Intermission 8 Page 15
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“Who’s Indira?”
“Is that the girl you talked about before?”
“The one I became an arachnomancer for. Yeah.”
“So… you think I’m trying to get you to join a cult, too?”
“Hah. No.”
“Though, if you ever DID want to start one, I think you might be scary good at it.”
“No, it’s just your attitude and mannerisms. You’ve got the same energy.”
“She doesn’t sound like someone who would be part of a group like the arachnomancers.”
“Neither do you.”
“Well, it’s… complicated.”
“The arachnomancers weren’t always what they are now. Way, way back, before the Empire, it was an isolated, ascetic religion.”
“They weren’t violent, they didn’t practice dark magic or summon monsters.”
“They didn’t even worship the Goddess of Spiders, if you can believe it. Not really.”
“Then how did they even count as a religion?”
“Well, the Goddess of Spiders… she’s not like like most other gods.”
“She’s HUNGRY.”
“She doesn’t give blessings, she EATS people.”
“Arachnomancers never used to kidnap people. Instead, when the Goddess demanded a sacrifice, one of the arachnomancers would volunteer. Usually the oldest.”
“That one acolyte would be killed in the name of the Goddess, and she would be satisfied and refrain from unleashing her wrath on anyone else.”
“They would rather die than see someone else get hurt, you see. In return, drow communities would send them whatever food or other supplies they needed. They were highly respected.”
“And then, one day, the Emperor started Forbidding the gods’ names…”
Oh my goodness a lore drop! Magic lens that so we know how to get more
ohhh this makes me uncomfortable to look at with those words underneath
So basically the arachnomancer were a religion that kept the rage and the hunger of goddess of spiders in check by sacrificing one of their own instead.
Hmm, not just a stylistic choice that the Goddess of Spiders, the God of the Sun, the God of Revelry, the God of the Home, and the God of Crows are only referred to by titles, not names. I don’t think any law of the empire would keep the likes of Lara from saying a name, so this sounds like law magic, or maybe something even more semantic – erasing the name itself. With the usual fantasy trope that gods draw power from being recognized, losing symbols and being forgotten is how they’d be hurt. Of course, we haven’t heard the Emperor’s name either.
One of the 3.5 D&D supplements dealt with truename magic. It had a 9th-level spell which destroyed the target’s name, preventing them from being restored by True Resurrection because there was no way to identify them anymore.
Since when does a scary drow spider cult pay attention to anything some human emperor says, anyway?
When it is high level magic, instead of a mundane law. See King Marth’s comment.
I suppose, before it became “scary cult”.
The Emperer might not even be human. For example, at some points of this story it was revealed that the Emperor was way older than a human gets.
I2P19 mentions that the Emperor “replaced” the God of the Sun. D5T29 had the Justiciar magically impose the Emperor’s power on Kamau, and D5T28 Macadamia refers to the Emperor with the divine capital He. Signs point to someone who, if not an actual God, has many of the trappings of one and is trying very hard to claim godhood.
Now, if we got another Imperial item and it gave Lara a Def penalty and Macadamia a Def bonus, that would tell us something.
Wow, yeah, that would actually tell us a LOT.
OoO NEAT.