Lhankor Mhy Sorcery and Meldeks

[Ian_W]

One of the things about Orlanthi culture is that All Orlanthi despise sorcerors.

 

As we all know, All Orlanthi means 85%, and that other 15% now appear to be the Knowing God's cult. Now, apart from the possibility that the modern Lhankor Mhy cult is a God Learner leftover together with "spell trading is just another phrase for cultural appropriation" Issaries, how does this change Heortling culture ?

 

 

[Noita]

Isnt it a bit of knowing one's enemy and being able to counter their sorcery?

 

[Ian_W]

4 minutes ago, Iskallor said:

Isnt it a bit of knowing one's enemy and being able to counter their sorcery?

 

The thing about the Orlanthi is that Western Sorcerors aren't the enemy - the enemy is Chaos (and maybe Yelm).

 

To Orlanthi, sorcery is something that has happened inside Time - it isn't part of any of their core myths.

[metcalph]

18 minutes ago, Ian_W said:

One of the things about Orlanthi culture is that All Orlanthi despise sorcerors.

 

As we all know, All Orlanthi means 85%, and that other 15% now appear to be the Knowing God's cult. Now, apart from the possibility that the modern Lhankor Mhy cult is a God Learner leftover together with "spell trading is just another phrase for cultural appropriation" Issaries, how does this change Heortling culture ?

 

 

Meldek are godless sorcerors.  Lhankorings are not godless so are not meldek.  The same goes for the Mostali.  

Lhankor Mhy may have been affected by the God Learners.  I'm thinking the Alien Combination Wheel (mentioned in HQ) is derived from the Zistorites.  But the Heortlings know that Lhankor Mhy is Mostal's son so any strange magic are part and parcel of him being a son of a strange god.  And we all know how Orlanth found friends in the Pit of Strange Gods.

[Ian_W]

20 minutes ago, metcalph said:

But the Heortlings know that Lhankor Mhy is Mostal's son so any strange magic are part and parcel of him being a son of a strange god.  And we all know how Orlanth found friends in the Pit of Strange Gods.

Wait, what ?

[metcalph]

3 minutes ago, Ian_W said:

Wait, what ?

King of Sartar p54 - Orlanth's initiation.  Also found elsewhere in HQ and Stafford library sources.

[metcalph]

40 minutes ago, Ian_W said:

The thing about the Orlanthi is that Western Sorcerors aren't the enemy - the enemy is Chaos (and maybe Yelm).

The Orlanthi do have several mythic fights against the sorcerors of the west.  Zzabur even pops up with a spell to kill all the Vingkotlings.  The spell works but kills nobody because people had stoppped being Vingkotlings.  But this is largely Stafford Library material as the Sartarites don't really have any current need for myths about fghting sorcery - unlike for example the Ralian Orlanthi.

 

[Ian_W]

5 minutes ago, metcalph said:

The Orlanthi do have several mythic fights against the sorcerors of the west.  Zzabur even pops up with a spell to kill all the Vingkotlings.  The spell works but kills nobody because people had stoppped being Vingkotlings.  But this is largely Stafford Library material as the Sartarites don't really have any current need for myths about fghting sorcery - unlike for example the Ralian Orlanthi.

 

Yes, but the Orlanthi also have several mythic fights against everybody - but it's the difference between 'Its a boring Saturday night, get the lads together' and 'This is the enemy'.

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, Ian_W said:

One of the things about Orlanthi culture is that All Orlanthi despise sorcerors.

KoS ed footnote 18 on page 13:

Quote

The Lunar magicians were able to perform many magic feats which the Orlanthi could not. Any bad magic is called sorcery.

page 44

Quote

Malkion: Enemy God, called the Atheist, who perverted the world and invented sorcery, which costs a person their soul to use.

So bad magic and costs your soul is clearly bad thing in a theistic culture. So Lhankor Mhy isn't bad magic and clearly his worshippers have a soul.

sorted 🙂

[Joerg]

Sorcery is another word for alchemy, and vice versa.

