Malkioni special abilities: a suggestion

[metcalph]

This post is a suggestion of mine about how Rightness and Caste Magic will affect encounters with the Malkioni based on this article by Jeff (with usual caveats on how Chaosium remains free to do something completely different)

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/notes-on-hrestol-and-the-invisible-god/

All Malkioni have Rightness.  Most have 1 to 3 points while the leaders among them will average 10.  The amount of rightness can support caste magic.  I've based caste magic on the Shamanic Abilities (RQG p360-362) as those were based on Sandy's Shaman rules which in turn proceeded from his sorcery rules.  

WARRIOR

Weapon Affinity:  Each point in this ability adds +1 damage to the weapon.  The bonus applies only to Malkioni cultural weapons.  If the warrior uses a non-Malkioni weapon (such as a High-Llama Dagger-Ax) then the Affinity won't apply.  

Armour Affinity:  Each point in this ability adds +1 absorbance to any piece of worn armour.  Only applies to Malkioni cultural armour and does not apply to Criticals.

Shield Affinity:  Each point in this ability adds +1 absorbance to any shield.  Only applies to Malkioni style shields.

Spirit Defense:  The warrior's Spirit Combat skill is increased by +10% 

Spell Extension:  The warrior can keep one sorcery spell that has been cast upon them indefinitely per point of Spell Extension.  The spell can be dropped any time to be replaced by another.  The spell can be dispelled normally of course.

Enhance (STR/CON): Every level will increase the chosen statistic by 1 point.

Worshippers of Humakt and Ehilm (Yelmalio) can increase their Rightness by taking on additional geases.  They receive no gift from this.

SORCEROR:

Magic Attack: Each point adds +1 mp to the sorceror's effective magic point total when overcoming an opponent's magic points.

Magic Defense:  Each point adds +1 mp to the sorceror's effective magic point total when resisting an attack spell.

Soul Expansion:  Each point adds +1 to the magician's species maximum POW.

Spirit Defense: As per warrior.

<Rune> Rapport:  Each point adds +1 free intensity to any sorcery spell cast using this Rune.  Won't stack with other Rapports.

<Rune> Defense:  Each point adds +1 defensive against any magic which uses that rune.  Spirit magic spells are defended against using Spirit Rune Defense.  Can stack with other defensive magic.

Wizards can increase their Rightness by becoming White Wizards.  This involves initiation to Zrethus (Dayzatar) and taking on additional geases.  They receive no rune magic from doing so.  At a bare minimum, they must wear white robes, be tonsured and shun the material world.  Many reconcile the apparent conflict with their atheism by saying Zrethus doesn't exist.

FARMER

Tool Affinity: Each point in this ability adds +1 damage to the tool.  Only caste approripate tools may be so affected (ie scythe, hunting spear etc).

Enhance (STR/CON): As per warrior.

Spirit Defense:  As per warrior.

LORDS:

All warrior caste abilities can be chosen.  

Enhance STR/CON/DEX: as per warrior.

Riding Affinity: Each point adds +1 to movement speed.

Aura of Authority: Each point adds +10% to social skills when pitted against another to cause a change in their position or attitude.

Aura of Firmness: Each point adds +10% to social skills when defending against being asked to do something unwanted.

[Richard S.]

I like most of your ability ideas, though with the ease at which Rightness can be lost or gained it might be a headache to track all your modifiers. You did also leave out the one ability we do have confirmed for zzaburi: their ability to store MP in the spirit world (1 RIGHT = 1 MP? Or maybe 1D10 in the spirit of enchantments). I'm not sure how I feel about your idea of White Wizards being Dayzatari - I know there's been reams of conversation on the place of theism in Malkionism, but I think the zzaburi of all people should have no part in it.

Personally, I think I'm going to ditch Rightness altogether from my own west (can you ditch something that technically doesn't exist yet?). I think that giving caste restrictions having magical consequences not caused by human action goes against the Malkioni idea that humans can exist without external magical aid. Instead, I'm ruling it that most Brithini or Brithini-derived spells can only affect people who are obedient to caste law (the level of obedience can vary with the spell), and in return give significantly improved benefits over standard sorcery like we see in the core book. "Bless the Fields of Dromal", for instance, probably doesn't work on fields not being tended by the most righteous of dronars, but if it is then that field might see yields rivaling those of Esrolia.

