From: Loren Miller (LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu)
Date: Sat 12 Jun 1993 - 00:31:05 EEST
Curtis writes:
>I'd just like to say I support the idea of including the Rune Power idea
>as an optional rule.
The problem is that as Greg has said before the Rune Power rules
break the cosmic compromise. Orlanth does not invoke a divine effect
when a priest casts cloud call, such would be cheating. Divine
intervention is such cheating. That's why it has such stringent
rules, and can't affect anyone else. That's also why it is so risky
to the one praying. The reason that divine intervention is so
expensive for the mortal involved is that the divinity risks being
caught and damaged by the compromise.
The way divine magic works is that the deity gives a boon to the
worshipper, and the worshipper uses a certain amount of POW to store
the boon. With an initiate the POW that stores the boon is tied to
the boon. It goes away when the boon is used. With a priest the POW
that holds the boon sticks to the priest and can be recharged with
the same boon upon further prayer. Why is there a difference?
Something Curtis says later gave me an idea.
> The other thing I liek about this is that it would add bit of
>similarity to priests and the other two magic types. Just like a shaman
>makes his otherself awaken as a fetch on the spirit plane and feeds it
>pow and a sorceror binds his otherself to the real world and gives it
>pow a priest gives his otherself to his god and stores his pow that way,
>as a pool to be drawn on later.
Now this is an important point. It allows me to see a sensible way to
explain the divine magic rules.
When the divine magic user becomes initiated he undergoes an ritual
that begins to separate his otherworldly self, the part of him that
would become the fetch of a shaman or the twin of a magus, from him,
and begins to form his "soul." (just picked the name. try another if
you don't like it.) The initiate prays to and receives boon powers
from his divinity, powers that are stored in the soul, along with the
POW that was committed to support them. If he wants to he can loose
those divine powers, permanently weakening his soul. If he holds on
to them then after his soul gets to 10 POW he may be initiated to
acolyte or priest rank, which means the soul is no longer weakened
by using divine boons. Until then the initiate is deemed to be ready
to possess the boons, but unready to use them. This period is a test.
After initiation to acolyte or priest status, divine boons loosed
from the soul may be regained through prayer. The soul can be thought
of conceptually as a personal god, connected to and synchronous with
the initiate or priest, existing on a personal godplane rather than
the mundane or spirit or god plane. This also explains why rune magic
cast on the hero plane or in the god plane is used permanently. The
hold of the boon on its piece of the soul is stronger than the soul's
connection to the priest.
This explanation is also consistent with the reluctance of real world
religious instructors to teach miraculous abilities to their students
and their frequent recommendations that people should not, at peril
of their soul, use magic. It shrinks the soul. Only very experienced
people should attempt to use those powers, for they are dangerous.
This explanation works for some divine magic users, but most if not
all temples teach spirit magic to worshippers. Why isn't spirit magic
also banned? Besides the game balance issue, I think that if the
personal and minor nature of spirit magic is emphasized then we could
see a clear path to allowing people to use minor tricks, and even
instructing them in their use, while discouraging them from using
major powers. I think the chi analog is a good one.
I think this explanation is consistent with all the facts we have
about divine magic on glorantha. It also matches a lot of the real
world facts. We might want to change the name of the priest's
pseudo-fetch from soul to something else, but... Should we run it by
Greg and include it in the rules?
-- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@wmkt.wharton.upenn.edu Into the flood again, same old trip it was back when 0,,
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