Long High holy days

[Jokum]

How are the long high holy days of Chalana Arroy(7days) and Daka Fal(14days)supposed to be understood?

Are they counted as one long Holy day or as every day was a new High holy Day?

If its one long Holy day then why? Characters have to spend their time in worshipping?

If its a new High holy Day every day, do the characters get their runepoints renewed everyday? ...and POW checks everyday? Sounds unfair for the rest of the universe.

 

And i suppose Daka Fal followers will use their Axis mundi magic and have their ceremonies anywhere their Clans happen to be and not somewhere in temples or so?

[Jokum]

...creating an old/experienced shaman, how much POW they gain on average per decade? 10? 20?

Do they get a POW check per season? Are there possible other sources of POW, like winning a sickness spirits in combat? Sacrificing lot of POW keeps the possibility to gain more of it higher, so maybe keeping their personal POW somewhere around 10 would be optimal and feeding the gained POW first to the fetch and then to enchantments etc.?

What would be intelligent strategy for a shaman who has time to think it through? 

[David Scott]

8 hours ago, Jokum said:

How are the long high holy days of Chalana Arroy(7days) and Daka Fal(14days)supposed to be understood?

Are they counted as one long Holy day or as every day was a new High holy Day?

If its one long Holy day then why? Characters have to spend their time in worshipping?

Firstly:

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The High Holy Day is actually a week-long festival running throughout the second week of Sacred Time, celebrating the return of the goddess with the rest of the Lightbringers from Hell.

It's one long Holy day that's a festival. It's not 24/7, so just like real world religious festivals you're not awake all the time and you participate when needed. Depending on the nature of the festival it could be distinct phases, like the christian lead up to easter and the after events. Or like a long Dance, 24/7 with dancer dropping in and out, or with a sacred fire with a rota of fire keepers 24 as well. Chalana Arroy is likely to have a format that is a spin off from the Lightbringers Quest:

Day 1 Preparation. Gather herbs, salves, bandages, supplies, correct clothing

Day 2 Departure, Saying goodbye to everyone.

Day 3 Travel & Hardships. Encounters with bad things and not responding to them - temptation.

Day 4 The Test. Finding a wounded God and tending to them 

Day 5 The failure and contemplation of the failure. Being unable to heal them and they die, forever gone.

Day 6 The Return. Meeting up with the other lightbringers and Ernalda, hope

Day 7 The Celebration

8 hours ago, Jokum said:

If its a new High holy Day every day, do the characters get their runepoints renewed everyday? ...and POW checks everyday? Sounds unfair for the rest of the universe.

i would say that they never run out. As for POW checks everyday, if you like, depending on what they do in the festival. However you can only get one POW check and sacred time is a single season.

8 hours ago, Jokum said:

And i suppose Daka Fal followers will use their Axis mundi magic and have their ceremonies anywhere their Clans happen to be and not somewhere in temples or so?

The living and the dead mix freely no spell needed, it's sacred time. Two weeks where everyone is together experiencing the hardship of the great Darkness and celebration of the Return of the World, then your ancestors return back to their afterlife.

Imagine it as a two week version of the "Day of the  Dead"

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On October 31, All Hallows Eve, the children make a children's altar to invite the angelitos (spirits of dead children) to come back for a visit. November 1 is All Saints Day, and the adult spirits will come to visit. November 2 is All Souls Day, when families go to the cemetery to decorate the graves and tombs of their relatives. The three-day fiesta is filled with marigolds, the flowers of the dead; muertos (the bread of the dead); sugar skulls; cardboard skeletons; tissue paper decorations; fruit and nuts; incense, and other traditional foods and decorations.

Except the dead come to stay and you honour them and tell them what's happened in the last year, and show them the land, new animals, new children etc.

 

Edited September 24, 2020 by David Scott

[Jokum]

Hey, that similarity with Day of the Dead didn't come to my mind. Very good idea , thank you.

I suppose the High holy days are not for personal Rune magic casting then? Otherwise one could with 5points of extension for example cast year long true weapon spell and next day similarly with find enemy spell, If all the points are restored with worship roll? ...or summon spirits and with that they could gain the POW checks for every day.

How about divination Rune spells during the long Holy days? ...or any what ever spells?

I'm just worried that our characters would gain unnecessary benefits based on our misunderstanding the basic rules.

