Cult membership during the Wind Stop

[Soccercalle]

The Wind Stop in late 1621 makes it impossible to use rune magic from Orlanth or Ernalda. How have people played this? Have players stayed loyal and only using their spirit magic or have they switched allegiances to other cults? I guess that this is a typical YGWV issue but I wonder how you think about it. One of my Orlanthi players is also a lay member to Chalana Arroy and the step to that cult would not be too far. 

Another question regarding the Wind Stop. Would you consider Vinga an aspect of Orlanth or a separate deity with regard to using rune magic during the stop? I think that it must be considered an aspect/sub cult. It would be strange if for example Kallyr and Leika could keep their magic by just being women.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Soccercalle

[scott-martin]

9 minutes ago, Soccercalle said:

The Wind Stop in late 1621 makes it impossible to use rune magic from Orlanth or Ernalda. How have people played this? Have players stayed loyal and only using their spirit magic or have they switched allegiances to other cults? I guess that this is a typical YGWV issue but I wonder how you think about it. One of my Orlanthi players is also a lay member to Chalana Arroyo and the stop to that cult would not be too far. 

The challenge with pivoting to other lightbringers is that historically those cults didn't provide the O+E magic that maintains the vibrant world. Initiates and converts alike will try their utmost to make it happen . . . maybe they'll get partial results or recover strange buried mysteries, but on the whole full success eludes them. The best they can do is deploy their specialized magic to keep the world more or less alive. You're going to remember variant survival stories in a hurry.

Even people who want to remain faithful to O+E will be tempted in extremis to resort to suppressed variants that were excised from the normal cults long ago but never really went away. Gagarth comes back with a literal vengeance. People undoubtedly get mixed up in (Sor)Ana Gor in the mother belt. All the questing may reopen deep questions about other ways to venerate Storm and Earth that people discarded in historical times. Maybe some of them work more or less. The fringe results will be surprising and shocking.

IMG this period is increasingly more of a deep communal dream or nightmare than anything empirical. In this model the seeds still sprout, the winds still blow the rain in, the crops still mature . . . but none of the people can see it or feel connected to the cycle in any meaningful way. It's the Waste Land vision, the death of god experience, the dark night of the world soul. The inner gates of heroquesting slam open and whole nations are cast to wander the spiritual desert in search of the same answers your players are looking for. How do you fix the world, where is god ,what does the grail king need--

[Akhôrahil]

31 minutes ago, Soccercalle said:

Another question regarding the Wind Stop. Would you consider Vinga an aspect of Orlanth or a separate deity with regard to using rune magic during the stop?

I would say that Vinga (especially), Barntar, Voriof and Mastakos count as "Orlanth" for these purposes.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 hour ago, Soccercalle said:

 I guess that this is a typical YGWV issue but I wonder how you think about it.

For me before the glorantha variation, the point should be :

"GM : player X, your character cannot join anymore your god / goddess, you cannot cast any divine spell. What do you do ."

 

if you allow orlanthi or ernaldan to contact and use their gods magic, your glorantha varies enough to say "there is no  wind stop'

 

1 hour ago, Soccercalle said:

 One of my Orlanthi players is also a lay member to Chalana Arroy and the step to that cult would not be too far.

yes why not, the big issue would be "now you cannot fight anymore".

 

1 hour ago, Soccercalle said:

Another question regarding the Wind Stop. Would you consider Vinga an aspect of Orlanth or a separate deity with regard to using rune magic during the stop? I think that it must be considered an aspect/sub cult. It would be strange if for example Kallyr and Leika could keep their magic by just being women.

From my perspective, Vinga is Orlanth, even if you have a cult dedicated to her only, she is the same power and the power is dead

 

Edited March 16, 2022 by French Desperate WindChild

[JRE]

It is a period of testing, specially for characters that do not know it is not a permanent thing. In the only game that interacted with this, the two orlanth initiates went humakti, as they wanted to keep fighting the Lunars and understood their clan could not afford to be linked to them, without ignoring the nifty magics. Then they became bandits taking tribute, mainly food, back from the Lunars. It actually died out as a bad Robin Hood parody. 