Of course, this leads to the whole new headache of tracking exactly which caste laws the characters have kept, broken, returned to, etc...

[jajagappa]

6 hours ago, Richard S. said:

I know there's been reams of conversation on the place of theism in Malkionism, but I think the zzaburi of all people should have no part in it.

I have yet to see any indications that any zzaburi ever practices any theism or uses any theistic magic. They are the priests of the Invisible God, and the Invisible God alone.

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I have yet to see any indications that any zzaburi ever practices any theism or uses any theistic magic. They are the priests of the Invisible God, and the Invisible God alone.

Sorcerer-Men-of-All like Aamor (a prince from western Safelster, the pupil in the Xeotam dialogues and unsung hero of the re-discovery of lost Brithos, listed as active in Fornoar in the Guide 1621) might, although I see mainly Daka Fal magics used by them.

[metcalph]

I agree that the White Wizards practice no theism - they are in a similar position to the Dwarves who gain no magic from Mostal despite it being available to other people (Caladra and Aurelion - Diamond Edge CoR: the Earth Goddesses p64).  Zrethus is not a foreign god to the Malkioni but one of the Erasanchula like Humct or Ehilm.  Dedicating themselves to him would not be alien to their mythology IMO.  That the God Learners discovered another side to him might have led to interesting tensions between them and the White Wizards. 

If you still don't like the idea that's fine.

That said, I see that Zrethus has been promoted.  He was originally identified as Dayzatar (Weapons and Equipment p13) but has now been upgraded to Aether (CoR: Prosopedia p142).  So... oops.  Might have to call him Enroval instead.

[PaulJW]

To my mind, I think Malkioni sorcerers should primarily rely upon sorcery.  They operate in a different philosophical world to the theists who use rune magic so, for me, I would like to see them developed as rounded philosophies and sorcerous magic systems that operate independently of either deism & rune or shamanism & spirit magic.  They do, after all, view the world and reality very differently from the theists and animists.

As too the castes, I can see adding in technical rules for 'rightness' would probably get a thumbs down from my players.  Besides, fleshing out a viable caste system based society will be a big ask and what we end up with as canon I can see may well be quite different from the various notes and musings people like Greg and Jeff have written in the past.  So I can see ''Chaosium remains free to do something completely different'  being a very real possibility in this case.

For one thing, if you look at a real world caste system (India) - things get very fuzzy in practice.  However neatly you feel you define caste, there are always people who don't fit within the boundaries.

Consider a bronze age farmer.  Bronze age farmers were often called up as levies in armies.  Would that be acceptable within the framework of their caste?  In medieval India where you do have a warrior caste, it is a fact that Vaishyas and Shudras also became soldiers (these castes were farmers and merchants) in times of war.  The difference was only that the warrior caste never sullied their hands with farming or trade but not the other way around.  An Indian merchant was primarily a merchant but became a soldier when needs must.  That was how a medieval/ancient caste system worked in practice.  Even farmers who do not fight at all, need to know how to use weapons.  If you keep sheep or goats - how do you keep them safe from wolves?  You need to know how to use a sling, and a maybe a spear or a club.  You also need to use a dagger from time to time.  So farmers must have weapons and they must know how to use them.  They may not use them in war - but they do use them to protect their livestock and themselves vs wild animals and (in reality) against bandits and raiders.  An ancient society in which that does not happen at all would probably be non-viable.

And what about all the people who are not farmers, lords, sorcerers or warriors?  What does 'rightness' mean for them?  What about a merchant?  Or a carpenter, leatherworker, a smith, a mason or other craftsmen?  How about healers?  What does rightness mean for them?  That's where I can see a points based rightness system running into a lot of complications.  

