Kolating Spirit Cults

[Sumath]

I'm creating a Lismelder Kolati Sezing antagonist and need a darkness spirit sub cult for them (and any associated Rune Magic). I can make something up but would be interested to know of any sources I can use or if there is already a write-up somewhere (I've already got some info on the Seven Winds).

[Revilo Divad Of Dyoll]

I assume, if you already have the Seven Winds material, that you have the Sartar Companion, which has the last "official" write-up of Kolat?  This lists a Darkness spirit society called the "Night Listener."

 

Thanks,

David.

[Sumath]

I don't have the Sartar Companion, but I'll check that out, thanks.

[davecake]

The Kolat write up in the Sartar Companion is still the best source on Kolating spirit cults. 

[David Scott]

On 4/13/2020 at 2:11 PM, Sumath said:

I'm creating a Lismelder Kolati Sezing antagonist and need a darkness spirit sub cult for them (and any associated Rune Magic). I can make something up but would be interested to know of any sources I can use or if there is already a write-up somewhere (I've already got some info on the Seven Winds).

We have one example of a Lismelder shaman from David Hall's Lismelder campaign (Tales 18):

Quote

Bofrost is the current chieftain of the [Hillhaven] clan. He is a Breath Shaman of Umath. His age is unknown, although he looks about fifty. A lean fit man, his skin is tanned, and he wears raven feathers in his hair. Bofrost is a quiet, confident man. He lives in no one place, but wanders the area, appearing in a given place with uncannily good timing. He is sometimes accompanied by an apprentice. Bofrost has no quarrels or rivalries; most people outside of the clan regard him ascccentric, and are uneasy around him.

Bofrost has spent all of his life at the foot of the Starfire Ridges, where he once protected a very important child. As a shaman he has befriended powerful local spirits. the spirit of Irnar Lawspeaker, and the Earth Twins who are minions of the Weeping Sisters.

There' more info on the Weeping Sisters in Tales 7 and some other local spirits. There's more info on Bofrost in the Sartar Companion in "The Ghosts of the Ridge". The example of how to make a shaman although called Bofrost is not the same character. I don't think that bofrost ever had an RQ writeup, at least I never seen one. He was always an NPC.

The Lismelder wouldn't normally have any link to any Darkness spirits, but that shouldn't stop you having a shaman with them. The best way to approach this is to look at the local landscape and see what local darkness spirits might live there. The best map is in WF 15 page 17 (or my map here, based on David Hall's). There could well be darkness spirits who live in or want to escape from the marsh or a set of caves or the Malani Hills. Pick a place and flesh out from there. Remember spirit cults are very simple so don't go overboard, eg:

Black Marsh Mallow (Darkness)

This once bright spirit was changed when the marshes formed. Her shrine on the edge of the marsh was made by Ornar the Black, shaman of the Lonendi clan in times past. Members of spirit cult can learn the secret of using the petals of the Black Marsh Mallow to make a magical salve. The Black Marsh Mallow only flowers in Dark Season and can be found throughout the marsh and around the shrine.

Dark as Night

Ritual, 1 point, stackable.

This ritual takes 1 hour per rune point. One rune point makes 5 doses. When one dose is applied to a naked worshipper it darkens the skin to allow near invisible movement at night. The salve lasts 2d6 minutes before loosing its potency, gaining an extra 5 minutes if harvested on the night of the dark moon. Each application of the salve gradually darkens the users skin permanently until it's black (SIZ x 3 applications), this enhances the duration by 1 minute. Yacoomb the assistant shaman has already used 15 doses of the salve on herself. As she's SIZ 12 her skin is already starting to look dark, when she's used another 21 doses, her skin will be permanently black. The next dose she uses will last 2D6+15 minutes, if made from petals harvested on the dark moon, 2D6+20 minutes.

