davecake

No, that is the same as most of the others, you no longer enjoy the privileges of cult membership and may face the judgement of the cult, only the chances are that for Danfive members the privileges of membership include not being punished for some terrible crime, often capital punishment. You are not supposed to leave Danfive, but if you do there will be no spirits of retribution, only the judgement of a particularly judgemental cult. The same applies to the majority of Lunar cults, including the Seven Mothers individually and collectively, there are no spirits of reprisal only the judgement of the cult itself, and society at large - just for most of them are a lot more relaxed about what is needed to justify punishment for members who have left (in fact, its only Yanafal that seems to take much action against former members at all). It usually will not even be the cult itself that punishes you - it may simply communicate to whatever authorities responsible for punishing your previous crime. Or the DX cult may decide you merit punishment under the cult rules and hunt you down, and you can spend the rest of your life panicking at the sight of anything that looks like black bearskin cloaks - usually if you broke the cult rules in some important way before you left the cult. But it is entirely possible (though presumably very unusual) that a DX initiate joined the cult entirely voluntarily (perhaps from doing something that they feel very guilty about), and did not actually commit any infractions of the DX cult rules that caused them to leave (or they have been punished for those infractions already), and simply decided to leave the cult. In which case DX is just like the other Lunar cults - there is no spirit of reprisal, though there may be consequences. I never said it was easy, only that canonically, even within official Lunar law, it is possible. And for PCs becoming Illuminated is easy to justify. Easy enough a generous GM could have it happen during character creation. Within the Lunar Empire some exposure to Illumination is common enough it can easily be part of your character history. And even outside it, it could be part of your campaign background with GM Permission. And once you have been exposed to Illumination, those yearly rolls make it fairly likely you will end up Illuminated eventually. But yes, becoming a Rune Lord is pretty hard though - though the cult does provide free training in the skills required for Rune Lord, so it is certainly possible for a dedicated penitent. Absolutely. Every so often a Sister of the New Consciousness might discuss Illumination, for example. And then ask a riddle or too. Or those who have 'graduated' from the cult, or the Overseers, might ask promosing penitents a riddle. I think once you are recognised as Illuminated, I think DX becomes more flexible. They might not entirely grant a penitent their full freedom or similar, but they might relax the restrictions enough to make you a playable PC, such as demonstrating your devotion to the Lunar Way through active service in the world - "For my sins, they gave me a mission." I do agree that discussing conditions under which the penitent is considered to have repented enough to leave the cult (or at least, leave the full time service of the cult) and continue serving the Lunar way in other ways would have been helpful.

There are some canonical ways to be freed from it. One example is an Illuminated Overseer may become an Initiate of the Red Goddess, and then may become an Initiate of the Red Emperor, at which point all their previous cult restrictions are removed (this may be what happened to Nose Ring of the Coders). But more commonly I think once a member of Danfive Xaron is Illuminnated, they may be tested, and they pass the test, and are believed to have performed sufficient penance, their superior in the cult may affirm that they are still bound to follow their orders - and then order them to go free. Think of the scene in V for Vendetta. After that they may be offered a mission, which would enable them to remain in the cult. Remember, most Lunar Cults have no spirit of retribution. If the cult decides no longer to punish a past member, no one else will.

It would be Talar, either ranking Talar, or of some specific kind (Judge?) Both Malkioni and local Orlanthi care a lot about genealogy. There should be records. And a good Talar should rely on the zzaburi on such matters. If you have a legitimate claim to be of noble lineage, or come from a line of wizards, there should be records. Or perhaps Divination is permitted.

The problem with this bit of theological gymnastics to cunningly redefine the meaning of worship, thus making it meaning pretty much the opposite of its meaning, is that we are left with either of two alternatives. 1) there is a 'Lhankor Mhy cult' among the Aeolians but it does not have any access to Rune Magic or spirit magic, and is not capable of many functions we would expect of the cult, and it gains no concrete benefits from being part of a cult at all, it being essentially just rebranded zzaburi - for those members that are trained in sorcery, but there is a minority that are taught no significant magic of any kind, so for them being a 'wizard' caste member just means they have less access to magic than the vast majority of Gloranthans. This pseudo-cult either does nothing most Lightbringers would understand as worship, or does so for no personal benefit from a sense of duty to the other castes. or 2) there is an actual Lhankor Mhy cult among the Aeolians, it just exists outside the wizard caste. Neither seems very satisfying to me.

