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Your favorite dark elements in Glorantha.


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3 hours ago, EricW said:

Would consuming a lie actually mess up a Thanatari?

It would mess them up by being something that they know but have no idea where it came from.  

3 hours ago, EricW said:

Or would it just result in a spell fail? If it was that easy surely all the important libraries in the world would boobytrap their treasured scrolls, by salting their shelves with at least a handful of interesting looking scrolls designed to mess up knowledge thieves.

I doubt the libraries would boobytrap their works because Thanatar isn't that prominent a God to be worth safeguarding their shelves from.

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On 6/21/2020 at 2:20 PM, metcalph said:

90% in a cult skill to become an initiate is clearly ridiculous.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I didn't write it. 

On 6/21/2020 at 2:20 PM, metcalph said:

Secondly relying on a text copied by a fellow Thanatari is cleartly insane. 

Relying on fellow Thanatari for just about anything is insane, yet there they are. 

On 6/21/2020 at 2:20 PM, metcalph said:

They could always take a page from the Name of the Rose and poison the paper

They could do all sorts of insane things, and no doubt many of them do. But not necessarily the same crazy things. 

You seem to be arguing that a cult of people with a strong hierarchy, but all covert and underground, and essentially on the fringes of sane behaviour and all dedicated to a variety of shortcuts to obtaining knowledge, will all make exactly the same reasoning about appropriate management of that process, including the same risk management decisions about the behaviour of their underlings. I think that they will be rather less consistent than that, and some will make decisions that seem crazy to others. They are a bunch of barely sane psychopathic conspirators, who radically vary in their relationships and behaviour. 

On 6/21/2020 at 2:20 PM, metcalph said:

Thirdly there is the time element.  Copying a text by hand  was quite a lengthy process in the Middle Ages and I doubt the Gloranthans find the process much quicker.  We're looking at a season or two of downtime and I doubt the Thanatari would be so paitent.

Yes, but some of them haven't got much else to do (the unfortunates that have managed to make themselves clearly visibly Chaotic, for example). Circumstances of cultists vary widely. 

And anyone who wants to make use of Devour Book isn't going to be THAT desperate to do it very regularly - it causes general hit point damage, so you are going to want to take a few weeks break between casts. 

On 6/21/2020 at 2:20 PM, metcalph said:

Lastly I doubt that grimoires are solely resident on the page and have some otherwordly component.  Merely copying a grimoire would not copy the wisdom within, it has to be illuminated so to speak.

While it is an interesting idea that I have some sympathy for, it's not one I find any support for in the rules. Of course, many grimoires are likely to include some sympathetic magic or enchantments to make them more useful. There were some draft rules for books published a while ago, but they didn't really talk about sorcery. If they turn into more official rules in the future (maybe in the campaign book?) I guess we will know more. 

There certainly could be a lot of interesting rules for books, as anyone who has played Ars Magica would know, we don't have them yet though (though noting Ars Magic has been mentioned as one of the inspirations for RQG sorcery more than once)

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21 hours ago, metcalph said:

t would mess them up by being something that they know but have no idea where it came from.  

I'm not sure that is how it works. It would make Devour Book crazily problematic - who knows what might be written in the margins, false or contradictory etc. It would essentially make it pointless - if you are directly inserting knowledge if your brain in a way that will mess you up if it contains contradictions or lies, then you'd want to carefully assess the contents of the bok before you Devour it, which kind of misses the point. I would expect that it is much more like knowing things in the normal way (well, perhaps more so - maybe you would have essentially an exactly memorised internal copy) that you otherwise know things from books you have read - you know what was written, know where it was written, and are able to assess it in context. Knowing every word of GROY would not make you think Plentonius was correct about everything, for example. 

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50 minutes ago, davecake said:

You seem to be arguing that a cult of people with a strong hierarchy, but all covert and underground, and essentially on the fringes of sane behaviour and all dedicated to a variety of shortcuts to obtaining knowledge, will all make exactly the same reasoning about appropriate management of that process, including the same risk management decisions about the behaviour of their underlings.

