What happens when you're dead

[Darius West]

23 hours ago, Jeff said:

Unless the Brithini in question uses powerful sorcery to ward themselves, they would agree with you. Just as they would say that a Brithini that enters the Void ceases to be. What you encounter in the Underworld are but shades and fragments, and not the Being. But with powerful enough magic, it is possible to enter the Underworld and re-emerge intact (although I am unaware of any Brithini actually doing this - whereas I know that the perverse Vadeli have done exactly that).

As you say, there is no record of Brithini going to the underworld, except for Arkat, and he wasn't a Brithini by that stage.

Now the Vadeli pose a different problem, don't they?  Clearly no Vadeli wants to break their caste restrictions and slowly die, exactly as the Brithini would, and entering the underworld for them would be instant annihilation.  The fact is, they would have to have developed a way to be alive in the underworld through sorcery, and that is yet another exception to "the rule".

 

[David Scott]

9 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Even Humakti heroes have to abide by cult strictures.  Coming back from the dead is strictly forbidden

Heroes by definition break the mould. If in a game, a Humakti wanted to come back from the dead by their own means, I would certainly allow it if it advanced the story. The playing out of any ramifications would be the key to this. They'd almost certainly have re-life sickness and likely die gloriously in the end. They might end up being the home of a hero cult, which in turn means they have to leave the cycle of life and death, and not be reborn.

Strictures from a game system point of view are often fun to play. In HeroQuest they provide a story driven element. Look at the Universal Lunar stricture of never use chaos. It's clear Lunars do this even though it's a stricture. In RQ they become "rules". There is then no way to break them without contradicting the rules. I would suggest that your definition of your "rule" has more to do with an RQ simulationist style of play as opposed to a HeroQuest style of narrative play. 

[Noita]

This is going round in circles. 

It's my fave entertainment thread.

[Darius West]

28 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Heroes by definition break the mould. If in a game, a Humakti wanted to come back from the dead by their own means, I would certainly allow it if it advanced the story. The playing out of any ramifications would be the key to this. They'd almost certainly have re-life sickness and likely die gloriously in the end. They might end up being the home of a hero cult, which in turn means they have to leave the cycle of life and death, and not be reborn.

Strictures from a game system point of view are often fun to play. In HeroQuest they provide a story driven element. Look at the Universal Lunar stricture of never use chaos. It's clear Lunars do this even though it's a stricture. In RQ they become "rules". There is then no way to break them without contradicting the rules. I would suggest that your definition of your "rule" has more to do with an RQ simulationist style of play as opposed to a HeroQuest style of narrative play. 

Lunars use Yanafal Tarnils, not Humakt as their war deity, and as an illuminate, Yanafal could break cult strictures without repercussions... well, his sword bent into a scimitar, but it didn't break (Humakt is his own spirit of retribution, and that was a joke I inserted there).  And when has "never use chaos" ever been a universal Lunar stricture? The Crimson Bat, the Chaos Gift spell, not to mention Eyzaal the Chaos Alchemist, but I digress, the Lunars are not the topic.

On the other hand, I agree with the notion of Humakti being "off the path of reincarnation", but there is a reason that you don't find Humakti heroes coming back the way Jaldon does, the notion offends the very basis for becoming a Humakti in the first place. 

Edited January 10, 2017 by Darius West

[Jeff]

Except that it has happened, more than once.  Hiia Swordsman died in order to cross the Crossline into Dragon Pass but his oaths permitted him to return. Makls Man (who HATES resurrection) returned from death to fulfill an oath. And so on.

[David Scott]

3 hours ago, Darius West said:

And when has "never use chaos" ever been a universal Lunar stricture?

Pavis: GTA and HeroQuest Glorantha, Seven Mothers and other Lunar Immortals' cults. 

[Darius West]

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

Pavis: GTA and HeroQuest Glorantha, Seven Mothers and other Lunar Immortals' cults. 

So the Lunars never use chaos... except when they do...  The Crimson Bat, the Chaos Gift spell, not to mention Eyzaal the Chaos Alchemist etc.  If you mean avoiding the use of chaos as a propaganda move in occupied areas so as not to annoy the locals and whip up anti-Lunar anti-chaos sentiment, that is very different to a universal stricture.  Don't Lunars have separate deities for "good" and evil chaos?

