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Musings on army units, wyters, and magical warfare


Richard S.

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So I've been reading some of Martin Helsdon's excellent book The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass and would just like to present some of my assumptions on how things like unit wyters and standards and initiation work under the Runequest rules. Please confirm or deny these ideas as you see fit, I'm not an expert concerning either the world or game.

  1. An entire unit will be members of a specific subcult of their patron deity, often unique to the unit, which provides the unit with specialized Rune magic.
  2. A unit serves as a temple to their subcult, and members can replenish their Rune points through it.
  3. A unit wyter mostly functions like any other community wyter. The standard serves as the wyter's home, the unit leader serves as the wyter's priest, and the rest of the unit sacrifices MP and POW to the wyter to replenish it. Going by the rules, I suppose this means that members of established units have a loyalty passion specifically for their unit? I'm assuming that the wyter's main job is running interference against hostile spirits and casting the unit subcult's special Rune magic when it's needed, the soldiers don't do the casting themselves. Maybe only the commander is initiated to the subcult, so he gets the special magic which the wyter can then cast, and the rank and file are lay members?
  4. Vexillae allow members to use their unit's special magic even when not under the influence of their wyter. This seems to imply that the members of the vexillae have intiated to their respective subcults and learned their unique rune magic for themselves, so they don't have to rely on their wyter to cast it for them. The wording of the section on vexillae makes me doubt this is the case however.
  5. Magical units like warlocks or the lunar colleges follow most of these rules, but their wyter is able to act offensively and the magicians of the unit often discorporate and follow along with it into battle. The magicians protect their wyter from hostile spirits, while the wyter attacks their target's wyter.
  6. Mass Rune magic like the Sunspear used against Harrek works along similar principles to the old Mind Link spell: one person casts a spell using the resources of everyone else involved. Thus, while only one priest is casting Sunspear, it uses RP and MP from everyone in the ritual, creating a terrifyingly hugely stacked Sunspear. Sunspear isn't stackable RAW though, so maybe something in the ritual changed that rule?

Please feel free to add your own thoughts or respond to mine.

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I can't speak canonically, but I normally use these sorts of things to break the rules, not stay within them.   For example a solider of the Lasdag Lions may have access to his own personal spirit/battle magic, plus a couple of points of Rune magic. Good for him, and right with the Main Rule book.  But when formed up with his unit, after proper sacrifices, rituals, and other requirements have been met, he will benefit is "some other way".  It may be sort of communal benefit more than personal, like perhaps his own power may be made available to enhance someone else's spell, kind of like the Sunspear concept, but it may also be additive, in the sense that maybe he gets some type of perk, like +10% sword skill while on the offensive, or +2 effective power when casting an offensive spell, or maybe even access to some type of Rune Magic that he is otherwise not able to cast.

It could also be a summons, which I think the Lasdag Lions actually get -- the standard turns into a magical lion, or some other type of effect.  However this is a community magic, and therefore should be greater than anything an individual has, short of a heroquest reward.   It should be a rule-breaker for the good units, imo.  The ad hoc ones maybe not so much.

That also gives role play opportunities, such as a task for the PC's to steal the moon rock needed for the local Lunar unit to have some special power that the players fear will decimate their local resistance forces.  Or they can quest for some type of power to enhance their militia force, a spirit, or a magic gift that works with the unit, probably under specific conditions, like defending the Tula, or maybe fighting Lunars only.  This is something that the PC's would achieve, but would not get in their day to day adventuring.  It would be the kind of magic that they bring to the community, instead of selfishly keep.  Or if the PC's were really aggressive, they could try to both things at once.

That's how I would run it (by which I mean am running it).

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11 hours ago, Richard S. said:
  1. Mass Rune magic like the Sunspear used against Harrek works along similar principles to the old Mind Link spell: one person casts a spell using the resources of everyone else involved. Thus, while only one priest is casting Sunspear, it uses RP and MP from everyone in the ritual, creating a terrifyingly hugely stacked Sunspear. Sunspear isn't stackable RAW though, so maybe something in the ritual changed that rule?

Hi Richard, that was assumed to be a Temple level spell, not one cast by a single priest, and so distinct from the spells available in the rulebooks. It was a major ritual, involving several priests, their assistants, and singers etc. to enact the ritual, over several hours, and others simply bound into the ritual, set to 'detonate' at noon to utilize the greatest strength of the Sun. The high priest was the 'director' but it was a collaborative effort. The effects were like a massively powerful Sunspear, but not the same spell.

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18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

An entire unit will be members of a specific subcult of their patron deity, often unique to the unit, which provides the unit with specialized Rune magic.

I think this is sometimes true, but not always. For major regiments it is likely true, but for your average regiment it is probably not - they have a regimental patron god and a wyter, but not specialised rune magic. And for many units, not even a single patron god. So the Lasadag Lions, Granite Phalanx, etc - yes, they have a unique sub-cult. Units of mixed origin troops, like the Wolf Pirates, have a wyter but are not all part of a single cult. Some militia units may have to rely on their community wyter. 