You seem to be arguing that people can copy a book quickly for a Thanatari to devour and that a Thanatari priests has enough initiates on hand to work full time at satisfying his desires.  Those are as plausible as the 90% initiate requirement which is to say, not very.  You also ignore that copying documents is at odds with the desires of the god, which is to devour knowledge and screw others.

50 minutes ago, davecake said:

Yes, but some of them haven't got much else to do (the unfortunates that have managed to make themselves clearly visibly Chaotic, for example). Circumstances of cultists vary widely. 

Yet a Thanatari priest has enough on hand to copy documents quickly and accurately?  

50 minutes ago, davecake said:

And anyone who wants to make use of Devour Book isn't going to be THAT desperate to do it very regularly

I didn't say regularly, I said quickly.  A Thanatari priest acquyires a valuable book which he wants to eat.  Out of concern for others, he waits several weeks while his lackeys copy the book to an uncertain event.  Why not READ the book instead of eating it?  

50 minutes ago, davecake said:

While it is an interesting idea that I have some sympathy for, it's not one I find any support for in the rules.

It is however found in the literature viz a viz the Book of Secrets and the Abiding Book.

 

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53 minutes ago, davecake said:

I'm not sure that is how it works. It would make Devour Book crazily problematic - who knows what might be written in the margins, false or contradictory etc. It would essentially make it pointless - if you are directly inserting knowledge if your brain in a way that will mess you up if it contains contradictions or lies, then you'd want to carefully assess the contents of the bok before you Devour it, which kind of misses the point.

I find this odd coming from a person who just argued that the Thanatari wouldn't behave consistently. 

53 minutes ago, davecake said:

Knowing every word of GROY would not make you think Plentonius was correct about everything, for example. 

He doesn't have to believe it for it to be effective.  Ibn Battuta recounts the tale of how the people of Delhi used to insult the Sultan by writing horrible things about him and sealing them with the inscription "By the hand of the Master of the World; none but him may read this" and throwing the sealed missives into his palace, where nobody would read them but the Sultan.  Even though they were not true, they still had an effect on the Sultan who decided to raze the city. 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, metcalph said:

He doesn't have to believe it for it to be effective.  Ibn Battuta recounts the tale of how the people of Delhi used to insult the Sultan by writing horrible things about him and sealing them with the inscription "By the hand of the Master of the World; none but him may read this" and throwing the sealed missives into his palace, where nobody would read them but the Sultan.  Even though they were not true, they still had an effect on the Sultan who decided to raze the city. 

Thanatar has the truth rune, so his followers should have some chance of filtering the lies and contradictions. Perhaps failure to filter or reconcile contradictions is what happens when a consume knowledge spell goes horribly wrong and sends the caster insane or damages their mind or whatever. Penalty if the scroll is deliberately boobytrapped.

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On 6/22/2020 at 5:16 PM, metcalph said:

You seem to be arguing that people can copy a book quickly for a Thanatari to devour and that a Thanatari priests has enough initiates on hand to work full time at satisfying his desires. 

Just that a master at a language probably can, and there are likely to be one or two around in any significant group of Atyari, so it may happen occasionally. Confusing qualitative aspects of an argument is a good way to make straw men, but doesn't yeld much (Dark)light. You seem to be more or less arguing for the point of arguing here - of course there are good arguments against it happening on some sort of industrial scale, but the argument against seems to be based on all cultists universally agreeing with your reasoning. 

On 6/22/2020 at 5:16 PM, metcalph said:

Those are as plausible as the 90% initiate requirement which is to say, not very. 

Well, I took that straight from the Gods book draft, so if it changes by publication we can discuss again, but if it doesn't your argument becomes based on you disbelieving in canon. Of course YGWV, but I'm more interested in discussing the shared one. 

I find it plausible enough - Thanatar is a weird secretive cult that is particular about who it lets in to its inner mysteries, not a broad based sect. And in particular, it means every priest of Lhankor Mhy (or most other knowledge cults, like Buserian or Irripi Ontor) is eligible for initiation, and the majority of competent sorcerers. And, of course, there are multiple other paths to initiation than the intellectual one. 

