Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes Adulthood Initiations (2012)

Submitted by Daniel Adamov on Wed, 25/04/2012 – 00:32

I’m curious about some particulars of initiations for Sartarite children as described in KoH. I’m not completely sure if this is the right place for it, but, well, I do have a question I’d like answered!

Specifically, I’m curious about elemental runes. The initiation write-ups mention awakening your True Self (Earth Rune) for women and awakening your Breath (Air Rune) for men. I wonder how it works if you have a different rune? Presumably even Vingan women and Nandan men undergo the initiation of their sex first, but what does a future Nandan awaken? His True Self instead of his Breath? His Breath, which is in some way different? Something else?

What of Darkness, Water, Fire? Do they awaken something else entirely, or a different variation on the same themes (sounds like it would be easier with a True Self than with a Breath, of course)? Would they be gender-specific as well? I suppose those things are all individual, of course, but I’m curious as to how you would approach it by default.

Also, I’d like to hear about people’s experiences with roleplaying initiations. They seem like they could be a nice touch, especially when helping people come up with characters and/or trying to immerse them in an unfamiliar setting from the start. On the other hand, of course, they would likely require a very different approach from normal roleplaying.

Thanks in advance!

WRT terms like “Breath”

Submitted by boztakang on Wed, 25/04/2012 – 14:29.

WRT terms like “Breath” and “True Self” I believe these are “just” evocative names for the rune affinity… not every Orlanthi woman thinks of her magical connection to the Earth as her “True Self” but (orlanthi) none of them would ever describe it to another normal orlanthi as “my Earth Rune Affinity”.

So a Nandan might call his Earth Rune his “Nurturing Soul” or a different orlanthi woman call it her “Inner Wealth” or “Cool Certainty” – In game terms I would treat all of these terms as slightly more specific synonyms of “Earth Rune”

An orlanthi who initiates into the Darkness Rune instead of Air simply never awakens his “Breath” in the way a normal man does… Instead he would discover “Dark Motives” or “Black Cruelty” or “Nocturnal Nature.”

In Glorantha, this is juat how “real” people would describe the magical parts of their nature… In game, we use Rune Affinity as a convenient shorthand for certain sorts of magical power. I would encourage Players to use the more descriptive names to help them more naturally understand what their magic should be able to do, and to help them to describe how their magic works in an interesting and fun way.

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