Boldhome Wyter

[Zebraman1]

Does Boldhome have a Wyter that is described anywhere? And if so what happened to it during the Lunar occupation. Did Sartar as a whole have one?

(The question came up in my last session with my players who are new to Glorantha. I was a bit stumped. I said good question, I felt the city did but I wasn't sure at that stage where it was or how the Lunars had dealt with it). 

Edited January 11 by Zebraman1

[Jens]

It looks like the City Founder is often the Wyter- Hauberk Jon for Jonstown, even Pavis is mentioned in that context- https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/notes-on-city-gods/ . That would suggest Sartar himself would be the wyter, although interestingly enough Jeff has pointed out that Sartar is the guardian spirit of the country, and the allied spirit of the Prince of Sartar- https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/orlanth-rex-allied-spirit/

[EricW]

Is there evidence of Lunars attacking or attempting to modify city Wyters in conquered territories? Given plentiful examples of Lunar tampering with the heroplane, surely a period of Lunar occupation would involve attempts to subjugate or corrupt the local spirit landscape, if not annexation and outright replacement of troublesome spirits.  

[Jens]

6 hours ago, EricW said:

Is there evidence of Lunars attacking or attempting to modify city Wyters in conquered territories?

The most famous is likely the attempt to marry Pavis into the Lunar pantheon https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/the-cult-of-pavis-ii/ ; there are likely others as well, but co-option through marriage seems to be a common practice both in the middle world and beyond.

[Martin Dick]

It could be the Flame of Sartar?

[mfbrandi]

13 hours ago, EricW said:

Is there evidence of Lunars attacking or attempting to modify city Wyters in conquered territories?

There seems to be an interesting shift in how wyters are conceived over the decades. This from 2002:

• Orlanth … is the wind and rain and storm itself.° In the same way, a wyter is not just the guardian being of the clan, it is the clan … The wyter is a network, a set of interwoven elements, and the collective whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts.
  — Greg Stafford, Hero Wars: Wyters Q & A

If I read that right — all the usual provisos about my idiocy apply — then you destroy the wyter by destroying the community (which includes all its dead members).°° The wyter is community strength emergent with respect to the strengths of the individuals: the power of connection, of interaction. Like an ant colony. Presumably, you subvert the wyter by subverting the community — and that can be done most easily by mundane means: the “benefits” of Imperial rule (what the Romans did for us)?

The “modern” notion of a wyter seems to be of a separate spirit — a third party — which can be destroyed by reducing its POW to zero. Then, mysteriously, the community disintegrates. On the old model — again, if I have it right (don’t put money on it) — there is no mystery as the wyter is community cohesion (or the community when it coheres, rather than something external which produces that cohesion).

On the modern model, how much agency does the wyter have? Does it just do whatever its priest says — like an allied spirit? — or does it have ideas of its own? Can the Lunars just execute a troublesome wyter priest before they have a chance to pass their role on to a new priest? How is a new wyter priest appointed in such a “crisis”? Is it just a race to sacrifice a point of POW? Can the Lunars subvert the appointment/binding process? Does the wyter just hang around “idling” till a new priest is appointed, or is it cut loose? What if the Lunars put the priest in a coma or suspended animation? I don’t have any answers, but I bet loads of you do — with any luck in technicolour diversity. Barf forth apocalyptica!

OTOH, I wonder how much community spirit is tied to having the right political leadership. That sounds like a brittle community. From the point of view of community cohesion, perhaps empires can come and go without making much difference — meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Maybe political regimes go wrong when they fail to grasp this, making themselves weaker when they try to get inside the heads of their subjects. If the rebels — or old regime loyalists, or true patriots, or whatever — try to identify the wyter with the spirit of resistance to our new insect overlords, maybe they make the same mistake. Perhaps, “if you are not for the rebellion, you are no member of this community” is as corrosive as the Stasi.

——————————————————
° Is this what Plutarch calls atheism?

°° You can destroy a mesh by destroying its nodes or by cutting the links between them.

[jajagappa]

7 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

It could be the Flame of Sartar?