OK, so when you said your version of the Aeolians was the same as the rulesbook version (and Prosopaedia version), that does not seem to be the case, as they are both pretty explicit that the Aeolians do not directly worship the Invisible God. But I think I'm going to go with the Wizard caste also practicing Rune magic (but avoiding spirit magic). I guess we will just have to see what comes of it when more is published about them.

Absolutely. Lots of people in the general area will be able to trace their lineage back to one or the other son or daughters of Vingkot, and so Orlanth. Though the endogenous Esvulari probably find it rather more difficult than most.

Yes, I think it is probably possible, but rare. In Seshnela it requires the consent of a Talar which is routinely granted, In Aeolianism probably the consent of a Talar which is rarely granted. As long as they have the full worship of such deities available - not a spirit cult type thing or a small subset, but at least the core spells. So in your conception of the Aeolians, the wizard caste do not worship the Invisible God, and do not worship any gods, and many of them do not even practice sorcery? A boost to INT can make the %age them that are untrained be a bare minority rather than a majority. But it would have to be a very large boost for it not to be a substantial minority. So lets assume for discussion purposes it is at least 30%? Which is reasonable, but it's an edge case to solve a rare social problem (in most cases orphans parent will still be known). It doesn't solve the social problem of a supply of smart wizard children, unless for some reason Aeolian society has a problem that produces orphans wholesale. The point of bringing the Rokari up was noting that they promote smart children (perhaps only Dronari or Horali, or perhaps Talar second and later sons) into the zzaburi caste to ensure they have an adequate supply of smart sorcerers - and given zzaburi celibacy, this means all zzaburi are in theory pretty smart. And the Loskalmi specifically promote the promising. and that just seems nonsense. Its a coherent cult that simply has more than one major internal sub-cult. The Aeolians are very obviously NOT a pure Malkioni culture, but henotheist - and the defining feature of henotheism is that they worship gods besides acknowledging the Invisible God. I find this whole discussion sort of baffling - the rulebook very clearly says they do not worship the Invisible God and do worship the Lightbringers, and we get a lot of discussion that seems to start from assuming they must be more like orthodox Malkionism really, so they must actually worship the Invisible God, and can't really worship the Lightbringers properly, they must only sort of do it. And maybe we justify all this by making them more like the Seshnegi and less like the description of the Aeolians. Sounds more like they have no dedicated Worship Invisible God rites at all, but rather invoke the name of the Invisible God in the rites of the Lightbringer gods. If they don't worship the Invisible God, and do worship the Lightbringers, why are you sure they get significant Rightness benefits?