[Tcneseis]

Humakt is the god of Death, even if you fall off from a cliff. Dead Humakti cannot come back from the dead. I believe they have given themselves to Humakt.

But if they go into the Underworld by themselves, don't they bypass the Death god?

 

[David Scott]

5 minutes ago, Darius West said:

So the Lunars never use chaos...

That's not what I was saying. More about there is a stricture  and it can clearly be broken. When strictures are broken there are opportunities for storytelling. The same goes for Praxian taboos. What happens when they have to be broken. The same goes in my mind for humakti breaking oathes or yelmalions breaking geases. A few heroic individuals will do that and the story is in the consiquences. 

[Darius West]

1 minute ago, Ulsan said:

Humakt is the god of Death, even if you fall off from a cliff. Dead Humakti cannot come back from the dead. I believe they have given themselves to Humakt.

But if they go into the Underworld by themselves, don't they bypass the Death god?

 

An interesting idea, but how do you bypass someone whom you seek to embody and emulate and be a living symbol of?  You and they are intrinsically connected.  I suspect that Humakti would be more powerful in the underworld, and would probably prefer to remain with the Einherjar.

[Darius West]

32 minutes ago, David Scott said:

That's not what I was saying. More about there is a stricture  and it can clearly be broken. When strictures are broken there are opportunities for storytelling. The same goes for Praxian taboos. What happens when they have to be broken. The same goes in my mind for Humakti breaking oaths or Yelmalion's breaking geases. A few heroic individuals will do that and the story is in the consequences. 

So, when the Empire sends thousands of people a year to be eaten by the Crimson Bat, that is not "using chaos".  I can't see that Lunars really lose anything by invoking chaos powers in an emergency.  I can understand that they may have personal moral objections to using chaos based on their upbringing, and a chaos taint is a nuisance, occasionally a fatal nuisance in Stormbull country, but hardly something that will get you turfed from the cult, after all, ogres can join the Seven Mothers and other Lunar cults.  It is not like sucking down on a Sever Spirit spell backed by 20 magic points worth of extra countermagic busting oomph because you broke a Humakti oath, nor is it like  facing Monrogh and losing your 90% Bow skill (or whatever)  for breaking a Yelmalio geas.  I mean, the Empire values illumination, and illumination is hardly hostile to chaos, and if you are illuminated you can't actually get a chaos taint anyhow. 

Please explain how using chaos penalizes a Lunar, and why they should be penalized? 

Edited January 10, 2017 by Darius West

[Jon Hunter]

39 minutes ago, Darius West said:

So, when the Empire sends thousands of people a year to be eaten by the Crimson Bat, that is not "using chaos".  I can't see that Lunars really lose anything by invoking chaos powers in an emergency.  I can understand that they may have personal moral objections to using chaos based on their upbringing, and a chaos taint is a nuisance, occasionally a fatal nuisance in Stormbull country, but hardly something that will get you turfed from the cult, after all, ogres can join the Seven Mothers and other Lunar cults.  It is not like sucking down on a Sever Spirit spell backed by 20 magic points worth of extra countermagic busting oomph because you broke a Humakti oath, nor is it like  facing Monrogh and losing your 90% Bow skill (or whatever)  for breaking a Yelmalio geas.  I mean, the Empire values illumination, and illumination is hardly hostile to chaos, and if you are illuminated you can't actually get a chaos taint anyhow. 

Please explain how using chaos penalizes a Lunar, and why they should be penalized? 

I think the point Dave is making is right heros often break or 'redefine' rules, though i think his example of lunar and chaos is highly flawed.

However if you obsess over the example you could loose sight of a great point.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Jon Hunter

[JonL]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

An interesting idea, but how do you bypass someone whom you seek to embody and emulate and be a living symbol of?  You and they are intrinsically connected.

Yanafal Tarnils managed it, though he embraced a new patron in the doing.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

So the Lunars never use chaos... except when they do...  The Crimson Bat, the Chaos Gift spell, not to mention Eyzaal the Chaos Alchemist etc.  If you mean avoiding the use of chaos as a propaganda move in occupied areas so as not to annoy the locals and whip up anti-Lunar anti-chaos sentiment, that is very different to a universal stricture.  Don't Lunars have separate deities for "good" and evil chaos?

