Peter Metcalfe:
> And that too has problems.
Yes, and all the points you make are good points.
> 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.
How far is this from a HeroQuest Challenge where you rip someone else's ability out to use for yourself? (Or, if you aim to be a capital H hero, for your community)
> 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.
> 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.
Same goes with magic drawn into Truestone...
> 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.
Well, when it comes to interacting with the Living World, gods are morons.
> 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.
That's what we have had to work with for the past thirty years or so. While it is legitimate to ask whether this is necessary in Gloranthan vampires, there is a load of precedents to carry along or tactfully dispose of.
Much of Glorantha came into being "because it is/sounds cool". This includes scary as well as silly things.
>> 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.
Ok. (I admit I'm just reading "The Name of the Wind", a book which uses sympathetic magic as a main theme, and introduces chains of sympathy.)
Blood is the carrier of life, a thing Vivamort gave up to continue his existence. Life is what holds the souls of an individual together (according to Heortling doctrine - upon death the various souls go different ways). IMO the drinking of blood is not a matter of satisfying a nutrational deficit, but a magical act.
So, whether by a magical ritual or simply by being a vampire, I think that draining blood also will be draining life, or magic, and magic comes tied to the soul (for theists).
We can get into the various concepts of soul here... assuming you have a soul-drinker, would a victimized initiate of Orlanth be penalized on his breath while a victimized initiate of Ernalda be penalized on her body?
> 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.
Chaos is well able to destroy also the immortal portion of a soul, so I don't let this argument stand. If we were hypothesizing about non-chaotic vampires, you would have a point.
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