Alchemists and guild magics are implicit in the RuneQuest2 rules, practiced among the Orlanthi. These aren't temple-taught magics,  nor do they have spirits behind them. Instead, they are derived from learned knowledge. There is of course a cult of Knowledge among the Orlanthi.

Orlanthi have co-existed with sorcerers for much of their history. Leaving aside the Arkati, we have Talor and the Fronelan Orlanthi making a common front against Gbaji, and we have the Trader Princes of Maniria after the downfall of Slontos.

Slontos itself was a mix of Orlanthi and Western population when the Rightness Crusaders arrived. Friendly contact existed already in the first century, when Boltror the Traveler brought a wife from the East on board a Waertagi ship (although Seshnela was a lot less Malkioni during that period).

 

There are numerous other ways to explain Malkion in Orlanthi terms.

How about this?

Malkion - a storm god born to a Sea Tribe mother who went into the distant west as a youth, was led astray by their notion of Logic and fathered a people of strange customs and magics to the land and sea goddesses of the west.

Late in the Darkness he returned, leading an army of his people against Chaos and destroyed his foe at the cost of most of his people, his life, and his soul.

[David Scott]

25 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Sorcery is another word for alchemy, and vice versa.

Maybe in your opinion, alchemy is much more tied in my mind with the medieval forunner of chemistry and the search of elemental transformation.  

Quote

Alchemists and guild magics are implicit in the RuneQuest2 rules, practiced among the Orlanthi. These aren't temple-taught magics,  nor do they have spirits behind them. Instead, they are derived from learned knowledge.

They make potions, poisons, antidotes and can put spirit magic in potions, much like now universally available enchantment magic. 

Personally I say this has more in common with Bronze Age herbalist practices of Egypt than sorcery. Mummification, healing balms, poisons and tonics all feel a better fit in my Glorantha. Herbal lore would cover most of it for me.

we’ll have to see how alchemy and guilds fare in RQG.

[GianniVacca]

5 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Maybe in your opinion, alchemy is much more tied in my mind with the medieval forunner of chemistry and the search of elemental transformation. 

The only alchemist (if I'm not mistaken) in the extra books from the RQ Classic KS is Chaotic.

[David Scott]

23 minutes ago, GianniVacca said:

The only alchemist (if I'm not mistaken) in the extra books from the RQ Classic KS is Chaotic.

:-)

where is that?

[GianniVacca]

20 minutes ago, David Scott said:

where is that?

The book titled "Dragon Pass something". It's one of the major NPCs.

 

BTW all the major NPCs in that book use a John Spaienza "Major NPC" sheet, which I have never seen elsewhere, and which is pretty cool.

Edited June 19, 2018 by GianniVacca

[GianniVacca]

Found it: it's in the book "Dragon Pass and the Wilds", (no page number): Miskander the Alchemist, Gbaji Priest.

[JonL]

Orlanth seems to be keen on recruiting at least one member who can add rival pantheons' signature brand of awesome to the Storm-Earth alliance. Lhankor Mhy and Issaries brought the gifts of esoterica, language, philosophy, and exploration that are the hallmarks of the Logic Tribe - much like Elmal & Gustbran from the Fire Tribe or Heler & Engizi from the Water Tribe. (I'll defer to greater scholars than I the question of whether the Knowing God & the Talking God originated upon the Spike as the Orlanthi commonly teach or whether their joining up with the Lightbringers during the Westfaring is more than a coincidence.)

Sun magic sux when Dara Happans throw their weight around, but we love it when the Loyal Thanes have our backs.

So too Sorcery.

Interestingly, Orlanth never recruited anyone from the Darkness Tribe, although perhaps Esrola taking Argan Argar as her husband covered the bases there.

Edited June 19, 2018 by JonL

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

Maybe in your opinion, alchemy is much more tied in my mind with the medieval forunner of chemistry and the search of elemental transformation. 

So have you forgotten about Storm Tribe's "Torvald the Alchemist", the first incarnation of Lhankor Mhy Orlanthi dealing with sorcery in Gloranthan publications?

Mostali sorcery is mostly alchemy in the medieval sense rather than spell-craft, IMO.

