Heroes, superheroes and demigods

[DrGoth]

7 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

It might depend - every mortal who has risen to become a demigod has surely passed through the hero stage, but I could also picture demigods that are merely very small gods and always have been, and those probably aren't heroes.

Yes, hence my hesitation. But if we limits to the "big name" demigods, then I'm a little more confident.

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, DrGoth said:

Add Cragspider to that list. GtG vol 1 p170 "Cragspider the Firewitch: This demigoddess is the best known and perhaps most powerful of all trolls.

My best guess (and it's only a guess) is the power range. 

My best guess is lineage - they are the children of gods (or a god and a mortal).  

[hipsterinspace]

12 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Also, 'sorcery' appears to be a very wide-ranging term that's not so easy to identify. Given that, I think it makes it harder to interpret the over-aching ban on all sorcery can't be shamans (or vice-versa - although I don't think there's a problem on the sorcery side).

And I've asked this question before (a year or 2 ago), without much conclusive answers - what does it actually mean to be a shaman? Personally, I think it means having a fetch, and the ability to discorporate without external help. Neither of those precludes knowledge of sorcery.

It seems like the intuition and spiritual immanence, for lack of a better term, required to make contact with spirits on their terms is directly at odds with the detached, materialist, rationalist perspective that sorcery requires. Sorcery has tools in its suite of magic that allow practitioners to exert control over spirits and the spirit world, perhaps even enter it, but that is very different than making yourself permanently a part of it.

Edited April 22, 2023 by hipsterinspace

[Shiningbrow]

8 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

It seems like the intuition and spiritual immanence, for lack of a better term, required to make contact with spirits on their terms is directly at odds with the detached, materialist, rationalist perspective that sorcery requires. Sorcery has tools in its suite of magic that allow practitioners to exert control over spirits and the spirit world, perhaps even enter it, but that is very different than making yourself permanently a part of it.

I'm not seeing your point, in either your post of that of the WoD entry.

I agree that it would be different - but I don't see it being contradictory. Sure, most never will, but it's obviously possible, because this is something that trolls do!

The only reason I can see that sorcerers wouldn't get into shamanism is that it takes a lot of time and effort (and POW) away from sorcery. (they're also arrogant with regards to the spirits and the spirit world!)

And one big reason I can see shamans not getting into sorcery is, again, the time, effort, POW, and the fact that being a good shaman usually means having lots of spirit magic spells on hand - and that would take up the Free INT for sorcery. Also, most shamans (ie, the average) won't have the necessary INT to become a shaman, won't be brought up in the right environment, and won't be able to read to a useful enough level.

Other than that... I don't see a problem here.

[Darius West]

On 4/19/2023 at 2:23 AM, Jeff said:

My short list of Gloranthan superheroes are basically: Androgeus, Arkat, Harrek, Jar-eel, and Yanafal Tarnils.

A good argument can be made that Errinoru was a superhero as well. 

However, in general I use the term hero for both heroes and superheroes because the latter term always conjures up images of people in spandex and capes.

I am surprised no God Learners made the cut.  Surely Gloranthan history's munchkins par excellence must have had some superheroes?  I mean, they are all dead now, I assume, but still...  If Errinoru almost makes the cut and he's dead...

Edited April 23, 2023 by Darius West

[metcalph]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

I am surprised no God Learners made the cut.  Surely Gloranthan history's munchkins par excellence must have had some superheroes?  I mean, they are all dead now, I assume, but still...  If Errinoru almost makes the cut and he's dead...

God Learners achieved their magics through powerful wizards rather than heroes.  Any aspiring superheroes probably had Hrestoli or Arkati sympathies which would have made them targets for eradication.  If they didn't have such sympathies, the Wizards would have still gone after them. 

[DrGoth]

21 hours ago, jajagappa said:

My best guess is lineage - they are the children of gods (or a god and a mortal).  

I'd say that's a possible qualification, but not the only possiblity.

[DrGoth]

14 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

It seems like the intuition and spiritual immanence, for lack of a better term, required to make contact with spirits on their terms is directly at odds with the detached, materialist, rationalist perspective that sorcery requires. Sorcery has tools in its suite of magic that allow practitioners to exert control over spirits and the spirit world, perhaps even enter it, but that is very different than making yourself permanently a part of it.

I would tend to agree.  I have trouble seeing anyone ( or at least, anyone who is not illuminated) being able to handle the two different mindsets. Shamans (to me at least) need to be able to relate to the spirits as beings of innate worth. Sorcery requires a much more "treat them as objects" view.  Hard to hold to both.