 

Dullstone (darkness)

Deep in the Malani caves Dullstone can be found, it's shrine surrounded by dulled, bent and blunted weapons. Dullstone has always hated the shine of metal and sharp edges. Members of his spirit cult are forbidden to carry blades of any kind and must take the Passion Hate (Sharp Edges). Once a year, initiates must offer Dullstone a blunted metal weapon for his shrine. In return he teaches the rune spell Dullstone.

Dullstone (darkness)

2 Points Ranged, Instant, Nonstackable

This spell must be cast on a metal blade, such as a sword or spear. The target receives a -20% skill penalty and -4 damage for the duration of the spell. If the weapon has a spirit in it, the spirit’s magic points must be overcome for the spell to work. This spell works on items already under the effect of other spirit, sorcerery and rune magic spells including Bladesharp, fireblade, etc.

Edited April 15, 2020 by David Scott

[davecake]

I'd interpret Bofrost being a 'Breath Shaman of Umath' as meaning he is of a tradition closely related to Kolat, but that also deals with Air spirits outside those that Kolat deals with, including spirits of the Vadruding deities such such as Valind, Inora, Gagarth etc. As befits a character who is a bit of a disreputable campaign antagonist, IIRC. He might not have Kolats connections to the Luck Rune though. Inora is a well known Vadruding spirit that is often contacted by shamans. 

Shamanic traditions usually are much less organised and have much more internal variation (and fuzzy boundaries), they are much more organic and more like generalisations about about a population of individuals within which one shaman (or lineage of shamans) may vary significantly from their fellows. And almost every shaman worth their salt ends up with multiple spirit cult connections that are specific to their community or homeland. Even if a shamanic lineage is tiny, or is just a single individual who got their powers in a unique way, they will still probably share a lot of spirit cult connections to other shamans in their community. 

That said, Darkness connections for Kolat:

The Below Me spirits from their core Seven Winds practice are Darkness, but probably not what you are after. Their role is protective against the Six Foes: undead,  possession spirits, spirits of Death, spirits of disease, and curses sent by women, and their taboo is never kill. 

The Sabi Varn, the "Night Listener", tradition has a couple of kinds of spirits, the Awakening spirits that stand guard during the night and awake the shaman when whatever the shaman asks them to wait for happens, and the Eye and Finger spirits that live in tiny sling stones. The Eye and Finger spirits provide abilities like Cause Pain to Intruder, and Frighten Intruders, and I'd actually probably treat them as just as example of spirit magic (Disruption or Demoralise) learnt from a shaman. 

Darkness spirits include Spider spirits. Grandmother Spider is from Shadows Dance, and she can teach a spell to cast Webbing. She also grants friendliness with spiders. Spiders can teach Spirit Binding in their webs. 

Raven is widely known, not just in Prax, and he is both a Darkness and an Illusion spirit, he can teach Invisibility and sometimes other Illusion and sneaking spells - he is a thief, and half way to being a Trickster. 

The Six Sisters are a group of six mountains, each with an individual spirit cult, on the border between Sartar and Prax - one of them is a Darkness spirit, the Wolf Sister, who grants powerful biting magic. 

 

[Austin]

I remember folks noting that the forthcoming Cults book has a treatment on the Horned Man, Kolat, and shamanism, to some degree. Does anyone know if it includes spirit cults like those shared by @David Scott or @davecake?

[davecake]

The forthcoming Gods book has a section on Spirit cults, but its not huge. It also does not go into much detail about the shamanic traditions. 

I have only seen a draft from now nearly a year ago, I hope the Horned Man/Spirit cult section will be expanded in the final version. For example, there was only about a paragraph on Kolat.

[Scotty]

32 minutes ago, Crel said:

I remember folks noting that the forthcoming Cults book has a treatment on the Horned Man, Kolat, and shamanism, to some degree. Does anyone know if it includes spirit cults like those shared by @David Scott or @davecake?

