Pavis Grimoires under HeroQuest Glorantha

[David Scott]

The Pavis Grimoires weren't written under the structure of HQG and so are now slightly different. I think the runes of Master of the Faceless King are in conflict with the way that sorcery now works.

Master of the Faceless King is a Harmony and Stasis Rune grimoire. Its spells are built around parts of the statue: Armstone, Headstone, Bowelstone, Bodystone, Legstone, Organstones (Heartstone, Liverstone, Kidneystone, Eyestone) and even Marrow dust is mentioned. The parts are likely rune associated.

There are three spell mentioned in the text:

Harmony of the Parts.

Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach that can suppress (temporarily) hostile Darkness magic in a prepared location.

The ritual that enables entrance and egress into the Room Without Doors.

HQG says there are these principles you have to use in sorcery: Summon / Dismiss, Command, Combine / Separate & Tap.

So how do we reconcile /change this so it's more representative of HQG.

[Noita]

Mmm i liked it more when we could just wing it

 

[Chris Bloxham]

Most grimoires focus on a single Rune (often narrowed to have some defined subset of the Rune) and contain formulae detailing permutations and combinations of that Rune with the four sorcerous principles. - HQ:G

Pavic Grimoires are limited to the City boundaries, no? The picture of The Master of the Faceless Kings (P:GtA page - 366) shows numerous runes associated with The Rubble. Will this allow spells using all of these runes to be created, but only workable in the city?

 

[Noita]

I thought my spell Hamstring Waha would be using Stasis (Command) to stop Nomads from charging/attacking the caster whilst in the Big Rubble.

Harmony of the Parts. Harmony using command?

Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach that can suppress (temporarily) hostile Darkness magic in a prepared location  Harmony again, possibly combined with water?

The ritual that enables entrance and egress into the Room Without Doors. No idea. Combined Harmony and movement?

[Chris Bloxham]

Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach - Dismiss Darkness?

I like yours better!

[jajagappa]

12 minutes ago, Iskallor said:

The ritual that enables entrance and egress into the Room Without Doors.

Movement and Luck - Movement rune to enter and leave, the Luck rune forms the gateway.

[metcalph]

17 hours ago, David Scott said:

There are three spell mentioned in the text:

Harmony of the Parts.

Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach that can suppress (temporarily) hostile Darkness magic in a prepared location.

The ritual that enables entrance and egress into the Room Without Doors.

HQG says there are these principles you have to use in sorcery: Summon / Dismiss, Command, Combine / Separate & Tap.

So how do we reconcile /change this so it's more representative of HQG.

Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach would be Dismiss and Darkness.

Harmony of the Parts would be Summon and Harmony (any effect which is called into being is best treated as a summons)

Enter the Room without Doors would be Separate and Earth.  That is if the Room exists on the mortal plane.  If it doesn't, then I would use Summon and Magic (in effect you are summoning yourself into the Room without Doors and Magic is used for communication between the worlds).

[davecake]

As far as I can work out, the only really unusual about the grimoire (apart from cultural factors like it being non-Malkioni and written in Auld Wyrmish) is that it has two runes instead of one, but that is perfectly within the rules (it says most have a single Rune, but that implies some Grimoires have more than one). You can still combine one of those two runes with any other rune. 

Harmony of the Parts - this is a Harmony effect obviously enough. Call it Summon or Command Harmony. 

Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach - I'd call this a Combine Darkness with Harmony - it is said to suppress hostile Darkness magic, but rules wise it actually doesn't suppress all Darkness, only magical attempts to make the Darkness hostile (practically the same thing for most purposes). I think calling this Dismiss Darkness is technically against the rules - its not involving one of the original runes of the grimoire. 

The entry to the Room Without Doors could be anything - we don't know much about what magic is used to seal the room in the first place - but my guess would be that this is a Command Stasis effect, and the Room Without Doors is normally kept closed by Flintnail Stasis magic. Same rules objection goes to making this Separate Earth or similar. 

We know so little about the magic of the Alchemical Wedding of Lord Pavis and The Book of the Original Man that there really isn't much to say, but as they have a single rune each they seem perfectly normal grimoires from a rules perspective. Given the marital metaphors of The Alchemical Wedding its a safe bet that it makes heavy use of Combine. The ritual allowing different species to reproduce from The Book of the Original Man sounds like its Combine Man and Fertility to me. 

The Book of Treaties is very straight forward - it has the Magic Rune (hey, a bit odd, I'd think twice before letting a player do this, but fine for the GM) and each spell is Combine Magic Element. Command Element is probably the canonical way of summoning an elemental, but Pavis is doing something weird here to get his multi-elemental grimoire, and his grimoire has disadvantages as a consequence (the single shared elemental for the whole cult issue) so its fine if odd. 

[David Scott]

so what other spells might these grimoires contain

[Darius West]

The question then becomes, where did Pavis learn this Auld Wyrmish sorcery, because the EWF draconic mysticism was essentially philosophically incompatible with it.  To this I can see only one clear answer.  There was only one sorcerer of note in the EWF, and that was Delecti, (creator of the beast men, survivor of the Dragonkill, exile of the God Learners).  That is unless Pavis went to the Clanking Ruins and met up with the Zistorites and their stolen Mostali magic, but then I doubt event he Openhandists would have tolerated him.  The Delecti idea also goes some way towards explaining the plethora of vampires in the Big Rubble.

