Chalana Arroy Penance

[scott-martin]

On 7/27/2024 at 12:06 AM, Squaredeal Sten said:

What would you accept as sufficient evidence of contrition and repentance?  A penance?  What things might be suitable penances, in your view? 

 

A lot of great answers on thread but I have to hear what compelled her to do this. Did the elves lie to her? Not her fault. She grieves and the goddess forgives. Did the elves threaten her or otherwise demonstrate that they are going to mistreat the hostages? IMG the hard part of CA is standing up to violence and protecting the weak. She failed to do that or set herself up as more important than her "patients." That's the guilt the goddess will have to help her work through.

And of course if she conspired deliberately with the elves, the karma will catch up. As others have noted this kind of willful blasphemy tends to carry extreme consequences: people get transformed into spiders, torn apart by lions, blind in Colonus or Gaza, driven mad by a drugged shirt and throwing themselves into the fireplace, doomed to roll rocks in hell. That kind of thing.

CA is a different figure though because possibly unique among the classical gods she forgives unconditionally. The problem then shifts to the initiate's lingering sense of guilt. How did she screw it up so badly? What could she have done differently? Or most horribly of all, do bad things happen to innocent people? These questions are a big part of how retribution works inside CA: your failure to live up to own moral standards eats you alive from the inside.

Luckily enough CA is also the goddess of psychoanalysis so the other priestesses can work with a truly contrite failure and get her rehabilitated. They can figure out whatever penances are needed. The goddess herself can also weigh in through dreams and creating "opportunities" to learn something deeper about a wounded world. But I would say that if she doesn't deal with this, she's going to end up facing increasingly suicidal scenarios. The guilt is going to call them. Or if she doesn't feel bad at all, she's done with CA and is free to build another kind of life.

[Squaredeal Sten]

5 hours ago, scott-martin said:

A lot of great answers on thread but I have to hear what compelled her to do this. Did the elves lie ....

Three trollkin wiith slings ambushed three Adventurers.  Intending to eat the CA, who is an elf.  They slung well at first but their luck turned: One disabled and two chased down.  One of the latter was Slept.  After this the captives were turned over to the forest elves, who the CA was visiting (her home forest.)  No,  the forest elves didn't lie nor did they make any promises. nor were they asked for any.

The only guess I have at the CA player's motivation is he had formerly played  another, Illuminated, CA Adventurer and didn't think about the CA cult strictures.  There was little discussion before the deed was done.

Guilt and suicidal tendencies are probably less immediate problems than the book description of the "spirit of retribution", which you will remember is an immune system collapse, unable to resist,  quickly leading to acute illness.

Edited July 28 by Squaredeal Sten

[scott-martin]

2 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

The only guess I have at the CA player's motivation is he had formerly played  another, Illuminated, CA Adventurer and didn't think about the CA cult strictures.  There was little discussion before the deed was done.

If the player isn't sorry, haunt him for awhile with their agonized little ghosts. But IMG CA won't mind too much. Mistakes happen.

[Squaredeal Sten]

3 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

If the player isn't sorry, haunt him for awhile with their agonized little ghosts. But IMG CA won't mind too much. Mistakes happen.

I disagree.  This Adventurer is not Illuminated.  CA's spirit of retribution is written in stark terms.  IMG I take CA at face value.

I will probably borrow the bit about agonized little ghosts.

Edited July 28 by Squaredeal Sten
I will borrow

[jajagappa]

55 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I disagree.  This Adventurer is not Illuminated.  CA's spirit of retribution is written in stark terms.  IMG I take CA at face value.

The other side of this is that it is not just the PC who has violated her vows, but the elves (perhaps unknowingly) killed someone under CA's protection. 

There are going to be consequences for those forest elves as well. CA will withdraw her grace, blessings, and protection from them or their part of the forest. Given the trollkin is a darkness being, then the leaves in some grove of importance will start to blacken and wither and begin to let rot set into some group of trees. They, too, will learn of CA's offense at their actions and may seek out the CA for help. It then becomes a mutual task for purification of both self and forest (since you noted the CA PC is an elf, then effectively it is her impurity that is starting to blight the forest).

[metcalph]

On 7/28/2024 at 8:31 AM, Squaredeal Sten said:

Can you give an explanation of spirit surgery in RQ game terms?  

On a wider scale, psychic surgery has been spoken of in connection with the Cult of Silence (Guide p623-624)

I myself speculate that it was invented by the Blueskins of the Dawn Age to overcome their spiritual limitaions.  It confers shamanic gits without the requirement to be a shaman but the costs of the gift are greater.

