[Glorantha] The EWF operation

> From: Chris Lemens <chrislemens@yahoo.com>

> I like the jade scale to dragon scale analogy and metmorphosis. Perhaps
> at the earlier levels, the use of jade is only partial. The first step
> is slicing your tongue with a (jade?) knife.

This is how I run it in my Pavis game! One of the characters was a sort of an EWF survivor. During the fall of the EWF he had committed Utuma (to escape the dragonewts), and his soul had incarnated several times along the way, the dragon aspects slumbering.

In 1400 ST, during the solitude of Testing, he lived in Sun County. He was a strange and troubled young man named Ainigma (enigma), with a yellow left eye.

He and a friend ended up in the troll haunted Pavis, got lost in time for a while (a very long story) and emerged in 1600 ST, in a EWF era draconic temple/dojo in Pavis (big rubble). Ainigma remembered bits and pieces of his former life, but he needed the operation to split his mind and tongue. I went with KoS on this.

The operation is supposed to be so simple, that people can do it on each other, as soon as it's been done on them. You just can't do it on yourself. Ainigma had to convince his companion Minos to submit to the procedure, so that Minos could do it to him. Eventually, after a few very interesting play sessions this was done.

The temple/dojo is a hollow ziggurat pyramid (three sided), that is open at the top. The walls are decorated in jade imagery of dragons, dragonewts and human transformation. Inside, there was a box of ritual items, including a very sharp blade (I can't remember if it was jade or obsidian in the game), with which to do the ritual bisecting of the tongue and brain.

<snip>
> I also like the notion that you have to emerge at each stage. I'd be
> satisfied with shedding your skin, though, since snakes do a lot of
> that. If you preferred re-hatching from the egg, that would be cool, but
> it seems awfully complex for the EWF. (A pyrmaid scheme has to be
> affordable at the bottom levels; dying -- even with the promise of
> rebirth -- does not seem all that enticing a proposition.)

Like in most things, the bottom level just participated in a little draconic enlightenment. They participated in the great work, but didn't transform into dragons. Just like in the third age Glorantha. Most theists are communal worshippers and initiates, the devotees and deciples few and far in between.

  ***

I'd just keep the stuff in the temples and for transformation... and for jewellery. I don't see people walking about in jade suits. That just seems silly, but to each of us their own.

        -Adept Received on Sat 27 Jan 2007 - 12:56:38 EET