Non-Book Grimoires, and Caste

[davecake]

On 5/29/2020 at 9:38 PM, EricW said:

The god learners proved that sorcerous heroquests are possible, so this surely implies is possible for a sorcerer to learn new magic from sources other than scrolls.

I think to an extent, much heroquest magic is acquired by means outside the normal methods, and can break the normal rules somewhat, even if it seems similar to existing magic. For example, even in the very oldest HQ play, it was common for heroquests to allow the casting of Rune magic from outside ones cult - and I don't think even fairly strict Malkioni would consider acquiring rune magic this way a problem if it was done through direct interaction with, especially 'mastering', otherworldly entities, rather than worshipping them. 

Which isn't to say that sorcerous heroquests specificly to acquire sorcery isn't possible - but it more often looks like either very complex rituals or research, or deep exploration of the 'Essence plane' (essentially, prolonged scrying sessions). 

[davecake]

On 5/30/2020 at 5:45 AM, EricW said:

The God Learners had access to illumination,  they conquered Arkat's dark empire and plundered its secrets, though I'm not sure if they used illumination extensively or just used sorcery to manage spirits of retribution.

It seems fairly clear to me from the Middle Sea Empire, by far the best source we have on the God Learners, that the God Learners were quite intellectually diverse, with a lot of competing sects and factions, that often had quite different magical practices too. I don't think the mainstream faction, the Makanists, were generally Illuminated, but instead were pure sorcerers - and it was an extremist element within that tradition that was responsible for Zistor and the Clanking City. Another, very large but still minority, faction was the Malkioneranists, and they look to have followed a variant of Illumination, though one they understood poorly - but that did give them a lot of ability to explore, use, and plunder divine magic. 

Just don't look to find one single explanation of what God Learners did  - they were a large, pluralist, empire, and a particularly notably intellectually diverse one. 

[davecake]

Generally speaking, I agree that sorcery is intrinsically linguistic in nature, and probably extremely difficult or quite likely impossible without a written symbol system - and Greg certainly saw it as very strongly linked to writing. 

And it draws inspiration from a lot of IRL magical tradition that are closely linked to written forms, such as the Kabbalah, the magical sigils of Western European planetary magic and goetia, etc.