[French Desperate WindChild]

10 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

CA's spirit of retribution is written in stark terms. 

by the way, what I read is not exactly against the healer :

Quote

Spirit of Reprisal: Infection
Enemies of the cult who defy the pacifistic and healing ways
of the cult will find themselves unable to resist infection with
disease.

Enemies of the cult, not initiates breaking their vows (and in fact, except if the player voluntary gave the trollkin to the "green" justice", he did not break the vow. That doesn't mean, in my opinion, that the pc should  not have some issue (less blessed, less magic, etc...) but not a spirit of reprisal.

In fact, it is more what @jajagappa said

9 hours ago, jajagappa said:

The other side of this is that it is not just the PC who has violated her vows, but the elves (perhaps unknowingly) killed someone under CA's protection.

Note that, for me, it is even a better situation if it is unknowingly (from a drama perspective) : there are no real bad guys, just mistakes (aka fate) that need to be fixed to avoid very very bad things to a whole community

[Squaredeal Sten]

13 hours ago, jajagappa said:

The other side of this is that it is not just the PC who has violated her vows, but the elves (perhaps unknowingly) killed someone under CA's protection. 

There are going to be consequences for those forest elves as well. ...

Now that is an interesting question:  Is the Slept trollkin supposed to be under the CA Adventurer's protection, or the CA cults protection?

As I read the Cults - Lightbringers book (and before it Cults of Prax) it is the Adventurer's protection.  Meaning the Advenurer is supposed to say "stop.  don't kill #3 who is the one I slept!".    If the protection passage means anything.  the spellcasting is up close and personal enough that the Adventurer knows who was Slept.

It doesn't say the whole Chalana Arroy cult.  Which IMHO would be unworkable, because how are other far flung cult members to know that Trollkin #3 was Slept last month?

[Ali the Helering]

8 hours ago, metcalph said:

It confers shamanic gits

That strikes me as quite defamatory! 🤣🤣🤣

[metcalph]

Just a question: at what point does the Chalanan protection actually end?  I had understood that it was no killing people under the effect of a sleep spell but consensus seems to think a longer period is required. 

A case in point.  A Chalanan sleeps somebody attacking her.  He is a murderous criminal and the authorities arrive to take away to be tried and executed. Is the criminal still under the Chalanan's protection or not? 

I'm not saying that the OP's scenario was wrongly decided as there may be some unmentioned detail that puts events in a totally different light.  But I can't tell when the OP thinks the protection should end. 

[Squaredeal Sten]

39 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Just a question: at what point does the Chalanan protection actually end?  ..... I can't tell when the OP thinks the protection should end. 

That's not defined by the Cults book, but my own interpretation is that protection lasts until the slept (or Befuddled) person goes free and is beyond pursuit, without quibbling or rules lawyering.  In other words you can't let them go on foot and have them chased down by mounted or flying troops.  You can't 'free" them into the bottom of a well, or into a labyrinth that  contains a hungry Minotaur.   They have to actually get away.

This may mean that a captive is under protection for an extended period.  You can hold them to avoid their tipping off the enemy that you are here.   But they can't be held for ransom, because one implication of holding someone for ransom is that if no one pays, Bad Things Will Happen.

But the Slept person is not protected forever.  If they come back for another encounter that's on them.  If their village is raided six months later, too bad.

 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

16 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Meaning the Advenurer is supposed to say "stop.  don't kill #3 who is the one I slept!".

This could lead to interesting roleplay if the CA forgets or mixes up who they slept, and #2 and #1 both shout "no, I was slept".  Kind of a reverse Spartacus ...

[Squaredeal Sten]

3 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

This could lead to interesting roleplay if the CA forgets or mixes up who they slept, and #2 and #1 both shout "no, I was slept".  Kind of a reverse Spartacus ...

True.  Let's say the player opts to take one of the suggestions above and try to Ressurect the betrayed trollkin.   If all three are buried together, will the CA be able to identify the right one? 

Maybe an IQ x 2 roll?   /  But in principle does it matter?  If the standard is sincerity then will a wrong but sincere belief in choosing the corpse satisfy the cult?

Of course a review of notes on the encounter reveals that #1 took an arrow wound, so even a random choice between the other two has a 50% chance of being right.  

[Byll]

On 7/29/2024 at 12:00 AM, jajagappa said:

The other side of this is that it is not just the PC who has violated her vows, but the elves (perhaps unknowingly) killed someone under CA's protection. 

