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Old 04-29-2022, 11:08 PM   #21
Steve Plambeck
 
Join Date: Jun 2019
Default Re: Is the Book of Unlife "canon" for Cidri?

Quote:
Originally Posted by stefanj View Post
I've been trying to find a justification for "animal spirits" on Cidri, and it might have some applicability to the undead and spirits.

Given magic -- the ability for a mind to alter the physical world, harness energy, shuttle things from other planes of existence, communicate with other minds -- we have to conclude that there is an energy field of some sort beyond kinetics and electromagnetism. Mana, The Force, Phlogiston.

Minds can alter this field, and this field can alter minds. It's likely a subtle and fine-grained thing.... [snip] Hypothesis: Even when not wielding magic, a mind tweaks this field. Over a lifetime, it sets up a complex pattern or standing wave. A spirit, if you will... [snip] And this *could* if you really stretch it create the sort of gods you see in settings like Discworld, who are dependent on believers for their existence and powers.
This describes the cosmology we invented as background for my old group's secondary world almost to a tee. Our world was embedded in an ambient field of Mana that could be influenced by human thought, but only consciously manipulated or focused by those with the psychic training or ability to do so: the wizards and (to a lesser extent) the priests of valid deities.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
What if the natives have built up the spirit of their first queen into a mighty "goddess" level?
And our valid deities were concentrations of self-aware Mana that were re-enforced, strengthened, and given their personalities by the beliefs of their worshipers. Or in game terms, the gods with the most worshipers had the biggest Mana stat.

In order from low to high, we ranked these self-aware Mana beings as: Elementals, Lesser Demons, Greater Demons, Lesser Gods, and Greater Gods in that order. Only a couple of the Lesser Gods made cameo appearances as NPCs -- we kept the Greater Gods pretty far in the background.

The Greater Gods could be entreated by the pious to grant small blessings (+1 on a roll if the prayer was successful) or small curses (-1 on a roll if the prayer was successful). Piety itself was a 1 point talent.

Priests and particularly the High Priest of any given Greater God could invoke bigger "favors" -- they could cast divinely powered "spells" paid for out of the deity's own Mana. This required a 4d6 roll against the cleric's Karma stat (KA), with the penalty for each missed roll being a cumulative -1 KA adjustment on all future KA rolls until certain rituals or penance had been performed to lift the penalty.

And some of the Greater Gods were jealous of each other. If you had more worshipers than the next god (the larger "standing wave" re-enforcing that spirit), then you had more power (the larger Mana stat). This of course gave a couple of these Greater Gods the motive to order their followers to eliminate the worshipers of their competition, which was a starting point for many of the adventures our PCs had to play out and survive. Damn, those were good times!
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Old 05-21-2022, 04:09 PM   #22
Steve Jackson
President and EIC
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Default Re: Is the Book of Unlife "canon" for Cidri?

And to answer the question directly, yes, it is canon.
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