Prax and all the thousands of questions about it…

[Jeff Richard]

Monkey Ruins is the main caravan track from southern Heortland to Prax, and only about 50 miles from Refuge. During the Inhuman Occupation, that would have been the only route from Prax to the civilized Holy Country.

[Niall]

Thanks Jeff.

What’s the Praxian attitude to the sea? Does it feature in their stories? Are their spirits of the shore?

Would a Praxian get on a boat, ship or raft?

[Niall]

And another one…

Long-noses, one of the lost tribes. I remember reading somewhere a short story about one of it’s members, coming back….There was a cave….Can’t remember more. Anyone know where that was printed? Old age…Getting muddled

[Niall]

Here’s a thing…

Someone just pointed out to me in the Cults of Prax that followers of Waha pay double for Healing spells and can’t use Xenohealing. Why was that a thing? Is it still true of Waha followers that they can’t use magic to heal their animals? Or frown on healing themselves?

“No Bull Roarer I shall let my beloved Stomper walk to the marsh with his innards hanging out…Waha forbids it. It will be character building for him…”

*Smack*

“And that’s for trying to heal me…I shall drink Kumiss to sooth the pain of the axe wound to my head.”

[Simon Phipp]

Eirithans can heal, so Waha cultists don’t need to.

The Healing 1 is to stop the bleeding and to get an impressive scar. Anything more and the Waha cultist needs to be cradled by his wife, mother or some other friendly Eirithan who can croon and make him feel better.

[Jeff Richard]

Waha is a god of Death and Mastery. Neither of the Runes are particularly healing related.

[Niall]

Quote:

Quote from Simon Phipp on May 28, 2014, 14:15
Eirithans can heal, so Waha cultists don’t need to.

The Healing 1 is to stop the bleeding and to get an impressive scar. Anything more and the Waha cultist needs to be cradled by his wife, mother or some other friendly Eirithan who can croon and make him feel better.

But not to good when miles from home like our typical wandering adventurers.

Quote:

Quote from Jeff Richard on May 28, 2014, 15:25
Waha is a god of Death and Mastery. Neither of the Runes are particularly healing related.

Thanks :). What do they do when they go raiding into Sartar? Do they bring their women folk to heal them?

I ask because I have a bunch of Waha braves wandering the Wastes far from home and their mums.

[Niall]

Quote:

Quote from Jeff Richard on May 28, 2014, 15:25
Waha is a god of Death and Mastery. Neither of the Runes are particularly healing related.

I forgot to add that back in the day when the Cults of Prax was written Waha’s runes were Death, Beast and Man. Surely they’d have allowed healing of their beasts.

Foundchild had death and they have no restrictions on healing.

I’m back to it making no sense.

[Simon Phipp]

Eirithans tend the beasts, Waha cultists ride them. If a beast needs healing, then the Waha cultists take them to the Eiritha cult.

In any case, I dropped XenoHealing virtually immediately, I just use Healing for everything.

But, Storm Bull, Humakt and Zorak Zoran are Death cults and have no restriction on Healing, so it must be something in Waha’s mythology. Maybe there’s a “How Waha went to his mummy when he got hurt” myth, but that makes him sound even more like a cry-baby than he already is.

[Jeff Richard]

Storm Bull is not a Death cult. He’s Air and his own weird Chaos-killing thing.

Humakt has no inherent healing magic. Nor does Zorak Zoran. Nothing stops someone from getting a charm or learning a spell that provides healing, but it doesn’t come from the god. Now you might call upon Humakt to let you keep killing even though your mortal frame should expire, but that’s not really “healing”.

[Simon Phipp]

Ah, but the original question asked why Waha was restricted to only a single point of Healing, where other cults were not. If Humakti were banned from getting healing in some form then it would make sense for that to be a Death attribute, but, with the exception of a couple of geases, that is not the case.

The original RQ runes for cults are: Storm Bull – Death, Storm, Beast; Zorak Zoran – Death, Darkness, Disorder; Humakt – Death, Death, Truth. They may well have changed, I can’t keep up with changes to make cults fit better with rules.