That's for the kingdom not the city.

[Squaredeal Sten]

 

The high priest of Pavis would be the Pavis wyter's priest.  So the wyter is not, strictly speaking, an allied spirit.  An allied spirit only has a tie to one person.  A wyter has ties to the community: First to its priest. Second to others who sacrifice POW to it (in this case the other priests of Pavis plus whoever they let initiate). Third to those who sacrifice MPs to it (citizens).  If the priest dies the wyter doesn't go away, unlike an allied spirit. The priesthood elect a new high priest and he already has a bond with the wyter, though we might guess that the high priest has a stronger bond.  Presumably there is a ceremony which confirms this magically, but maybe the election is enough. YGMV until someone writes it up.

The king of Sartar would be the Sartar wyter's priest.  Not its owner.   So the wyter is not, strictly speaking, an allied spirit.  An allied spirit only has a tie to one person.  A wyter has ties to the community: First to its priest. Second to others who sacrifice POW to it (Initiates). Third to those who sacrifice MPs to it.  If the priest dies the wyter doesn't go away, unlike an allied spirit.  It's a common occurrence for kings to die, but the spirit of Sartar remains.  In this case we need a descendant of Sartar to light the Flame of Sartar, which presumably leads to acclamation by the initiates & the populace, before he or she is THE high priest.  Different cults, different minor mechanics, same general principles.

Edited January 13 by Squaredeal Sten
Pavis, Sartar.

[Martin Dick]

16 hours ago, jajagappa said:

That's for the kingdom not the city.

But as Jeff said Sartar himself is the guardian spirit of Sartar the country, so the Flame of Sartar can't be the wyter for the country unless a guardian spirit is different from a wyter or you can have multiple wyters

Edited January 14 by Martin Dick
Typo

[Jens]

On 1/13/2025 at 9:28 PM, Martin Dick said:

you can have multiple wyters

Multiple wyters abound- in the city of Boldhome alone there will be the City wyter, temple wyters, guild wyters, regimental wyters, etc. People can also have a connection with multiple wyters by virtue of being part of several communities. What does not seem to be possible is for one entity to be the wyter of multiple communities, so if Sartar is indeed the wyter of the country, I don't think he could also be the wyter of the city.

Edited Monday at 05:28 AM by Jens

[AlexS]

What if the Wyter was the dragon that took on the Crimson Bat during the siege of Boldhome in 1602? 

@Zebraman1’s thread on this already threw up some great ideas for explaining the dragon’s intervention in the siege, some of them wonderfully dragonewtish – but maybe the motivation was a bit more basic? The Bat was an existential threat to the Wyter’s community, so the Wyter decided it had to intervene directly when Salinarg called on it to support the city’s defence.

Of course, that decision was fatal for the Wyter and therefore for the city itself (in the sense of a political and spiritual community, not a physical settlement). Maybe the dragon knew that was the price it would pay, but taking the Bat down was justification enough for burning all the POW it had accumulated in the century or more since Sartar first allied it.

So how would that have happened? As a high and hidden valley, the site where Boldhome was built seems like exactly the sort of place where a dragon might be sleeping. Maybe the dwarves disturbed the dragon’s dreaming when they dug the foundations for the city, forcing Sartar into an emergency heroquest to form a bond with it. Maybe amidst his Larnsting change magic there was a hidden draconic element that awoke in that moment – which Sartar subsequently kept quiet about (perhaps even to the extent of hiding the Wyter behind the Flame of Sartar, and passing down the secret of its true identity only to members of the royal line?).

So, one of the reasons Kallyr failed to restore Boldhome as a flourishing community is that she was so freaked out by the Dragonrise that she balked at the heroquest that would have been necessary to seek out the Wyter on whatever plane dragons retreat to and ally it. She focused her remaining magical energy on the LBQ instead, with disastrous results.

