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What happens when you're dead


David Scott

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5 hours ago, JonL said:

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.

Or purified Hofstaring to the point he won the ultimate prize, beyond life and death, of breaking out of the cycle of re-incarnation and becoming a worshipped Hero with a permanent place on the God-Plane. Hofstaring was already an acknowledged Hero, ageless and well over 100, having been a companion of Tarkalor, before he was bodily taken to the Lunar Hell.

It's not that your interpretation is wrong, many Gloranthans might agree with what you wrote. 

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14 hours ago, JonL said:

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.) 

I suspect that  am arguing that "the rule" should only apply to an Orlanthi "all" (85%) not 100%.

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On 1/9/2017 at 10:06 AM, Ian Cooper said:

Only once the pass into their afterlife, which happens at the Court of Silence, where heroquesters refuse to go to the afterlife and are cast into the pit. See S:KoH. I think that any heroquester who does not refuse their god's help at this step, will never return, instead passing on to their after life. Of course, I don't think this is exactly how Brithini experience it, they have thier own 'perspective' of how this process looks, but it is equivalent.

Brithini who come back from the Underworld are probably no longer Brithini. Perhaps that is what happened to Arkat.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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On 1/10/2017 at 4:22 PM, 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?

I think the aforementioned cults have restrictions as they are the pretty face of Lunars. However, they are probably only guidelines. A Seven Mothers cultist in Dorastor might use chaos amongst the broos and scorpionmen, but they would struggle when encountering Talastari.

Having said that, ogres can join the Seven Mothers and, as you said, the cult gets the Chaos Gift spell which, although it doesn't bestow a Chaos feature on the user/recipient, does use the power of chaos.

I would guess that Lunars claim the Seven Mothers don't use chaos, but they would be lying.

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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One of our PCs is a Storm Bull (Well, Calm Bull really) who joined Humakt after meeting Humakt on a HeroQuest. He often travelled to the Underworld (Our PCs are River Voices and can travel to the Underworld on their Black Barge) but gained the Geas "Never Cross the Styx", to prevent him from entering the Underworld and returning, as that was resurrection. He got around it by being transported directly to Hell and then back, but eventually HeroQuested to get the geas removed. Then he became Illuminated and didn't care anymore.

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Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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It seems to me we are talking about two different things, death by being in the underworld on the one hand and the severing of body and soul on the other.

When heroquesters (and giant babies?) travel to Hell they cross the Styx they are dead, but their bodies and souls are not necessarily separated. When someone is killed in the Middle World their bodies and souls are separated, but the soul does not immediately travel to the Underworld. Once the soul does go to Hell after 7 days, resurrection by the spell is no longer possible.

Note that Humakti have a huge problem with people getting resurrected by having their separated body and soul rejoined, but don't have any problem with people who bodily travelled to the underworld returning. So these are clearly completely different states, they are not just two different ways to reach a single identical state. But equally beings in Hell are clearly operating under the rules that apply in Hell, they are in a different state from beings in the Middle World.

So to me this disagreement is due to perhaps the single most common cause of all disagreements ever - using the same words as each other but meaning or understanding them to mean different things.

I'm sure this sort of disagreement happens in Glorantha as well. The great mystical truths of Gloranthan religion are not learnable by memorising dogma (shh, don't tell the Lankor Mhy), but must be experienced because language and even logic is incapable of expressing them.

Is there some better terminology we can use to distinguish these different forms of death though? Maybe, but we're always going to have to deal with the fact that sources are going to use ambiguous language. With mythology as with many forms of literature, you need to look past the literal terminology and be prepared to interpret it flexibly. So when Jeff says that the official position is that because beings in Hell are by definition dead, I like to think that what that state - dead - means needs to be interpreted flexibly and might not always to all beings in all cases mean the same thing.

As a footnote, bear in mind that even separation of body and soul can mean different things. Someone killed by Sever Spirit is dead, their body is lifeless and decays, but a Shaman who's spirit has discorporated is not in the same state. It's not even that mortals are just binary beings of body and soul, I think Orlanthi believe there are many parts to a mortal being, only one of which is the physical body. So which parts are severed from which? The two types of 'death' might consist of different parts being separated. The whole terms of this discussion are hopelessly simplistic. There's an awful lot of talking past each other going on.

Simon Hibbs

 

Edited by simonh
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On 1/22/2017 at 5:37 AM, simonh said:

It seems to me we are talking about two different things, death by being in the underworld on the one hand and the severing of body and soul on the other.

When heroquesters (and giant babies?) travel to Hell they cross the Styx they are dead, but their bodies and souls are not necessarily separated. When someone is killed in the Middle World their bodies and souls are separated, but the soul does not immediately travel to the Underworld. Once the soul does go to Hell after 7 days, resurrection by the spell is no longer possible.