I am not saying that I can see Chaosium junking the castes altogether by any means - but I can see them doing a lot of work on fleshing out the details of how the different castes work in practice and how castes inter-relate before we get to a final canon version.

 

[radmonger]

2 hours ago, PaulJW said:

Consider a bronze age farmer.  Bronze age farmers were often called up as levies in armies.  Would that be acceptable within the framework of their caste?

I'm not sure that was universally true. For example you can find this military historian talking about how Gauls and Iberian Celts only transitioned into having mass armies under pressure from Rome and/or when iron weapons become cheap to make.

Quote

But as we get into the fourth and third centuries in Celtiberia, these smaller aristocratic burial groups are supplemented (and in many cases, replaced) by much larger cemeteries with a lot more and a lot simpler burials, which nevertheless often contain weapons.

There is a lot of story potential in the idea that farmers trained as soldiers do become bad farmers, because doing so is a violation of caste rules. So come the _next_ war, you'll be worse of because you can't keep feeding a mass army. Nevertheless only the Brithini on their isolated island would claim to have never needed to do so at some point or another. 

Note that Sartarite Orlanthi are bad farmers by this standard; less than half of the population knows Bless Crops or other useful agricultural magic, despite 90% of people doing that for a living. This is of course why they can find it hard to meet Lunar taxes, which are sometimes set on the expectation of more productive Lodrilli peasantry.

 

[metcalph]

The Lunars, among others, manage fine without levies of bronze age farmers so I doubt that the Malkioni would do so - they are not feudal europeans.  

That said, there is some scope for replacing military losses from the commoners without caste crime.  The ideal is the one lives and dies within one's caste.  What happens if someone becomes legally dead?  What the Seshnegi could do is take commoners who have been condemned for some crime or another, enter "death recorded" for the files, coerce them into joining Humakt and viola, new troops!

 

[Kloster]

7 hours ago, metcalph said:

What the Seshnegi could do is take commoners who have been condemned for some crime or another, enter "death recorded" for the files, coerce them into joining Humakt and viola, new troops!

Remo Williams, nous voila. Nice idea.

[Joerg]

23 hours ago, PaulJW said:

Consider a bronze age farmer. 

Which Bronze Age farmers are you talking about?

Egyptian farmers busy to bring in two harvests a year on rather small areas of land while handling distribution of the inundation waters over the growing season?

Mesopotamian farmers busy to maintain their irrigation works?

Bronze Age Danubian farmer-warriors practicing Koryonos bands, spreading all the way into the last corners of arable Europe, like the participants in the battle at Tollense Bridge?

 

[PaulJW]

On 6/30/2024 at 10:20 AM, Joerg said:

Which Bronze Age farmers are you talking about?

Well, let’s consider some examples from the major bronze age civilisations.

In ancient Egypt the military became gradually more professional throughout its ancient history.  In its early history, soldiers were mostly all levies raised on the hoof, regionally, from the local population.  These were supplemented by mercenaries who were more professional (in the Old Kingdom this would have been Nubians).  Most ordinary soldiers would therefore have been first and foremost farmers (many of whom probably did not want to be away from their farms fighting but they had no choice in the matter).

Later, the army developed an increasingly significant core of professional full-time soldiers.  And, when chariots came along, the chariot force would all have been professionals.

The levy continued to be used on and off depending on the needs of the day.  It would never have conscripted ‘all’ able-bodied men, however.  Typically, the draft was 1 in 10.  The levies were given training, but they weren’t professional soldiers.  They were first and foremost farmers for the most part (many of whom probably wanted to get home as soon as they could).

By the time of the New Kingdom, you did have a large core professional army.  But that presented its own problems – what do you do with all these soldiers when they are not fighting?  The Egyptians typically put them to work on large civic projects such as construction and irrigation when there was no enemy to fight.