There are going to be consequences for those forest elves as well. CA will withdraw her grace, blessings, and protection from them or their part of the forest. Given the trollkin is a darkness being, then the leaves in some grove of importance will start to blacken and wither and begin to let rot set into some group of trees. They, too, will learn of CA's offense at their actions and may seek out the CA for help. It then becomes a mutual task for purification of both self and forest (since you noted the CA PC is an elf, then effectively it is her impurity that is starting to blight the forest).

Surely Arroin is also going to be troubled by the Elves having broken his mother's restrictions on treatment of those that she has made incapable of self defence. Although he has no magic to withdraw, the Lightbringers CoG says 'Arroin is of greater importance among the Aldryami. To them, he is also a god of fertile water and one of their three great Protectors'. His cultists could also stop trading with and assisting the 'rouge' elves / forest until they and the Chalana Arroy make some sort of act of atonement. Without Magic the Chalana Arroy may want to get close to Arroin to learn how to heal while interdicted.

[davecake]

On 7/27/2024 at 7:06 PM, jajagappa said:

There are two classic paths to ritual cleansing: Water and Fire.

Water might be achieved via the rivers, but the ultimate cleansing is the acid baths of Nelat which even cleansed Orlanth. For a PC-level, though, I'd go with one of the great rivers: Zola Fel, Oslir, the Creek-Stream River, or possibly the Sky River.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the Baths of Nelat are like pure acid, that the Baths of Nelat literally dissolves your body. You then need both the self-knowledge of what you were (perhaps the point of the test) and the ability to retain that knowledge past death, and great magic (Orlanth is a master of Movement, and as such a change, including a shape changer) to recreate your body. But during the process, your spiritual pollution (and physical) is literally washed away, you have not just proved yourself worthy but purified yourself completely. Of course reforming your dissolved body isn't something it is obvious how to do in the rules - that is why it is a difficult hero quest I guess. And I don't think just knowing the right spells would ever make it easy. 

... and having learnt how to recreate the body, Mastakos the changer (whose service Orlanth acquired after passing through the Baths of Nelat and drinking of the Well of Daliath) offers a secret - if you acquire more shapes than your own (Meld Form rune spell) you can change to that shape instead (Proteus rune spell) 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

On 7/28/2024 at 2:53 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

One disabled and two chased down.  One of the latter was Slept.

This is the problem.  There used to be a guideline that Sleep can only be cast when the healer, or a party member, was "in danger."  Kind of like self-defense laws.  Obviously there can be debate and grey areas over what constitutes "danger".  I don't think this restriction is present in RQG.  A shame.

Casting Sleep at a fleeing enemy obviously doesn't apply.  In fact, it's kind of silly, since you will just have to free them later.  Yes, there might be instances where Sleep makes sense, like you don't want them alerting others of your presence.  But that probably doesn't constitute danger.

1. At minimum, the CA's cult superiors should add this requirement as part of the penance.  They can only cast Sleep if somebody is in danger.
2. If the player really just cast Sleep to get a POW check, (my personal suspicion) just throw the book at them.  Let them die of disease.  Disrupting fleeing trollkin is a classic abuse of the POW check rules.

[French Desperate WindChild]

1 hour ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

They can only cast Sleep if somebody is in danger.

that's the big point AND that means you can cast sleep on any ennemy, weak or strong, dangerous for you or not because if your ennemy is not the danger, if you don't sleep them, your party will kill it so in all cases, someone is in danger

IMO you can cast always to avoid or to stop a fight

[Jens]

1 hour ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Disrupting fleeing trollkin is a classic abuse of the POW check rules.

Ruling it wouldn't count as a stress situation, and therefore not grant a POW check, can address that issue.

In my mind CA's protection has always interacted with the ransom system- it's a well recognized and supported way of getting defeated combatants out of harm's way. This of course becomes more interesting for beings that don't have a ransom, which is likely the case for most trollkin.

[John Biles]

16 hours ago, davecake said:

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the Baths of Nelat are like pure acid, that the Baths of Nelat literally dissolves your body. You then need both the self-knowledge of what you were (perhaps the point of the test) and the ability to retain that knowledge past death, and great magic (Orlanth is a master of Movement, and as such a change, including a shape changer) to recreate your body. But during the process, your spiritual pollution (and physical) is literally washed away, you have not just proved yourself worthy but purified yourself completely. Of course reforming your dissolved body isn't something it is obvious how to do in the rules - that is why it is a difficult hero quest I guess. And I don't think just knowing the right spells would ever make it easy. 