Note that Humakti have a huge problem with people getting resurrected by having their separated body and soul rejoined, but don't have any problem with people who bodily travelled to the underworld returning. So these are clearly completely different states, they are not just two different ways to reach a single identical state. But equally beings in Hell are clearly operating under the rules that apply in Hell, they are in a different state from beings in the Middle World.

So to me this disagreement is due to perhaps the single most common cause of all disagreements ever - using the same words as each other but meaning or understanding them to mean different things.

I'm sure this sort of disagreement happens in Glorantha as well. The great mystical truths of Gloranthan religion are not learnable by memorising dogma (shh, don't tell the Lankor Mhy), but must be experienced because language and even logic is incapable of expressing them.

Is there some better terminology we can use to distinguish these different forms of death though? Maybe, but we're always going to have to deal with the fact that sources are going to use ambiguous language. With mythology as with many forms of literature, you need to look past the literal terminology and be prepared to interpret it flexibly. So when Jeff says that the official position is that because beings in Hell are by definition dead, I like to think that what that state - dead - means needs to be interpreted flexibly and might not always to all beings in all cases mean the same thing.

As a footnote, bear in mind that even separation of body and soul can mean different things. Someone killed by Sever Spirit is dead, their body is lifeless and decays, but a Shaman who's spirit has discorporated is not in the same state. It's not even that mortals are just binary beings of body and soul, I think Orlanthi believe there are many parts to a mortal being, only one of which is the physical body. So which parts are severed from which? The two types of 'death' might consist of different parts being separated. The whole terms of this discussion are hopelessly simplistic. There's an awful lot of talking past each other going on.

Simon Hibbs

 

I agree with this position.  Good work Simon.

I also like Simon's suggestion that Shamanic soul separation and Death need to be differentiated too.  In western occultism for example the notion exists that there is a "silver cord" that ties the person to their body, but that is a bad model and I have not heard of shamans worrying themselves about such things in any other culture.

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On 21/01/2017 at 7:37 PM, simonh said:

Note that Humakti have a huge problem with people getting resurrected by having their separated body and soul rejoined, but don't have any problem with people who bodily travelled to the underworld returning.

I think most Humakti cults would have serious problems if they met them and had to kill them again.

 

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32 minutes ago, Tcneseleis said:

I think most Humakti cults would have serious problems if they met them and had to kill them again.

 

I think it's unlikely someone killed by a Humakti would end up in Hell with their body and soul not separated.

Simon Hibbs

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12 minutes ago, simonh said:

How would someone killed by a Humakti end up in Hell with their body and soul not separated?

Simon Hibbs

People who go to Hell with all of their soul and body and return are very powerful people who have walked heroquest paths of special kinds, in fact Heroes. I didn't mean people who were killed by Humakti but people who went to the Underworld willfully. If I can make myself clearer, I mean to say that it is highly unusual to meet them and just call them sinners and try to kill them (although it is often what most people would like to do). They are very dangerous, may have a large band of followers, and when they are not blessed by the gods, they are able to withstand divine rules. Very few such individuals are known in Glorantha: Sheng Seleris, Ethilrist, the Red Emperor, are the ones I can remember.

 

 

 

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How about heroquesters that travel to the underworld? In particular Humakti heroquesters such as those performing the Sword Bridge Quest?

This is the issue that triggered this discussion. We know that Humakti don't have a problem with people that bodily travel to Hell and back and actually do this themselves.

Simon Hibbs

Edited by simonh
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11 minutes ago, simonh said:

How about heroquesters that travel to the underworld? In particular Humakti heroquesters such as those performing the Sword Bridge Quest?

This is the issue that triggered this discussion. We know that Humakti don't have a problem with people that bodily travel to Hell and back and actually do this themselves.

If the Humakti don't have the problem with sacrilege resurrection, they still have to deal with competing heroquesters. I don't know what happens in the Sword Bridge quest, so I could not comment on this. My point is mostly about the scale of power involved, even if only followers of other war gods are taken as serious rivals. Humakti who have never heroquested and meet real heroquesters who follow rival war gods have problems. :-)

 

 

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1 hour ago, simonh said:

How about heroquesters that travel to the underworld? In particular Humakti heroquesters such as those performing the Sword Bridge Quest?

The heroquesters are, I suspect, fulfilling roles defined by the heroquest. If the role a Humakti is fulfilling died in the myth, then they will be in trouble; otherwise they will only suffer the consequences of their own actions.

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6 hours ago, Tcneseleis said:

If the Humakti don't have the problem with sacrilege resurrection, ...

 

 

The whole point of my suggestion is that this form of resurrection may not be sacrilege for Humakti, and there are some reasons to believe that this is so. If it's sacrilege of course they will have a problem with it. But equally if they don't have a problem with it, presumably it is not considered sacrilege. Does that seem reasonable?