And if the wizard caste have a small boost to INT, then it would no longer be the case that the majority of them aren't wizards, but even so still a fairly large minority of the wizard caste are not wizards - and have no other particularly important function either, just Aeolian sorcerers seem to have a lot of assistants. This seems a rather silly way to run a Gloranthan society to me. I don't think that is canon. But it certainly doesn't seem to be true for any post-Godtime Malkioni, and the Aeolians are very far from Brithini caste customs. First, this means a lot of them don't seem to do much at all then. A lot of them are not trained in sorcery, explicitly don't worship the Invisible God either, and can't worship any of the gods that they claim are personifications of the Invisible God either, or use any other magic. Which naturally leads us to some very odd conclusions - as the Talars are only eligible to join a few cults, and the wizards can't join any, and the various Lightbringers etc still have functional cults and so must have priests, so most of their best magicians are going to be commoners? And certainly better than those members of the wizard caste that can only use sorcery, but aren't taught it, so know no practical magic at all! Does that mean 'they worship their ancestors' or 'they worship the Lightbringers, but have conveniently discovered all the useful gods are their ancestors to pay lip service to Malkioni custom'? It sounds rather like the latter. If its the latter, that seems to contradict the rules book. I'd rather just keep the 'we worship the gods but its OK because we know they are our ancestors' as a Seshnegi thing - it seems to run counter to the Aeolian idea that the Lightbringers are worthy of worship. (also kind of extra hilarious, as they majority of the Orlanthi can probably claim to be descended from Orlanth via Vingkot and their tribal ancestors, but the endogamous Esvulari probably can't?) The rulesbook seems to have already changed it, as it says the Aeolians worship the Lightbringers. "Unlike most Malkioni, the Aeolians view the Invisible God as too remote and too unapproachable to directly worship. Instead, they worship Orlanth, Chalana Arroy, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy, and Eurmal as personifications or emanations of the Creator." It does mean the Rokari have a functional wizard caste however, while the Aeolians have about half their wizard caste as people who know no sorcery or other magic, and just basically do their paperwork, apparently. Yes, we could also ensure that the free caste commoners are also notably very bad at magic by deciding they only have spirit cults, and the best magicians of the whole culture are hitherto unmentioned shamans, yes. Yes, but kind of the whole point of the Aeolians is that they already think the Lightbringers, as emanations of the Invisible God, are acceptable deities. And its a millennium and a half later etc. Yes. But the Aeolians are explicitly not Rokari, or old Seshnegi. They believe the Lightbringer gods can be worshipped - just as long as its not by anyone that matters, apparently. And I don't think we know that the modern Seshnegi do the ancestor worship thing - that was known as more of a Dawn Age, Serpent Kings, thing. Modern Seshnegi Talars worship what gods the High Ecclesiarch says are ok. And even the Ingareens are explicitly not as good at magic as them (except maybe when they get all heretic and crazy with machine gods etc). And so the Esvulari who live next door have had many centuries to absorb the Rex rites. Belintar may even have deliberately tried to extend it, as it would benefit him.

The Baths of Nelat are not just purifying and painful, they are acid and completely dissolve the body of the person being tested (or in Water god terms, turn it all to liquid=Water), and to survive them you must have the wisdom to know that you are not your body, and be able to master the powers of change enough to create yourself a new body. It is purification also, of course, when you create your new body you can rid yourselves of any external corruption. Orlanth of course has this power of change, and so survives, though it is a great trial. His reward is wisdom from the Well of Daliath, or course - but also Mastakos, the ultimate power of change. And Mastakos teaches that if you can magically create one body, you can create another - dissolving the body is the Meld Form ritual, creating it anew is what the Proteus spell does. And this may be the source of all that shape changing magic known to Heort and his ancestors.

Not all Illuminates have the power to ignore spirits of retribution - in fact its one of the rarer powers of Illuminates. And for those that do have the power, it is not necessarily 100% reliable (like most Illuminate powers, it probably requires and Illumination skill roll). If you make the idea of ignoring spirits of retribution and cult restrictions central to your understanding of Illumination, you'll tend to miss the point. Think about more common powers as more central - raising Opposed Runes, overcoming ones own Passions, etc.

Of the three castes of the Aeolians: Commoners are literally everyone who isn't noble or zzaburi, and I presume they worship the entire normal range of Orlanthi gods. Probably a fairly large percentage of them are Orlanthi farmer-warriors just like their Heortland neighbours, though there are plenty of fisherman as well, who probably mostly worship Choralinthor. I suspect they probably have a way for others to be adopted into the caste? But are primarily endogamous, certainly. The zzaburi, also described as sorcerer-priests - two big questions about them, which likely relate. 1) do they exclusively use sorcery, or do they combine sorcery and rune magic? Are they exclusively 'priests' of the Invisible God, or do they worship his emanations as well? If they do use Rune magic and lead worship, which deities? 2) the rulebook says they are trained in sorcery if they have INT 14. But what happens to the majority of the Zzaburi (presuming they have a normal human spread of INT) that aren't? The main question about the Talars is what gods do they worship? They don't use sorcery. The rulebook says they use Rune Magic and Spirit Magic - do they worship Orlanth? Does this include the Rex cult? What alternatives would there be? In Western tradition Talars may also be merchants and diplomats, which would potentially include Issaries, but the Aeolians are clearly not very bound by Western tradition.