[metcalph]

On the subject of Shaman Sorcerers, RQ3's Trollpak said that Mistress Race Trolls could be Shaman, Sorcerer, Priestess or any combination thereof.  I suspect it's a case of who is going to say they can't?

[Shiningbrow]

On 4/23/2023 at 6:26 PM, DrGoth said:

Shamans (to me at least) need to be able to relate to the spirits as beings of innate worth.

I would generally agree with that statement - however I wouldn't say it's a categorical requirement.

Besides, I think you may be thinking of Malkioni sorcery with the ...

On 4/23/2023 at 6:26 PM, DrGoth said:

being able to handle the two different mindsets.

Certainly, the mental gymnastics required by sorcery might suggest it, but I don't think the attitude towards spirits is always going to be one of abuse, as a necessity.

[Shiningbrow]

On 4/23/2023 at 6:43 PM, metcalph said:

On the subject of Shaman Sorcerers, RQ3's Trollpak said that Mistress Race Trolls could be Shaman, Sorcerer, Priestess or any combination thereof.  I suspect it's a case of who is going to say they can't?

Rhetorical, but I'll answer that anyway...

The Horned Man?

Darkness spirits?? (especially the bigger nastier ones)

KL herself?

I don't think that Mistress Race Trolls are at the top when it comes to this sort of thing...

[French Desperate WindChild]

from my perspective there is no "technical" reason to not be both shaman and sorcery ( what @metcalph said about mistress race is for me the proof)

however there are a lot of difficulties :

- the time : you need a lot of time to learn all these skills. It is better to focus on one domain if you want to be efficient

- the morale values, pedantry, arrogance, tabboo, fear, what you want: no reason to learn the "opposite" side

- the community pressure: maybe you are able to accept other perspectives but it is to hard in your community

- then what you do with sorcery. As you manipulate energy/rune/etc.. you may "pollute" the world, even if you don't want or don't know what you do. And spirits may be angry (princess monoke and co) : Easier to challenge you if you are always in spirit world because you are a shaman

 

so Mistress has not these kind of problem :

she has time

she is venerated by her communauty, they follow her even if they don't understand
 

she has a lot of darkness spirits as friends/ allies / protectors.. She has one of the most powerfull goddess as her mother or grandmother (or about). Few spirits will challenge her

And she is in so many worlds that she knows what she can do and what she can't.

 

 

 

[Akhôrahil]

The types of magic are supposed to get mixed up in the Underworld, so trolls in particular might well be using a mash-up of the types, IMO. The system punishes mixing Sorcery and Spirit Magic to an extent, but if you can work with that, that's fine by me. I find it questionable whether it's worth if the effort to try to push both, but if you want to, all the more power to you.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[DrGoth]

9 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I would generally agree with that statement - however I wouldn't say it's a categorical requirement.

Besides, I think you may be thinking of Malkioni sorcery with the ...

Certainly, the mental gymnastics required by sorcery might suggest it, but I don't think the attitude towards spirits is always going to be one of abuse, as a necessity.

Fair points. I would go with the "generally". There may well be exceptions, but on the whole I think it would be very hard to manage.

Except for the non-illuminated.

[Nick Brooke]

On 4/20/2023 at 11:24 AM, DrGoth said:

I'm going to borrow from Nick Brooke (possibly more than he'd like - sorry Nick)

No need to apologise. I like it when people agree with me. I like spawning evangelists. Carry on!

[soltakss]

On 4/24/2023 at 2:32 PM, Shiningbrow said:

Rhetorical, but I'll answer that anyway...

The Horned Man?

Darkness spirits?? (especially the bigger nastier ones)

KL herself?

I don't think that Mistress Race Trolls are at the top when it comes to this sort of thing...

Arkat changed troll spirits so that they could learn Sorcery, so all trolls can learn sorcery.

Mistress Race Trolls can learn sorcery because their souls are big enough to contain Sorcery, Shamanism and Theism, in fact they are closer to deities than most people.

Also, when your Great-great-great Aunt is Kyger Litor then you can do whatever you want.

 

[Harry the Dirty Dog]

On 4/23/2023 at 6:20 PM, metcalph said:

God Learners achieved their magics through powerful wizards rather than heroes.  Any aspiring superheroes probably had Hrestoli or Arkati sympathies which would have made them targets for eradication.  If they didn't have such sympathies, the Wizards would have still gone after them. 

