> This [Vivamort] stealing is not so different from Issaries spell
> trading in allowing someone unrelated to the deitiy to perform this
> deity's feat.
And that too has problems. In terms of divine magic, you are essentially trading something that is a grace of your god, not a good to be brought or sold at the market. I can see certain circumstances where this might be viewed favourably (ie within the Lightbringers) but generally it's a theft (of sorts) from the Deity. The second issue that I have is that this is carried under the aegis of the Trade Rune. A trade implies an enduring transfer of property whereas the Issaries spell trading has the spells being used once before being handed back, which is rather sophisticated commercial behaviour for a bronze age deity. Yes, the spells are one use for game balance, but it's a rather hamfisted limit which raises a host of issues).
I do not argue that Issaries can't trade magic (Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes has a feat called equal exchange) but I do think that in terms of divine magic, it's not something that can be carried out by the worshippers alone.
> Basically, the difference is that the Vivamort victim makes an
> involuntary "trade" and doesn't gain anything in exchange. I have no
> real problem with the way RuneQuest handled this
My issue isn't how RuneQuest handled this mechanically, my issue is that it takes a rather mercenary attitude (without mythic justification) towards divine magic that is rather at odds with the principle behind the magic. It also implies the Gods are morons as they are able to determine whether a worshipper has lost faith and cancel his magic but they are unable to grasp that a vampire might have stolen the magic.
> Getting a part of your connection to your deity ripped out and used against you or yours is big time scary.
It's big time silly due to the lack of any reason for it. Simply being supposedly scary behaviour is a weak justification. Vampires are feared because they are powerful creatures of the night. They are not feared for the ability to steal their victim's magic and my opinion is that ability was written in as a game balance against Thanatar or even Bagog. But Krarsht, Malia and Thed work just fine without the ability to steal spells.
> The question is, how much of this divine magic has become an integral part of the victim initiate, and thus can be manipulated by the vampire holding the blood bond.
The answer surely is divine magic has nothing to do with the blood bond - it's a property of the victim's soul. That makes it a different than to use of blood to enthrall a victim or to animate a corpse. If Vivamort were to be a soul vampire (for the sake of argument, I think it's accepted that his vampires drink blood) then my belief is that the victim's divine magic is untouchable as they are the immortal portion of his soul.
--Peter Metcalfe
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