I also think it is important this is a wide but still localized effect. So you can move away and the problem sort of solves itself. Easier done with rootless adventurers than with the clan ring, however, but it could be a good moment to join the Wolf pirates, travel to Ralios or to visit Umathela. 

I would expect that most Orlanthi will try to solve this, so many people will be attempting heroquests to reverse it, and it is even possible that they actually succeed, so it is not only the merit of Kallyr and Broyan, but also the efforts of your players. 

[Akhôrahil]

39 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

yes why not, the big issue would be "now you cannot fight anymore".

I don't think Lay Members of CA are supposed to fight either.

[Akhôrahil]

5 minutes ago, JRE said:

I would expect that most Orlanthi will try to solve this, so many people will be attempting heroquests to reverse it, and it is even possible that they actually succeed, so it is not only the merit of Kallyr and Broyan, but also the efforts of your players. 

As in The Eleven Lights, for instance.

[Soccercalle]

10 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I don't think Lay Members of CA are supposed to fight either.

Maybe not. The character in question were raised by an Chalana Array priestess but later joined Orlanth. I consider a lay member as someone who participates in some rituals (holy days) and respects the traditions. But they are not forced to follow the rules, and get no benefits. In "my Glorantha" most male sartarites are lay members of Orlanth and most female are lay members of Ernalda (if they are not inititates). Even if you are a not an initiate of Orlanth you follow the "How Orlanth woo Ernalda" rituals when you proposes for marriage. And you respect that your king and clan chieftain are priests and/or initiates of Orlanth Rex.

 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Soccercalle

[JustAnotherVingan]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

I would say that Vinga (especially), Barntar, Voriof and Mastakos count as "Orlanth" for these purposes.

Even if Vinga is a goddess in her own right as she is in my game an Orlanthi female is still primarily a worshipper of Orlanth. I play it that the Orlanth and Ernlada rune pools are useless, no rune spells from associated or subcults. 

[Eff]

1 hour ago, scott-martin said:

The challenge with pivoting to other lightbringers is that historically those cults didn't provide the O+E magic that maintains the vibrant world. Initiates and converts alike will try their utmost to make it happen . . . maybe they'll get partial results or recover strange buried mysteries, but on the whole full success eludes them. The best they can do is deploy their specialized magic to keep the world more or less alive. You're going to remember variant survival stories in a hurry.

Even people who want to remain faithful to O+E will be tempted in extremis to resort to suppressed variants that were excised from the normal cults long ago but never really went away. Gagarth comes back with a literal vengeance. People undoubtedly get mixed up in (Sor)Ana Gor in the mother belt. All the questing may reopen deep questions about other ways to venerate Storm and Earth that people discarded in historical times. Maybe some of them work more or less. The fringe results will be surprising and shocking.

IMG this period is increasingly more of a deep communal dream or nightmare than anything empirical. In this model the seeds still sprout, the winds still blow the rain in, the crops still mature . . . but none of the people can see it or feel connected to the cycle in any meaningful way. It's the Waste Land vision, the death of god experience, the dark night of the world soul. The inner gates of heroquesting slam open and whole nations are cast to wander the spiritual desert in search of the same answers your players are looking for. How do you fix the world, where is god ,what does the grail king need--

"And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall.

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours,

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells."

Perhaps this is all one gets when listening for the words of the thunder. 

And the alternatives can get very exotic indeed. 

[scott-martin]

3 minutes ago, Eff said:

And the alternatives can get very exotic indeed. 

Once you're off the beaten track you can end up all kinds of hundred-letter thunder places, oh yeah. The trick is reconnecting with the timeline afterward. I suspect a shocking number of people didn't.

[Eff]

5 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Once you're off the beaten track you can end up all kinds of hundred-letter thunder places, oh yeah. The trick is reconnecting with the timeline afterward. I suspect a shocking number of people didn't.

It's easier if you know where you're going and what you want to do, of course. It's always best when negotiating to have a clear sense of intent and purpose for the other party to work from. 

[Eff]

A possibility that's derived from previous incarnations of Glorantha: the little subcults work unpredictably. Sometimes you have the power to call Heler and sometimes you don't. The centers of Orlanth and Ernalda are missing, the operators aren't at the switchboard, and it's anyone's guess whether you can reach through and talk to the demideity that scrawls out the decorations on Thunderstones or Blesses those Crops. 

