Shiningbrow Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Just a strange thought.... I presume there's nothing really stopping a dwarf from becoming a shaman (at least, for the dwarf... any cult or teacher might have a problem with them, and maybe their sorcery). But, given how dwarfs are apparently made (not simply born), do they have ancestors? And, thus, could they Summon them? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
French Desperate WindChild Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Mostal ? but is it dead ? is it a spirit ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndreJarosch Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 A rogue dwarf (outcast from dwarfdom) might be able to become a shaman. Why not. If he wants to summon ancestors, does that mean HIS personal biological ancestors (maybe you can could the Mostali that made him ancestors... but they might still be around/alive)? Or Does this mean "the generation that came before us"? If the second one is true, then he could summon spirits of Mostali/Dwarfs that were generations before him, and are not alive anymore. I doubt that biological ancestry is required. What would happen if a (human) shaman tries to summon his dead grandfather, but the grandfather he thinks of his grandfather was only the husband of his granmother, and his real grandfather was a lad from one village over? In my Glorantha the person he recognizes as his grandfather would show up, not the unknown to him biological grandfather. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott-martin Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 THIS IS [HERESY/INDIVIDUALIST] CITIZEN. But let them try. To a properly broken dwarf or self-initiated shaman every can and pipe has its spirit. With the right access to the official population records you can probably achieve some kind of mental communication with vanished generations and ultimately come to an abstract understanding of the Ancestral Mostali. The structure of modern dwarf society suggests that this has been done in the past. Maybe it's the route forward. You take a step back in order to make a great leap into the future beyond the hole they're stuck in now. 4 Quote singer sing me a given Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jajagappa Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 1 hour ago, scott-martin said: To a properly broken dwarf or self-initiated shaman every can and pipe has its spirit. With the right access to the official population records you can probably achieve some kind of mental communication with vanished generations and ultimately come to an abstract understanding of the Ancestral Mostali. May depend on how deceased dwarfs are recycled. If they recycle body AND soul into the World Machine, then I don't think any "ancestors" would remain (if you could even determine such origin beside being cast within the appropriate cauldron or mold). 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svensson Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Do androids dream of electric sheep? 😆 [I'd tell you I couldn't help myself, but fact is that I didn't even try] 1 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akhôrahil Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Do dwarves have souls in the first place? 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joerg Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Clay Mostali reproduction might suggest that there is a generational sequence of units. Their life expectance due to accidents and sabotage should be around 4 centuries, which means that there may have been less than a dozen generations of Clay Mostali since the Greater Darkness, and possibly as many during the Lesser Darkness (when they were designed and released). Clay Mostali proto-modules aren't primed for any caste yet and could have come from whichever caste. Ancestral information would thus usually clash with the imprinted caste programming, quite likely resulting in fatal runtime errors. We don't quite know whose "make humans from clay" procedure the Mostali copied. Shaping humans from clay is attested for Vimorn and his siblings, for Yelm and his fellow deities and for Pamalt and several of his Necklace fellow deities. (Also for the Creator entity of Thinobutu, but they had little opportunity to interact with Mostali until far into the Lesser Darkness.) Apparently the first Clay Mostali were created this way, inheriting the self-reproduction method of the Man Rune that had not been applied to the Elder Mostali. Clay Mostali proto-modules are removed from their reproductive sources fairly early, resulting in premature infants transferred to technomagical devices (similar to the one in the Mabinogion for infant Llew Llaw Gyffes his grandfather and his uncle Gwydion forced out of his (professed virginal) sister Arianrhod's womb, alongside an older, more developed brother Dylan from a Sea entity). These devices proceed to shape the proto-module's body into the desired size and proportions - which clash mightlily with human ideal proportions, putting dwarfs at best into uncanny valley and at worst into the grotesque. Besides the body, the operation system of the future Clay Mostali is imprinted from Elder Mostali caste coding that may have been reproduced during the Gods War and recorded in some container. The production of such codings might damage the original owner's programming and may have been part of ancient recycling procedures. It is possible that the programming of diamond clay mostali can be used for priming proto-modules towards the end of their productive career. In many ways, these programmings would be the ancestral spirits rather than the (spit, hack) biological parents. 2 1 Quote Telling how it is excessive verbis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jajagappa Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 2 hours ago, Joerg said: We don't quite know whose "make humans from clay" procedure the Mostali copied. Given the location of the great Mostali Mountain, you'd almost suspect that Vadel had to have been involved... 👹 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eff Posted March 15 Share Posted March 15 When Mostali cast Summon Ancestor, or other ways of interacting with the ancestry recognition system, what happens is that their pool of ancestors includes all contributors to their individual codebase, arranged by repository and by meticulous version number. Thus, all dwarves have not just the two dwarves that engaged in the protodwarf module production but also the quicksilver decanter as parents, creating a triple string of commits that go all the way back to True Mostali... But sometimes interacting with this system causes a revert to an earlier version, spontaneously. Proper forking and commenting procedures are an eternal struggle within a broken World Machine... 4 Quote "And I am pretty tired of all this fuss about rfevealign that many worshippers of a minor goddess might be lesbians." -Greg Stafford, April 11, 2007 "I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010 Eight Arms and the Mask Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SDLeary Posted March 15 Share Posted March 15 (edited) A line of inquiry that should be played out in the BESTEST game for Mostali... Paranoia! 😆 SDLeary Edited March 15 by SDLeary 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akhôrahil Posted March 15 Share Posted March 15 5 hours ago, SDLeary said: A line of inquiry that should be played out in the BESTEST game for Mostali... Paranoia! 😆 ”But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Mostal.” 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manunancy Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 (edited) On 3/14/2024 at 5:41 PM, Akhôrahil said: Do dwarves have souls in the first place? They have an animating magical energy provided by the World Machine that enables them to perform their function. As the brithini correctly knows, upon death that energy returns to where it cames from and gets recycled in the Machine's internal processes. Ignorant mortals calls that energy a soul and because of improper disposal procedures it doesn't get properly recycled and can be acessed through magic. Both stages of that process are wrong, and as anyone even remotely knowledgeable knows, two wrongs almost never ends up a right. Edited March 18 by Manunancy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndreJarosch Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 On 3/15/2024 at 4:55 AM, SDLeary said: A line of inquiry that should be played out in the BESTEST game for Mostali... Paranoia! 😆 SDLeary There was a Tournament Scenario by Oliver Jovanovic & Michael McGloin in 1993 "The Seven Pillars of the World Machine" for RQ3 that did exactly this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soltakss Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 Elder Secrets describe how clay Mostali (Dwarves) reproduce, a shameful act involving grinding a pestle with a mortar for hours on end. So, Dwarves have parents. For me, an Ancestor Cult is not something that springs into being, it is more a social entity borne of many generations. So, a Shaman would not normally suddenly become an ancestor worshipper. However, Cults of Prax has Baboons trading Summon Ancestor with a non-ancestor worshipper who can use it to summon an ancestor, so you don't need to be in an ancestor-worshipping cult to summon ancestors. That means that a Dwarf who wants to worship ancestors needs first to be able to join Daka Fal, then needs to start summoning ancestors and building up a family tree. It is possible, of course, to summon random ancestors and find out who they are. 1 Quote 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfbrandi Posted March 21 Share Posted March 21 8 hours ago, soltakss said: a shameful act involving grinding a pestle with a mortar for hours on end … … while whistling the tune of “Florentine Pogen” is my guess. 1 Quote NOTORIOUS VØID CULTIST Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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