[TSoY] Confusion about Qek spirit magic

[Ricky Donato]

I'm hoping someone can clear up some questions about Qek spirit magic for me.

1) Zamani cannot be contacted. Based on the description of contacting roho and sasha, does that mean that zamani cannot be spoken with? That sounds reasonable, because zamani have no knowledge of the world any more because no one remembers them. I'd like to confirm this is the case, though.

2) A walozi can interact with a roho by being near the person who owns the roho. The walozi can interact with a sasha by being near a person who remembers the sasha. How does a walozi interact with a zamani, though? By "interact", I mean "be close enough that he can perform a ritual (such as severance) on the spirit". Is there some way for a walozi to "summon" a zamani?

[Ricky Donato]

Oops, I forgot another question.

3) It is my understanding that spirits are invisible and intangible initially. The spectral form ritual (which can only be used on a sasha or a zamani) makes the spirit visible but it remains intangible. The binding ritual (which can only be used on a spectral spirit) attaches the spirit to a body so that the spirit can interact physically with the world. Is all of this correct?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Zamani are pervasive to the world, and thus you need not contact or summon them. They are like an evil force of gravity. Think of Zamani as more of a spiritual substance than spiritual things, as they have long since lost all individuality. A walozi that gives 'a' zamani spectral form or a body is really just scooping a suitable amount if zamani-matter from the spirit world and giving it form, not finding a specific entity.

Based on the above:
1) Yes, no contacting, because there is nothing to contact. Or rather, what you could contact is all the same (presumably an unending sense of hunger and cold). You could figure out a "Secret of Zamani sense" that allowed a walozi to sense local disturbances in the Zamani matter or something like that, but it's not like contacting an individual spirit.
2) You can perform most rituals concerning zamani anywhere people have lived and died. If you have some specific zamani-golem that you want to destroy with rituals, get into operative distance of that particular golem.
3) I've played it so that you can bind a spirit that has not been given a spectral form. I might be wrong.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Eero's correct in all these.

If you want to summon a specific zamani - let's say there's someone whose story is still told, but everyone who knew him is dead - you can do so. There's no specific rules for it, as the power of the zamani is determined by the check to summon them (that is, give them form.) So if you want to summon Xichotl, great warrior of the North, a check that gives you a powerful zamani might be him. It might whisper out in between its screams of pain that it is him, anyway.

I would totally grant you bonus dice from a check to, say, find the ancient tomb of Xichotl, to summon him.

[Ricky Donato]

Thanks for the quick replies, and I hope you'll answer one more question. The rules clearly state what a roho knows, and a zamani cannot be spoken to. What does a sasha know? I see two possibilities:

1) The sasha knows everything it knew in life. This is the simple choice.

2) The sasha knows everything that those still living who remember it know about it. This means that a sasha may state things about itself that are false if only falsehoods are known about it. For example, if a man once cheated on his wife, and the only people who knew were him and the other woman, and they are both dead, then contacting either of their sasha will not reveal that information.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

People,

I often say that I left holes in TSOY for you to fill in - Ricky found one of them.

Ricky - sasha change based on people's rememberences of them. Does that change what the sasha knows? I don't know. Probably. I do know that if you change everyone's memory of a sasha, that sasha will change.