From: David Cheng (cheng@global2000.net)
Date: Wed 05 Nov 1997 - 06:11:32 EET
I am slow in catching up on recent Digests.
A few issues ago, father-to-be Nick Brooke did an off-the-cuff description
of how Western wizardry can fit nicely with Western society. Specifically,
he mentioned how cathedrals might serve as foci for huge region and
population-affecting magics.
He also mentions how Westerners specifically have 'magical specialists'
(their Wizards), deliberately keeping magic from the hands of the others.
To keep this theme, and to scale down his cathedral idea, I'd like to
relate an idea voiced by Charles Morehouse many moons ago.
Charles envisions each Malkioni town having a church of some size great or
small, with a heirarchy of wizards tending it (heirarchy of 1 for small
churches).
On Holy worship day each week, a main part of the ceremony would be the
populace approaching the wizard and touching the local holy relic. In game
terms, they are using the worship ritual to sacrifice Magic Points to the
relic. These MPs are then used by the Wizard(s) to do socially-beneficial
magic for the rest of the week. Thus, each week, the non-magic-using
populace expends its MPs to provide magical energy for the magic-using
specialists, with the understanding that the magic cast will be for the
greater social good. Oppressed Rokari peasants have a more modest
expectation of this, but an expectation none-the-less; if they don't get
any magical support, then everyone starves/goes without new clothes/etc,
Wizards & Lords included.
Note how _GoG_ even states how the Malkioni "Worship Invisible God" ritual
drains worshippers of Magic Points, while leaving them with (nothing but) a
sense of satisfaction that the Invisible God has accepted their
worship/sacrifice and found it Good (suspicions about this being a
Staffordian poke at Christianity aside).
Sounds good to me.
- -DC
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