I have a vague memory that Greg said that the God Learner path rules out the Hero path.  The way God Learners did things meant they were never going to be Heroes or Superheroes.

It makes sense to me when you take Jeff's comments about community and support into account.

I don't have a reference and may be remembering it wrong, though.

[Shiningbrow]

15 hours ago, soltakss said:

Arkat changed troll spirits so that they could learn Sorcery, so all trolls can learn sorcery.

Got a decent reference for that?

15 hours ago, soltakss said:

Mistress Race Trolls can learn sorcery because their souls are big enough to contain Sorcery, Shamanism and Theism, in fact they are closer to deities than most people.

A) while I get the second part,, and I can understand the first part - although I'll question this idea of "souls are big enough" (what's that even supposed to mean in general, and then what's that supposed to mean specifically and mechanically) - that still doesn't help considering Dark Trolls are also able to "contain" (huh??) all 3 as well!

[DrGoth]

On 4/25/2023 at 9:44 PM, Nick Brooke said:

No need to apologise. I like it when people agree with me. I like spawning evangelists. Carry on!

I tend to rant more than evangelise

[soltakss]

9 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Got a decent reference for that?

Opinion.

9 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

A) while I get the second part,, and I can understand the first part - although I'll question this idea of "souls are big enough" (what's that even supposed to mean in general, and then what's that supposed to mean specifically and mechanically) - that still doesn't help considering Dark Trolls are also able to "contain" (huh??) all 3 as well!

If you approach things from the point of view that "Shamans can not learn Sorcery because it is beyond their comprehension", for example, then Mistress Race Trolls can learn sorcery because Arkat taught them how to, and they can embrace both sorcery and being a shaman. Again, opinion.

[Joerg]

Hell is an Otherworld made up of all other Otherworlds, minus a lot of energy that is bled out into the Void at the bottom. As Darkness demons, trolls have less alienation to any sort of magic, even though they seem to come mainly from the fusion of spirit and theist magics. They contributed to the Theyalan sacrificial system of magic (which became the Rune Magic that is modeled by RuneQuest, or the Feats in HeroQuest Glorantha), or learned its methods from their Heortling allies, and they are great shamans in their own right.

Sorcery as practiced by the Brithini doesn't work well in the Underworld as it assumes a ready access to the Energy of the Source channeled through life energy (from the caster, or from the environment the caster taps into, or from shared magic from Invisible God worship or Brithini urban architecture). There is one school of sorcery specialized on sorcery for the Underworld, and in my thermodynamics trained imagination, these sorcerers don't tap into the energy above to disperse in the normal world, but pull energies from around them into the lowest oblivion to have that energy gradient that is required to result in magic.

To the uz, this must feel exactly like digestion. When Arkat shared his knowledge of Western sorcery with them as he had practiced it as a troll, these methods may have come naturally after the initial realization.

 

Is sorcery necessarily a part of being a Superhero? Superheroes possess the mystical Infinity rune to deal with any kind of magic, and at least in an earlier attempt to define an orthodox Eastern mystic's progress, there was exposure to the worlds of pure magic from Spirit Magic, Rune Magic, and Sorcery in which the mystic's ability to both master these by meditation and to refrain from being caught up in them was tested in the intermediate stages before approaching the face of the Ultimate. (Steps jumped over in Nysalorean illumination as my limited understanding of it tells me.)

Superheroes are not orthodox mystics. They share the effects of master mystics (or True Dragons) in being able to control the magic around them, but their approach would be through Hero Plane acquisition of such powers.

I don't see Harrek as having mastered any sorcerous techniques or runes, but he will have developed an innate understanding of how these affect the magical energies around him, and how to interfere with that.

Jar-eel may actually have had some formal education in sorcery. Whether she relies on it to achieve her goals is a totally different question.

Androgeus? Who knows.

[Shiningbrow]

On 4/27/2023 at 3:16 AM, soltakss said:

If you approach things from the point of view that "Shamans can not learn Sorcery because it is beyond their comprehension", for example, then Mistress Race Trolls can learn sorcery because Arkat taught them how to, and they can embrace both sorcery and being a shaman

Well, no, I don't approach things from that point of view.

