Shaman's fetch

[Noita]

Can folks explain how Fetches  work, using Prax as the localised area. My game has several apprentices and i'd like to know how fetches work and what form they take before they become shamans.

[Stew Stansfield]

Apropos of nothing, Iskallor, I thought you'd enjoy this non-Praxian shamanic tangent:

Joseph Greenface, (in)famous shaman and spokesbeak of the ducks, has a female fetch named Dear! who resides in the iron 'horns'/antlers of his reindeer-hide armour. (Joseph is also accompanied by the spirits Slim, Brunhilda and Pidgeon; and can summon James the sylph and Slippery Sam the undine - whose waters hold Bruno the rainbow fish. Needless to say, adventuring with Joseph is ACE!)

(And, no, I'm not making any of this up. I think Charlie K. was particularly well-lubricated that session. )

Edited June 4, 2016 by Quackatoa
*Iron* horns. IRON HORNS.

[jajagappa]

In my Orlmarth campaign, the PC's never saw Joseph's fetch, though it guarded over their and Joseph's bodies while Joseph led the discorporate party into the Spirit World.

Joseph had no attendant spirits at that point, though, as they had been destroyed saving Joseph from an attack by the Lunar witch Oheha.

I'm thinking, though, that by the time the PC's encounter him again, that Joseph will have gathered new ones such as Slim and Pidgeon and Slippery Sam to help him!

[David Scott]

10 hours ago, Iskallor said:

Can folks explain how Fetches  work, using Prax as the localised area. My game has several apprentices and i'd like to know how fetches work and what form they take before they become shamans.

I'm on my way back from uk games expo so don't have my references with me, so...

apprentices don't have any form of fetch until their shamanic initiation. That's what's awoken with in them at the initiation. The initiation simply put is where Bad Man tears the candidate apart, the assistant's spirits collect the pieces and take them to the horned man who reassembles them. If they have less parts than normal, they die, the same they can never become a shaman, but survive, more the extra part is their fetch.

details on the different shaman paths to follow. 

[Charles VA]

The gaining of a fetch makes for a great adventure. As the shaman-to-be travels deeper into his inner power, overcoming the obstacles to awakening the fetch grows with the apprentice gaining powers and awareness. Each such awakening should be different and inherent to the apprentice as that is where the fetch takes shape and becomes an individual being tied to the shaman. It's also possible the seeker will lose himself among the labyrinth of his own inner being and lose the connection to the spiritual and physical planes forever consumed from within. I love the esoteric of the essences that make up a shamanic tradition and you should take advantage of those any chance you get to give the player a better chance to examine the character. YGMV

[simonh]

I played a shaman extensively in RQ3. It's a lot of fun, but time consuming. A important issue is that searching for spirits and managing your bound spirits often took GM time which meant taking away play time from the rest of the group. I don't think involving the rest of the group in these activities e.g. By introducing mechanisms for the group to go with the shaman on the sprit plane helps because now they're just shaman sidekicks, and the extra nteraction means it will take even more time. This is one of the issues RQ4 shamanism needs to address.

Simon Hibbs

Edited June 5, 2016 by simonh

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, simonh said:

I played a shaman extensively in RQ3. It's a lot of fun, but time consuming. A important issue is that searching for spirits and managing your bound spirits often took GM time which meant taking away play time from the rest of the group. I don't think involving the rest of the group in these activities e.g. By introducing mechanisms for the group to go with the shaman on the sprit plane helps because now they're just shaman sidekicks, and the extra nteraction means it will take even more time. This is one of the issues RQ4 shamanism needs to address.

This is quite similar to integrating the netrunners in games like Cyberpunk or Shadowrun into the group action.

Whether hunting for spirits or for useful sidekick animals for beast handlers, such activity always is a selfish action for the player(s) profiting the most from this activity.

If the sidekick role is equally distributed among the player heroes, playing out such selfish quests can work. If not, this is catch-up activity with the potential of going wrong, potentially damaging a player character off-screen (though more likely enriching that character). I think that the catch-up mechanisms for activities between adventures will make up a significant portion of the new RQG, though probably not completely explored in the basic rulebook currently worked upon.

"Hunting" for useful spirits might be compared to a whaling or slaving expedition. The latter comparison makes me wonder whether shamans also trade for followers of powerful spirit world entities, and what they offer in trade.

[David Scott]

Here's the Shaman initiations for the main Praxian Shaman paths, you can easily work out any minor ones from the following patterns. I see this initiation as solo for the assistant shaman. I do them outside the game with the player as it's pretty boring for the others sitting around. The entry back into the game is the rebirth point. There are no rolls for any of this, generally speaking the outcome should be a new shaman, unless there is a very good reason for the Hero to die!

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A fetch is a unique spirit that is the incorporeal second self of a shaman, whose appearance and abilities are dependent on the path of the shaman. Fetches are the opposite sex to the shaman. Waha fetches appear as an nomad-headed herd beast,  Eiritha fetches appear as an herd beast-headed nomad, Helpwoman fetches appear as young men. Daka Fal fetches are normally ancestral shaman.

