Cut off for summon ancestor

[Ironwall]

How far back can you summon an ancestor could you summon an ancestor from the dawn or even before time?

[Richard S.]

Yep, though I think you'll usually need a Summon Specific Ancestor to get them. That's why Uz and Talars, among others, are fanatic about genealogy: they have literal gods for ancestors, so its important to know who they are and what their connection to you is so you can call on them when necessary.

[Ironwall]

So you can with summon specific ancestor but what about summon ancestor. Could it still be from that far back.

[Richard S.]

1 minute ago, Ironwall said:

So you can with summon specific ancestor but what about summon ancestor. Could it still be from that far back.

Yes, but since its random it's entirely at the discretion of the GM.

[HreshtIronBorne]

1 hour ago, Richard S. said:

1 hour ago, Ironwall said:

So you can with summon specific ancestor but what about summon ancestor. Could it still be from that far back.

Yes, but since its random it's entirely at the discretion of the GM.

Or an appropriate and/or hilarious series or Crits/Fumbles. Depending on whether you really would rather have that ONE ancestor notice you or not. I could see some of Orlanth's mean old uncles being rather unpleasant to meet face to face. 

[Richard S.]

After a bit of thinking, some more thoughts on how I'd personally rule summoning ancestors:

1. The spell "Summon Ancestors" can't randomly drop a god or demigod on you, usually. Maybe in the case of a critical casting or other magic schenanigans it'd have a chance but it nearly always just picks a "normal" ancestor from the general ancestral host, one closer to what the caster is.

2. For Summon Specific Ancestor it's not enough to just know a name, you need to know the entire line between you and your target, thus making accurate genealogies even more precious. You might know you have a Thunder Brother ancestor, but you also need to know the right path to send the spell seeking down.

3. Specific summoning truly magical beings like spirits or demigods is going to be harder, like -25% or -50% depending on the individual ancestor. An actual god might require a special or critical success if possible at all.

[soltakss]

6 hours ago, Ironwall said:

How far back can you summon an ancestor could you summon an ancestor from the dawn or even before time?

Yes.

If you know your ancestral line and it goes to someone before Time then you can use Summon Ancestor to call them.

3 hours ago, Ironwall said:

So you can with summon specific ancestor but what about summon ancestor. Could it still be from that far back.

Look at the Ancestor Summons table on RQG p88, that has spirits with POW of 5D6+6, so could give a POW 36 ancestor. Those could be from an early point, or even before Time, or they could just be spirits that have been given POW as a gift.

 

[soltakss]

By the way, I have done some very rough calculations.

Assuming one generation is 30 years, we have 54 generations since the Dawn.

Assuming members of three clans, each with 1000 people, can marry, each generation has a pool of 3000 people for their ancestors.

The number of ancestors is 2 raised to the power of the number of generations back.

At generation 16, the number of ancestors exceeds the size of the clan in that generation, so ancestors either come from outside the clan, or the person has shared ancestors, with the same person being an ancestor to several different lines.

At generation 54, there are 162,000 people who have lived in the Clans, So, you could number each one, generate the Spirits using the table on RQG p89 and roll randomly to see which one you get, for some flavour. 

 

[Joerg]

8 hours ago, Richard S. said:

After a bit of thinking, some more thoughts on how I'd personally rule summoning ancestors:

2. For Summon Specific Ancestor it's not enough to just know a name, you need to know the entire line between you and your target, thus making accurate genealogies even more precious. You might know you have a Thunder Brother ancestor, but you also need to know the right path to send the spell seeking down.

Note that "Ancestor" can and will include the childless brother/sister of a direct ancestor, and entire side lineages if included in the family rites. Otherwise people who died heroically before leaving offspring are still included in the ancestor worship.

An ancestor roll-call may be a long litany of names, similar to a list of supporters in a kickstarted product (like e.g. the Guide to Glorantha).

And outside the bloodline praxis of Daka Fal, the clan praxis will include kin by clan membership, too. Making Hofstaring a potential ancestor in the clan sense for most Culbrea.

[AndreJarosch]

1. (as someone who is been into geneology for 12 years): 
54 Generations (30 years per generation from Dawn to 1620) = ~ 18.000.000.000.000.000 ancestors. 
Statistically every gloranthan that has ever lived is one of your ancestors. 
But because of pedigree collapse there are many people in your ancestry that are in multiple positions of your family tree. 
That is totally normal. 

