Joerg

A shrieking pain piercing all of her Darkness's worshippers a short while after the Sunstop after a moment of blissful unity with her. The Battle had a few timeless moments, but was a historical event nevertheless. The unity with the Black Eater would have affected all true trolldom - if snow and jungle trolls remain unaffected, it shows how broken their tie to Kyger Litor is. Cave Trolls did experience this, however.

Undergoing the initiation rites and succeeding in them with a hostile intention will be somewhat hard. These rites are deeply immersive quests, baring the self of the initiee to the deity. Hostile intent to the specific priesthood of the place of initiation won't be a problem, but hostile intent to the cult object will be difficult to overcome. For the Initiate, his cult is about becoming like his deity or becoming his deity, at least in special instances (when carrying or enacting the magic of the deity). The lay members and associates may be ok with just observing the cult practices and sacrifices. Divine magic is the magic of being, not of having or knowing. You have to be the Storm to cast a Lightning, even though it is reduced to an ability roll on your runic score in RQG or HQG. You can always be the storm with the wrong allegiances. Sylilan sky bear worshippers might be able to "infiltrate" Orlanth after proving that their deity is as much an aspect of the Storm King as the local form.

Brother against sister doesn't mean cult infiltration in any way. The sister is very likely married off to a different clan anyway, so it isn't even kinstrife. You are extremely hung up on illumination. There is no need to bring mystic experiences and detection blank into this. There is standard Orlanthi mythical precedence: the Sword and Helm Saga, where the Ernaldan wife betrays the Orlanthi husband for the welfare of her beset kin. There are plenty of semi-enlightened folk around. For a lot of them not devoted to the Lunar Way, it simply means that they are above the struggle between the Lunar Way and the Old Ways of Orlanth. They would be hard to find, harder to recruit, and yet harder to rely on. Those devoted to the Lunar Way don't work as undercover agents. Former or pro forma lay worshippers is about the deepest insertion into the cult that you can hide from divination. Of the Lightbringers, only Orlanth has a personal problem with the Lunar Goddess - she invaded his realm. For the rest of them, it is a problem their leader is annoyed with which they may help or hinder according to their own goals and agendas. It's a bit like the Atlantic alliance right now. Orlanth wants to build a wall and everyone to increase their "defense" budget to that of an offensive army, and the other Lightbringers have their own priorities to tackle. Eurmal just has announced he'll leave the clan, Issaries is worried about tariffs on trade, Lhankor Mhy has problems with yellow-robed apprentices, and Chalana's call for charity for strangers has angered the warbands who just managed to evict the red menace.

It happened in a Trickster thread.

It did have soldiers to offer, which might have been one reason why they kept invading it for two centuries after the disaster of the Varus battle, as shown by the finds of the Harzhorn battle. But it is true, none of the mineral deposits that were to be found in Germania had been accessed yet when the Romans entered, and the cost appeared higher than the return. On the other hand, sitting still while abandoning most of their Biscayan coast as "Litus Saxonicus" rather than going against the root of that trouble was part of the downfall of the empire. The Principality of Sartar was made rich, yes. The pre-Sartar Quivini tribes were at best well-to-do without a secure trade across the Pass guaranteed. Arim's Kingdom did offer such a thing while the Grazers remained friendly, which gave Tarsh a head start it lost in several civil wars and regained only in repeated Lunar conquests as part of Lunar political and magical maneuvering . Sartar entered the region just as Illaro had died, and when it wasn't sure that his successors would make a successful dynasty. By the time Sartar had established his superior trade network, the dynasty was usurped by Hon-eel.

