Can a Shaman act as an intermediary for any god?

[Akhôrahil]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

I suppose we'd need a mechanic to sort out whether or not a given Shaman knows of a specific ancestor that was an initiate of a specific deity. Off the top of my head that would probably be a Customs [Own], Cult Lore, or Insight [Own] roll, probably requiring a Special or Crit success.

If you have the time and magic resources, you could also map your ancestry by summoning and questioning ancestors, and working your way back that way.

Edited April 12 by Akhôrahil

[svensson]

27 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

If you have the time and magic resources, you could also map your ancestry by summing and questioning ancestors, and working your way back that way.

That's a whole BUNCH of Rune Points, man.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm presuming that a shaman would know their ancestors back 100-150 years ago if there wasn't a major catastrophe or magical event that breaks the lineage descent.

For example, the clans that founded Sartar literally broke from their ancestral Heortling clans, 'a new history was made', to quote KoDP. A Kolating shaman [who has tenuous ties to his clan anyway, shamans being almost-outcasts in Sartarite society] would have  a helluva time getting past that magical rite.

[Squaredeal Sten]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

But initiates are not ordained in the priesthood... they're committed worshipers only. Yes, they can worship without a priest/ess, but there are functions they can't do... My point in my first comment on the thread is that Shamans with no connection to deity cannot access the deity's magic. Initiates have a connection with the deity granting the powers and a place in a cult's hierarchy that shamans simply don't have.

There are exceptions, of course, Kolatings sometimes have access to Orlanth-given Rune magic for one example. Shamans can Summon a Specific Ancestor to gain access to a deity's Rune magic if the shaman knows of the Specific Ancestor by name. A shaman would have summon his ancestor 'Bob, son of Joe', not 'I summon one of my ancestors who was a Barntar initiate'.

I suppose we'd need a mechanic to sort out whether or not a given Shaman knows of a specific ancestor that was an initiate of a specific deity. Off the top of my head that would probably be a Customs [Own], Cult Lore, or Insight [Own] roll, probably requiring a Special or Crit success.

Any player who wants to do that should take pains to put maximum detail into the Ancestor part of character generation.  

[svensson]

2 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Any player who wants to do that should take pains to put maximum detail into the Ancestor part of character generation.  

Sure. There's plenty of room on page 3 of the character sheet for ancestral names and information, at least to the grandparent generation. After that, post-it notes 😆

[mfbrandi]

Anyway, we drift. Can a shaman act as an intermediary for any god? How far did we get?

• The god needs a presence on the spirit plane.
  (Thed, yes. Ragnaglar, the IG, and Wakboth, arguably no.)
   
• The shaman needs to be able to frame a contest or deal with the god.
  (I remain silent on whether this is a matter of scale or subtlety of approach.)
   
• Maybe the shaman can deal with a proxy or impostor and still bring back magic.
  (On the model of heroquests and lesser figures rôleplaying deities.)

Doubtless I failed to recall many better points.

[theconfusingeel]

On 4/15/2024 at 2:02 PM, mfbrandi said:

 

• The god needs a presence on the spirit plane.
  (Thed, yes. Ragnaglar, the IG, and Wakboth, arguably no.)
   

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but after reading a bit from arcane lore, I get the impression that all the magic/religious systems are just different ways of looking at the same things. So a god on the god plane is the same thing as a great spirit on the spirit plane.

Edit: rereading it, it seems like heroquesters can turn foreign entities into something from their belief system. So a shaman heroquesting could "transmute"(term used specifically for animists doing this) a greater god into a great spirit and interact with it that way.

Edited April 23 by theconfusingeel

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

So a shaman heroquesting could “transmute” (term used specifically for animists doing this) a greater god into a great spirit and interact with it that way.

