Worship
Normal worship rituals for all Gloranthan religions are re-enactments of ancient creative myths to maintain the flow of magical energy in the world. With the priests’ invocations on holy days, real spirits, gods, and demons enter within the sacred precincts. The sacred magic is performed again, invested with the presence of the immanent gods and spirits, and acting as a link between worshippers and Gods.
Some things that the gods did are too intense for the uninitiated, unused as they are to dealing with powerful spiritual forces. Thus, there are “secret rites” for every cult, known only to initiates, where the roles of the gods are enacted by the individuals with the greatest power. Those are heroquest rituals, such as those performed during the Sacred Time rituals of many Gloranthan religions (although some Heroquest rituals are vital community deeds, involving the whole village or Clan).
Everyone participating in a worship ritual must sacrifice 1 magic point. Initiates and Rune Masters of a cult must sacrifice at least 2 magic points. For each additional magic point sacrificed, the adventurer gets a +10% bonus to their Worship skill for the purpose of the skill roll.
Replenishing Rune Points
Rune points may only be replenished through worship of the deity on a holy day and participation in cult rites.
Rune points can be replenished up to the total the adventurer has with their deity by participating in worship of the deity at a temple, sanctified area, or other holy place to the
deity on a holy day and succeeding with a Worship skill roll and an expenditure of at least 2 magic points.
The amount of Rune points replenished depends on the holy day and whether the adventurer is an initiate, Godtalker, Rune Priest, or Rune Lord.
Sacred Time: All Rune points are replenished with a successful Worship roll. Even on a failure, 2D6 Rune points are replenished, up to the total Rune points.
High Holy Day: All Rune points are replenished with a successful Worship roll. Even on a failure, 2D6 Rune points are replenished, up to the total Rune points.
Seasonal Holy Day: With a successful Worship roll on a seasonal holy day, initiates get 2D6 Rune points restored, and Rune Priests, God-talkers, and Rune Lords get all Rune points replenished. With a failure, an initiate gets 1D3 Rune points replenished; God-talkers, Rune Priests, and Rune Lords get 1D6 Rune points replenished.
Minor Holy Days: With a successful Worship roll on a minor holy day, initiates get 1D6 Rune points restored and God-talkers, Rune Priests, and Rune Lords get 1D6+1 Rune points replenished. With a failure, no Rune points are restored.
Associated Cults: With a successful Worship roll during an associated cult’s high or seasonal holy day, initiates get 1D6 Rune points restored, and God-talkers, Rune Priests, and Rune Lords get 1D6+1 Rune points replenished. With a failure, no Rune points are restored.
Holy Site: A cult member that maintains a holy site for a season (providing it with regular offerings and sacrifices, and typically costing between 25 and 200 L a season) gets 1D3 Rune points replenished with a successful Worship roll or 1 Rune point replenished with a failure.
Votive Image: With the approval of the temple hierarchy, a cult member can commission a votive image (usually a terracotta, stone, or metal statuette costing between 15 and 100 L to make). For each votive image placed in a temple during seasonal or High Holy Day worship ceremonies, the cult member gets 1 Rune point replenished each season. A cult member may have as many votive images in a temple as the priests allow, each votive image typically requiring successful Loyalty (temple) rolls.
However, as ever, those whom the Gods Favour, whilst they are Favoured, may get different benefits.
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is practiced by most cults, although most Gloranthan cults draw the line at sacrifice of sentient beings.
Sacrifice transfers energy from this world to the Gods World. Sacrifices are typically of magic points, of living things, or of goods. An adventurer gets a bonus to their Worship skill depending on the nature and the amount of sacrifice made during the ritual:
Magic Points
Initiates and Rune Masters must sacrifice at least 2 magic points during a Worship ritual to their deity. For each additional magic point sacrificed, they get a +10% bonus to their Worship skill during that ritual. Magic points sacrificed regenerate normally.
Sacrifice of Items or Living Things
Sacrificing animals or plants (in the form of grain, bread, fruits, etc.) and then consuming them in a sacred feast or sacrificing items provides bonuses to worship
eg
Small :Rabbit, bird, 1 liter of wine or beer. +5%
Medium: Sheep, pig, 40 liters of wine or beer. +10%
Large: Cow, horse, 500 liters of wine or beer, etc. +20%
Small: Dagger, axe, spear, or approximately 15 L of goods. +5%
Medium: Sword, large shield, hauberk, full helmet, or approximately 50 L of goods. +10%
Large: Plate panoply, magic item, or approximately 300 L of goods. +20%
Sacred Dates
An adventurer gets a bonus to their Worship skill by performing the ritual upon a date sacred to the deity:
Weekly or other minor holy day +10%
Seasonal holy day +20%
High Holy Day +40%
Sacred Time +40%
Sacred Places
An adventurer gets a bonus to their Worship skill by performing the ritual in a place sacred to the deity:
Shrine: No benefit
Minor Temple +10%
Major Temple +20%
Great Temple +30%
Divination
Divination is a Rune spell, described on page 327 of the main rulebook. Its relation to the worshipper who uses it reveals certain basic aspects of Rune magic.