Of course, Argrath Dragonspear will have no such qualms about allying a dragon spirit as the Wyter when he takes over Boldhome in 1627…

Edited January 14 by AlexS
Added link to original thread, general edits

[Darius West]

On 1/13/2025 at 8:24 AM, EricW said:

Is there evidence of Lunars attacking or attempting to modify city Wyters in conquered territories? Given plentiful examples of Lunar tampering with the heroplane, surely a period of Lunar occupation would involve attempts to subjugate or corrupt the local spirit landscape, if not annexation and outright replacement of troublesome spirits.  

What?  You mean the Lunars are trying to God Learn annoying city deities into something more palatable to their doublethink?

[Darius West]

On 1/12/2025 at 9:08 AM, Zebraman1 said:

Does Boldhome have a Wyter that is described anywhere? And if so what happened to it during the Lunar occupation. Did Sartar as a whole have one?

(The question came up in my last session with my players who are new to Glorantha. I was a bit stumped. I said good question, I felt the city did but I wasn't sure at that stage where it was or how the Lunars had dealt with it). 

It seems to me that the founder of most cities become the deity of the city.  Is this the same as the wyter of the city?  Not quite.  I suspect something different happens with cities and their gods.  I think the founders start off in control of the city community wyter, but as they become increasingly immortal, they begin to merge with the city wyter and that is the source of their godhead, as the city becomes more important and more followers offer their prayers over time as the community grows and prospers.  Thus I think that cities that have deities don't have wyters.

[Squaredeal Sten]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

It seems to me that the founder of most cities become the deity of the city.  Is this the same as the wyter of the city?  Not quite.  I suspect something different happens with cities and their gods.  I think the founders start off in control of the city community wyter, but as they become increasingly immortal, they begin to merge with the city wyter and that is the source of their godhead, as the city becomes more important and more followers offer their prayers over time as the community grows and prospers.  Thus I think that cities that have deities don't have wyters.

Or that the city god is also the city wyter.  Just more powerful than most other wyters.  The wyter of a village or a ship holds the community together, watches out for evil spirits invading, and reports troubles to its priest.  The wyter / city god of a city has more MPs sacrificed to it, and can do more things: Provide some Rune magic, City Harmony plus another spell or two at a minimum.  Answer divinations.  

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

It seems to me that the founder of most cities become the deity of the city.  Is this the same as the wyter of the city?  Not quite.  I suspect something different happens with cities and their gods.  I think the founders start off in control of the city community wyter, but as they become increasingly immortal, they begin to merge with the city wyter and that is the source of their godhead, as the city becomes more important and more followers offer their prayers over time as the community grows and prospers.  Thus I think that cities that have deities don't have wyters.

Apparently both cities and kingdoms have an interim wyter installed by the Founder, to be replaced by the Founder through apotheosis - at least that's what we know about Jonstown (Jon Hauberk becoming the first City Rex and thereby priest of the interim wyter) and the principality of Sartar (who undertook a Westfaring to gain the interim kingdom wyter).

Speculation: the interim wyter might be a variant of a shaman's fetch, similar to the White Bull? Although this idea gets a little problematic with the founder of Swenstown, who later left his city for elsewhere. Also Duck Point did not really get a city rex, but then the duck representative later was a powerful shaman.

Boldhome is a special case in that the Prince of the Quivini federation doubles as City Rex, although he quite likely will have an official for the urban duties while pursuing the kingdom ones himself.

Elder Races communities seem to have living demigods rather than wyters - the Inhuman King, Eldest Mistress (or ranking Hellmother), Flamal Tree, and possibly some kind of apparatus for Mostali communities.

 

3 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Or that the city god is also the city wyter.  Just more powerful than most other wyters.  The wyter of a village or a ship holds the community together, watches out for evil spirits invading, and reports troubles to its priest.  The wyter / city god of a city has more MPs sacrificed to it, and can do more things: Provide some Rune magic, City Harmony plus another spell or two at a minimum.  Answer divinations.  

Wyters are a specific class of deities, really. Most have a previous existence before becoming a wyter, and usually they retain an ability or three from that previous existence. LIkewise, a heroic founder may contribute some of their lifetime magics as a community deity. But as in the case of Swenstown, there might be wyters who don't retain that much from their founders.