... and having learnt how to recreate the body, Mastakos the changer (whose service Orlanth acquired after passing through the Baths of Nelat and drinking of the Well of Daliath) offers a secret - if you acquire more shapes than your own (Meld Form rune spell) you can change to that shape instead (Proteus rune spell) 

I'm thinking probably checks on appropriate runes to hold yourself together and then reform.  Roll on your highest rune to know yourself, something like Truth to retain it, and a rune like Stasis to reform yourself.  Or Movement, ironically.

 

 

[Rob Darvall]

On 7/31/2024 at 4:08 PM, John Biles said:

I'm thinking probably checks on appropriate runes to hold yourself together and then reform.  Roll on your highest rune to know yourself, something like Truth to retain it, and a rune like Stasis to reform yourself.  Or Movement, ironically.

 

 

Perhaps The Baths require checks on Highest Rune and then Truth AND Death, Movement AND Stasis, and Harmony (hence Satar the man?). They're meant to be nearly impossible. 

Of course ritual preparation and community support can boost these making a sort of pseudo temporary illumination. This also could allow a path for party play, your Humakti gets to sub in for the Death check etc.

[Squaredeal Sten]

Just to tell you how it worked out: The CA player knew his Adventurer was in trouble.  Went to the CA temple and the priestess on charge told her she had committed a crime and was ritually unclean. Failed a Loyalty(CA) roll.   Set it right and do penance too.

The Adventurers went back to the forest. the CA still sick but made a Treat Disease roll so I put off the next disease roll.  First had to convince the Gardener that this was a good idea.  Gardener didn't like the wilting leaves on the CA elf, but OK.   Dug up the trollkin and partly by deduction from wounds. partly by INT check, got the right corpse.  Resurrected it after Healing the corpse per spell description.  The POW vs POW roll to force its spirit back went well, good thing trollkin only had POW 9.

The resurrected trollkin even lived after characteristic losses for days dead.  The Adventurers conducted it to safety with Uz a day's journey away.

Then the CA elf did penance by healing trollkin under direction of the XU priestess in Troll End, until end of season.  Had to carry bedpans to the trollkin feeding room.  Got two fingers bitten off by a trollkin.   Did learn 1% of Darkspeech.

Eventually sacrificed POW for a rune spell to restore her own lost STR. 

 

Edited August 9 by Squaredeal Sten
typing

[mfbrandi]

21 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

The resurrected trollkin even lived after characteristic losses for days dead.  The Adventurers conducted it to safety with Uz a day’s journey away.

I had this horrible feeling that you were going to say that after all that effort, the uz ate the resurrected enlo.

[Ali the Helering]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

I had this horrible feeling that you were going to say that after all that effort, the uz ate the resurrected enlo.

They internalised the moral of the story.. or is that 'morsel'?

[Squaredeal Sten]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

I had this horrible feeling that you were going to say that after all that effort, the uz ate the resurrected enlo.

Well I did consider that. It would be in character for Uz.  But my message for the adventure was not futility, so I didn't do it.  I'm not big on futility, it runs against the spirit of a heroic adventure game.

Another party member gave 50+ bolgs to that enlo, without discussion of why.  Maybe to enable it to take care if itself in the short term.

 

[davecake]

On 8/1/2024 at 8:44 PM, Rob Darvall said:

Perhaps The Baths require checks on Highest Rune and then Truth AND Death, Movement AND Stasis, and Harmony (hence Satar the man?). They're meant to be nearly impossible. 

I tend to think the Baths of Nelat are more of a test of personal qualities and test your ability to survive the destruction of your body (something not all gods could survive, or at least survive unscathed, but Orlanth can, showing he is more than an elemental god but has transcendent aspects), and the Fires of Ehilm is a more difficult test, doing so against opposition (the test of Hatred) as well as overcoming Fire.

I think of the Baths of Nelat as requiring something a bit like a shamans self-resurrect ability. Which also makes it clear that having the ability to self-resurrect is different to having the ability to do so. Or becoming a ‘kaelith’ (see Glorantha Sourcebook pg 74). Incidentally, this is an ability I think Argrath has (the self resurrection, not necessarily the shape changing), as he has essentially gained this by completing the Drinking Giants Cauldron quest. 
Note that Ehilm is described this way - it’s the body of the sun, dying at the end of every day, recreated at each dawn.