So that's what I'm suggesting - the actual distinction between the cases they seem ok with and may even participate in and those they are explicitly not ok with.

Most of the details of the Sword Bridge Quest aren't relevant except for that it's a Humakti hero quest and that at leas part of it takes place in Hell. So to perform the quest a Humakti would have to travel to Hell and come back again.

>I didn't mean people who were killed by Humakti but people who went to the Underworld willfully

I'm saying that while such people are dead in some sense, they are not severed and have not actually been touched by Humakt, so their returning to the lands of the living might not be considered sacrilege by Humakti.

Simon Hibbs

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On 1/21/2017 at 8:37 PM, simonh said:

Is there some better terminology we can use to distinguish these different forms of death though? Maybe, but we're always going to have to deal with the fact that sources are going to use ambiguous language. With mythology as with many forms of literature, you need to look past the literal terminology and be prepared to interpret it flexibly. So when Jeff says that the official position is that because beings in Hell are by definition dead, I like to think that what that state - dead - means needs to be interpreted flexibly and might not always to all beings in all cases mean the same thing.

 

This absolutely spot on. Dead is a broad category (as I think I have said before) and the state of being dead is not always the same thing. Other than being dead, of course.

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1 hour ago, Jeff said:

This absolutely spot on. Dead is a broad category (as I think I have said before) and the state of being dead is not always the same thing. Other than being dead, of course.

State of Dead?  Isn't that the name of the Donandar Skeleton Rock Band?  Where the drummer whips out his femurs and they're his drum sticks and the other skeletons tap dance except that one that plays his bone flute?  (All you Storm Bulls stop guffawing and I heard that snort of derision from the Lankhor Mhy in the corner.)

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2 hours ago, Jeff said:

This absolutely spot on. Dead is a broad category (as I think I have said before) and the state of being dead is not always the same thing. Other than being dead, of course.

To reiterate what I said earlier in this thread...

The discussion of this issue as with many others in the forum suffers from contributions  that are lacking in Mythopoeic Thought. There often seems to be those who are unable or unwilling to tolerate seeming contradictions in the mythology of Glorantha or various attempts to create modern "universal" thought paterns ("Rules") and impose them onto mythology. 

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4 hours ago, Jeff said:

This absolutely spot on. Dead is a broad category (as I think I have said before) and the state of being dead is not always the same thing. Other than being dead, of course.

And yet here we are using the same term for multiple states, often repeatedly.  I accept that death can be a direction like a compass point in Glorantha due to the mythic landscape and the transmigration of animating spirits.  When you die you go in that direction, much like travelling into the North or travelling towards the North, you can travel into Death or travel towards Death i.e. the Underworld.  But there is a clear distinction to be made.  If you are a spirit separated from your body by means other than shamanic travel, you lose a lot of agency in that process.  Someone who retains their body while travelling into Death retains agency.  The embodied are clearly immensely less dead than a ghost, because while they have traveled into death, they are not dead in any sense that Humakt would acknowledge, or Daka Fal for that matter. Living bodies should be very vulnerable in the underworld, and moribund, and the longer they are exposed to the underworld the more exposed and endangered they should be.  What does a living body eat or drink down there after all?   This I have no issue with.  On the other hand, they aren't dead while they are animated, and nor are they undead for Humakt certainly wouldn't permit that to his worshipers, so they must be alive but in a death-like state by a logical process of elimination. 

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16 hours ago, simonh said:

The whole point of my suggestion is that this form of resurrection may not be sacrilege for Humakti, and there are some reasons to believe that this is so. If it's sacrilege of course they will have a problem with it. But equally if they don't have a problem with it, presumably it is not considered sacrilege. Does that seem reasonable?

So that's what I'm suggesting - the actual distinction between the cases they seem ok with and may even participate in and those they are explicitly not ok with.

Most of the details of the Sword Bridge Quest aren't relevant except for that it's a Humakti hero quest and that at leas part of it takes place in Hell. So to perform the quest a Humakti would have to travel to Hell and come back again.

I understand that Humakti would not target people who return from the Underworld as much as they target people who resurrect. I didn't think it could be a problem, I just thought powerful heroquesters would usually be taken seriously. But in a general context, Humakt defends the sacred status of death both as his own territory and as a member of the Orlanthi pantheon.