Hence, it makes sense for this to be myth-based, rather than Rune-based.

[Niall]

Yes I’m coming at this from the time of Cults of Prax. I’m just interested of why it was like that then and because I’m running an old school RQII game where all the players are followers of Waha. Doesn’t help that all the Runes are different too. And yeah back then Storm Bull was a death cult

I think it has to be myth based like you say Simon.

Waha had to be healed by Pavis, so that backs up him not having healing magic. But why would you condemn all your male warriors not to heal easily? To bind them to their womenfolk and not to stray from the Herd. Makes them totally reliant.

I never came up against it before as there was always a mix of characters in the party.

Yep I got rid of xenohealing too.

[Scott Martin]

I always thought Waha followers (Cults of Prax era) could Heal or be Healed to their hearts’ delight and could become as good at it as anyone else; it was only that they had to pay double in cult credit to learn the spell in the first place.

Because this applied to lay worshippers and not just initiates, my guess was that it was a cultural constraint and not something unique about the Waha spirit that we might expect to reveal itself in initiation to the god. The old men of Waha collectively have access to the Healing spell! There’s no cult prohibition or geas against learning or using it! They simply don’t like to teach it so need to be “motivated,” have a harder time teaching it or it’s a rarer spell for them so the occasional specialist can charge a fat premium on his expertise. (See also: Evaluate Treasure, Climbing, Map Making.)

If so, this is a self-perpetuating system. Most Waha braves have an easier time making friends with someone or capturing a walker who can learn Healing on the relative cheap than they do seeking out the teacher and the funds to learn it themselves. Braves who pick up Healing on the way up the uh totem pole are relatively rare and so people in a position to teach the spell are relatively rare and the cycle repeats another generation.

I’m sure there are Just So myths explaining this in terms of “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Scars Are Your Honor” and so on. I like the notion that Waha digging the Good Canal represents Praxian circumcision, the one wound you must not have magically Healed because it demonstrates your ritual status. But by the book Waha wasn’t the source of Battle Magic anyway so it didn’t matter what his runes were. Humakt and Storm Bull (for example) also had the Death Rune but could still learn the spell, Heal and be Healed willy-nilly unless geasa got in the way.

The Xenohealing thing was an outright prohibition so learning or teaching it to braves is an actual taboo. I like the theory someone had years ago that tied this to the secrets of the Peaceful Cut. A blooded [sic] Waha brave can never restore life to a herd animal. A Waha brave only takes. This is part of the Covenant.

Suddenly vast Gene Day vistas of the *gendered* dimension of the Covenant (Waha / Eiritha) open up in my head and I can almost hear the songs they sing to celebrate a Praxian marriage, so I’ll stop babbling now.

[David Scott]

Quote:

Quote from Simon Phipp on May 28, 2014, 19:45
Eirithans tend the beasts, Waha cultists ride them. If a beast needs healing, then the Waha cultists take them to the Eiritha cult.

Looking more deeply at Praxian culture reveals that most men and women are herders, with some men being warriors or hunters. All ride herd beasts.

The Waha cult has a restriction on life magic (opposite of Death), but most healing is based on the Harmony rune. Waha cultists can get healing charms from other cults/spirit societies in the Praxian tradition.

All Praxian know simple animal healing techniques, but doesn’t come from Waha. Waha of course knows the healing, the peaceful cut.

In RQ terms Waha cultists can learn animal healing from associated cults.

Big healing (both animal and human) is best left to the Eiritha Shaman-Priestesses who really know their stuff. At the Paps it’s rumoured that they can even heal gods as Pavis taught them.

[Niall]

Medicine Bundles

From an article by Greg in one of the Tales of the Reaching Moons No 14, he indicated that there were ten great medicine bundles on Prax. Do we know anything about them?

The Stepladder (I think this was to do with Raven)
The Clay Pot
The Trumpet of Apprehension
The Plough???
The Comb
The Cradle
The Spicegrass Kettle
The Lens
The Table (Eiritha tables?)
The scissors

[Author]

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