How do you gamify this? I have no idea how you make it enjoyable as opposed to frustrating. Possibly in RQG terms, using the random Runes from 13th Age Glorantha to determine how the magic has shifted? 

[AlHazred]

2 hours ago, Eff said:

How do you gamify this? I have no idea how you make it enjoyable as opposed to frustrating. Possibly in RQG terms, using the random Runes from 13th Age Glorantha to determine how the magic has shifted? 

GM: "Your divination has resulted in you drawing this rune from the cup."
Player 1: "Uh... Do I recognize it?"
GM: "Your character doesn't remember putting it in there."
Player 1: "Uh..."
Player 2: "Wait, isn't that the logo of a surfboard company?"

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Soccercalle said:

The Wind Stop in late 1621 makes it impossible to use rune magic from Orlanth or Ernalda. How have people played this? Have players stayed loyal and only using their spirit magic or have they switched allegiances to other cults? I guess that this is a typical YGWV issue but I wonder how you think about it. One of my Orlanthi players is also a lay member to Chalana Arroy and the step to that cult would not be too far. 

Another question regarding the Wind Stop. Would you consider Vinga an aspect of Orlanth or a separate deity with regard to using rune magic during the stop? I think that it must be considered an aspect/sub cult. It would be strange if for example Kallyr and Leika could keep their magic by just being women.

During the Windstop, initiates of Orlanth and Ernalda within the affected area could not use their Rune Point pools to those gods and subcults of those gods. That includes Orlanth Adventurous, Rex, Thunderous, and Vinga. 

Tatius the Bright expected that it would cause the Orlanth cult to collapse, but instead, Orlanth's associates stepped into the gap. Chalana Arroy, Eurmal, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy, Storm Bull, Maran Gor, Babeester Gor, Grain Goddesses, and many others (including friendly cults such as Humakt) took on a greater social and magical prominence during that year. When the Windstop ended, the respect for the Orlanth and Ernalda cults actually rose as their importance in maintaining the cosmos was made more vivid.

[Ian A. Thomson]

I remember this in my Pavis Campaign. At that point all the Orlanthi PCs were also already initiates of Pavis.

Each affected PC immediately joined the most useful subcult/herocult of Pavis that was closest to the cult they were in. Opili the Defender for instance

Since these old herocults were slowly starting to become popular again anyway

Edited March 17, 2022 by Ian Thomson

[Martin Dick]

19 hours ago, Soccercalle said:

The Wind Stop in late 1621 makes it impossible to use rune magic from Orlanth or Ernalda. How have people played this? Have players stayed loyal and only using their spirit magic or have they switched allegiances to other cults?

Our two Orlanthi (me and another character) are carrying on with spirit magic, the GM ruled that I could still use my 1 point of Kolati rune magic. We're also frantically looking for ways to end it, while doing what we can to preserve the Red Cow Clan. The Odaylan and Yinkini in the party are pretty cock-a-hoop at the moment with their rune magic untouched and letting us Orlanthi know about. I'm not planning to change, but that may change depending on how long the GM lets it last.

 

[AlHazred]

4 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

the GM ruled that I could still use my 1 point of Kolati rune magic.

In the description in the HQ scenarios, Kolat and Serdrodosa are called out as still having functioning magic, since they are "distinct" from Orlanth and Ernalda. I appreciated that as I had a Serdrodosa witch in my PC party, and I was looking forward to seeing what she did when she was no longer an outcast! Sadly, we didn't get that far.

[Joerg]

23 hours ago, Soccercalle said:

Have players stayed loyal and only using their spirit magic or have they switched allegiances to other cults?

There is nothing disloyal in joining a spirit cult for some specific rune magic unless there is definite antagonism between the spirit and your usual deity. If the antagonism is only on the part of the spirit and the spirit still accepts the initiate of the antagonistic deity, then that is an answer in itself. The other way around would infringe loyalty, and probably any passion of Devotion.

[EricW]

I think most people were so profoundly shocked it would never have occurred to them to join another cult - what if the new god goes away as well? “more difficult to draw breath”, a major spiritual injury. You offer a piece of yourself to your god, then suddenly it’s just gone.

Edited March 17, 2022 by EricW