[Torg] Spirit Axiom and Cross-Cosm Mythos?

[Kansas Jim]

Benn writes:

[...]

> There's another cosm where the Greek Gods hold sway of Spirit axiom Y.   A
> miracle using PC is from this cosm, but is currently in Sumerian Earth.

> 1) If the Sumerian Spirit axiom is 23, the core book states that "One mythos
> becomes dominant.  All others need to create a contradictory reality to
> effect their miracles."

> Does this mean the PC needs only to make a contradiction check to cast his
> miracles?  Would that be a 1-case or a 4-case?  Or is the PC unable to cast
> ANY miracles without raising a reality bubble?

It would be a 1-case contradiction. He would only need a reality bubble
if he were in a pure zone since pure zones don't allow any contradiction
to occur.

> 2)  If the Sumerian Spirit axiom is 27, the core book states that "All enemy
> mythos lose power. No believer in an enemy mythos may access an miraculous
> power."

> What is an "enemy mythos"?  Does this mean followers of the Sumerian god of
> Good consider the beliefs of the followers of the Sumerian good of Evil to
> be an "enemy mythos"?  Or is the entire pantheon of Sumerian gods a single
> mythos, and all other mythos' are "enemy mythos'"?

It's not entirely clear what the original rulebook meant by "enemy
mythos" since the chapter on miracles only mentions evil enemies,
nothing about enemy mythoi. In the R&E I changed the axiom chart entry
to read "enemies of the dominant mythos".

As for what constitutes an enemy of a mythos, there are some basic
guidelines given but for the most part left vague. For example, the
description of Monotheism in the rulebook notes "Traditionally
monotheists consider atheists, pantheists, and panentheists as
enemies...Monotheists almost always have an evil enemy within the
mythos."

(I've always wondered why polytheists got a break and aren't
traditionally considered as enemies of Monotheism.)

For our example Sumerian world, which would be polytheistic, I'm not
sure who the enemies would be exactly (the forces of Chaos maybe?) but
it's probably only going to be internal enemies so other mythos like
our guy from the Greek world could still work their miracles as a
contradiction.

> To put another way, is this supposed to make it so that Devil's worshipers
> have no power in/near Heaven, or is this supposed to make it so that
> miracles of a Muslim origin have no power, while the Devil's miracles work
> in Heaven itself.

It'd be the former.

> Is "mythos" the entire pantheon, with enemy mythos any foreign beliefs, or
> is "mythos" just one god or side, with the "enemy mythos" being the
> adversary *within* the pantheon/belief structure, and foreign religions are
> treated as neutral?

Yes. ;)

Something I added in the R&E is a statement that while "the enemy may
have a place within the mythos of the religion (being the opposite side
of the coin as it were), they are not considered to be part of the same
community and so they are treated as a separate faith" to cover things
like internal enemies being both a part of the mythos but separate from
it at the same time.

> And however an enemy mythos is defined, if a PC finds himself in a cosm with
> a spiritual axiom of 27 of an "enemy mythos" than that PC is denied all
> miracles while he is there?  Even invocations?

Yes. Though he could put up a reality bubble to get around that.

> 3) If the Sumerian Spirit axiom is 33, the core book states that it is "A
> pure cosm, a cosm in which all aspects of the mythos are literally true. No
> other mythos has any access to miraculous powers." 

> In any case, I thought I read somewhere that Spirit 33 cosms were
> fundamentally the "home cosms" for the gods and beliefs that they are about.

The originating cosm concept, page 126 of the original rulebook.

[...]

> For that matter, taking a basic mythos, with a good place we will call
> "Heaven" and a bad place we'll call "Hell" - is it the approach of Torg that
> these two places (which must obviously have a spirit axiom of 33, right?)
> are not part of the Earth cosm (which does not have a spirit axiom of 33)?

They could be fringe realities of CE (the entry for Spirit 19 suggests
that they are), but the originating cosm concept would indicate that
they are probably instead part of that Spirit 33 cosm. Except that we
know from Spirit 27 that the forces of Hell would have no power in said
cosm even though the mythos tells us that they have power, so er, um....

> 4) Do ANY of the above answers change depending on the axiom level of the
> miracle user's home cosm, or for these questions, are the home cosm axiom
> levels irrelevant with regard to the limitations or lack there of of being
> in other cosms?

The visitor's own Spiritual axiom is irrelevant.

-- 
Kansas Jim, Torg guru (ksjim (at) sdc (dot) org)
Torg website: http://www.sdc.org/~ksjim/index.html