They have cult rules forbidding it, and institutionally encourage Illumination, which allows one to bypass cult rules. It's kind of having it both ways, but that's the Lunars for you.

[Tcneseis]

2 hours ago, Darius West said:

An interesting idea, but how do you bypass someone whom you seek to embody and emulate and be a living symbol of?  You and they are intrinsically connected.  I suspect that Humakti would be more powerful in the underworld, and would probably prefer to remain with the Einherjar.

From that point of view, I agree it would be oathbreaking. And to stay with the Einherjar is certainly great but they may be bound by stronger duties. Now, this is just an example of what the Death god may instill into his worshippers, although he is still bound by the Great Compromise. They have not been put to the sword, neither physically nor spiritually, when they enter the Underworld.

 

Edited January 10, 2017 by Ulsan

[Darius West]

1 hour ago, JonL said:

They have cult rules forbidding it (use of chaos), and institutionally encourage Illumination, which allows one to bypass cult rules. It's kind of having it both ways, but that's the Lunars for you.

So once you are illuminated you are not bound by cult rules anyhow.  Let me guess, if you use chaos and someone finds out, the cult conducts an inquiry and initiates a legal proceeding against you within the cult governing body, where you have to write a series of reports, then face a tribunal, and if it is found that you acted improperly they exert some sort of disciplinary action against you?  Why not?  That sounds worse than many spirits of retribution, if a bit more bureaucratic and a bit less "spiritual big brother is watching you".  I imagine that bureaucratic sanction is about the only way to discipline wayward illuminates, it would be so annoying and boring.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Darius West

[Tcneseis]

14 hours ago, JonL said:

Yanafal Tarnils managed it, though he embraced a new patron in the doing.

They have cult rules forbidding it, and institutionally encourage Illumination, which allows one to bypass cult rules. It's kind of having it both ways, but that's the Lunars for you.

I think it cannot be dogmatically forbidden in all instances, but things involving Chaos may be forbidden. Usually no Lunar would ever think of embracing Chaos as such, they usually follow the Lunar way, not a path of corruption and destruction.

 

[JonL]

I expect that some non-illuminated Lunar who swapped the Moon rune for the Chaos rune would get flagged, but there's clearly an institutional space for it even so, given things like the Crimson Bat cult, the Vampire Legion (I wonder if some of them served under Nysalor?) , and so on.

[jajagappa]

On 1/10/2017 at 5:19 AM, David Scott said:

Heroes by definition break the mould. If in a game, a Humakti wanted to come back from the dead by their own means, I would certainly allow it if it advanced the story.

As Death mythically came out of the Underworld in the first place, IMO that's the most natural path they would follow.  But... they would be changed.  They would BE Death, not just a follower of the Death God.  And Death exists in the Mortal World as part of the Great Compromise. 

[Charles]

On 09/01/2017 at 10:48 PM, Jeff said:

Suffice it to say, when a living being enters the Underworld, they become subject to its laws and cannot get leave without great magic or secret knowledge.

Thanks Jeff ??

Expanding on the quoted part of the reply, particularly 'subject to its laws'. Absolutely agree. And those laws are not knowable or even constant. There's assumptions that generally hold in the better known areas - 'if you are in a hell then you are dead' is one example. But there may be occasions when this does not hold, particularly if it makes your in game story of Glorantha better.

[Charles]

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

As Death mythically came out of the Underworld in the first place, IMO that's the most natural path they would follow.  But... they would be changed.  They would BE Death, not just a follower of the Death God.  And Death exists in the Mortal World as part of the Great Compromise. 

Completely disallowing a Humakti to quest into the parts of the Underworld where their most holy events took place would mean that there could never be a Humakti Hero (capital H Hero) and would demean their worship of their god. However it would be completely apposite that any Humakti, that significantly failed a death relevant challenge in an Underworld Hell, would not be able to return to the Middle World, i.e. permanently dead.

[Darius West]

4 hours ago, Charles said:

Completely disallowing a Humakti to quest into the parts of the Underworld where their most holy events took place would mean that there could never be a Humakti Hero (capital H Hero) and would demean their worship of their god. However it would be completely apposite that any Humakti, that significantly failed a death relevant challenge in an Underworld Hell, would not be able to return to the Middle World, i.e. permanently dead.

