[Glorantha] Re: Soul Wound and unhealability

In message <20060404175710.693.qmail@web25708.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Jane Williams writes:

>Coming back a step, I think we all agree that the
>Humakti attitude to full vampires is to kill them, and
>that they regard this method as satisfactory. Does
>this in fact "kill" them in the normal sense, or does
>it consign them to immediate oblivion? I suspect the
>latter. And if so, is this ability to consign a being
>to total oblivion confined to vampires (where it's a
>function of the vampire's nature), or can it be done
>to others (a special Humakti ability)? The former
>seems likely, but I could believe the latter.
>
>Looking at what else a Humakti might do, the concept
>of severing the victim from the Void was mentioned,
>and at the time I thought it was a good idea. But now
>I think about it, that raises questions as to what we
>mean by "wound". If you have a broken leg, or a gashed
>side, you don't "sever" it. Well, not unless you're
>solving the broken leg by amputating it. If on the
>other hand the link to the Void is seen as a parasitic
>attachment, then yes, severing would work. But it
>sounds as if what we want here is the soul equivalent
>of stopping something bleeding.

The way I see the void is a spiritual vacuum, it sucks away spirits, souls, essences given the chance. A vampire gives the void that opportunity when it bites and the victim is wounded. At that stage if the connection to the void is severed a healer can treat the symptoms and the body will recover. Untreated the void will eventually suck the person dry leaving a zombie. Vivamort teaches a way of stealing the life force from others to replace that lost to the void but the vampire's soul (spirit or essence) has already gone by the time the transformation is complete. So when the vampire's connection to the void is severed it no longer has a normal soul but bits and pieces of other peoples some of who are probably dead. A Humakti will just kill what's left and the bits either return to a person who's still alive or go to whatever afterlife they're entitled to. Since the vampire's soul has already gone into the void death is oblivion.

So I don't think Humakt has a general ability to send a being to oblivion. It doesn't fit the concept of a god who separates the living from the dead. I can imagine there is such a god though but he or she is going to be a judge of the dead - probably a Dara Happen one.

-- 
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/