From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Fri 07 Mar 1997 - 05:34:30 EET
David Cheng votes early, and as is recommended in these parts, often:
> Count me as another vote against the supposed consensus opinion that all
> Humakt initiates are sterile.
Moi aussi. Lismelder Reproductive Fitness would take a bit of a hammering
were this true. However, I do agree that for a variety of reasons,
Humakti are, in the main, Less Successfully Fertile than the general
populace, so David D.'s -3/-6 may be justified in at least that sense,
if not by any direct magical effect (which I'm currently agnostic about).
Including:
> I think it very appropriate that a possible geas be "never have children"
> or "never engage in coitus." However, I think automatic infertility upon
> inititation is too extreme.
And more to the point, much less colourful and interesting than Fine
Suggestions like the above.
There are also rather mundane reasons for possibly low(ish) Humakti
reproduction rates, such as lifestyles incompatible with homebodiness,
self-selection of candidates making them unlikely to be the rake about town,
comformance to Humakti stereotype, low marginal propensity to sit around with
flowers in their hair at Ernaldan rituals, and generally poor chat-up lines.
("Do you come here often?" "My business is Death, and business is good.")
> This, of
> course, avoids the question "Should the Humakti Beserker spell really be
> redefined as 'Death Song'?", which came up on the Digest several years ago.
It does? How's that, then? I thought, personally. the question arose
mainly because Death Song is a Cool Name.
> I think it far more appropriate that infertility be a side-effect of some
> special Humakt heroquest. Or, perhaps some GMs might introduce the idea of
> gifts & geasa of increasing severity; only Swords could take them.
Pretty much the Same Difference, really. Any Sufficiently Advanced Gift is
Indistinguishable from a HQ power. ;-) Or put less frivolous: to get any
geas ought to require a minor HeroQuest; for progressively more elaborate
G&G's, simply delete the "minor". My own feeling is that resemblance
between the restriction on the cultist of a geas, and the much-argued-about
phenomenon of Loss of (Free) Will from HQing generally is not coincidental.
One might also lose one's fertility in an _unsuccessful_ HQ, rather than
calculatingly sacrificing it. Cf. HQ's to Asrelia's Hut (I think), as an
analogue for such.
The practice of genital mutiliation or amputation is _certainly_ plenty
"colourful", and has ample RW precedent, too. (And clinchingly, a mention
in _Soldier in the Mist_.) But that's not so much a Death God thing,
methinks, as a Malign Earth custom, at least principally. Most obviously,
Babs Gor and her Auntie Maran, but I think the pattern is likely to be
bordering on the Monomythically General. (See Jresteli Institute of
Mythtechnics research monograph KRR55/8765/T4B, Figure 23, "Guys with
filled-in Runes plotted against ambient genitalia count.")
Generically,
Alex.
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