From: David Cake (davidc@kultarr.cs.uwa.oz.au)
Date: Tue 05 Oct 1993 - 09:41:40 EET
>
> From: eosgg@raesp-farn.mod.uk (Geoff Gunner)
> Subject: Spirit Plane (again...)
> Message-ID: <9310041315.AA17392@raesp-farn.mod.uk>
> Date: 4 Oct 93 13:15:53 GMT
> X-RQ-ID: 1902
>
> Geoff Gunner here, folks.
>
> GP = Gods/Hero Plane, SP = Spirit Plane, MP = Material Plane
> There is a heirarchy; MP -> SP -> GP. ( -> ? )
> Each successive level is an abstraction of the previous.
Quite reasonable.
> Things such as fear spirits are much more explainable. They might even be
> linked to a god, if 'fear' has been personnified into a deity.
>
If fear is an attribute of a deity, it will have fear spirits associated with
it.
>
> On taking myself to another plane, I can make my *spirit* aware of the 'rational
> me', and so extend myself into the spirit plane (note, this isn't sending 'me'
> off into the spirit plane, but bringing the spirit to me.) This seems to me
> to be how shamans and dream workers do it.
>
Quite reasonable - but 'bringing the spirit plane to you' is in rules terms
Second Sight, I would guess. Not discorporation - which starts with gaining
awareness of the spirit plane, but also includes moving your spirit free from
the body. Perhaps some people can do this in dreams?
> The idea of transferring myself physically into the SP I'm having a lot of
> problems with ( e=mc^2, after all! The physical can't exist on the spiritual,
> so where does it go ? Saved up as raw energy for the transfer back ?
I just don't like it. Why make it something possible if it makes no sense? Certainly for it a spirit being to gain a physical body in moving closer to the mundane plane would be exceptional. I prefer to think that most of the summonable creatures with bodies are summoned from the GP, and that the GP has some sort of physical existence.
> Hence
> the mythical time limitations on walking the planes, as this energy is slowly
> dissipating. Or perhaps it could get 'eaten' by some spiritual horror).
I thought that the time limit was more from fear of getting lost.
> And transferral the other way (i.e. Demonic appearence) has the same problems.
> But note - the use of energy to create mass might account for the temperature
> drop/rise present at so many mythical happenings. Anyone help me out of this
> hole I've dug myself ?
Well, I can tell you that you are not going to get around it with physics. The amount of energy in the heat change, is very insignificant campared to mc^2. I once calculated that for m=1kg, the amount of energy is sufficient to vaporise a sphere of Ice well over a km in diameter.
I guess summoned things that have physical bodies already have them
before summonable.
>
> And what if a species, rather than an individual, learnt to cross the boundary
> between the planes ? As with all invader species, they would find life a lot
> easier. So the Tuatha de Daan (?) retreat from the Milesians into the lands
> of Faerie in Celtic mythos. They would gain in spiritual skills to help them
> survive but slowly loose their physical skills until they were fully part of
> the spirit world (Irish legends are full of the TdD using mortals to do their
> dirty work). I prefer European elves to Gloranthan, and forsee some good stuff
> coming from this approach. Ghouls I can see as a species that are moving the
> other way in a particularly nasty manner.
>
I prefer to think that in RQ terms the TdD live on the God-Plane.
I actually think of HeroQuesting as most HeroQuesting as not involving
directly moving to the Hero-Plane, but perceiving it, and increasing your
presence there, so that your physical efforts have more significance. Also,
as you perceive and move in the HP, some places that are neighbouring on the
HP may not be physically as close. Some places on the HP may not appear to have
a physical correspondence that we can locate, such as Hell or the Sky. This,
however, does no mean that it is not real in some sense.
>
>
> ps. Has anyone done any work on translating C&S magic into RQ terms ?
> Although most of it is more appropriate to medieval FRP, things like the
> Drug Trance and Power Word magics are very tempting !
>
Well, the Sorcery system that I am still working on (very intermitently) is
influence by C & S Basic Magick. But I would love to see more differentiation
of the different approaches to the same spells, like C&S Drug Trance or
Thaumaturgists.
Someone else said
>
> 'Course, you could say that everything on the Mundane Plane has an underlying
> Magical Structure. The magical structure of the Living is a Spirit. The
> magical structure of the Non-living is something less than a spirit but still
> magical in some way. (I'd draw a real-world analogy with Organic and Inorganic
> chemistry; but I ain't no chemist.) Perhaps this magical structure is visible
> on the Spirit Plane... who knows?
I think that there should be some relationship between the mundane and the
spirit plane geography. Things with spirits associated with them, particularly,
such as Streams and rocks. The same goes for the Earth, which after all has
a large pantheon. But that does not mean that all the spirit plane is this
closely associated with the mundane (only the Frontier region), and it does
not mean that all the mundane plane things are represented (only those things
with spiritual importance, which generally means not transient).
>
Also, on thing like Frogs and Frog Woman - frogs have spiritual presence, and
so the existence of many frogs give a source of froggy power. Worshipping
Frog Woman (which humans do, and frogs generally do not) gives this froggy
power a name and an associated presence, and allows humans to tap into this
power. If humans worshipped a different Frog deity, then they would be able
to summon it and talk to it - though maybe they need to HeroQuest to make this
deity real. But this other deity would tap the same source of froginess.
I too, deny ever having been a God-Learner.
And on the subject of deteriorating spirits - I dislike it, because it makes it highly unclear what is meant by the afterlife. Gloranthans fear above all else the loss of the Immortal soul, and this makes it sound inevitable for anyone not saved from this fate by their god.
I much prefer the lack of memories that has always been mentioned. Spirits that die first lose tracks of their earthly motivations, and then gradually lose all memories, and then when they have lost all the memories that connect them to Earth they go to join their god, drifting towards the Heroplane, 'connected' to their God by initiation. Spirits that are not initiated drift with less purpose, perhaps ending up at Daka Fal.
Ghosts exist both in the normal, bound form (conventional ghosts) and ocassional ghosts that do not lose their connections to the mundane plane. A special example is the various ghost battles, where the ghosts do not go their eternal rest because they are constantly reminded of the battle with their enemies by their attacks. They may forget everything else but the battle, but the battle remains.
Just my thought Cheers Dave Cake ---------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:31:48 EEST