I think so, too, but aren’t we supposed to think that Ragnaglar and Wakboth are not currently possible objects of cult? If so, then on the equivalence theory, they wouldn’t be available to shamans just now either. And presumably, the Invisible God has long been out of touch with everyone. BUT I usually have things exactly wrong. 😉

————————————————————
On the unavailability of Wakboth: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/the-moral-evil-of-glorantha/

Edited April 23 by mfbrandi
added link & footnote

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

So a shaman heroquesting could "transmute"(term used specifically for animists doing this) a greater god into a great spirit and interact with it that way.

"Transmute" is not the right word. The shaman would simply see the god AS one of the great spirits and know them by their Spirit World name. I.e. they would see Orlanth as West King Wind or the Adventuring Wind or something similar. But they would not be in a position to readily bargain with such a spirit without giving up part of their soul (i.e. transfer POW to the deity/great spirit).

[theconfusingeel]

8 hours ago, jajagappa said:

"Transmute" is not the right word. The shaman would simply see the god AS one of the great spirits and know them by their Spirit World name. I.e. they would see Orlanth as West King Wind or the Adventuring Wind or something similar. But they would not be in a position to readily bargain with such a spirit without giving up part of their soul (i.e. transfer POW to the deity/great spirit).

That's just what it's called in arcane lore.

[Ynneadwraith]

11 hours ago, jajagappa said:

"Transmute" is not the right word.

Agreed. I see it as a sort of 'viewing different parts of the same elephant' thing. Or, potentially more accurately, the thing that old-school palaeontologists did when they were stitching together old skeletons: sometimes connecting the bones of one creature together to see some of its whole, but other times connecting together the bones of completely different creatures and getting a false vision of what the reality is.

14 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

...aren’t we supposed to think that Ragnaglar and Wakboth are not currently possible objects of cult? If so, then on the equivalence theory, they wouldn’t be available to shamans just now either.

Ah, but doesn't that hinge on why Ragnaglar and Wakboth are unreachable. Is it because those gods are dead/trapped? Or is it because people have forgotten how to reach them (read: all the people who knew how to reach them have had their heads chopped off).

How much of the dawn myths are intended to be interpreted as read, and how much are they intended to be allegorical?

The reason this matters in a practical sense is that Ragnaglar and Wakboth may be unreachable theologically as the expertise to do so have been wiped clean from the lozenge. Perhaps, though, they are still lurking beneath the surface, stalking through the Spirit Realm, waiting for unlucky shamans to stumble into their trap. Perhaps, so long as a god is remembered in any facet (including as a character in other gods' myths), they are not truly dead and gone.

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

I see it as a sort of ‘viewing different parts of the same elephant’ thing.

Or viewing the same parts of the same thing differently?

[jajagappa]

8 hours ago, theconfusingeel said:

That's just what it's called in arcane lore.

Arcane Lore has a hodge-podge of early ideas and interpretations on how to try to build a heroquesting system - some more successful than others. 

Largely the viewpoints/lenses are different, so how you perceive and interact with a given entity varies, but it's still the same entity.

[radmonger]

5 hours ago, Ynneadwraith said:

Or, potentially more accurately, the thing that old-school palaeontologists did when they were stitching together old skeletons: sometimes connecting the bones of one creature together to see some of its whole, but other times connecting together the bones of completely different creatures and getting a false vision of what the reality is.

I think that is pretty exactly it. A shaman goes near a temple, discorporates. At one level of remove from the mundane world, they can see the temple wyter. This has properties as described in the RQ:G rules, including a large but, for a minor temple, potentially defeatable POW. 

If they were to beat that Guardian, without accepting initiation. they could head deeper into both the spirit realm and into  the temple. Likely they come to whatever Great Temple the local temple defers to. If so, they would get to see how the local wyter is just a part of the bigger one. And _that_ Great Temple wyter is probably not beatable by anyone who wouldn't have their own counter in the Dragon Pass wargame.

But still, they can theorize that if they could, thet could go further. And there they would find a Cult Wyter. or God, who collected together all the different strands. Even from Great Temples widely separated by geography and culture.

At no point are you actually imposing your assumptions or decisions on the world. It is just that the process of determing the truth is an inherently destructive one.