Godlearner Secret

A

aww900

Mongoose
Hi all. Tried searching for this on the forums but couldn't find anything.

Anyway, in the Glorantha: Second Age book, there's information on the Godlearner Secret: something to do with being able to 'punch back through the heroplane into the godplane' (whatever that means). Is that it? Is that what the Secret is all about? Or is there more?
I heard once that it could be summed up in three words.

I don't really care whether I learn the Secret or not. I'd just like
to know if I've now learned what it is after having read the RQ source book.

By the way, I like the descriptions of farming in the EWF: cattle and sheep
with hints of reptilian features, bizzare food crops producing high yields, which can be milled and baked into bloated, unearthly loaves of bread, etc. Very creepy.

Andrew W
 
Actually there are several god learner secrets. One of them was the RuneQuest Sight. Another was how they conducted the Truth Contests. Then there was the secret eliminated by the Gift Carriers, which may or may not have been one of the ones I just mentioned.
 
Yes. But I think you also might want to think about this:

They are able to combine magic from several Otherworld sources without penalty. Sorcery, shamanism, divine power. They had it all. The only thing they were never able to plunder was draconic magic (and they admitted this as being something completely outside their understanding).

That is incredibly powerful and something that no one has been able to do before or since - with the partial exception of the 3rd Age Lunar Empire who have a completely separate Otherworld. Kinda. Sorta.

A half burned book of pictures with a strange little creature living inside it gave the original scholars who would become the God Learners access to divine landscapes. Interestingly, this happened about the same time that the hand of the Invisible God wrote the Abiding Book.... Hmmm.

Voriof

P.S. The RuneQuest Sight spells and relevant skills are included in several of the God Learner schools and orders. Let the plundering of the divine commence!
 
Voriof said:
They are able to combine magic from several Otherworld sources without penalty. Sorcery, shamanism, divine power. They had it all. The only thing they were never able to plunder was draconic magic (and they admitted this as being something completely outside their understanding).
Click to expand...

I'd be a little surprised if they could avoid penalties using different magic types. They engineered cults and modified their magic, but remember they were also devout Malkioni and I expect they avoided using foreign magic (divine magic and shamanistic magic) directly themselves and stick to sorcery.

They never really got to grips with the esoteric aspects of mysticism, whether eastern orthodox or draconic, but they did meddle with draconic magic. The EWF got it's start from God Learner experiments with Auld Wyrmish, and the Path of Immanent Mastery is a God Learner experiment too.
 
simonh said:
I'd be a little surprised if they could avoid penalties using different magic types. They engineered cults and modified their magic, but remember they were also devout Malkioni and I expect they avoided using foreign magic (divine magic and shamanistic magic) directly themselves and stick to sorcery.
Click to expand...

I think the key here is to remember that the God Learners see the pagan deities and heathen spirits as resources to exploit rather than things to be honored.
 
Yes, it's fine showing your mastery of subnormal heathen things by forcing it to give you divine magic or whatever, but not OK to actively worship it.

Of course, if you need to do a little ceremony that calls on the Invisible God and also mentions the name of the entity being mastered, then so be it.
 
simonh said:
Actually there are several god learner secrets. One of them was the RuneQuest Sight. Another was how they conducted the Truth Contests. Then there was the secret eliminated by the Gift Carriers, which may or may not have been one of the ones I just mentioned.
Click to expand...

Another was the Goddess Switch.

RuneQuest Sight's most immediately practical uses get a mention in Magic of Glorantha. Obviously, a lot of it is overly philosophical magical theory that doesn't apply to adventurers (or indeed anyone outside the highest echelons of the God Learners). But finding HeroQuest Gates and Runes - that's covered.
 
weasel_fierce said:
essentially, the god learners are playing at being D&D wizards in a non D&D world :)
Click to expand...

This has more truth to it that you might imagine.

In fact... er... Sorry, someone's at the door - back in a jiffy.

Jeff
 
The Godlearners know what the Number 42 stand for
They also know the secret ingrediant of Coca cola and what the 11 herbs and spice used in KFC chicken are.
 
Was the GL creation of the Trickster Cult an attempt to recreate Ratslaff from his fractured parts including Eurmal?
Or was it just an attempt to draw together aspects of Eurmal?

Drawing on another old RQ thing... are the God Learners illuminated , or does the RuneQuest Sight thingy impart illumination?
 
Exubae said:
Was the GL creation of the Trickster Cult an attempt to recreate Ratslaff from his fractured parts including Eurmal?
Or was it just an attempt to draw together aspects of Eurmal?

Drawing on another old RQ thing... are the God Learners illuminated , or does the RuneQuest Sight thingy impart illumination?
Click to expand...

Eurmal was only one part of Trickster. He's found everywhere and is a transcendent being. Kinda. Sorta. He's found everywhere. Just like bad smells, loaded dice, and tragic misunderstanding.

The GL trickster college was an attempt to catalog and know what is essentially unknowable and inherrently uncontrollable. It ended about as well as you might expect and is a paramount example of God Learner hubris - if not downright stupidity.

Far too many players think of trickster and his cults like WoD players view Malkavians (fish malks). Funny hah hah rather than a curse. Try reading up on some North American trickster tales such as those found in the wonderful book by Pantheon "North American Native Folktales" and then remember that a trickster IS coyote. Or remember the pranks-turned-malice of Loki or Hermes's selfish activiites.

Anyway, that's the viewpoint I write from.

Jeff
 
Exubae said:
Drawing on another old RQ thing... are the God Learners illuminated , or does the RuneQuest Sight thingy impart illumination?
Click to expand...

No, and No.

Illuminatio is a mystical insight into the nature of the Self and subjective reality, while the God Learners as Malkioni are materialists and believe in an objective universe, so realy they're as close to being diametrically opposed as you can get.
 
Voriof said:
Far too many players think of trickster and his cults like WoD players view Malkavians (fish malks). Funny hah hah rather than a curse. Try reading up on some North American trickster tales such as those found in the wonderful book by Pantheon "North American Native Folktales" and then remember that a trickster IS coyote. Or remember the pranks-turned-malice of Loki or Hermes's selfish activiites.

Anyway, that's the viewpoint I write from.

Jeff
Click to expand...

Good approach, but there is some scope for both approaches. The path of trickster is rarely voluntary, but it's very interesting trying to play a fundamentally sane character who has cought the interest / received the curse of the trickster.

In a glorantha influenced sologame I played such a character for almost a decade. The character was a weirdness magnet. The craziest stuff would happen around him, and he'd always get mixed up with things when something strange and dangerous was going down. The neatest part was that I as a player (and the character) could never know how much of it was in his own head, and how much was real.

He turned pretty much into a trickster archetype. He was basically a kind and hedonistic character, but when angered he was a surprisingly unstoppable killer. His best plans often went horribly wrong, and he survived them mostly by blind chanse. When he did save the day, it was often without planning and just by being in the wrong place at the right time.

He was always looking for love, and when he found it, he lost it immediately. He often got what he wished for, but in way that turned out quite different that he had thought.

And so on. A trickster can be a playable character. There can be degrees, and they aren't always mad, just cursed. Heck, odysseus was cursed (as a jinx), but he was still a hero.
 
Might add in the Book of Drastic resolution there was a write up ona chaos trickster cult.
And while I agree that the Godlearners where not be illuminated I can understand why some might believe it. It seems Godlearners where rather soft on Chaos and many would even try to bend it to their will and make use of it. Look at them raising the Broo Hero in Dorester(Rakalzark cant remember how to spell his name) And of course nobody can control chaos for long so those who tried, but that would never stop them
 
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