Poorer in luxury goods, and possibly in the ubiquity of metal. On the other hand, they had a monopoly on amber, and such monopolies went a long way to bring in either riches or invaders. The main items of the Bronze Age international trade away from the naval routes were bronze, copper and tin, and exotic luxuries for the elites to display and reinforce their status. All food, presumably almost all clothing items (which, due to the climate, weren't that many), and quite likely most other everyday articles were locally produced. Salt and top quality flintstone and easily carved minerals like jet or steatite may have been "bulk" trade items next to the metal. Dyes, exotic resins, and semi-precious and precious stones are traded mainly for ritual use by the elites. We know that central and northern Europe were "poorer" in social organization due to the lack of the necessity for water management that climate change forced upon the riverine cultures. Quite different riverine conditions, as watching a few other videos of that series made clear. That reduced the need for record-keeping and literacy. Huge communal works like the mounds still occurred, but not for direct needs of survival, only as cultic practice. Water management reached the area only in the Roman Iron Age as the coasts needed fortification against rising sea levels (actually sinking ground levels, due to the seesaw effect caused by the absence of several tons of ice per square meter). All of that was handled by communities that would be regarded as small clans in Dragon Pass at best. But then, that's the true difference between the Orlanthi and the lowland river cultures, too. The Orlanthi never were much of an irrigation culture, although Orlanth taming Oslira (another interpretation of the Aroka story, or Aroka aftermath) may have been recognized as such. Only Esrolia has similar levels of water management, and more of drainage than of irrigation. The resettlement era of Dragon Pass is what I would qualify as one of the poorer Orlanthi cultures (compared to the international trade relations nurtured and then controlled by the House of Sartar). First and Second Council Dragon Pass and Orlanthland were some of the richest periods and regions in Orlanthi history, however, and the EWF drained all their subject areas for even more wealth. One problem with bronze artefacts in the archaeological record is of course recycling. Any item not taken out of the daily usage would be melted up when no longer serving its purpose unless devoted to the dead or the gods. The same is true for glass (which is not really a Bronze Age material). A lack of metal never was a feature of historical Dragon Pass (and wasn't much of an issue in Godtime, where you went to a master metalworker whenever you needed a new toy that you didn't have to plunder). Access to the metalworker was the real Godtime limit for full canoplies of armor, IMO. That goes for the introduction of the fully armored urban soldier by Daxdarius, too.

Must be a very weird sect of Arkati. The major tenet of Arkat's multiple cult membership was always to respect the cult he joined.

Thanks for that pointer. I am a little behind in reading up the newest material. Orgorvale was more a heroic queen than a goddess, daughter of Vingkot (himself a demigod) and granddaughter of Tada through the elder of the two daughters given to Vingkot as wives ("the summer wife"). Together with her as heroic foreigner husband Ulanin the Rider she led one of the three Summer Tribes of the Vingkotlings. Her tribe ruled the entirety of "Old Sartar" south of the Creek and east of the Creek-Stream River, and when the Vingkotling kingdom faltered in the Great Darkness, the tribe re-emerged as one of the Heortling tribes and lasted until after the Tax Slaughter, to disappear into the nebulous history of the EWF. For a measure of the heroic or demigod status of the Vingkotlings - when Orlanth summoned the Ring of the Vingkotlings via the winds to aid him at the shores of Luathela, the responding warriors stood man to man against the Luatha - the same creatures who destroyed the Kingdom of Old Seshnela with just a shipload of warriors and workers, ending the Second Age. Otherwise, little is known about Orgorvale or her husband, outside of the material in the Red Cow campaign. Ulanin is mentioned once or twice in the Dragon Pass - Land of Thunder gazetteer for Volsaxiland, and has recently been suggested as a hero cult or subcult for Orlanth under RQG rules. It isn't clear whether Ulanin's ancestry is tied to the Nivorah exodus or to the Galanini mythic cycle of Ralios, or possibly both. If there is something like chains of events of these Godtime activities, her marriage to Ulanin followed that of Redalda to Beren (which is part of the marriage of Redaylda and Elmal, or vice versa). Their ancient royal seat at Ulaninstead probably had quite a bit of the Rohirrim splendor I mentioned above for the Berennethtelli, too. Before the council of Orlanthland introduced the Pure Horse Folk into Prax, her tribe would have been the closer source of horses to hate for the Praxians, with the Pentans only discovered in the Imperial Age as the Hidden Greens of the Wastes were explored by the Praxians. Looking at the Red Cow material, we know about the presence of giants nearby, and of hostile interaction. At the same time, we have occasional builder services rendered by giants. Never Elder Giants, although one of the mountains overlooking Boldhome may come close. Clearwine differs significantly in architectural style from ancient Earth places like the Paps, Ezel, or some of the Oasis altars (places built by or with the aid of Orgorvale's maternal grandfather, Tada). It might be of a similar cast as Old Karse or one of the earlier wall periods of Nochet.

It's not like we really reached a conclusion, did we?😈

God of Zombies, generally assumed to be evil or chaotic, even though it allows your dead folk to remain active and productive members of society. "Live now, work off your debts when you're dead!" Or the Fonritian take on it: "Mere Death isn't the end of slavery."

