From: Saravan Peacock (saravan@perth.DIALix.oz.au)
Date: Fri 09 Aug 1996 - 11:27:41 EEST
David Cake noted that one view of Red Vadeli blood magic:
>This isn't necessarily because they are evil though and through
>(though they may be IYG), but it could be partly because needing blood so
>often for their magic, they must often make do with their own (or borrow
>from their children), so are trained from a young age to endure the pain of
>cutting themselves (I don't think any Vadeli have nice childhoods....). So
>being able to endure the pain of cutting yourself could be a culturally
>encouraged trait. Thus they could almost be complimenting you by inflicting
>excruciating pain on you - its could be a sign of respect. Or maybe they do
>it because they like to laugh at your childlike screams, which they find
>funny in an adult. Or maybe for bizarre ritual reasons known only to
>themselves. I suspect you don't care much if they are doing it to you.
There is a great parallel of this in a medieval text on European history by
Liudprand of Cremona. He writes of the Hungarians attacking Germany and
Italy in the ninth-tenth centuries:
"No man ever more ardently desired a drink of cold water than these cruel
savages longed for the day of battle. Indeed their joy is in fighting. In
the book which deals with their origin I read that 'as soon as a child is
born his mother makes a cut on his face with a sharp knife, so that he may
learn to bear the pain of wounds before he has received nourishment from
the breast.' This assertion is rendered credible by the wounds they inflict
on their own live flesh as a sign of grief when their kinsmen are dying...
this ungodly and impious race shed blood it seems rather than tears."
Ian Gorlick:
> I frequently play a Tusk Rider. He is an avid practitioner of the Bloody Cut
>>ritual. He has collected a complete set
>of all the 97 recommended cutting tools for the best execution of the ritual,
>and he has used them on a goodly number of captives. However, we have never
>bothered to detail what all these tools are nor how they are used. We have
>>never
>had a single description of what he does to his captives. When he strips down
>>to
>his loincloth and gets out the knife case, all the other party members get out
>of sight, and preferable out of earshot, quickly. They don't want to know what
>is happening! They know enough to know that they don't want to know any more.
This is great. A powerful and horrible invocation of a gruesome ritual,
which says virtually nothing about the details of that practice but leaves
it open to the immensely vivid imaginations of the players themselves
(which, by the way, are almost invariably more vivid than can be achieved
by explicit description). It is a wonderful example of what can be achieved
by understatement. When I think of Horror, I think of Call of Cthulhu. You
know the deal, lots of spooky things going on at the corner of your vision.
Never seen but damn frightening. Of course all this depends on PCs knowing
what the danger is - after a few goes they know they are going to DIE if
they hang around! Even in CoC, though, for me, the best way to play those
deaths is sudden, and mysterious - preferably where the other PCs cant see
- - except the results of course. Sure there are lots of different ways of
portraying horror/nastiness but for me personally, hints and allusions work
best.
Pax
Saravan.
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End of Glorantha Digest V3 #106
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