However, I would certainly think that once someone has become a shaman, then they would be in their 20s or so, and thus haven't had the years of patient, methodical mental exercises necessary for sorcery. I wouldn't say it's "beyond their comprehension", but it's not likely to be something that they'd ever head towards (largely out of need or desire - let alone out of tribal/clan obligations). Even though Uz can combine the training, I strongly suspect that the sorcery still comes first - just because of those early years of mental exercises.

[hipsterinspace]

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

However, I would certainly think that once someone has become a shaman, then they would be in their 20s or so, and thus haven't had the years of patient, methodical mental exercises necessary for sorcery.

People are also called to be a shaman most of the time. The Horned Man chooses them and they follow him. It’s something that pervades their life and experience, it’s not what they do, it’s what they are. The thing about shamans is how direct their connection with the spirit world is, they have spirits who are their personal friends and personal enemies in addition to those who they have cultic friendships and enmities with.

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I wouldn't say it's "beyond their comprehension", but it's not likely to be something that they'd ever head towards (largely out of need or desire - let alone out of tribal/clan obligations).

If someone’s entire perception is rooted in the personal, immanent, transcendent experience of the spirit world, it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to internalize the impersonal materialist sorcerous perspective, which for someone who is a shaman would constitute an incredibly dramatic detachment from what they’re used to. Plus, who has the time to spend literal years training in an entirely different way of approaching the world, let alone reconciling the two?

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Even though Uz can combine the training, I strongly suspect that the sorcery still comes first - just because of those early years of mental exercises.

I believe it’s actually the opposite. Arkat Kingtroll, the Uz route to sorcery, is something that was added to the established paths of darkness. If it’s anything like the human Arkat cult, it requires illumination to fully enter the secrets and receive teaching in sorcery. Now, I’d think the reason it’s rather easy for mistress race trolls to learn sorcery, in addition to their assumed shaman status through Kyger Litor, is because they have that time that most other beings don’t, as they are effectively immortal. 

[Shiningbrow]

@hipsterinspace You seem to be agreeing with me on the first couple of points, although I'd suggest that the attitude towards shamansim is different on Glorantha than on Earth. I still don't see any contradictions between shamanism and sorcery, and the attitudes you are referring to with the relationships seem to solely revolve around those with spirits (greater or lesser). I don't see a problem with a shaman learning sorcery to, say, Enhance their characteristics (e.g., POW or CHA), or for many of the other mundane effects. Even Lunar sorcery, which manipulates Spirit Magic (although, we're not yet sure if it's actual spirit magic, or merely an imitation of it).

9 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

If someone’s entire perception is rooted in the personal, immanent, transcendent experience of the spirit world, it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to internalize the impersonal materialist sorcerous perspective, which for someone who is a shaman would constitute an incredibly dramatic detachment from what they’re used to. Plus, who has the time to spend literal years training in an entirely different way of approaching the world, let alone reconciling the two?

I don't know.... are you saying that deeply religious people on Earth (particularly shamans, given our topic) - or others with deep, personal, emotional connections, can't also have the mindset of intense mentalism?

Don 't get me wrong... I'm not saying that it would be easy, and definitely not common. Just that it's possible, and some people have done it. (and PCs can do it).

9 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

I believe it’s actually the opposite. Arkat Kingtroll, the Uz route to sorcery, is something that was added to the established paths of darkness. If it’s anything like the human Arkat cult, it requires illumination to fully enter the secrets and receive teaching in sorcery. Now, I’d think the reason it’s rather easy for mistress race trolls to learn sorcery, in addition to their assumed shaman status through Kyger Litor, is because they have that time that most other beings don’t, as they are effectively immortal. 

Fair point. But I do need to point out again - it's not merely Mistress Race Trolls who can do this...

I'm not sure that MRTs would be taught sorcery first... granted, it would make sense doing this because of the years of intense mental exercises, but I can see it going the other way around.

Also remember, MRTs have 2D6+12 INT, so yes, sorcery should come easily to them.. (the boosted POW & CHA help too).

[jajagappa]

8 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I still don't see any contradictions between shamanism and sorcery

There is something fundamentally different between these two though. 

Sorcery is precise, rational, a logical sequence of actions that produces predictable results. You expect things to work in the same manner consistently. You can repeat your experiments. 

With shamanism though it is an embrace of the ecstatic, the irrational, the flow of emotional, intuitive, and perhaps contradictory or illogical leaps of faith that produce unexpected bargains. You don't dictate the flow, you follow it, but the experience can never be repeated (even on the exact same path).

Perhaps some Lunars find a middle ground or balance, but at the cost of never achieving the full potential of either.