If we look at Egypt’s great rival, the Hittites, we see a similar kind of approach.  The Hittites maintained a large core standing army of professional warriors.  Well trained, experienced and well equipped.  In addition to these soldiers the Hittites had what they called ‘men of weapon’.  The men of weapon were basically farmer-soldiers.  They were first and foremost farmers but had been selected as reservists.  They were given training but were not called to military service unless there was a need (i.e. a major war).  Finally, the Hittites sometimes resorted to a general levy if they needed to fight a major campaign against a rival power like Egypt.  These conscripted men were farmers with no military training who were simply handed a spear and a shield and told to get on with it.  Like the Egyptians they also sometimes used mercenaries.  They also sometimes offered enemies captured in war the chance to serve in the Hittite army (if they accepted, they got treated well and paid decent money).  So, there were ways in which they could supplement their numbers for outside their citizen pool.

If we look at the Mesopotamians, which of course covers a mix of different cultures over time, we also find levy farmers.  In Babylon the levy was organised via the temples.  The temples identified temple dependents for recruitment – mostly farmers, but also shepherds, craftsmen, etc.

Evidence from inscriptions shows temples could, at most, raise 14% of their dependents for war in times of crisis (rather like the Egyptian levy of 1 in 10).  That suggests it was impractical for an ancient society to raise a force greater than around 10-15% of their farmers, even if the need was great and even in a civilisation with such an efficient administrative infrastructure as Babylon or Egypt.  Like the Egyptians and Hittites, the Babylonians also supplemented their forces with mercenaries.

A similar system was employed in ancient Sumer – i.e. recruitment organised via the temples.  The Sumerians recruited farmers and craftsmen to serve as labourers on civic projects and as soldiers.  These appear to have been recruited in the same way and organised identically into units.  These men were referred to by a Sumerian word that meant ‘Yoke stock’.  The implication being that these were men who had been selected for a national service (labouring on civic projects or fighting wars).  It also implies that this was not a service that the men concerned volunteered for – they had been yoked, like an ox to the plough, to perform a service for the state.

So, all three civilisations, the three ‘great’ bronze age civilisations, used levy farmers to a varied degree depending on needs.  In all cases the farmers themselves had little choice in the matter (some were no doubt happy for the chance of booty and the regular pay, but others were probably unhappy about been taken away from their farms).  However, by no means all farmers were levied in this manner.  The practical maximum appears to have been around 10-15%; anymore that that probably did risk famine and food shortage. 

What then might that mean for a bronze age society in which a rigid caste structure meant that you potentially lack the flexibility to recruit levy farmers for military service (or use your warriors for construction projects when there was no fighting to be done)? 

What it probably would mean would be that such inflexibility would cause your society a lot of strain and potential problems.  So, how could you mitigate that?  Well, there’s a number of possibilities that occur:

1)        You could, of course, supplement your military force with mercenaries – perhaps a lot of mercenaries if you needed to fight a major war.

2)        If you could ensure your warriors were better trained, better equipped and had potent magical support, that could compensate for a lack of numbers to a degree.

3)        You could supplement you labour force and perhaps your army with captives/slave units.

4)        If you were Brithini, you could organise your society as a minority elite of ‘pure’ Brithini who were able to maintain their perfect caste restrictions because they are served by a large serf population of ‘Mud-Men’.  Perhaps that is now the only way in which such a purist Malkioni society can even exist at all (maybe the pure rigid caste of the true Brithini was only ever truly possible, without enserfed mud-men,  in the God Time – not after the dawn).

5)        If you were Hrestoli, maybe you could go for something like the Hittite idea of the ‘men of weapon’.  In such a system the talars nominate, say, one in every ten farmers to be ‘men of weapon’.  They get trained with weapons but in general they stick to farming.  Only in time of need and only at the command of the talar does the man of weapon become a soldier and it is under those circumstance in which they have dispensation to use weapons.  The talar can then rule that a man of weapon can bare arms when summoned because the talar deems that they are acting to ‘uphold justice’

In general, I suspect it would be comparatively easy for a sorcerer, talar or warrior caste to stick to caste restrictions.  This is simply because they are special status minorities within the mass of society. 

Not so easy for a shepherd faced with a bunch of bandits steeling their sheep who is likely going to face starvation unless they do something about it!  Unless, of course, your talar tells you that a shepherd may use a sling, a club or a quarterstaff to defend his flock from bandits and predators, since so doing is necessary to ‘uphold justice’.