Alchemy is about producing the essences of stuff, or infusing stuff with such essences. Basic sorcerous techniques and concepts.

Anyways, there are examples elsewhere like Mikaday's Pill of Immortality for his wife.

Being a chemist by trade, to me alchemy has as much in common with chemistry as astrology has with astrophysics. The stuff Newton worked on after leaving the field of physics is some weird form of sympathetic spell-craft. For the logical conclusion of that path, read the Peter Grant novels by Ben Aaronovich, starting with The Rivers of London.

Gem-cutting and setting, metallurgy, probing ores, perfuming, dyeing, glass-making, even glazing of pottery are somewhat chemical lores, and ones I would associate with alchemy, but only in addition to sympathetic principles and sorcerous techniques like Tap..

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

They make potions, poisons, antidotes and can put spirit magic in potions, much like now universally available enchantment magic. 

The interesting part about RQ2 alchemists was that they could do so without burning up their souls (unlike the RQ3 enchantment rules which made the Enchanter the Emptied Magician, regardless from which of the three branches he came). 

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

Personally I say this has more in common with Bronze Age herbalist practices of Egypt than sorcery. Mummification, healing balms, poisons and tonics all feel a better fit in my Glorantha. Herbal lore would cover most of it for me.

Herbalism to me isn't anywhere alchemy, but an almost shamanistic practice. Much like in Brian Bates' "The Way of Wyrd", the story of an Anglo-Saxon monk learning from a magician.

Poison lore is a form of art, but does share skills with perfumers or dye makers, or tanners. And I hope that blade poisons are mostly a thing of the past, kept only for backwards compatibility reasons if at all. Curare for hollow-pointed blowdarts is one thing, but smeared on a bronze weapon? I could survive with bone blades or similarly porous material used for such purposes.

Mummification has lots in common with tanning or the furrier's trade - a paleolithic technology to preserve animal parts applied to human remains. Unless you are talking about awakening mummies as immortal guardians for graves.

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

we’ll have to see how alchemy and guilds fare in RQG.

True. The Guide does mention these things, so I am fairly positive that this stuff will be dealt with sooner or later, but it is quite likely that it will take an urban supplement to do so.

[simonh]

I’ve got no problem with some form of guilds existing, particularly in places like Nochet, Furthest and possibly some Sartarite cities. After all guild-like societies go back into the ancient world era. They existed in Vedic India and Ptolemaic Egypt for sure, and at least as far back as second century BCE Rome.

[Tindalos]

In Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, the Mostali say that their magic is called alchemy by others, and classed as a type of sorcery. (261)

My guess is you could class Alchemy as a form of Natural Philosophy, and use sorcery as part of it.

[Jeff]

6 hours ago, Tindalos said:

In Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, the Mostali say that their magic is called alchemy by others, and classed as a type of sorcery. (261)

My guess is you could class Alchemy as a form of Natural Philosophy, and use sorcery as part of it.

Alchemy is a skill in RQG. 

[David Scott]

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

So have you forgotten about Storm Tribe's "Torvald the Alchemist", the first incarnation of Lhankor Mhy Orlanthi dealing with sorcery in Gloranthan publications?

Yes, deliberately. It was a clumsy writeup and conflated sorcery and alchemy. I'm not disputing that alchemical knowledge isn't coveted by Lhankor Mhy, not all LM are sorcerers, likewise not all are alchemists.

Sorcery and alchemy are separate skills. There is clearly a separation between the two. You don't have do be a practitioner of one to do the other. I would suggest that the difference is the use of magic points and POW in sorcery. Although magical potions exist in RQ, this would seem to be part of enchanting and not confined to sorcery.

[Joerg]

10 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Yes, deliberately. It was a clumsy writeup

Agreed that it was clumsy.

10 minutes ago, David Scott said:

and conflated sorcery and alchemy.

Your notion of alchemy, though not Sir Isaac's.

10 minutes ago, David Scott said:

I'm not disputing that alchemical knowledge isn't coveted by Lhankor Mhy, not all LM are sorcerers, likewise not all are alchemists.