On 6/22/2020 at 5:16 PM, metcalph said:

I didn't say regularly, I said quickly.  A Thanatari priest acquyires a valuable book which he wants to eat.  Out of concern for others, he waits several weeks while his lackeys copy the book to an uncertain event.  Why not READ the book instead of eating it?  

I figured anyone who has Devour Book is going to usually use it only relatively irregularly due to 'indigestion' and the arduous and unpleasant nature of the process, so usually won't be simply Devouring things immediately but finding a few days of private time (though far more for Comsume Mind etc). But the motivation isn't just an urge to acquire knowledge in the short term, but in the long term - generally speaking Devouring a few books a season will still be plenty if it can be sustained over the long term.  There are plenty of reasons to want to have a copy - mostly because it seems to be a major cult practice to maintain a library (presumably as more than a sort of literary larder), but also including worrying that books that disappear from the shelves  of another library will arouse suspicion if they disappear permanently, a bargaining chip to other cultists to trade for their juicy books to devour or other favours, someone may know you have the original, to ensure that others in the cult have the same knowledge so you can work with them (relevant for some sorcery), or for reasons to do with maintaining a less suspicious mundane life. But sure, plenty of the time they will just Devour books as acquired too. 

On 6/22/2020 at 5:16 PM, metcalph said:

It is however found in the literature viz a viz the Book of Secrets and the Abiding Book.

I didn't get that at all - without wanting to get heavily into epistemology, issues with the Book of Secrets and the Abiding Book are more to do with the way the knowledge is used (particularly the multiple ways in which knowledge from the Abiding Book can be interpreted - cf. Hadmalism) rather than the method of acquisition. 

The spell description says you acquire all knowledge in the book, but doesn't suggest that its different in any way to other knowledge, of course you can have 'knowledge' that contains some false components, but thats a normal thing - a body of knowledge will contain biases, hypotheses that will prove false, etc. Nothing indicates it is any less doubtable than other knowledge. 

On 6/22/2020 at 5:29 PM, metcalph said:

Ibn Battuta recounts the tale of how the people of Delhi used to insult the Sultan by writing horrible things about him and sealing them with the inscription "By the hand of the Master of the World; none but him may read this" and throwing the sealed missives into his palace, where nobody would read them but the Sultan.  Even though they were not true, they still had an effect on the Sultan who decided to raze the city. 

That is a fine story, but not sure of its relevance. You could certainly incorporate extra messages into a book - and while it could be used to sow particular ideas in the mind of the Devourer, would this be any different to planting the same ideas in the mind of a reader of the paper version? 

On 6/22/2020 at 5:42 PM, EricW said:

Perhaps failure to filter or reconcile contradictions is what happens when a consume knowledge spell goes horribly wrong and sends the caster insane or damages their mind or whatever.

Perhaps. Maybe some problem to do with the text and its interpretation is what happens when a Devour book roll is fumbled. 

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13 hours ago, davecake said:

That is a fine story, but not sure of its relevance. You could certainly incorporate extra messages into a book - and while it could be used to sow particular ideas in the mind of the Devourer, would this be any different to planting the same ideas in the mind of a reader of the paper version? 

 

For me it raises the question of whether a cult that considers the written word holy (LM, truth rune) would reject counter-factual text as blasphemy. If not, elite cells of Knowledge Assassins who do nothing but doctor books as bait for the enemy. It's a dangerous and ultimately destructive career ("lies murder some part of the World") but the tactical benefits in the Information War are just too tempting for pragmatic big beards to resist.

On the other side I suspect much of the real pleasure of eating a book comes from knowing that you're taking those lore points out of circulation forever. But Atyar is still a truth god so knows the difference. We know he maintains "libraries." He doesn't eat everything. 

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36 minutes ago, scott-martin said:
On the other side I suspect much of the real pleasure of eating a book comes from knowing that you're taking those lore points out of circulation forever.

Hell, no. It’s about passing that test *tomorrow* without doing a week’s reading beforehand. Screw the next Sage who wants to pull this book from the Great Library: I need to eat it now now now.

Instant scholastic gratification. Don’t tell me you’re immune to the temptation...

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