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Ernalda and children


Godlearner

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6 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

What is if the candidate in question belongs to a species which does not give birth as a human? Is it possible to become a priestess if for example one lays eggs?

Yes, in my opinion.

 

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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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3 hours ago, Godlearner said:

What is if the candidate in question belongs to a species which does not give birth as a human? Is it possible to become a priestess if for example one lays eggs?

I would say that "having a child" does not necessarily imply mammalian birth. A dinosaur can have children -- I mean, Littlefoot had a mother! 😄 

3 hours ago, Godlearner said:

Ok, what about if one finds a (magical) egg and hatches it by donating Magic Points and POW?

IMHO the Ernalda cult just wants its priestesses to go through the process of creating life. If you're looking for edge cases, the answer will always be: it depends. If the player is into it, make it require an appeal, gathering allies for the hearing, going into Divination, asking what Ernalda herself thinks of it, finding some precedent with a former priestess, finding some precedent from the God Time, whatever. Edge cases are meant to be played.

Edited by lordabdul
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5 hours ago, Godlearner said:

Ok, what about if one finds a (magical) egg and hatches it by donating Magic Points and POW?

More serious answer.

Ernalda wants mythic proof that the candidate is fertile (that's one of her runes) and female.  Using "female" in the traditional sense.

  • Laying the egg and hatching it is proof.
  • Finding somebody else's egg and helping hatch it could be done by an infertile female, a "traditional male" and possibly even by an undead or a dwarven machine, depending on the exact details.  Not proof.
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57 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Ernalda wants mythic proof that the candidate is fertile (that's one of her runes) and female.  Using "female" in the traditional sense.

Or a dwerulan that has done their share of the reproductive heavy lifting.  For example!

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6 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Ernalda wants mythic proof that the candidate is fertile (that's one of her runes) and female.  Using "female" in the traditional sense.

  • Laying the egg and hatching it is proof.

same for me

6 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Finding somebody else's egg and helping hatch it could be done by an infertile female, a "traditional male" and possibly even by an undead or a dwarven machine, depending on the exact details.  Not proof.

I agree except (from my perspective) if "the" somebody succeeds some ritual that "prove" :

1) she is a she (nandan-like including) and not a he (vingan-like including)

2) the egg is her egg

then she is the mother

but without magic/divine ritual somebody is only a generous person/ The same way that you are part of a clan after an adoption ritual

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OK, I admit my "dwerulans" comment was a failed bid for cheap laugh-reacts.  (Reddit's done bad things for my spiritual Acceptance when it comes to post karma, and look at how the BB deals with equal gains of on rep.  First place and ties?  Alphabetical?  Give the poor newbie an event break?  Nooooo.  To him who has been given, let him be given more! And on one of Jeff's days off, too!  😄 😭 🤣) 337416510_Screenshot2021-09-2315_42_15.png.0c50481adef6048bc7ade24eb2f497d8.png

So to make a more sincerely tryhard orlanthropology response...

How does it work with the most obvious slightly off-All case, human males?  I assume that Nandan initiation is a 'career path' to Ernaldan priestesshood, at least as a theoretical possibility, if the 'flipside of Vinga' comparison is to be true to any real degree at all.  OK, they're pretty clearly mostly not, but they're often mentioned in the same breath as if they were, so surely this must be at least about 15% true?  Is this largely a formalised ritual thing?  Or does it require and involve pretty high-end magic?  Doing a little gooooogling, I see that the CoG draft has a Nandan subcult with the 'Pregnancy' runemagic (for which, text not yet publicly given AFAIK).  So...  on the face of it fairly high-end magic, it seems, but not "we're gonna need a bigger heroquest" level.  Assuming this doesn't get cut for space, keeping out of the twitter trans wars, or the traditional Gloracanonian authorial change-of-mind.  Your "Carry on Up Vantar" literary-mode Glorantha will rightfully vary.

So for me, that sets an approximate bar for the magical difficulty in other cases.  The social difficulty will no doubt vary even more widely.  "Oh, so that's how your species, em, does it?  The ways of the Goddess's bounty are endlessly manifold!"  "We don't have any truck with your kind 'ere.  Sling 'yer 'ook, before I have six burly huscarls sling it for you."

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4 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Some ppl find this funny... but I have no idea what the reference is to...