Divination is used to gain information that the worshipper’s god knows. The god cannot reveal what it does not know.
Most consistently, a god understands the events with which it was involved during the God Time.
Secondly, initiates and Rune Masters are extensions of the deity, and can tell the deity many things through prayer. Thus, a deity will know what has happened to its Rune Masters and, to a lesser extent, its initiates. The god does not know what a Rune Master or initiate is thinking and cannot deduce motivations. A deity cannot invade anyone’s mind; though it knows when a worshipper has lost faith. Other knowledge given to a god by a worshipper must be volunteered through prayer.
Thirdly, gods have general information about events within their own realm. In this case, air is the realm of Orlanth, the earth is Ernalda’s realm, darkness is the realm of Kyger Litor or Zorak Zoran, and the daytime is the realm of Yelm. However, even this ability does not mean that Orlanth can tell you everything that is happening that is in contact with the air. He may be able to tell that an army is approaching but not necessarily whose army, how big it is,
or how fast it is moving.
There are many things that a god cannot tell or find out. Most significantly, a god does not know of events pertaining to another deity or that deity’s worshippers, especially events occurring within “foreign” (i.e., belonging to other gods) sacred or temple grounds.
The motivations of mortal individuals are almost always a mystery to the gods.
Divine Intervention
Divine intervention has the same sort of limitations as Divination. A deity cannot do other than what it did during the God Time. Orlanth cannot make the earth shake, Ernalda cannot bring a storm, and Issaries cannot create a cloak of darkness. Only an Earth deity can open holes in the ground, and only a Fire god can create a fire hot enough to melt bronze (let alone Iron).
A god can transport a worshipper and their followers out of danger by whisking them away to a temple of the god. In general, a call for divine intervention to escape a situation can include up to about 10 normal-SIZed people with limited equipment.
Divine intervention is often used to resurrect a dead adventurer. This works on a single individual—and is often invoked by the dying before the soul leaves their body. An adventurer cannot use divine intervention to be resurrected at some future time. The gods have no concept of, let alone control over, Time. They are incapable of transporting someone into the future or the past.
Divine intervention can be used to raise a characteristic by 1 point, but no characteristic can be raised above its normal maximum, as described on page 418 of the main book (21 for humans).
Divine intervention cannot be used against worshippers of the same god. The worshippers of the Orlanth temple in the Aranwyth Tribe will be refused if they attempt to call
upon Orlanth to help them invade the temple of Orlanth worshippers of the Culbrea Tribe.
Gods are also unlikely to help creatures not of their own religion or lineage. For example, a Kyger Litor cultist shouldn’t expect her goddess to resurrect any non-trolls, and the Ernalda cultist can’t expect Zorak Zoran to help her. It might be possible for a person to have gained the loyal following of peoples outside their cult, and in such cases the leader should be able to assist all their followers via that god. An anti-Chaos party, consisting of a Zorak Zoran leader, and Storm Bull, Babeester Gor, and Orlanth followers should be able to escape a Thanatar temple, if the leader calls upon Zorak Zoran and the god responds.
When a Rune Lord appeals for divine intervention, their God always answers. Because of the direct tie with their god, Rune Lords may even call upon their god after death, calling for one favor, as described in the description of divine intervention found on page 272 of the main book. Certain Death gods (Humakt, looking at you here!), of course, never answer a call for renewed life, but may answer a call to bring the Rune Lord’s party out of difficulty. The call for divine intervention must be made immediately (the next melee round) after death, or the spirit of the Rune Lord goes to their god’s entourage and is unable to call on such intervention.
Should a Rune Lord have insufficient POW to fully meet the results of a divine intervention roll, the request is answered but their body falls lifeless as their spirit is drawn into the god’s entourage.
Wyters
A wyter is the spirit of a community. It is a magical entity linked to its members and a leader, conferred with special powers and abilities. The community may vary, and wyters have been associated with everything from villages, military regiments, temples, clans, tribes, and cities. Any community with an associated Passion has a wyter. A wyter is a powerful resource for a community, but is also the community’s most precious treasure. Without the wyter the community does not exist, the bonds of fraternity dissolving. Its members will become alienated from one another, moving apart, perhaps even leaving the area.
The origins of an individual wyter varies, and wyters include the spirits of dead heroes, genius loci, children of gods, artificial psychic constructs, souls of extinct spirits, intelligent elementals, and many other possibilities. Whatever the origins, these magical entities have become wyters through heroquests that bind the spirit and the community together.