Revealed Mythologies is the main source, but it is mentioned elsewhere.

Ancestor Worship is the primary magic that is provided by the practice of the cults we regard as classic Ancestor Worship. The practice is different to their beliefs, and somewhat separate to the magic they provide. Daka Fal is perhaps the most classic version - his cult follows a clear version of the standard ancestor worship cult practices, and also acknowledges Daka Fal as both Grandfather Mortal, Flesh Man, and the first person to die. Cults like Surenslib and BisEllenslib mix it up with other forms of worship (sex dances in your frog outfit and so one), cults like Votank are a more limited version that does not make universal/cosmic claims about their ancestor. That's one of the reasons the God Learners identified Daka Fal as The archetypal ancestor worship god - though the inherent difficulties with identifying Malkion as Grandfather Mortal and the source of ancestor worship also made for some difficulties (though it was presumably at one time considered true enough, hence its use by the ancient Seshnegi). We now know there are other forms of worship that provide some ancestor worship spells - In the Dragon of Thunder Hills you can revive a First Age Vingkotling form of worship for Orgorvale Summer, and at the time there were presumably ancestor worship cults for the other children of Vingkot. They are not shamanic, but provide all common rune magic as well as some ancestor summoning spells. I think Aptanace the Sage in Kralorela is another variant ancestor worship cult that is probably not shamanic - Aptanace is probably always worshipped through one of his hundreds of children, who each founded a profession. Ebe the first man is thus always acknowledged (as father of Aptanace), but civilised Kralorelans wouldn't worship him by the primitive ancestor worship rites favoured by Hsunchen villagers and such, and they have a number of other ancestor worship practices instead, with lots if small sacrifices to there ancestors collectively and individually and shrines in their houses and businesses, but none of this dancing with spirits at the Axis Mundi stuff.

According to the mythology, Surenslib is the actual ancestor - Surenslibs Sixfth Clutch of eggs hatches into the first of the Suvarian people, who are the Revered Ancestors. I think the ancestor worship tradition in practice is about tracing your genealogy back to one of the Revered Ancestors, with a sort of 'an also Surenslib, so also waterfowl' appendix. Suvar is a warm earth deity, and his son Jerondum is the founder figure who teaches us how to serve Surenslib. Perhaps Verondum is the first shaman for the tradition. He seems to teach in particular a foe-curser type ritual. But his father Suvar is also a shaman. Perakosus is the father of Suvar, literally means Grandfather, but appears to be identified with Lodril rather than Grandfather Mortal. And of course Yestendos the reed boat god is part of the tradition as well. And later, in the Gods War they are enemies with the Hippo God, the Crocodile God, the Tapir god - and Surenslib devours the bodies of her people to make new eggs, and from them come the Hero Families (who seem a way of incorporating foreigners and/or worshippers of other magic into the ancestor worship tradition - even though we don't know the lineage of these new people, we clearly want them to be part of our tribe), and the Manimati are presumably among the Hero Families, who get them into trouble with the Dara Happens and start this whole 'we hate Darjiin usurpers' thing. (all from GROY)

I'd expect this more as gods of the various individual waters, with minimal detail on how they differ, but yes. With a spell here and there attributed to an associated ancestral water deity. Yes, though I expect the different ancestors of the different kindreds to differ only minimally. I expect this to end up in a Prax/Pavis book - perhaps Lands of Glorantha: Prax I really appreciate that many of these are new, and have not had a cult writeup before, and will represent a huge increase in our knowledge of the sea pantheon. Brastalos has previous been written up only as an associate of Magasta, Triolina is likely very different to her description in RQ3 Gods of Glorantha, as her two really interesting spells have been given to Mastakos instead, and I think Murthdrya we mostly just know as an associate cult too. That leaves four that are pretty much entirely new. Deities with important genealogical roles but few distinct worshippers tend to turn up as Associate Cults that provide a spell or two, but without a full writeup. Gata is a good example.