The Black Spear was an artifact already in the possession of Old Man Colymar when he led his clan across the Crossline. The Thunder Oak of the Varmandi would have become the new center of the community only after having been pushed out first out of Ormthane Valley and then out of Arfritha Vale.

I don't think that the RQG core rules Wyter rules apply to Pavis - I don't really see Benderri or Fleeter Nemm reducing the POW of Pavis-in-his-crystalline-temple in order to cast some spell known to them on a number of initiates. There might be a lesser manifestation allowing such treatment, though.

[Darius West]

13 hours ago, Joerg said:

Apparently both cities and kingdoms have an interim wyter installed by the Founder, to be replaced by the Founder through apotheosis - at least that's what we know about Jonstown (Jon Hauberk becoming the first City Rex and thereby priest of the interim wyter) and the principality of Sartar (who undertook a Westfaring to gain the interim kingdom wyter).

Speculation: the interim wyter might be a variant of a shaman's fetch, similar to the White Bull? Although this idea gets a little problematic with the founder of Swenstown, who later left his city for elsewhere. Also Duck Point did not really get a city rex, but then the duck representative later was a powerful shaman.

Boldhome is a special case in that the Prince of the Quivini federation doubles as City Rex, although he quite likely will have an official for the urban duties while pursuing the kingdom ones himself.

Elder Races communities seem to have living demigods rather than wyters - the Inhuman King, Eldest Mistress (or ranking Hellmother), Flamal Tree, and possibly some kind of apparatus for Mostali communities.

 

Wyters are a specific class of deities, really. Most have a previous existence before becoming a wyter, and usually they retain an ability or three from that previous existence. LIkewise, a heroic founder may contribute some of their lifetime magics as a community deity. But as in the case of Swenstown, there might be wyters who don't retain that much from their founders.

The Black Spear was an artifact already in the possession of Old Man Colymar when he led his clan across the Crossline. The Thunder Oak of the Varmandi would have become the new center of the community only after having been pushed out first out of Ormthane Valley and then out of Arfritha Vale.

I don't think that the RQG core rules Wyter rules apply to Pavis - I don't really see Benderri or Fleeter Nemm reducing the POW of Pavis-in-his-crystalline-temple in order to cast some spell known to them on a number of initiates. There might be a lesser manifestation allowing such treatment, though.

I do like reading your posts Joerg, and you have taken the ideas in an interesting direction.

The problem we have here is that there is no known mechanism for the merger of the wyter with the personality of the founder to become a deity.  Obviously the infinity rune features somewhere, but we don't know where and how.

Your idea that this "Union with Wyter" involves a situation like a Shaman's fetch seems likely, and is possibly a HQ power akin to Shamanic abilities.  After all, Gods and big spirits need to come from somewhere...

As to your comment that Elder races have living demigods rather than wyters is a bit tenuous for my tastes.  Are you suggesting that Wyters are a purely human power?  I can't see why a troll clan can't have a wyter, especially given that it is likely to have powerful shamans.  Admittedly I suspect these wyters are likely to be powerful ancestors in the case of the trolls, and potentially dryads in the case of the aldryami.  I don't know if the Mostali would bother with wyters, but we know from the wargame White Bear red Moon, that the dragonewts have wyters, which seems odd, given that they are primarily mystics.

As to your Pavis example, I think he forms an interesting magical synthesis between the 4 schools of magic, which is in keeping with his green age agenda of man rune unity.  I think we both agree that there is clearly a line between wyters and gods.  There is no reason I can see why Pavis couldn't have unified with the city wyter he effectively created and controlled, if we are assuming such things are possible as a step towards divinity.  I do see parallels between Pavis in his crystaline temple (tomb), and the bodies of Orlanth and Ernalda desecrated when Whitewall fell, begging the question "And where is Humakt buried? I'm going to ruin the hero wars".  

 

[Joerg]

Nothing that I write is canonical in any way, at best it is me voicing how I try to make the Gloranthan facts known to me fit into a coherent whole.

