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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Neal A Porter <nap@*****.PHYSICS.SWIN.OZ.AU>
Subject: Re: Totems fighting over Shamans
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 15:05:03 +1000
> What would happen if two totems wanted the same shaman?
>
>____ Robert A. Hayden


This raises an interesting question, namly wether a Totem is in
fact a seperate entity (either physical or spirtual), or wether a
Totem is mearly a physcological (sp?) crutch used by the Shaman to
justify his/her ability to use magic. If in the fist case they are
actual entity, you would expect that conflict between such radically
different outlooks would occur. Yet in none of the source material,
or books did Totems ever confront each other (True Sam did fight
Spider, but Dog played no physical part in the battle). Now this
could be explained away by saying that Totems prefer, or are forced,
to work against each other through itermediaries.

On the other hand if you say that Totems are purely in the
Shamans mind, then surely conlicting portions of the Shaman
personality could be considered to be Totems in conflict.

In either case you would be left with a very confused Shaman, if
in fact you were left with one at all, as frequently in a tug of war
the item being used is broken.

A'Deus.
Message no. 2
From: "C. Paul Douglas" <granite@*****.NET>
Subject: Re: Totems fighting over Shamans
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 15:02:54 -0500
On Fri, 11 Mar 1994, Neal A Porter wrote:

> > What would happen if two totems wanted the same shaman?
> >
> >____ Robert A. Hayden
>
>
> This raises an interesting question, namly wether a Totem is in
> fact a seperate entity (either physical or spirtual), or wether a
> Totem is mearly a physcological (sp?) crutch used by the Shaman to
> justify his/her ability to use magic.

You know that way you bring up totems here Makes them sound like Passions
in EarthDawn...HMMMM

-----------------------------GRANITE

Further Reading

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Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!