[PhilHibbs]

21 hours ago, David Scott said:

Imagine it as a two week version of the "Day of the  Dead"

Except the dead come to stay and you honour them and tell them what's happened in the last year, and show them the land, new animals, new children etc.

...and complain that your food is rubbish, you aren't keeping up the old traditions, you married someone from an enemy clan (that was an enemy back in their day, they don't keep up to date with current affairs), your kids are not respecting their elders...

 

 

Edited September 25, 2020 by PhilHibbs

[David Scott]

21 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

...and complain that your food is rubbish, you aren't keeping up the old traditions, you married someone from an enemy clan (that was an enemy back in their day, they don't keep up to date with current affairs), your kids are not respecting their elders...

This does raise the question of how do these "visitors" behave? I've always thought that they are just happy to be remembered and that death mellows them, that the communication is mostly one way, until one of them is incarnated...

[Jokum]

21 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

...

 

 

PhilHibbs, nice 😅.

Sounds like suitable tasks or even adventures for Daka Fal followers. What to do with a grand-uncle who died two weeks ago, but one day the spirit returned to the body, not understanding it's time to move to another plain 😅

Why is he back? He's got something to say or unfullfilled promises still undone? ...maybe a curse, because he couldn't keep his promise.

...i think im going to use this, it will be fun. Thanks 🙏

Edited September 26, 2020 by Jokum

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

I've always thought that they are just happy to be remembered and that death mellows them, that the communication is mostly one way, until one of them is incarnated...

I've always thought the opposite. They are bitter that they know what should be done and can see their descendants not doing it right, but they can't affect it. That makes them bitter, complaining, interfering (where possible) old biddies, worse than the most annoying relatives that you can think of. give them a bit of power and they are the force of conservatism that does not allow your clan to change, as any change is a deviation from the customs. 

One thing that anyone who wants to change the clan needs to do is to convince the ancestors, which is not very easy at all.

When a clan splits into two, some ancestors stay with the original clan and some go with the new clan. That can have interesting effects.

When two clans join, or when a bloodline leaves one clan and joins another, the ancestors join and they will have different ideas about what the customs are, possibly pulling the clan in different directions.

[PhilHibbs]

It's definitely a thing in Glorantha that ancestors, like all spirits, maintain their identity through reinforcement. You take on a pact with a spirit, and it wants you to do something in the middle world that cements their identity - eat the same food, hate the same people, wear the same perfume. Ancestors want you to hate trolls, raid the Red Oaks, and take thralls because that's what they did.

Edited October 2, 2020 by PhilHibbs

[jajagappa]

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

I've always thought that they are just happy to be remembered and that death mellows them, that the communication is mostly one way, until one of them is incarnated...

Just go to Nochet during their Festival of the Dead - the old Grandmothers will quickly knock that notion right out of your head!  😉 

[Joerg]

On 9/26/2020 at 1:19 PM, soltakss said:

One thing that anyone who wants to change the clan needs to do is to convince the ancestors, which is not very easy at all.

It is probably like getting a new paradigm to be accepted in science by letting the advocates of the old pardigm retire or die out - you need to produce a sufficiently high population of "ancestors" adapted to the changes to let the grumbling against innovation fade to white noise.

 

On 9/26/2020 at 1:19 PM, soltakss said:

When a clan splits into two, some ancestors stay with the original clan and some go with the new clan. That can have interesting effects.

Or some are in both clans, and others retreat from either.

The body of clan ancestors in KoDP is a lot less defined than shamanic Daka Fal ancestor worship which has very individual spirits identifiable by name, generation etc.

Certain heroic ancestors like e.g. Ulanin the Rider are present in many of his distant descendants' clans.

On 9/26/2020 at 1:19 PM, soltakss said:

When two clans join, or when a bloodline leaves one clan and joins another, the ancestors join and they will have different ideas about what the customs are, possibly pulling the clan in different directions.

With the exogamous nature of clans, I wonder how much the ancestry of the in-laws comes into play. If a clan regularly takes women from few neighboring clans, somehow there are bound to be ancestral ties to these other ancestors.

And how does a wife or husband married into another set of ancestors interact a) with those of their current clan and b) with those of the clan they hail from? Is marriage a full-fledged adoption into a different set of ancestors, and sort of a divorce from those of your birth clan?