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Gark vs Vivamort


Manu

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54 minutes ago, Manu said:

Vivamort has the rune of Darkness and Undead. Gark should have the same, no? Does Gark has the rune of Chaos?

Most sources I find say Harmony + Chaos for Gark the Calm.

Honestly no idea why Gark zombies are Chaos and ZZ zombies aren't.

Edited by Akhôrahil
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Vivamort has the runes of Chaos, Darkness, and Undead.

Gark has the runes of Chaos, Stasis, and Undead. 

There are lots of ways to animate the dead. Vivamort's and Gark's are chaotic, ZZ is not. There are also lots of ways to kill people - the Crimson Bat's methods are chaotic, Humakt and Zoran Zoran's are not.

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36 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Vivamort has the runes of Chaos, Darkness, and Undead.

Gark has the runes of Chaos, Stasis, and Undead. 

There are lots of ways to animate the dead. Vivamort's and Gark's are chaotic, ZZ is not. There are also lots of ways to kill people - the Crimson Bat's methods are chaotic, Humakt and Zoran Zoran's are not.

The undead around Nochet and in Necropolis aren't Chaotic either, from what I gather, just to add to the examples.

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47 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

The undead around Nochet and in Necropolis aren't Chaotic either, from what I gather, just to add to the examples.

Those aren't usually undead. While the Esrolian dead are ambulatory on what is effectively Ancestor Day, that's just taking a dead body (or the idea of it) for a walk. The rest of the time these dead spend on their side of the veil.

The dead ones from Necropolis are a lot less restful than the denizens of the Antones Estates outside of Nochet (those outside the Blackmaw, at least). These dead were more or less imprisoned by damming up the river so it formed a lake around the Necropolis, preventing them from roaming the land and causing trouble.

The dead in the lands of the Heortlings appear to have been a lot less trouble in the Silver Age than those of Esrolia, even though the living among the Heortlings would have been as outnumbered by their dead as the Esrolians. Something to do with King Heort being a shaman?

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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In my Glorantha, I normally have the following.

Vivamort is the God of Vampires, he is the First Vampire, created to heal a wound from the Devil and cursed by the same action. he was involved in causing Death to enter the world, as he was tricked into letting Eurmal steal it. He creates vampires and his worshippers create vampires.

Gark the Calm is a god of Zombies, not the only one. However, his is a cult of silent contemplation, or it can be. Anyone dying in a Gark the Calm temple comes back as a Zombie, this is automatic for Gark worshippers and not always automatic for non-worshippers. some worshippers of Gark the Calm sit around meditating in circles, where they deny themselves food and drink, sometimes sealing themselves in, so they run out of air, when they die they immediately awaken as zombies and continue their eternal meditation. Gark's zombies are normally harmless, unless disturbed or commanded by someone who has a Command/Control Zombie spell. In my Glorantha, Gark has a Command Zombie Horde spell that causes the mass of Zombies to obey simple commands.

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

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I wonder what the background for Kralorelan zombies are. Theistic means are certainly possible, but I can't help thinking that giving the Kralorelans some form of sorcery by way of Taoist-styled alchemy would be neat. And we've discussed elsewhere how it would be interesting if zombieness is seen as a sort of intentured servitude of the dead of indebted families or something.

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8 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I wonder what the background for Kralorelan zombies are. Theistic means are certainly possible, but I can't help thinking that giving the Kralorelans some form of sorcery by way of Taoist-styled alchemy would be neat. And we've discussed elsewhere how it would be interesting if zombieness is seen as a sort of intentured servitude of the dead of indebted families or something.

Some sort of underworld magic. Kralorela is rife with demons etc. living beneath or even in their cities. While the north has contact with the spawn of Kyger Litor, the rest of the country has its own underworld troubles.

These zombies may very well be mildly chaotic. The Kralori appear to have a similar tolerance to low levels of Chaos as do the trolls themselves with their toleration of cave trolls and sea trolls. That's draconic enlightenment for you.

I don't see mass creation of zombies as the work of shamans who reconnect a single spirit with its deceased body to create that undead. Too much magical effort for a rather disposable servant if you or your paying customer don't bear a grudge against that former individual.

RQ3 had the concept of ghoul spirits possessing dead bodies, and maybe there is a different but similar kind of spirit hungry for living flesh or brains whose hunger can be shut down. Ghouls are a different class of undead, though, and in Kralorela they are created from victims of a huan-to's bite. Their hunger makes them unattractive for this kind of slavery.

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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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16 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I wonder what the background for Kralorelan zombies are.

I am sure that they have different origins.

The Zombies that row the barges of the Kralorelan Navy are probably sailors who have volunteered, or "volunteered" to stay on after death and I would expect a runespell to be used to create them.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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On 1/19/2020 at 2:49 AM, soltakss said:

The Zombies that row the barges of the Kralorelan Navy are probably sailors who have volunteered, or "volunteered" to stay on after death and I would expect a runespell to be used to create them.

They also hop about if given shore leave.

On 1/15/2020 at 11:55 PM, Akhôrahil said:

Most sources I find say Harmony + Chaos for Gark the Calm.

Honestly no idea why Gark zombies are Chaos and ZZ zombies aren't.

This is a perfectly reasonable question so I am going to go out on a limb and offer you an interesting hypothetical answer...

Suppose for a moment that you are an Earth priestess with access to a spell that allows you to resurrect the dead, but you are lazy and haven't done your research, or perhaps you are in a perverse mood and want to experiment.  Now rather than going to the fresh bodies of those folk who want resurrection, you instead choose the body of someone who has been dead for hundreds of years.  The spirit of the person who once inhabited the body has long since been reincarnated, perhaps multiple times, and so there is no original spirit to take possession.  Instead, the earth and fertility magics would summon the spirit of an obedient gnome to inhabit the body.  The body itself is a creaky and decrepit mummy that is hard for the gnome to move, but it contains enough earth for it to be possible, and so we get a slow moving earth zombie.

With Zorak Zorani, they are inevitably restless in death as they died violently without overcoming their foes.  By nature they want to be revenants.  Now Zorak Zoran cannot offer them true life, but he can help the spirits of his dead take up the fight, aided by their bloodlust and hatred as the motivating factor.  These zombies are created by disorder rune power.

Rinse and repeat for Vivamort, Gark, and the Kralorelans.  Some zombies are chaotic, because it is chaos that motivates them. 

As far as Humakti are concerned, it is more than mere man-rune-shape that makes a person; it is the living functions of the body and mind.  Now, when a Chalana Arroy restores the dead to life, they do it within a week, so that the spirit is able to retain memories of their former life, as well as having life function restored to the body.  Even this makes Humakti uncomfortable, as death is the severing of the spirit from the body and ne'er the twain should meet again, save as an affront to the power of death. 

I might also argue that at some level all zombies have some undeath rune in them as a byproduct of their reanimation, but then humans also have undeath in their bodies in their hair, nails and teeth, which are simultaneously alive and dead.

Anyhow, how do you rationalize this? 

 

Edited by Darius West
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