  

2 minutes ago, Darius West said:

As to your comment that Elder races have living demigods rather than wyters is a bit tenuous for my tastes.  Are you suggesting that Wyters are a purely human power?  I can't see why a troll clan can't have a wyter, especially given that it is likely to have powerful shamans.  Admittedly I suspect these wyters are likely to be powerful ancestors in the case of the trolls, and potentially dryads in the case of the aldryami.  I don't know if the Mostali would bother with wyters, but we know from the wargame White Bear red Moon, that the dragonewts have wyters, which seems odd, given that they are primarily mystics.

Trolls and aldryami share a strong ancestral component, and their founders often are unaging, or available through ancestor worship if Death claimed them.

Troll community unity can result in the Black Eater, physically absorbing the constituent trolls in the Battle of Night and Day. Their group identity is a lot stronger than for most human communities, resulting in near-mandatory Kyger Litor initiation for trolls and in a similar way initiation or more to Aldrya for sapient adult aldryami. Aldryami are expected to be part of their forest. Broken aldryami aren't part of their community, although they may be tolerated cohabitants who contribute to the welfare of the community despite not belonging. Great trees or the central tree of a grove are what serves as the physical representation of aldryami communities. Groves belonging to a Great Tree may have a two-tiered association, while isolated groves might only weakly contribute to the greater forests around them.

Mostali are assigned to blueprints/plans that are somehow their role in Mostal. They transfer their spirituality and their magical energies to the portions of the Machine under their care (and so does the human "slave" population at Dwarf Mine, and probably at Slon as well). The Plan is divine, however fragmented it might be. The gold caste assigns tasks and work gangs across the castes, including their own, guided by the regional council or extraordinary individual (Isidilian, Martaler, Ginkizzie) with only loose dependency to the regional council (Greatway). The wyter might materialize as a work ticket receiving magic along with work reports. (What remains of Mostal might just be a QMS.)

Dragonewt communities manifest as nests, usually perceived as cities in Dragon Pass. (Those in the Elder Wilds seem to have different kinds of nests, possibly mobile ones carried on dinosaurs.) The dragonewt priests and the Inhuman King wield spirits in WBRM/Dragon Pass that resemble the weaponized wyters of the Sartar Magical Union and the Imperial College of Magic. So do the Trachodons (IMO giant magisaurs, all power, hardly sapient any more).

But then weaponizing wyters seems to have an innate mystical component. One of my go-to comparisons is David Gemmell's Temple of the Thirty.

 

[Darius West]

33 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Nothing that I write is canonical in any way, at best it is me voicing how I try to make the Gloranthan facts known to me fit into a coherent whole.

Undertstood.  Creating a more coherent lore is good for Glorantha.

33 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Troll community unity can result in the Black Eater, physically absorbing the constituent trolls in the Battle of Night and Day.

This is an interesting idea.  Do you see the Black Eater as a dehori who becomes a wyter?  The old story used to be that Nysalor ripped Korasting's womb with his adamantine claws, creating the trollkin curse.  The role of the Black Eater in the curse hasn't been established in any detail though it is what trollkin believe, and they probably know better than most.

 

[Darius West]

41 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The wyter might materialize as a work ticket receiving magic along with work reports. (What remains of Mostal might just be a QMS.)

Now there's a thought...👍😂

42 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Dragonewt communities manifest as nests, usually perceived as cities in Dragon Pass. (Those in the Elder Wilds seem to have different kinds of nests, possibly mobile ones carried on dinosaurs.) The dragonewt priests and the Inhuman King wield spirits in WBRM/Dragon Pass that resemble the weaponized wyters of the Sartar Magical Union and the Imperial College of Magic. So do the Trachodons (IMO giant magisaurs, all power, hardly sapient any more).

But then weaponizing wyters seems to have an innate mystical component. One of my go-to comparisons is David Gemmell's Temple of the Thirty.

I agree that mysticism definitely seems to form an important component to wyters, but it is never made explicit in the rules.

[davecake]

On 1/14/2025 at 8:10 PM, Darius West said:

It seems to me that the founder of most cities become the deity of the city.  Is this the same as the wyter of the city?  Not quite.