The initiation for Waha Shaman is on page 170 of HeroQuest Glorantha. The remaking section was removed for space:

 

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In the remaking there can be three outcomes;

• If any pieces are missing, the candidate dies, his spirit is taken by the Good Shepherd to the Path of the Dead, and Daka Fal.

• The candidate is whole, and Earth Witch pulls a new Khan from Eiritha's womb deep in the Paps, and they are reborn as Waha, amidst the holy night ceremonies. He has instead completed the Waha and the Horned Man Task. He is still able to act as a spirit-talker, but is no longer a shaman's assistant.

• There is a part left over, the new shaman's fetch. With this, Earth Witch pulls the new shaman from Eiritha's womb deep in the Paps, and they are reborn as Waha, amidst the holy night ceremonies.

Eiritha

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On the night of Eiritha's burial, Clayday, Death week, Dark season, the living candidate is ritually buried as though they were a Herd Sister. The burial should ideally be at the Paps, although in practice anywhere in Prax can be used. It is more dangerous out in the Wastelands, and so this is normally avoided. The sponsoring shaman takes the candidates spirit to the Underworld. There she joins Eiritha and the other Earth goddesses deep asleep in Yelm’s Palace. For an eternity her body lies still, dead, in the Goddesses Dream, whilst evil spirits driven mad by the world try to hunt her down and devour her. Eventually Bad Man finds her by a tell that she is only sleeping, and he directs the foes of the Great Darkness to tear the would be shaman to pieces. The candidates helper spirits take her pieces to Eiritha's womb. There the Horned Man, the Mother of all shaman, pores over the pieces slowly fitting the candidate back together

 

One difference in the outcomes:

 

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The candidate is whole and is reborn still a spirit-talker. Eiritha needs her as that, her talents are wasted being a shaman. There is no shame in this event, these spirit talkers often go on to have other roles, outside of the Eiritha Society. Some become shaman of other societies.

Daka Fal, initiation only has two outcomes:

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During sacred time, the candidate is taken through the spirit world by his shaman, into the Great Darkness. Here he must find his ancestors and protect them from the Hungry Ghosts, Chaos spirits and other bad things that would drink their life blood. Bad Man always appears at this time and singles out the candidate, directing the foes of the Great Darkness to tear him to pieces. The candidate’s ancestors take his pieces to the Horned Man, who is the Father of all shaman. In his place of power he pores over the pieces slowly fitting the candidate back together. In the remaking there can be two outcomes; 

• If any pieces are missing, the candidate dies, his spirit is taken by the Good Shepherd to the Path of the Dead, and judgement by Daka Fal.

• There is a part left over, the new shaman's fetch. On the last night of Sacred Time the new Shaman is danced out of the Great Herd and back into his own clan with great celebration.

Help woman's is similar to Daka Fal's:

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During sacred time, the candidate is taken through the spirit world by her shaman, into the Great Darkness. Here she finds a young child that she must nurture and protect against the Hungry Ghosts, Chaos spirits and other bad things that would drink their life blood. Bad Man always appears at this time and singles out the candidate, directing the foes of the Great Darkness to tear her to pieces. The candidate’s helper spirits take her pieces to the Horned Man, who is the Father of all shaman. In his place of power he pores over the pieces slowly fitting the candidate back together. In the remaking there can be two outcomes; 

If any pieces are missing, the candidate dies, her spirit is taken by the Good Shepherd to the Path of the Dead, and judgement by Daka Fal.

There is a part left over, the new shaman's fetch. At the Dawn of the first day after Sacred Time the new Shaman is danced out of the Home Camp and back into her own clan with great celebration.

 

 

 

[Charles VA]

7 hours ago, simonh said:

I played a shaman extensively in RQ3. It's a lot of fun, but time consuming. A important issue is that searching for spirits and managing your bound spirits often took GM time which meant taking away play time from the rest of the group. I don't think involving the rest of the group in these activities e.g. By introducing mechanisms for the group to go with the shaman on the sprit plane helps because now they're just shaman sidekicks, and the extra nteraction means it will take even more time. This is one of the issues RQ4 shamanism needs to address.

Simon Hibbs

I always managed to have the rest of the group doing something while the shaman danced. Either guarding said shaman or participating in rites outside of the shamanic circle or even something as crude as social interactions. I tend to use the "split screen" action to keep all the players involved in something. Works fairly well if you're prepared to deal with the changing perspective and if you have players who are capable of separating player/character knowledge. Makes for an excellent story that eliminates the world vacuum feel of single player activity.

[davecake]

(Great Stuff David Scott) 

I've run shamanic initiations as adventures - most significantly I ran a Kargzant initiation where they went into the Sky World, followed the path of the Young God across the Sky, fought Bakoka the scorpion goddess who was going to destroy them, and survived by finding a fetch who would take them out of the sky world. 

This wasn't intended to be a standard initiation though - the shaman had already heroquested etc and some of the experiences they had had came back to influence their initiation. 