2. (as someone that has read almost everything gloranthan... but unfortunately can´t remember every detail... especially not the source of some things i have in mind): 
Do some cultures in Glorantha beive that they reincarnate at some point?
If the soul of your ancestor has already reincarnated, then he is somebody new now, and can´t be contacted any more. 
(Have i read it somewhere, or is my memory corrupted by chaos?)

[PhilHibbs]

16 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

Do some cultures in Glorantha beive that they reincarnate at some point?
If the soul of your ancestor has already reincarnated, then he is somebody new now, and can´t be contacted any more. 

I don't think reincarnation would prevent contacting an ancestor.

[Joerg]

21 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

Do some cultures in Glorantha beive that they reincarnate at some point?

Many Hrestoli sects do, and the Ty Kora Tek cult talks about taking care of souls until their reincarnation, too. Ancestor worshippers include the Mani clan of Old Pavis, whose founder reincarnates every few generations.

 

21 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

If the soul of your ancestor has already reincarnated, then he is somebody new now, and can´t be contacted any more. 
(Have i read it somewhere, or is my memory corrupted by chaos?)

That's a bit more troublesome, and it is where the five-partite soul (or six, or seven) may come into play. Plus, Daka Fal worship contacts a deceased person's spirit rather than the soul.

A perfect re-incarnation like Mani of Mani Tor would require all parts of the ancestor to come together as one. IMO that's the absolute exception.

Then there is the possibility that the soul portion tied to your deity (e.g. Storm for Orlanth) remains with the deity, and may have neither the desire nor the need to be reincarnated. That wouldn't prevent the spirit of that ancestor from responding to a Daka Fal ritual, though.

 

If a spirit is reincarnated, I would remove it from the spirits available to the Daka Fal rites. Once that spirit's body dies again, the ancestor might be available to the original Daka Fal lineage as well as to his newer family (which may quite likely be a different one).

[davecake]

If you want it be, I agree that when your random Summon Ancestor roll gives you an ancestor with POW as high as 4D6+6 or 5D6+6, it seems quite reasonable to assume that is a very ancient or otherwise magical ancestor. 

On 2/19/2022 at 5:28 PM, Richard S. said:

The spell "Summon Ancestors" can't randomly drop a god or demigod on you, usually.

I mostly agree. I unless you have the precise knowledge of how to summon your demigod ancestors (that most people don’t really have) it doesn’t happen by chance. Extant active gods resist such random stuff, and dead or extinct gods probably can’t be summoned because they are metaphysically extinct (you’d probably need to heroquest them back), or for some other reason. Sometimes trying to summon a divine ancestor will work ( and have dramatic consequences), sometimes it will fail - and you don’t need to give any immediate reason why it fails. 
 

(Spoilers ) the Dragon scenario in the GM pack gives in an interesting example of this, in which there is a good reason why an important divine ancestress can’t be summoned that is going to be quite unknown to almost everyone in the Third Age. The incident in the scenario is good inspiration for how to handle such things. 
 

And yes, those that have carefully kept track of their genealogy can sometimes summon such powerful beings deliberately and it is a big damn deal - if you want it to be. 

[Shiningbrow]

28 minutes ago, davecake said:

If you want it be, I agree that when your random Summon Ancestor roll gives you an ancestor with POW as high as 4D6+6 or 5D6+6, it seems quite reasonable to assume that is a very ancient or otherwise magical ancestor. 

I mostly agree. I unless you have the precise knowledge of how to summon your demigod ancestors (that most people don’t really have) it doesn’t happen by chance. Extant active gods resist such random stuff, and dead or extinct gods probably can’t be summoned because they are metaphysically extinct (you’d probably need to heroquest them back), or for some other reason. Sometimes trying to summon a divine ancestor will work ( and have dramatic consequences), sometimes it will fail - and you don’t need to give any immediate reason why it fails. 
 

(Spoilers ) the Dragon scenario in the GM pack gives in an interesting example of this, in which there is a good reason why an important divine ancestress can’t be summoned that is going to be quite unknown to almost everyone in the Third Age. The incident in the scenario is good inspiration for how to handle such things. 
 

And yes, those that have carefully kept track of their genealogy can sometimes summon such powerful beings deliberately and it is a big damn deal - if you want it to be. 

Kyger Litor... 😁