Some cities venerate the founder, such that they become a deity in their own right, in some cases the wyter of the city. But sometimes they can be venerated separately. The statuses of founder, patron deity, city god, and wyter are all separate statuses, and not every deity has all four, or cares about them. But there is a general tendency for entities to be more than one of these. And/or something else related, like the spirit of the place that the city is built on. 
 

On 1/15/2025 at 2:54 AM, Joerg said:

Apparently both cities and kingdoms have an interim wyter installed by the Founder, to be replaced by the Founder through apotheosis - at least that's what we know about Jonstown (Jon Hauberk becoming the first City Rex and thereby priest of the interim wyter)

I think of this more as one of those hero tricks, maybe - a founder might harvest some of the power of the community themselves while they are still alive, but then become the wyter on death? But it’s very much one among many many options. 

On 1/15/2025 at 6:49 PM, Darius West said:

The problem we have here is that there is no known mechanism for the merger of the wyter with the personality of the founder to become a deity.

Literally a wyter is just something formed by linking a community with an existing (or created) spirit. We know it is done by HeroQuest, and there is nothing to suggest that the spirit of the founder is any less suitable than any other spirit. 

On 1/15/2025 at 6:49 PM, Darius West said:

Obviously the infinity rune features somewhere, but we don't know where and how.

Not at all obvious to me - no reason I can see that a city god is any more special than any other entity able to grant a single Rune spell, be it a hero cult or small spirit cult. 

On 1/15/2025 at 2:54 AM, Joerg said:

Elder Races communities seem to have living demigods rather than wyters - the Inhuman King, Eldest Mistress (or ranking Hellmother), Flamal Tree, and possibly some kind of apparatus for Mostali communities.

There is no reason to assume that the Elder races follow the same customs, or think wyters are a good idea (they are both a strength and a weakness). Or that they have those particular tendencies. 
But FWIW - we actually have no indication that dragonewts have the same forms of passionate connection to their communities required to form wyters, they have their own strange approach to passions. But I don’t think the Inhuman King is a wyter in any case, if the Dragons Eye or Dragon Pass dragonewt community has a wyter, he might be its ‘priest’. 

Trolls seem to regard ancestors as most appropriate for wyters, but no reason they wouldn’t also have particular great darkness spirits or spirits of place. The ranking matriarch is likely th ‘priest’ of the wyter, but if it is an ancestress they won’t be the only people able to speak to it. Wyters of clans (normally a founding ancestor) are probably more important than wyters of places most often.
 

Great trees may important for elf communities - but intelligent great trees can also be the ‘priest’, the wyter is more likely more like a powerful dryad or forest spirit. 
 

For the Mostali, again it is a bit unclear if they are usually loyal to communities other than their castes, though wars between Mostali suggests so. But if they are, note that wyters can be created from sorcerous constructs created for the purpose, which sounds quite Mostali. But also powerful intelligent elementals, or spirits of place (eg the spirit of the mountain they live within) are possibilities. Probably Diamond dwarfs act as the ‘priests’ for communities of sufficient size. 

[davecake]

On 1/15/2025 at 6:49 PM, Darius West said:

As to your Pavis example, I think he forms an interesting magical synthesis between the 4 schools of magic, which is in keeping with his green age agenda of man rune unity.  I think we both agree that there is clearly a line between wyters and gods.

And I disagree. They are orthogonal concepts. Minor divine beings can become wyters, and so can beings that are of purely sorcerous or shamanic origin. City gods might be called gods, but that doesn’t seem to mean anything in particular - some are heroes or ancestors in origin clearly. And city gods granting rune spells is the same as hero cults or spirit cults. 
 

On 1/15/2025 at 6:49 PM, Darius West said:

There is no reason I can see why Pavis couldn't have unified with the city wyter he effectively created and controlled,

There is also reason to assume that something like this happened. I tend to think they might be different, though, and Pavis just unified them into one cult (the wyter being formed from the Faceless Stone Statue). You don’t necessarily have to have a ritual to unify the founder (or any other being) with the wyter, you just need to have a ritual (a form of HeroQuest) in which they become the wyter. The does not have an intrinsic personality - it has to be an existing spirit that becomes the wyter. 