Obviously not, but after the Inhuman Occupation, there is an over-abundance of lumber that needs to be cleared for pasture. While some of that may be consumed or exported as charcoal, once you have all those beams lying about, why not use them for construction? I may have different ideas about the usabilty of the Dragon Pass bedrock for building purposes, too. IMO neither Kero Fin nor her children are made of easily quarriable rock, but harder, basal material. And in my region, despite that lack of bedrock, we do have megalithic buildings in the region - the bigger rocks come pre-quarried, but rounded from the grinding process. Seeing pre-Bronze Age Egyptian sculpture, working porphyry and granite with copper tools, I do wonder how they did it - grind away at it with the same material, just like diamond cutters still do for lack of a harder material?

While the founder of the city was from a Heortling environment (although not necessarily a Heortling himself) and a lot of the original settlers would have been Heortlings, too, the lawmakers were the Pure Horse-descended Zebra Rider kings of the Arrowsmith Dynasty who might have some ancestors with ideas about how to lord above grounders in a walled city on a different river. I still think that Karakorum is a great parallel, with the Middle Sea Empire and the EWF creating a north-south anti-parallel to Karakorum' east (Chinese) - west (Persian and beyond) conflagration. New Pavis is a Sartarite city foundation compromising with whatever Arrowsmith laws survived through the troll occupation. The rules for the city outside of the old wall were probably prepared by Sartar himself in 1490 when he negotiated the Pol Joni compromise with the Praxians when the Rubble still was sealed off. At my guess, Tarkalor first received his nom-de-guerre Trollkiller in the Pavis Rubble. His later career remained true to that, though. I do think that citizenship does mean obligatory lay membership in the cult, with duties. Not necessarily automatically vice versa. A radically new concept to the Rubble dwellers, really. But yes, food distribution was the major role of the cult during the survival centuries. The rule of the mayor and his council is very much that of the Sartar-founded cities. The mayor's authority more or less ends at Dorasar's walls and the original wall, though. Given that Dorasar was a teenager when he founded the city (possibly even before Saronil's death), the law details will have been provided by his companions (possibly inherited from Sarotar) well versed in Sartar's laws.

Sure. The encounter with Harrek's fleet happened just as the mainland fell out of sight - which takes a little longer with the cliffs of the Praxian Plateau remaining above the angular resolution, never mind landmarks like the Block. The Wolf Pirates are definitely part of the Opening rather than the Closing, and one that is much regretted by many a coastal population. They even become the spearhead of the Cult of Dormal in the conflict with the Waertagi. Probably without too much involvement of King Harrek of Banamba. Our details for the construction of the Cradle are nil. A re-use of the Boathouse ruins has been assumed, and Redwood magical lumber certainly played a role, but that's as far as I dare speculate. Covert dwarf support for Gonn Orta might be possible if one or more of the Greatway leaders see this as an opportunity to pull one over the Nidan Decamony and their ridiculous definitions of orthodoxy. Gonn Orta being wise about the Closing and its details might be behind his curious selection of certain individuals for inspection among the visitors of his pass castle. But then, he might have been waiting for someone to bring the Cauldron. Like a tide, but not like the Annilla tide. There is no such moment in the Gloranthan tidal cycle. The tidal effects are best described by a sawtooth curve, with a continuous rise of the water levels and then a sudden drop to the lowest, only very slightly smoothed out. How high the water rises might be related to how slowly the moon passed in this cycle (which isn't very regular - on average, you have two tidal cycles in a week, but theoretically you could have seven). The original mosaic studied by Hunlarni might have documented a Giant Cradle, though, or a design derived from one. There is no evidence for this idea, though.