 

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7 hours ago, Darius West said:

And yet here we are using the same term for multiple states, often repeatedly.  I accept that death can be a direction like a compass point in Glorantha due to the mythic landscape and the transmigration of animating spirits.  When you die you go in that direction, much like travelling into the North or travelling towards the North, you can travel into Death or travel towards Death i.e. the Underworld.  But there is a clear distinction to be made.  If you are a spirit separated from your body by means other than shamanic travel, you lose a lot of agency in that process.  Someone who retains their body while travelling into Death retains agency.  The embodied are clearly immensely less dead than a ghost, because while they have traveled into death, they are not dead in any sense that Humakt would acknowledge, or Daka Fal for that matter. Living bodies should be very vulnerable in the underworld, and moribund, and the longer they are exposed to the underworld the more exposed and endangered they should be.  What does a living body eat or drink down there after all?   This I have no issue with.  On the other hand, they aren't dead while they are animated, and nor are they undead for Humakt certainly wouldn't permit that to his worshipers, so they must be alive but in a death-like state by a logical process of elimination. 

Some issues:

  • The 'undead' including ghosts, vampires, Delecti etc that have a soul have not passed into the Underworld. They have defied the fate of Grandfather Mortal. Skeletons and Zombies are a little different because they are just re-animated corpses not souls. A ghost is not 'dead' to a Humakti, it is defying death. The cult can create ghosts, their perspective is 'nuanced.'
  • Under this term ghost in Glorantha is different to ours because it does not refer to visits to the living by the souls of the departed i.e. on Ancestor Day. These are the dead who return to commune with the living. Humakti don't go around 'finishing off' the ancestors on Ancestor Day. The ancestors did not 'defy death' they are dead, but on this day they get to walk amongst the living once again. Humakti understand this nuance.
  • Because HUmakti understand nuance they can distinguish between a heroquester who has returned from the Underworld, and someone who has defied the fate of Grandfather Mortal.

There is no simple rule which says: Humakt hates things that should be dead that are not, and hates beings that return from the underworld. It's about context.

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Completely with Ian on context. I loo think it's likely to be something that different Humakti can disagree on. Some temples might apply different interpretations. So for example on Ancestor Day one Humakti might take part, another might prefer to leave for the duration, while a real a-hole might actively try to spoil everything.

Simon Hibbs

Check out the Runequest Glorantha Wiki for RQ links and resources. Any updates or contributions welcome!

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12 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

Some issues:

  • The 'undead' including ghosts, vampires, Delecti etc that have a soul have not passed into the Underworld. They have defied the fate of Grandfather Mortal. Skeletons and Zombies are a little different because they are just re-animated corpses not souls. A ghost is not 'dead' to a Humakti, it is defying death. The cult can create ghosts, their perspective is 'nuanced.'

I draw your attention to Cults of Prax.  As I have said elsewhere, Humakti don't resurrect, and that means all forms of coming back from the dead.  I think however that Humakti do not regard disembodied spirits with the same dislike they treat those who are embodied, like ghouls, zombies, vampires etc.  On the other hand, if you go into the underworld and are mortified and considered "dead", then you can't come back if you are a Humakti... unless you aren't actually dead at all because your spirit is not severed from your body, which seems eminently more likely and logical.

12 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

Under this term ghost in Glorantha is different to ours because it does not refer to visits to the living by the souls of the departed i.e. on Ancestor Day. These are the dead who return to commune with the living. Humakti don't go around 'finishing off' the ancestors on Ancestor Day. The ancestors did not 'defy death' they are dead, but on this day they get to walk among the living once again. Humakti understand this nuance.

Again, I don't think Humakti have as much issue with disembodied spirits as they do with those who cling to the flesh without any right to it.  Clearly Humakti have allied spirits taken from the Einherjar that live in their swords. As to ancestor day, I think the decisive answer is that dominant possession doesn't kill the spirit that is overwhelmed, and if the ancestor leaves after a day, having met, in effect, a ritual oath, Humakti are unlikely to get offended.  I get the feeling that perhaps the only area where Humakt offers leeway on undeath is in the case of unfulfilled oaths. 

13 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

Because Humakti understand nuance they can distinguish between a heroquester who has returned from the Underworld, and someone who has defied the fate of Grandfather Mortal.

When Grandfather Mortal died he went into the Underworld and remained there as judge.  Those who return from death are inherently and unavoidably resurrecting themselves if you are always 100% dead in the underworld.  If like myself you think that you have to be separated from your body in order to be truly dead, then that is not the case, and you can return without offending Humakt.  I think a descent into the underworld is a journey into death, but not the same as actually being dead.  Surely that is the Humakti secret of the return.

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55 minutes ago, Darius West said:

I draw your attention to Cults of Prax.  As I have said elsewhere, Humakti don't resurrect, and that means all forms of coming back from the dead.

Interestingly, going back to Cults of Prax, it says "Humakt worshippers are never Ressurected." With resurrected capitalized, unlike other uses of the word.

It's quite possible that this reference is specifically talking about the Resurrection spell, and not all forms of coming back from the dead (although being neither Stafford or Perrin, I can't be sure.)

Other resurrection spells are mentioned as existing, they're just not as easy or foolproof (such as the Eirithan Seal Spirit spell,) and it may be feasible that there would exist those which would work on Humakti.

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