[David Scott]

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

The question then becomes, where did Pavis learn this Auld Wyrmish sorcery, because the EWF draconic mysticism was essentially philosophically incompatible with it.

There are two separate things going on here Auld Warmish and Sorcery.

The written form of Auld Warmish is covered on page 239 of HeroQuest Glorantha:

Quote

Dragonewts do not write, but during the Empire of the Wyrms Friends a written form of Auld Wyrmish was devised by clever sages using a variant of the Three Sacred Scripts. Many Second Age documents were written in this tongue, and it is still popular among pedants. 

The sorcery was written in Auld Wyrmish, the written language of the Empire, a variant of the three scripts. There's no connection between the Draconic mysticism and the sorcery, except a non-draconic written version of the language. Being based on the Three Sacred Scripts undoubtably means that it's readable in some form by Lhankor Mhy sages, although for safety they'd have to use the Alien Combination Machine. To where he got the Sorcery - he researched and invented it.

[Darius West]

Pavis invented his own sorcery?  Like Zzabur?

[David Scott]

22 hours ago, Darius West said:

Pavis invented his own sorcery?  Like Zzabur?

As Zzabur did - all powerful sorcerers can do it. Sorcery is is a set of techniques that can be applied to the world. Once you've been taught the basics, you can extrapolate and apply them to your own researches. As an example, once Pavis had completed his basic studies perhaps he saw a mostali Jolanti. Likely he fashioned his own and after much experimentation with the correct application of the runes, got it to move. He probably started doll size and got bigger. Studying these creations he likely travelled around to see if he could find more mostali examples. Perhaps he borrowed one from the Dwarf. In doing this he came across the faceless statue and realised his revenge on the Praxians would be sweet. To preserve his knowledge he wrote his spells in a grimoire. The oldest simple ones were either never recorded, never put in the final grimoire or just erased. It's these that can be discovered by researching the grimoire for more spells. It's much like discovering hidden paintings under an old master, or finding the artists early sketches. Likewise you can continue Pavis's research and extrapolate forward. A better way with Pavis is to go and ask him as he's still in his temple in the Old City.

[Tindalos]

On 25/08/2016 at 9:30 AM, David Scott said:

so what other spells might these grimoires contain

I think we might get some ideas from the diagram on Pavis:GtA pg 366. This shows the Faceless King, and various runes. It's likely this is a key to the Grimoire.

His left arm bears the rune of Law. This would indicate that the Armstones of the left would relate to sorcery (presumably they were used to build the old aerial defence towers, such as the one known as the Arm of Pavis.) From the relationship of this arm to sorcery, Pavis revealed a spell that married (combined) Harmony and Law: "Defence of the Left Arm," this spell would allow the user to protect themselves from hostile sorcery.

His right arm bears the runes of Man and Stasis, but it is the latter which is most important here. The Armstones of the right were used in building the walls of Pavis, and Pavis' father-in-Law Flintnail taught him how the Armstones powers of Stasis would support the art of building in general. By commanding Stasis this spell, "Support of the Right Arm," (also known as Support in RQ) maintains a given wall in its current position (temporarily), even if parts are removed which would normally cause it to collapse. This allows repair to be performed, and was a useful defence of last resort during the Troll Occupation.

The Statue's Thigh is marked with the runes of Earth, Harmony, and Life, calling to mind the goddess Ernalda. The Thighstones were rare organstones associated with the powers of fertility and bounty, and thus sacred to her. Pavis used this knowledge to craft the spell "Bounty of the Thigh". By marrying Harmony and Life, the spell preserves stored grain and other foods from blight and pests. This spell helped provide for the city during the lean years, and Pavis' old granaries are still said to lie -- unlooted -- where the thigh once fell. (This is said to be in Huntland, somewhere between the Central Bridge and the Salt Mines.)

 

[davecake]

Remember the Empire of the Wyrns Friends was a whole Empire, not just a single magical philosophy. Sure, its draconic mystic at the core, but like all Empires it was a big, complex, messy entity with a huge amount of internal variety. 

Plus remember draconic mysticism is a form of Illumination. No reason an Illuminate can't sorcery. 

[Ian Cooper]

On 25/08/2016 at 4:25 AM, metcalph said:

Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach would be Dismiss and Darkness.

Harmony of the Parts would be Summon and Harmony (any effect which is called into being is best treated as a summons)

Enter the Room without Doors would be Separate and Earth.  That is if the Room exists on the mortal plane.  If it doesn't, then I would use Summon and Magic (in effect you are summoning yourself into the Room without Doors and Magic is used for communication between the worlds).

Maybe. I'd try to work either Harmony or Stasis into all the explanations.

So Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach would probably Combine Harmony and Darkness - in essence the darkness is calmed by Harmony.

I'd agree on Harmony of the Parts

I would suggest that Enter the Room without Doors would be Summon Stasis. A 'room without doors' sounds like an 'unchanging location' perhaps a short world, so the Summons would open a gate, but you would step through as opposed to something coming out. Of course, on a complete failure it's possible something is in the room and comes out...