resolutions (below)
>
Of course Atyari can easily acquire sorcerous knowledge. Atyar is one of the few chaotic divine cults that has immediate appeal to a sorcerer.
> Book of Drastic Resolutions
> Finally there was the interesting (unofficial) suggestion that there was a famous Chaotic grimoire called the Book of Drastic Resolutions (in the Chaos edition of the fanzine of the same name), parts of which might be found and used as a grimoire by Chaotically-inclined magicians.
>
> Originally it was suggested that the spells in this grimoire could be modelled on spells from Call of Cthulhu or Stormbringer (so in game mechanics terms as RQ was in the mid-1990s, these were probably rare and powerful Common/Spirit Magic spells). In my Glorantha I went down the 'Cthulhu' route as that is what I know.
>
> However in terms of the mechanics of MRQ or HQ maybe these spells would nowadays be considered as part of a sorcerous grimoire instead?
It works fine as a sorcerous grimoire if you want it to be.
Cheers
David
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