As Joerg says you can run such things for a group using a 'split screen' technique, so I had the forces of Darkness (mostly a troll priestess and some accompanying warriors) try to stop the process, fought off by the remaining party members. For later shamanic adventures in the spirit world, they can also take the rest of the party with them if they are a powerful shaman - but of course, there has to be a good reason why they would do that. Or you can abstract it off stage (I agree with Simon - rules would be really handy for managing shamanic activity like that). 

 

[Noita]

My  Feathered Rivals game set in the Wastes has all the characters as possible shamans, with a little over half of them planning on becoming one. 

Every character has the spirit rune and are members of their rivals' spirit society. 

[pachristian]

I always liked the idea in Tom Dowd's book Burning Bright (Roc books, 1994, a Shadowrun novel). In this story, the magician has an allied spirit, and he explains to his client that the spirit embodies the repressed aspects of his personality. Consequently, mage and ally are always at (basically friendly) odds, as they see things from different points of view. This ties very nicely to the "fetch is of the opposite gender" comments earlier.

In a viking game I ran, years ago, the shaman's fetch was a fylgjur - an ancestral guardian spirit. The fetch was present as a spirit before the character became a shaman, but gained full fetch abilities when the character became a shaman.

Recently, I was in an RQ game. My character had earned the respect of a griffin's ghost on Stormwalk. When he became a shaman, that ghost became his fetch.

So there are many different approaches to making a fetch - and different shamans and shamanic traditions would have different kinds of fetches.

[David Scott]

22 hours ago, pachristian said:

...there are many different approaches to making a fetch - and different shamans and shamanic traditions would have different kinds of fetches.

I would agree with this. It's worth looking at the origin of the word "Fetch" as in real world shamanism, it doesn't really exist. Generally speaking the shaman has a number of different helpers, who may perform a singular activity or many activities depending on their role. They may be of different forms, ranging through animal, humanoid to anything you can imagine and beyond. Depending on culture, these have different names; Power animals, spirit helpers, tutelary spirits, ancestors,etc. Some specific names exist in some cultures - 

A Book of Folklore by Sabine Baring-Gould (1913) tells us the origin of the word "Fetch":

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/bof/bof07.htm

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Throughout the Aryan stock we find a belief in fetches, wraiths, or doubles, i.e. of man being attended by his duplicate, often considered as a guardian spirit; in a good many places we find also a belief in an evil--minded, mischievous genius as well. These are none other than a survival of old conceptions relative to the reflection and the shadow.

Fetch is specific to Ireland, and further on in the (short chapter) it talks of

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The Greeks held that there were agathodaemones, good spirits, also kakodaemones, attached to men swaying them to this side or to the other...

The Romans had their genii; every man had his genius, an attendant spirit...

The Norsemen believed that every man had his fylgja, follower, a spirit intimately related to him, and that died when he did...

In Germany the Companion Spirit is called Jüdel, or Gütel..

The idea of the Companion Spirit has been christianised into that of the Guardian Angel...

Although the fetch or doppelgänger, as the Germans call him, has been melted into the Guardian Angel, he has for all that, in many cases, retained his identity; and stories are not uncommon of his appearance...

In Yorkshire the wraith or double is called a waft...

All of these are useful in describing the helper spirits of the shaman.

22 hours ago, pachristian said:

This ties very nicely to the "fetch is of the opposite gender" comments earlier.

I use this all the time - the spirit husband, spirit wife, Spirit spouse. This is what i'm intending with Praxian shaman. Wikipedia covers the concept well here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_spouse

Have a look through sacred-texts.com and you'll find loads of useful material.

[rust]

 

59 minutes ago, David Scott said:

A Book of Folklore by Sabine Baring-Gould (1913)

In Germany the Companion Spirit is called Jüdel, or Gütel..

Although the fetch or doppelgänger, as the Germans call him, has been melted into the Guardian Angel, he has for all that, in many cases, retained his identity; and stories are not uncommon of his appearance...

Sorry, but Sabine Baring-Gould got it wrong in these two cases. The "Jüdel / Gütel" is actually a regional type of house spirit, somewhat similar to a brownie, from the Erzgebirge region, and the Doppelgänger - mostly an idea of the Romantic literary movement - is actually a kind of evil spirit twin of a person, usually a symbol for the loss of a person's identity.

[David Scott]

12 minutes ago, rust said:

Sorry, but Sabine Baring-Gould got it wrong in these two cases. The "Jüdel / Gütel" is actually a regional type of house spirit, somewhat similar to a brownie, from the Erzgebirge region, and the Doppelgänger - mostly an idea of the Romantic literary movement - is actually a kind of evil spirit twin of a person, usually a symbol for the loss of a person's identity.

I'm not too worried about the accuracy of a 1913 book of folklore, as I said:

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

All of these are useful in describing the helper spirits of the shaman.

This is about inspiration not accuracy.

If the spirit is a house spirit, it can still be used as a fetch, likewise an evil spirit twin of a person as a fetch would be ideal for a Thed shaman.

Edited June 12, 2016 by David Scott