About Greater Entities

[Pheres]

Hello all!

I am reading RQG since few weeks and it seems that gods and other spiritual entities are taking a very important part in the game background and character life.

I think that having the capability for a player and his character to make a deeper link between his character and this entities could be a very important thing.

So i would like to know if the greater entities, especially like Hykim and Mikyh that are associated with Yinkin, will be describes in the future book about cults?

About Hykim and Mikyh: i have tried to find some informations about them, but found very few things. So if someone can tell me more, he will be welcome.

Thanks

[metcalph]

There are quite a few greater deities - the problem with their worship is that they are not very developed  That is, their demands are simple and their magic quite basic.  That's why gloranthans worship the more sophisticated lesser gods and pay lop service to the greater ones.

[Richard S.]

16 minutes ago, Pheres said:

Hello all!

I am reading RQG since few weeks and it seems that gods and other spiritual entities are taking a very important part in the game background and character life.

I think that having the capability for a player and his character to make a deeper link between his character and this entities could be a very important thing.

So i would like to know if the greater entities, especially like Hykim and Mikyh that are associated with Yinkin, will be describes in the future book about cults?

About Hykim and Mikyh: i have tried to find some informations about them, but found very few things. So if someone can tell me more, he will be welcome.

Thanks

Hykim and Mikyh are widely considered to be the progenitors of all beasts and the original holders/creators of the beast rune. Them and other greater beings such as Umath, Flamal, and other original gods of the Element and Form runes, while encompassing everything about that rune, are more limited in what they can actually do and thus in the magic they can provide as they exist as primordial forces and ancestors rather than active participants in cultural myths and legends. Since what rune magic a god provides is based on their own actions before time, those who do little give less magic. This is probably better explained in the Xeotam Dialogues though, which are a series of passages by a Ralian sorcerer on the nature of gods, the runes, and ancestry, and is easily found with a Google search.

[jajagappa]

21 minutes ago, Pheres said:

So i would like to know if the greater entities, especially like Hykim and Mikyh that are associated with Yinkin, will be describes in the future book about cults?

About Hykim and Mikyh: i have tried to find some informations about them, but found very few things. So if someone can tell me more, he will be welcome.

I expect most of the greater entities will be in the Gods of Glorantha book.  

Re: Hykim and Mikyh, the best sources are the Guide to Glorantha and the Glorantha Sourcebook.  It/they are the source of the Beast Rune, and almost all beasts are said to descend from one of them.  The Hsunchen folk claim them as part of their ancestry, usually with whatever animal is their associated beast-spirit.

GtG p.21 or GS p.73: "Hykim and Mikyh
According to God Learner genealogies, Hykim and Mikyh are the ancestors of all beasts. They are usually said to be dragons. Hykim is male and Mikyh female, though they never appear together in tales. The God-Learners hypothesized that they represent a single hermaphroditic being, in normal draconic fashion. The genealogy of these deities resembles a taxonomic
classification of Gloranthan animals. There is, for instance, a Mammal Mother whose children are the cat-god, bear-god, sheep-god, and so on. Then the cat-god is parent to the lion spirit,
the lynx-spirit, the tiger-spirit, and so forth. Some animals are also accounted another origin elsewhere. One example is Vrimak – the paramount bird-ancestor, but who is said to have been created by Dayzatar, the sky god. Most animals are closely associated with another deity, and Hykim or Mikyh are used as explanatory links. For instance, Mikyh is the mother of King Griffin by Yelm, and of Storm Bull by Umath."

GS p.71 "There roamed Hykim, Eldest Beast, said to be in the form of a Dragon."

[Pheres]

5 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Hykim and Mikyh are widely considered to be the progenitors of all beasts and the original holders/creators of the beast rune. Them and other greater beings such as Umath, Flamal, and other original gods of the Element and Form runes, while encompassing everything about that rune, are more limited in what they can actually do and thus in the magic they can provide as they exist as primordial forces and ancestors rather than active participants in cultural myths and legends. Since what rune magic a god provides is based on their own actions before time, those who do little give less magic. This is probably better explained in the Xeotam Dialogues though, which are a series of passages by a Ralian sorcerer on the nature of gods, the runes, and ancestry, and is easily found with a Google search. 

Thanks, i will have a look on the Xeotam Dialogues

 

And Thanks jajagappa,!

Edited July 4, 2018 by Pheres

[soltakss]

On 7/4/2018 at 8:31 PM, Pheres said:

I am reading RQG since few weeks and it seems that gods and other spiritual entities are taking a very important part in the game background and character life.

I think that having the capability for a player and his character to make a deeper link between his character and this entities could be a very important thing.

So i would like to know if the greater entities, especially like Hykim and Mikyh that are associated with Yinkin, will be describes in the future book about cults?

About Hykim and Mikyh: i have tried to find some informations about them, but found very few things. So if someone can tell me more, he will be welcome.

I would be surprised if they are described in detail.

However, Hykim and Mikyh are thought to be dragons who mated with each other and a lot of deities to produce the beasts. Hykim is traditionally male and Mikyh is traditionally female, presumably except when they are not. Some people think they are one hermaphrodite dragon. It doesn't really matter either way. 

Most of their myths are origin stories of how such and such a beast came into being, normally through mating with one or the other.

The Hsunchen are beastmen/werebeasts who worship the children of Hykim and Mikyh and they are probably the ones most likely to actually worship them.

Sorcerers and shamans might try to access their powers in different ways, but their children are easier to access and grant more specific powers.

[simonh]

One way to think about this is what forces are active in the world. Air by itself doesn’t do much, it’s really important obviously and we’d die without it, but it’s not active, whereas Storm is an active thing that engenders change. So while the primal god of air is vital to the existence of the world, people worship the gods of the weather, because those are agents of change.

Without Hykim and Mikyh the beasts of the world wouldn’t exist, but the actual beasts we encounter in our daily lives are what matter here and now.

[Joerg]

The God Learner philosophical devolution of beasts has Hykim and Mikyh as the first physical manifestation of beasthood, and follows them up with a host of single purpose and derived taxa, plus ancestral trees resembling the Linnaeus taxonomy concepts, like Mother Mammal or Fralar, the ancestor of the Carnivores.

7 hours ago, simonh said:

Without Hykim and Mikyh the beasts of the world wouldn’t exist, but the actual beasts we encounter in our daily lives are what matter here and now.

Also, for most Hsunchen the beast god worship is ancestral in nature. I expect some Hsunchen magic (and not just limited to full or partial shape-changing) to be introduced with the Bestiary, at least for Telmori and Basmoli.

But basically, worship of the unspecific Beast rune entity has a lot less application than worship of the totem beast spirits (or deities).  Trying to gain some draconic powers or insights through Hykim and Mikyh sounds like something the God Learners might have tried, and may have found lacking in their conflicts with the EWF.