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Twilight's entrance exam to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns is supposed to test how she responds to an "impossible" task -- "hatching a dragon egg". Instead, she undergoes a magic surge, hatches the egg (and turns her parents into potted plants -- they get better). The dragon becomes sort of a younger brother following her around (and learns to cook, take notes, etc.). Twilight is (in my estimation) between 10 and 15 years at the time of the exam (and looks on the low end of that range). The show starts with her essentially at college graduation level from the school, and the series lasted 10 years (though those 10 years translate to an ambiguous amount in-story -- anything from four years up)... Hence my "spend the next 15 years" -- 6-10 for (pre-series) school period, and 5-10 for actual series time.

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On 9/22/2021 at 2:45 PM, Godlearner said:

Ok, what about if one finds a (magical) egg and hatches it by donating Magic Points and POW?

I think the main thing for me (so this is IMG, I suppose) is that a priestess has to have performed the act of creating an intelligent being from raw materials. So if that egg hatches someone that is clearly intelligent, yes. If the prospective priestess has created a golem-like thing that is clearly intelligent, yes. A homunculus? Sure, though they're probably going to be watched carefully. If the prospect has ventured onto the Otherside and fought the Plover Princess and received a child from the beak of Jabiru, Count Stork himself... that also counts. That is, it's not about whether you experience pregnancy physically, because that's pretty inconsistent with an Ernalda that accepts Nandan and with the extent to which Ernalda has magic that plays with that experience of pregnancy to begin with and of course the fact that Ernalda's got authority over various things that do not reproduce by giving live birth through a physically debilitating gestational period. It's about the process of creating a child in abstract terms. (Possibly, eligibility for the Asrelia cult requires realizing that your children are their own people.)

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

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On 9/22/2021 at 7:45 PM, Godlearner said:

Ok, what about if one finds a (magical) egg and hatches it by donating Magic Points and POW?

That is the same as raising someone else's baby.

so, if you laid the egg and it hatches then it is your baby.

If you take someone else's egg and hatch it then it might not be yours.

If someone sneaks into your nest and replaces all your eggs with someone else's eggs then you are effectively raising a clutch and would qualify.

 

To be honest, a series of "What ifs" becomes tiresome after a while and are best answered through gameplay.

Maybe someone discovered that an Ernaldan faked a pregnancy and stole a baby, then became a Priestess. What happens if that was later discovered? I don't know, what happens in the game where it happened?

 

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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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2 hours ago, Godlearner said:

 a Gloranthan NO (which as we come to understand covers 80% of the cases)

Nope, that's an Orlanthi no.  They're kinda notorious for it.  "So you'll definitely meet us at the agreed, time-critical rendezvous point, O Honourable Orlanthi allies?" "Oh, you can all-ways depend on us!"

Other Gloranthan neve-- no, wait, I mean always include...

Lunar All:  51%.

Yelmic All:  99%.  (That blasted shadow!)

Malkioni All:  99.9%.  Within the limit of wizardry error.

Brithini All:  actually 100%, but sadly now on the Hero Plane, so inaccessible.

Mostali All:  100.1%, to allow for World-Machining tolerances.

Shargashi All:  110%.  See also, Nigel Tufnel.

 
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On 9/23/2021 at 11:57 PM, Eff said:

That is, it's not about whether you experience pregnancy physically, because that's pretty inconsistent with an Ernalda that accepts Nandan and with the extent to which Ernalda has magic that plays with that experience of pregnancy to begin with and of course the fact that Ernalda's got authority over various things that do not reproduce by giving live birth through a physically debilitating gestational period.

This is Glorantha, after all, where the local version of Clarke's Law might be that sufficiently stacked magic is indistinguishable from physics! (Or indeed, biology.)  Tricky area, since we're kinda in the middle of a multi-year ruling on this from Jeff. The pause is preg-- eh, palpable.  (I'll get me coat.)  But sure, very possible this is not necessarily a strictly physical alteration and experience -- or at least that the definitive text we end up with on this leaves some residual residual wriggle room.

OTOH, being under Ernaldan authority doesn't necessarily equate to access to to full Ernalda enfranchisement.  A stalk of wheat surely gets the former, but not the latter.

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2 hours ago, simonh said:

I think there are probably heroquests where a person that could not normally give birth can become a mother, and thus prove their fertility.

Ernalda PC in one of my games was barren.  Subsequently went on the quest to free Orane from the Underworld, and as a consequence of her successful return (and freeing of Orane) that condition was removed.  She has subsequently conceived a child during the Colymar's Feast of Beasts. 

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