Or it could be that the people who worship death and know it the best off all peoples understand that, just as natives of the underworld are not dead just by being in the underworld, and just as a giant baby is not dead just by being in the underworld, and just as Brithini and Vadeli don't simply disappear from being in the underworld, that in fact when they enter the underworld that they aren't in fact dead at all, and that is the secret of how they can return.  See how much self contradiction that puts an end to and ties a nice bow on? 

Now this is not to say that most people in the underworld aren't dead entities passing through on the way to their respective afterlives, it is simply pointing out that being dead is not utterly compulsory in the underworld, and thus resolving a plethora of contradictions.

Edited January 12, 2017 by Darius West

[Charles]

YGDV 

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

Now this is not to say that most people in the underworld aren't dead entities passing through on the way to their respective afterlives, it is simply pointing out that being dead is not utterly compulsory in the underworld, and thus resolving a plethora of contradictions.

YGDV - Your Glorantha Does Vary and you are welcome to your interpretation.

I welcome these kinds of constraints as they lead to better stories (for me anyway). And the exceptions to the constraints can make a great story even better. 

[JonL]

It certainly seems to be that at least some of rules and expectations differ between people who are dead because they were separated them from their bodies and those who walked wholly into the Underworld, despite both being dead in the ritual sense.

The sample adventure in HQ:G has those who survive to the end being returned to the living world by a grateful Asrelia intervening with Ty Kora Tek to allow their release, but those who are slain in the course of their journey become more properly dead and can only return if resurrected during Sacred Time.

In the Underworld excursion part of the Colymar Campaign, the heroes are clearly of the dead by virtue of being there, yet also maintain a connection to the living world that is tested as they walk the Path of Silence and is both recognized and acknowledged by various personages they encounter in the Underworld. In the end, they require no particular resurrection as they leap from the Pit (with Holfstrang calling on Larnste to amplify his super-leap to world-spanning proportions) clear up to Orlanth's Hall. Larnste may have only been willing to help because because the Lunars cast Holfstrang into Hell directly while otherwise still living and the heroes came similarly to retrieve him.

(Cue mostly dead vs all-dead bit from The Princess Bride.) 

Edited January 12, 2017 by JonL

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, JonL said:

Larnste may have only been willing to help because because the Lunars cast Holfstrang into Hell directly while otherwise still living and the heroes came similarly to retrieve him.

Although note that Hofstaring does not return to the world of the living (so yes cast while living into Hell, but among the tortured dead - so dead at whatever point in the journey he enters the Underworld).  He simply goes to Orlanth's Hall to live among the heroes - i.e. he is finally able to follow the true path in the afterlife (and can presumably be worshipped as a hero cult).

Edited January 12, 2017 by jajagappa

[JonL]

Good point. I suppose that, unlike his rescuers, the tortures and deprivations to which he had been subjected were enough for him to "die in the Underworld" as described in the HQ;G adventure, becoming dead in the concrete practical sense as well as in the legalistic ritual sense. 

Humakt seems to be more concerned with the Separation of Life and Man aspect of Death, as the Humakti guardian in the HQ;G scenario insists on somebody getting killed to death rather than just walking through into the ritual state of Death, perhaps insisting that the Death satisfy Truth as well. If there's guidance to be had on the subject of Humakti questing in the underworld, perhaps that's it. If the Humakti walks in, walking back out isn't resurrection, It's the ritual state following the Truth that Life and Man were never Separated in that person. If they, are it doesn't matter to Humakt in which World the follower was standing when it happened. You're not supposed to re-unite what Humakt has Separated. 

Ty Kora Tek, in contrast, embodies Death and Fate. Fate is arbitrary. She's less concerned with how you arrived than with the fact that you're there. It is the Fate of the dead to remain so (until and unless reincarnation provides a new Fate). Eluding her grasp is not a matter of pleading that you're not really dead, but that you're not supposed to be in the Underworld because your destiny lies elsewhere, your current Fate incomplete. If she allows your ritual state of Death to change (by leaving) to reflect the fact that your Fate lies above, it doesn't matter to her whether you were Separated from Life or not. What matters to her is that you must still fulfill your destiny.