I stumbled across this video about the Nordic Bronze Age which sums up where many of my ideas for Bronze Age Orlanthi come from, although I would take a fair number of the "Indogermanic" and God Learner hypothesis with big grains of doubt. A number of interesting facts remain, like access to the Pannonian bronze through trade independent from the sea trade in the Mediterranean, cultural exchange through the amber trade, etc. I'll look out for more info on the Pannonian Bronze Age, which would be even more pertinent, but when looking at things like the presumed battle of the Tollense Crossing and migration evidence as with the Egtvedt Girl (mentioned in the video), that battle makes a lot more sense. As for missing structures: with quarriable stone being absent, the archaeological record relies mainly on holes in the ground. The part of Germany where I live has virtually no bedrock (there are two exceptions, one former mountain of gypsum, formerly crowned by a stone castle, that was quarried down to half its size, and a high reaching chalk area near Itzehoe which is now quarried for cement), but there used to be 100 families of landed knights (who had special liberties in the original counties, then duchies), each of them with at least one fortified homebase. None of those castles survives, in a few places some holes in the ground did survive the intensive plowing. Any grandiose structures from the Bronze Age would have suffered the same fate. That's why I have my difficulties with the descendants of Durev the carved man being so avid masons. Dwarves make up for a lot, but honestly, Clearwine in Cypriotic or Thessalian architecture does feel as wrong as would Roman opus cementitia. Fortunately, most other Orlanthi appear to be carpenters rather than masons. Giving the 3rd century Berennethtelli something like Peter Jackson's Rohirrim splendor wouldn't be wrong for my Glorantha, and would make the "steadburning" that claimed Brolarulf only that way more impressive. Edit: Silly me. Here's the link:

Interesting argument, in light of many of the rebels giving up significant portions of their humanity by replacing it with chrome - and not just functional parts, like those former military / corporate security cyborgs or prosthetics. Cyberpunk scratches on transhumanism, but in a hopeless way. You're able to make a statement, but won't be able to affect any changes.

I am not exactly certain that the Giants know or care about the Closing. Gonn Orta's daughter is the only giant cradle that encountered the Closing. The stream of cradles stopped well before the Closing reached Prax. IMO the Cradle is bound to the waters of the Zola Fel river, and doesn't really have a choice to maneuver anywhere but where is waters join the Maelstrom.

That's pretty funny in light of him being painted as a Great Spirit during the "strictly separate Otherworlds" dogma. His continent is the cradle of theism, but at least for a long while Greg thought that Genert himself was a spirit entity, as was most of his Garden. When challenged about the presence of so many great spirits in theist territory (Genert, SurenSlib, the Hykimi of the Greatwood), Greg replied that the collision of worlds (or possibly Otherworlds) that led to Glorantha started with the contact between the Theist and the Animist world. Pentans and Praxians practice a mix of theism and animism. The core theist populations are all west of Genert's Wastes (that used to be his Garden), until you come to the Hykimi anomaly adjacemt to the Malkioni colonies. The Lightbringer Missionaries did convert a good number of previously animist cultures to their brand of theism, though. Genert is the Earth King among immensely powerful primal entities. That needn't mean that he was a theist deity. Genert and his avatar Tada figure in the early stories of the Vingkotlings. The On Jorri tribe of VIngkot's mother is fairly enigmatic, but it appears to come from outer Saird, which was adjacent to both drowned Dara Happa and semi-drowned Genert's Garden, which leaves at least room for speculation that they had some relation to the Earth King. In Peloria, Genert becomes obscured by the Earth Walkers who are associated with Lodril, although Gerendetho is a bit of a mountain god and a lot of an earth god. All of these are theist entities, however. In the lands of the Downland Migration of the Durevings, the Earth King doesn't seem to play much of a role, or gets displaced by the Storm King early on. I am pretty certain that one of the three or four "Bad Men" of Esrolian myth is a cognate of Genert. The God Learner Six Legged Empire did conquer significant parts of the Jolar veldt with its Doraddi population before their horses faltered and their conquest went wrong. But then, whatever magical riches they thought they would find down south failed to materialize, too, unlike conquests such as Eest (Teshnos) or Kralorela. Coming as conquerors and know-it-alls, the question remains how well they learned about the role of Pamalt. I mean, how much cultural anthropology was handed down from the companions of Cortez and Pizzarro? Repeating myself, personally I see Pamalt on the same level as Tada - the demigod, near-human mover and shaker who raised mountains and created rules and traditions who rose to be head of the pantheon through his deeds. Sure. Still, the monomyth amalgamation has significant magical power that may trump original truths. No, I think that this view of Pamalt is the correct one. Pamalt becomes Earth King through marriage, not through birthright. In the end, he might be able to draw on the powers of the land in a way no entity other than Genert manages, but this is acquired power, not the power of his original identity.