 

On 1/15/2025 at 8:04 PM, Darius West said:

I agree that mysticism definitely seems to form an important component to wyters, but it is never made explicit in the rules.

I feel almost the opposite - wyters are formed from community passions, mysticism seems opposed to allowing yourself to be controlled by your passions.

But the manifestation of wyters as group entities in a way that can be controlled and enhanced into weapon of war, and without having the minds of those involved shredded by the experience, seems to be associated with mysticism. I think both protecting communities with wyters, and mysticism, are age old - but combining them to create magical military units is an innovative and complex new thing, something only the Lunars had successfully done before Argrath. 

[Darius West]

4 hours ago, davecake said:

 And city gods granting rune spells is the same as hero cults or spirit cults. 

Surely that is a function of the condition runes, especially the infinity rune, that marks them as deities?

4 hours ago, davecake said:

I feel almost the opposite - wyters are formed from community passions, mysticism seems opposed to allowing yourself to be controlled by your passions.

I agree, but the literatures seems to suggest that militarizing wyters is easier with mysticism.

[Zebraman1]

Btw, I hope this doesn't jinx it but this discussion has been really amazing insight into Wyters, guardian spirits and ancestor gods. Normally I know the OP of a topic is more involved but I hadn't expected the question to quite generate this and I've just been reading it all! 

[Akhôrahil]

On 1/12/2025 at 10:24 PM, EricW said:

Is there evidence of Lunars attacking or attempting to modify city Wyters in conquered territories? Given plentiful examples of Lunar tampering with the heroplane, surely a period of Lunar occupation would involve attempts to subjugate or corrupt the local spirit landscape, if not annexation and outright replacement of troublesome spirits.  

Not sure if there's any canonical content to The Marriage of Pavis (to the Red Goddess), but it seems like exactly the kinds of shenanigans you would expect from the Lunars.

[mfbrandi]

Familiar fun facts about wyters:

• Wyters include the spirits of dead heroes, … artificial psychic constructs, souls of extinct spirits, … and many other possibilities.
• A wyter is bound to a single person, typically the leader of the wyter’s community … this person is called the wyter’s priest.
• The priest can direct the wyter to … cast spells, etc. Additionally, the priest can use the wyter’s magic points as if it were an allied spirit.
• A wyter spends points of its characteristic POW instead of Rune points when casting Rune spells
• A wyter is incapable of recovering its own magic points … the community … gives it magic points
• A wyter may receive sacrifices of characteristic POW from its members up to an upper limit based on the size and age of the community … If the wyter’s POW is ever reduced to 0, the wyter is extinguished
  — RuneQuest Glorantha (PDF, pp. 286–287)

With the usual proviso that game mechanics do not necessarily tell us what the game world is imagined to be like (may not be its imagined “physics”), a wyter may not fit everyone’s conception of a god. Maybe it used to be a god, but now it is dead and bound. On the other hand, in some Gloranthas, this may be exactly what a “normal” god looks like.°

Spare a thought for the disaffected of any community — the alienated goths, grebos°°, and roleplayers — and ask how the wyter looks to them. The community leader/necromancer’s undead stooge leeching on the people of the village?

The local anarchist — there’s always one — will chip in that leaders are narcissists with a shaky grasp on reality and always ready to spend the wyter’s last POW point in pursuit of some vanity project. It’s being so cheerful as keeps ’em going!

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° “Things were so bad for the six villages that their leaders came together to save themselves. They hired a strong team of medicine men to install a common deity for them. This deity which the fathers of the six villages made was called Ulu.” Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God (chapter two, p. 15 in the current Penguin edition)

That is how I think of wyters. At least from the point of view of Ulu’s priest’s son, Ulu “stood above Eru [god of wealth] and all the other deities” (p. 9), so it is not clear that these made, community-binding deities (Ulu was made to stop inter-village fighting) are minor in Achebe’s novel of Igboland past.

°° Not to be confused with the Greboes.