18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

A unit serves as a temple to their subcult, and members can replenish their Rune points through it.

If they do have a sub-cult, yes, but this isn't always true. I think the regimental wyter is usually somehow helping. 

18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

A unit wyter mostly functions like any other community wyter. The standard serves as the wyter's home, the unit leader serves as the wyter's priest, and the rest of the unit sacrifices MP and POW to the wyter to replenish it.

Yes. 

18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Going by the rules, I suppose this means that members of established units have a loyalty passion specifically for their unit?

I think this is true of most regiments anyway. 

18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

I'm assuming that the wyter's main job is running interference against hostile spirits and casting the unit subcult's special Rune magic when it's needed, the soldiers don't do the casting themselves.

Where there is special subcult rune magic, it may often be something similar to Morale, so yes. The wyters magic can also be used to cast magic on multiple people, so as to bolster the fron line against a charge etc. 

Defending against magical attack is usually something you would use the wyter for, especially as many magical attacks take the form of an attacking wyter. 

18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

exillae allow members to use their unit's special magic even when not under the influence of their wyter. This seems to imply that the members of the vexillae have intiated to their respective subcults and learned their unique rune magic for themselves, so they don't have to rely on their wyter to cast it for them. The wording of the section on vexillae makes me doubt this is the case however.

I don't know how this works in the rules, but there are a few ways it could. 

18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Magical units like warlocks or the lunar colleges follow most of these rules, but their wyter is able to act offensively and the magicians of the unit often discorporate and follow along with it into battle. The magicians protect their wyter from hostile spirits, while the wyter attacks their target's wyter.

Look at the one example we have of a wyter like this - She That Strikes From Afar, the wyter of a Minor Classes Unit in the Bestiary. In that case the wyter can take physical form, and can blast out Madness spells at a vast rate (one per magic point per round, so 10 or so a round) as long as it has enough magic points, and it is in Mindllink with multiple priests who can keep feeding in magic points from their own resources, which presumably includes many storage matrices and bound spirits. The wyter can also attack physically engulfing multiple soldiers a round, which would be a reckless tactic, except probably multiple priests bolster its physical defences and healing and most of those in a position to physically attack it are already magically weakened. The (literally hundreds) of priests (and shamans, and sorcerers) that accompany it will also be assaulting the target position with summoned creatures, and the wyters main role is to lead the hundreds of discorporate priests etc so they all can attack the same physical target without getting lost in the spirit plane. But I think it also directly attacks. In some cases the wyter may be leading the fight against the defending wyter, though in many cases the defending wyter will be comparitively weak and out classed. 

A regimental level magical assault is a hell of a thing. 

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18 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Mass Rune magic like the Sunspear used against Harrek works along similar principles to the old Mind Link spell: one person casts a spell using the resources of everyone else involved. Thus, while only one priest is casting Sunspear, it uses RP and MP from everyone in the ritual, creating a terrifyingly hugely stacked Sunspear. Sunspear isn't stackable RAW though, so maybe something in the ritual changed that rule?

I think, as Martin says, this is a regimental level ritual. In many cases this does involve a wyter, who is able to cast a spell against multiple targets. There are other ways to get useful mass effects, but I think it is very seldom just 'cast a really big version of the spell' 

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In the case of massive sunspears, I wonder whether Avivath's version was the "measly" RQ spell or a blessed variant with an area effect similar to what hit Harrek at Pennel.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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12 hours ago, davecake said:

A regimental level magical assault is a hell of a thing. 

Given the existance of such destructive magic in Glorantha, one might imagine that certain confrontations goes from being Bronze Age-y to being (at least temporarily) more like WW1. That's just a personal interpretation, and would probably be hard to simulate and conceptualize for actual play, but I'd imagine that commanders with experience might have some answers to terribly destructive magic that isn't just to have their own terrible wyter canceling it out. Digging trenches/dugouts or felling trees and going into cover for a while might be somewhat viable. 

Obviously - not anywhere similar, logistically.

Edited by Sir_Godspeed
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12 hours ago, Joerg said:

In the case of massive sunspears, I wonder whether Avivath's version was the "measly" RQ spell or a blessed variant with an area effect similar to what hit Harrek at Pennel.

I'm guessing that based on the historical reaction to the Sunspears, they were Pennel-style. It's not like magic didn't exist when Avivath was around; to impress people with the power of a true prophet would require the actual spear of god, not the RQG version of the spell that any priest can learn.

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10 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

I hope the upcoming GM Book will include rules for community magic like the examples in this thread. In the campaign I'm currently playing, our pirate ship also has a wyter and there's communal magic to help in weathering storms.

I hope so, too!

Maybe @Jeff can comment ... ?   Can we expect to see this topic treated any time soon, and do you know yet where we can hope to look for it?

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