I've been talking to an archaeologist who takes burial site counts to estimate the population of a settlement, but I guess that in the case of Rome or even Cologne this method comes to its limits. And with urn burials, few remains can be clearly sexed, which means that the remains of burial goods are used to sex the individual. This has on occasion led to "male burial sites" with hardly any females interred, and no indication of the whereabouts of a femal burial site, offering an error of almost 100% for the estimate. Calculating the consumption of food is a method I have seen for Rome, but that comes with very broad estimates to begin with, which can (consciously or unconsciously) be tailored to match expectations from other sources. Still, such feasibility calculations based on imperial decrees and harbor records might be a way to calculate the upper limit of sustainable population. Water consumption doesn't help in the case of Rome, though, their aqueducts imported way more than the immediate needs of the population. In our fantasy city of Nochet, water consumption is a concern for the Sarli district, however, as it mainly relies on cisterns rather than aqueducts. The Lyksos estuary shouldn't be too brackish given the amount of the Skyfall water pushing through it, though. Transportation of food is another major concern, especially for Nochet which has virtually no agricultural land immediately outside the walls, but instead the sprawling Necropolis called the Antones Estates.

My favourite still is the Hallstatt culture and the subsequent Graecised La Tene period oppida in the Danubian valley which was more or less bought in by the Romans as Noricum, and whatever was destroyed by the Romans in Pannonia. The Gallic society is pretty similar to that of the Orlanthi, way more so than the Old Irish that the Anglophone countries associate with the term Celt much like they associate Aegaean and perhaps Mesopotamian culture with Bronze Age due to ethnic (and to some extent cultural) preconceptions.

For a continuously settled place, York might be the better major city than London. The Roman walls fortified a pre-existing Belgae (?) place which the Romans mis-pronounced as Eburacum. York would be a smaller big city while limited to the extent of its city walls. (How long those limits lasted de facto is another question, even though the wall may have remained the legal extent of the city. Looking at the map of Caernarfon about 300 years after its founding as a fortified small city, we find it spilled out of the original fortification, as shown in the City of Carse map discussed elsewhere, but the comparable castle city Conwy doesn't show any such spiling. When looking at remnants of Roman imperial cities, the three seats of the later electorate bishoprics of the Germanies - Trier, Cologne, and Mainz - plus the former imperial seat of Augsburg were some of the major cities in the Austrasian Frankish territories. Cologne and Augsburg never fell down to small city populations and remained some of the most populous cities well into the modern times, even with the great urbanisation boom of the high Middle Ages that led to upstart new big cities like Nürnberg (aka Nuremberg), Vienna, Munich and Lübeck. Wall maintenance is a Flintnail cult duty, isn't it? On the whole, the best RW parallel for the city of Old Pavis might be Karakorum. Similar ruling dynasty, too.

The temples in Boldhome and Jonstown are major affairs, way beyond the normal means of a fringe cult like Lhankor Mhy. All literate people in Sartar are worshippers of LM. While many of these are going to be found in the cities, Clearwine and Runegate act against Sartar's efforts to centralize all such endeavors in the cities of his, and are responsible for the poor state of Duck Point. This leaves the western quarter of Old Sartar without a princely administrative center. Clearwine, Runegate, probably Duck Point, and various small collections of documents distributed between the thanes of tribes in the region may make up the congregation headed by the Chief Priest in Clearwine. Whether the administrative changes (like ceasing clans to other tribes as reaction to Lunar dictate) affects his congregation is another thing to question. Sartar and his successors managed to centralize these efforts elsewhere by sponsoring decent shrines in the tribal confederation cities (apart from the major library at Jonstown). In case of the cult of Lhankor Mhy, seeding these shrines generously with copies of standard works from the Jonstown library would convince the clan-located sages to move to these more convenient locations.