There are currently 32 spirit cults in the book with a few more to be added. The Horned Man isn't a cult:

Quote

The Horned Man has no lay members, and his initiates are shamans. He has no priests or Rune Lords. As a god, he defies the normal scope of worship. No initiates sacrifice POW to him, nor regularly feed him with magic points. No temples or shrines to him dot the land. No Rune spells can be gained by gathering to worship him.

Kolat is a simple spirit cult with a few common rune spells and Bind Wind.

[Richard S.]

On 4/16/2020 at 7:01 AM, Scotty said:

Kolat is a simple spirit cult with a few common rune spells and Bind Wind.

Er, apologies for the necromancy, but could you maybe give us some idea of what Bind Wind does? I'm assuming it'll allow the binding of Air elementals or similar, so the shaman can have a coterie of them following him around all the time instead of constantly having to summon new ones.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Richard S.

[Leingod]

53 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Er, apologies for the necromancy, but could you maybe give us some idea of what Bind Wind does? I'm assuming it'll allow the binding of Air elementals or similar, so the shaman can have a coterie of them following him around all the time instead of constantly having to summon new ones.

I would guess it's also how you make something like a Bag of Winds, which basically stores Umbroli to be released later when you open the bag.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Leingod

[g33k]

On 4/15/2020 at 8:48 AM, David Scott said:

... The Lismelder wouldn't normally have any link to any Darkness spirits, but that shouldn't stop you having a shaman with them ...

Yeah, PC's are frequent exceptions to the "general" rules / the generic case.

Also, shamans are mostly -- AFAIK -- a bit iconoclastic, so it seems almost natural for a tribe with no Darkness links to have a Shaman with Darkness !

Last but not least, the whole "fighting fire with fire" approach -- what better way for a non-Darkness Tribe to be savvy about Darkness, than to have a Dark-aligned tribe-member like this?

 

Edited May 23, 2020 by g33k
removing extranea

[David Scott]

12 hours ago, g33k said:

Yeah, PC's are frequent exceptions to the "general" rules / the generic case.

In this particular case I'm only saying that they wouldn't as I''m very familiar with David Hall's Lismelder campaign setting (I played Branduin at one point). I've run the campaign myself and there's normal Darkness links.

12 hours ago, g33k said:

Also, shamans are mostly -- AFAIK -- a bit iconoclastic,

I would say that they run the full spectrum, but weighted towards the supporting society end. In most societies they are community centred, while at the other extreme there are the rare hermit types. Bofrost is actually the chief of the Hillhaven clan.

12 hours ago, g33k said:

so it seems almost natural for a tribe with no Darkness links to have a Shaman with Darkness !

Shaman will most likely be familiar with what's around them, as that's the easiest to find and work with. Having some kind of darkness spirit, may not actually be useful.

14 hours ago, Richard S. said:

could you maybe give us some idea of what Bind Wind does?

This spell enchants a leather bag or rope to be capable of holding a wind. For each Rune point used, a wind or air elemental can be captured in the bag.

Let one out, use command air element to do your bidding then back in the bag.

[Richard S.]

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

This spell enchants a leather bag or rope to be capable of holding a wind. For each Rune point used, a wind or air elemental can be captured in the bag.

Let one out, use command air element to do your bidding then back in the bag.

Ooh! Useful and flavorful, I like it.

[Jim]

On 4/16/2020 at 1:01 PM, Scotty said:

Kolat is a simple spirit cult with a few common rune spells and Bind Wind.

Are you able to give any details of the Bind Wind spell? Asking for a shaman's apprentice 🙂

[Richard S.]

4 hours ago, Jim said:

Are you able to give any details of the Bind Wind spell? Asking for a shaman's apprentice 🙂

 

On 5/23/2020 at 8:47 AM, David Scott said:

This spell enchants a leather bag or rope to be capable of holding a wind. For each Rune point used, a wind or air elemental can be captured in the bag.

Let one out, use command air element to do your bidding then back in the bag.