Sorcery and alchemy are separate skills.

I will grant you that there is spell-craft, and there is lab-craft. (What is a good, ancient-sounding word for laboratory that doesn't sound like a smithy?) Both may use the same principles and runes.

10 minutes ago, David Scott said:

There is clearly a separation between the two. You don't have do be a practitioner of one to do the other.

Sorcery is something magical you know. I don't see any need to invent yet another way of doing magical stuff.

You can do beginner-level lab-work without being a sorcerer. Brewing a tea or other extract, press some matter for extrusion of oils (and collecting them), concentrating thin essences into thick ones doesn't convey any magic in itself. But then, the mere act of breathing is magical in Glorantha, so there is a magical component to whatever gets done, or simple existence.

Bless Woad might be listed under alchemy, as it involves lab-work, and even some gardening. At a stretch herbalism. Creating Thunderstones is alchemical in nature, too, and some minimal application of mineral lore - both these magics are about transforming non-magical stuff into the carrier of active or passive magic, but both of these work through being Orlanth (Varanorlanth, Hedkoranth) repeating feats of the deity. The magic isn't imbued through magical knowledge of the nature of the runes, but through divine blessing.

10 minutes ago, David Scott said:

I would suggest that the difference is the use of magic points and POW in sorcery. Although magical potions exist in RQ, this would seem to be part of enchanting and not confined to sorcery.

I have come to see the creations of enchantment as a sorcerous practice. These are skills that are rolled to manipulate magic, not runes or charisma. Dormal's Open Seas is sorcerous in nature, too. Probably alchemical in that it alters the substance of the ship or the water it touches in some way.

In a way, Peaceful Cut with the use of the Butchery skill is sorcerous in nature, too - not something you have or that you are, but something that you know. Here, butchery is the lab-craft..

There are other examples of overlapping magic, like the theist spell-teaching for cult spirit magic.

 

Let's speculate about magical potions. Does their creation require an expenditure of magic points? A mechanism like that would prevent industrious alchemists from creating healing potions by the barrel, probably a desired outcome. The effect of a pre-cast spirit spell should cost the same as (or more than) the spell cast directly. Knowledge of the spell - whether by the person creating the potion, a mindlink to a spirit with that knowledge, or in a matrix - should be demanded, too.

 

[Tindalos]

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

Alchemy is a skill in RQG. 

And so''s Treat Disease, another skill that would presumably involve magical knowledge (to deal with disease spirits) and can be used in tandem with runic, shamanic, or sorcerous magic for more efficacy.

[David Scott]

45 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Your notion of alchemy, though not Sir Isaac's.

See RQG page 175. Alchemy skill, there's no mp or POW expenditure or manipulations. There's also no spell potions. I would speculate that there's info forthcoming in the Gods book as Alchemy is a cult secret of LM & CA and "certain Lunar cults". Adding magic would likely follow the enchanting outline on page 249, but i'm not convinced that spell potions now exist and that any effects could be derived from the source materials using an updated CA potency chart from Cults of Prax:

Ephemeral Grass

When harvested from a Hidden Green this grass has a Potency of 2D6. A successfully alchemy roll can turn it into an odd potion of invisibility. If the potions POT overcomes the POW of the user, the user begins to fade out and in over their POW in days with them totally invisible for 24 hours in the middle of this time. During the before and after fading time it acts as a shimmer spell, increasing then decreasing 1 point per day. If it fails, it acts as a shimmer spell of 1/10 the POT of the potion (rounded up) for 24 hours. It's manufacture is a secret of the Black Fang Cult.

 

[JonL]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

I will grant you that there is spell-craft, and there is lab-craft. (What is a good, ancient-sounding word for laboratory that doesn't sound like a smithy?) Both may use the same principles and runes.

"Laboratory" is from the Latin "laboratorium." If you just drag out every syllable a bit, it will sound ancient.  

If that's too mundane, "Εργαστήριο" (erevastirio) in Greek, "مختبر" (mokhtabaron) from Arabic, or مایشگاه • (âzmâyešgâh) from Persian could all be put to work.