Why, let's populate the region with New New Orleans and New New New Yorks, then... The exact details may be lost or have acquired fairy tale status, but lost monuments with ties to deities still worshipped will carry on in some way or other. We have no real idea how the language changed between the ages. Was Auld Wyrmish influence the major change of the Imperial Age, to come and to be excised (along with a majority of the speakers of Wyrmish-influenced language), or were there gradual changes and adaptations to new fashionable expressions and modes of speaking, too? Who in 1579 knows about it? All the local godlings and spirits that witnessed these events and that require certain weird gifts or taboos in relation to that. The amorphous mass of ancestors, and the popular ballads of tragic heroism against the unstoppable Bright Empire, the hurtful liberation and betrayal by Arkat, and the lingering Shadow Tribute demands that may re-visit you despite the Tax Slaughter attempt to end them for good (which happened a millennium ago, and may not matter any more). And of course the written or (alliteratively) rhymed histories of past times, though parsing the kennings correctly may be harder than relating to Shakespearan ideas. Where I live and work, ancient districts and fallen cities persist in weird ways - the big fallen city being Hedeby, abandoned 953 years ago, and the enigmatic drowned city being Rungholt, swept away by the Mandrenke 657 years ago. We have some place names dating back before the Angles packed up and left, and others in between from later settlement and condensing efforts. You wouldn't believe some of the weirder place names in modern Anglia. And all of that pales in comparison to the long history of places like Cyprus, even though a lot of the less "ancient" stuff there is weirdly out of place, like gothic cathedrals (not a home-grown feature) turned into mosques.

While the Anglo-Saxon terms aren't exactly correct, don't fall head over heels to promote another rather naval culture's titles for a land-locked population. The Mycenean and Cretan cultures were possible only through sea trade. Taking that away (the advent of the Sea Peoples) collapsed those civilizations badly. The marginal bronze using cultures away from the trade centers survived mostly intact, even though their access to bronze was limited or cut off - they didn't have that much of the metal in the first place and were used to making do with local material. The core Orlanthi culture is that of land-locked, self-organized cattle and grain farmers with sheep herding on the fringes of cultivated land. Those living in more mountainous regions practice transhumance with their herds of cattle, too, basically splitting the clan during the summer into the upland herders and the farming stay-at-homes. Sheep herding gets even more extreme. Calling the cottars "sheep men" is misleading - sheep herding doesn't take that much manpower, and most of the cottars are indeed field hands and/or maintain cottage industries. "Single cow households" might be the better term. (Although, looking at the herd sizes in Montaillou, the Cathar village thouroughly investigated and documented by an inquisitor, suggests quite a bit of the poor, unmarried (aka undesirable) male population spending their time away from the village with rather small herds. No idea how they produced enough food for themselves, let alone made a business out of shepherding.) But then, hardly any property among the Orlanthi is personal, including most personal gear and wardrobe. Exploring such a state of property assignments through roleplaying is a no-go area, however, as your average player doesn't want to play kibbuzim communards.

That would have been the Sambari and Balmyr tribes. The Torkani displacement was one of the earliest conflicts of the Resettlement phase in Quiviniland. They would have been at least a clan, so about 200 adults. Caroman village is an important battle site of the 1602 conquest of Sartar, the last field battle fought by Prince Salinarg, and the one that allowed an orderly retreat into Boldhome, giving the Lunar invaders an extra tough nut to crack. The Torkani occupied their corner of Old Sartar before the arrivals of all their neighbors. Dinacoli and Telmori arrived significantly later, and the Maboder, Aranwyth, Kheldon and Sanchali came at best around the same time, but possibly a generation later. We don't have many migration details for the tribes east of the Highways. Both the light worshipping Dinacoli and the Telmori werewolves would have been uncomfortable new neighbors, nibbling away at what modest wealth the Torkani had managed to build up after their displacement. They did join the anti-werewolf alliance against the Telmori and became a member of the Jonstown confederation, but didn't contribute much due to their distance. The Coming Storm has the best published info on the werewolf wars, with King of Sartar's CHDP providing some migration detail, and a couple of rather short mentions mainly for their worship of Deloradella and Argan Argar in other publications dealing with Sartar. The best detail map would be the Trollpak map. Little is known about their relationship with the Sazdorf troll clan. At the very least, they should have some trade relations, sitting on the access routes to the Indigo Mountains. Some trade relations to Adari are highly probable, too. What about Torkani queens? How does the Rex cult deal with tribal queens (other than Vingans) in general?

I read that spell as the contract that you make with a controlled or otherwise cooperative spirit. In any other case, you would have to overcome a resistance, but since no such struggle is mentioned, I would rule out any other case. It appears to make the tie between the spirit and your CHA limit organ (whatever that is in non-rules terms). It could be seen as part of the Binding Enchantment itself, but that wouldn't make it applicable to unpowered crystals used to house spirits. This is not a spell for combat situations, as far as I am concerned.