Sorcerous Witches

[PhilHibbs]

What's the "Witch" profession supposed to be? If they are a sorceror, then what is their Grimoire access? In a Gloranthan context, where most grimoires are hugely rare and precious, how does an independent sorceror get access to one? I guess there must be Grimoires that are not derived from the Abiding Book, for instance Mostali grimories, and possibly Trollish ones (although they may be derived from Arkat's grimoires).

I've created a Witch as a sample character for my group, and I gave him three Grimoire skills and will allow the player to pick spells from any of the three but they will not have access to a grimoire to learn more without acquiring access in-game. The rationale is that he stole or cheated his way to get access to them.

If you have a Grimoire skill, and you come across another grimoire that has one of the same spells in it as yours, could you learn that spell from it and cast it with your existing Grimoire skill? I think so, as long as the Grimoire is culturally similar, e.g. both Malkioni or both Stygian.

 

[Loz]

What's the "Witch" profession supposed to be? If they are a sorceror, then what is their Grimoire access? In a Gloranthan context, where most grimoires are hugely rare and precious, how does an independent sorceror get access to one? I guess there must be Grimoires that are not derived from the Abiding Book, for instance Mostali grimories, and possibly Trollish ones (although they may be derived from Arkat's grimoires).

From a generic POV, its up to the GM to decide what form the witch's grimoire takes and where those spells are sourced from. If part of a coven, then the coven is the sorcery order and that's where the spells would come from. A coven of white witches would have healing and nature influencing spells; a black coven the obvious nasties like Wrack and Tap.

From a Gloranthan perspective witches will exist within both Malkioni and non-Malkioni sorcery orders, and independently. Look at the Spolites of Carmania: no idea where they got their magic from, and not even sure that its ever been defined, but in your Glorantha then the Spolites might have stolen spells from the Brithini, the dwarves, Malkioni sorcerers tortured and captured for their secrets, and so on. They might even mix sorcery and divine spells.

Point is, its up to you to define these things, in ways that fit your campaign.

 

[simonh]

It's my understanding that many Grimoires are not primarily lists of spells. Often the fact that they contain magical formulae was not the primary reason for writing them. Many of them are religious or philosophical texts that contain information that can be used to derive magical formulae.

Take The Abiding Book. IMHO as a text it has far more in common with major religious texts from our world than it does with historical occult grimoires of spells. It lays out religious doctrine and teachings, including prayers, parables, anecdotes, etc that those in the know can interpret and adapt into practical magical rituals - spells. However understanding those passages from the text, interpreting them and adapting them to any given situation requires an in-depth understanding of their context in the book. For any given magical effect the sorcerer may need to draw on different passages and synthesise them, perhaps interpreting one passage using an insight gained in another. This is why it's the sorcerer's understanding of the whole text that forms the basis of the chance of casting a spell.

Individual sorcerers would annotate (gloss) their copy of the grimoire, so the text itself will probably change and grow more sophisticated as their skill in it advances. I can imagine that sorcerers will want to gain access to the grimoires of other sorcerers, even if they're notionally the same grimoire, because in an age before printing each document will be unique. Another copy might have different side-notes. Your own copy might have errors, missing sections or damage that another copy might not have in the same areas. Another version might have completely different, possibly older or more authentic illustrations. Or perhaps your copy contains material others lack. This is why individual grimoires are so valuable. It alos means that different copies of supposedly the same text might contain slightly different lists of spells. It might also be possibly to 'discover' a new spell in a grimoire. I remember reading about an ancient velum document that was recently found to contain two extra pages previously unknown because two of the leaves had become fused together, possibly deliberately.

Simon Hibbs