How a Malkioni society copes with these challenges and the potential disadvantages of caste inflexibility is therefore an issue.  That, for me anything, is what needs fleshing out/thinking about.  I can see some ways in which it can be compensated for/worked around but questions like - how do shepherds protect their flocks from predation in they can't use a sling or a club is an example.  You could, of course, argue that such a question is not really that relevant since I can't imagine any player wanting to play a Malkioni shepherd (since such an individual would certainly not 'go adventuring with a bunch of ducks').  But, in my mind, I do like to at least try to work through such questions - i.e. how could this society actually work in practice?

[davecake]

On 6/27/2024 at 1:16 PM, Richard S. said:

You did also leave out the one ability we do have confirmed for zzaburi: their ability to store MP in the spirit world (1 RIGHT = 1 MP?

Where is that confirmed? 

[PaulJW]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

Where is that confirmed? 

I believe Jeff mentioned it in passing on Well of Daliath back in 2021.  His exact words (under an article entitled 'Notes on Hrestol and the Invisible God') were:

"A character with a zero RIGHTNESS characteristic is no longer in good standing with their caste and cannot use any caste special abilities (such as a talar’s Forced Command ability or a zzaburi’s ability to store magic points in the Spirit World) until their RIGHTNESS is positive."

At the time he wrote that these notes were not for the Malkioni cults book but for later.

So, it looks like it is set to become a thing at some point.  However, we may have to wait a while before it actually appears in an official RQ book (unless of course, Jeff changes his mind by the time he comes to publish it).

That said, I can find no reference to any detailed indication of how a zzaburi goes about storing magic points in the spirit world as an innate ability.  Or how a talar's Forced Command might work.

I did however find some more of Jeff's notes, that provide a little more context:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/malkionism-as-a-cult/

 

Edited July 5 by PaulJW

[jajagappa]

57 minutes ago, PaulJW said:

That said, I can find no reference to any detailed indication of how a zzaburi goes about storing magic points in the spirit world as an innate ability.

I expect this occurs through Worship of the Invisible God and allows the zzaburi to store the magic points of the whole congregation for use in their subsequent spells.

[metcalph]

12 hours ago, PaulJW said:

That said, I can find no reference to any detailed indication of how a zzaburi goes about storing magic points in the spirit world as an innate ability. 

Part of the problem is that any sorceror with an active tap can store an indefinite amount of magic points until the spell expires.  So a 1d10 storage limit will be trivially pointless.  I really think the Chain of Veneration is more like the Ritual of the Web being a network of sorcerors storing, dealing and using magic points as needed.  

 

12 hours ago, PaulJW said:

Or how a talar's Forced Command might work.

Best I can think of is a Dominate Human (RQG p394) with the addition that it only costs 1 mp to order those who recognize themselves as being under the Talar's authority with a possible cost to Rightness if they refuse.  

[metcalph]

If storing magic points on the spirit plane is the chain of veneration (or worship of the Invisible God) then the biggest problem for me is trying to avoid a bean-counting approach that rivals deducting fatigue points from the Crimson Bat in RQ3.  Instead it could be a quasi-divine intervention in which all the magic points are provided for any one spell that the Wizard may cast within a given time period.  The time period depends on how many points of Rightness are in this caste magic.  Something like the Self-Ressurrection table (RQG p361) but I kinda blanch at its implications..  

[radmonger]

I suspect in a certain sense MPs spent in worship at theistic ceremonies are similarly held by wyters and returned as rune points. Or, at the least, sorcerors think so, and are not demonstrably wrong.. Either way, no-one does the accounting for that.

Just treat it the same way as downtime income. A certain skill, spell or passion (meditation, tap, or _loyalty:congregation_) gives gives a certain baseline number of spendable MPs per season. A roll on that skill increases or decreases the baseline value. Things that might plausibly help, like conspiciously protecting your congregation form a threat,  give a bonus to the downtime roll.