Five Duck Friends

The Five Duck Friends

by Sergio Mascarenhas de Almeida

Updated 3 February 1999, Converted to html from original Digest postings.

The Five Duck Friends Cult is the particular way in which durulz pay cult to the mythical duck friends: Eurmal, Humakt, Ty Kora Tek, Babeester Gor, and Zong.

The Five Duck Friends Cult is a shamanic cult. At its center are shamans. Those shamans perform a variant of the Ancestor Cult where, instead of worshipping ancestors, durulz worship the Five Duck Friends.

In the shamanic ceremonies performed by Five Duck Friends Cult shamans, the spirit of the gods is summoned reenacting the situation were the friendship between the durulz and the god was sealed. Then the durulz worship the god and receive the proofs of friendship given by the god.

There is a generic format in the Five Duck Friends Cult:

There are two levels of friendship: (normal or lesser) friends and Best (or Rune) friends. Lesser friends are in a position similar to initiates in the standard cult of the god while Rune friends are the equivalent to rune levels.
In the shamanic ceremonies lesser friends can sacrifice for one use special divine spells of the god summoned. Best friends can sacrifice for multiuse special divine spells like a rune level. They cannot sacrifice for common divine spells.
If a Best friend uses a multiuse spell, he must recover its usage in another Five Duck Friends Cult ceremony.
Lesser friends of a particular god are automatically initiates of that god in the conventional cult if they fulfill all the requirements for initiation. Best friends have the status of acolytes on the conventional cult if they fulfill all the requirements for becoming an acolyte.
When a durulz dies, his spirit doesn't join his god friend automatically but if a duck achieved Best friend status he can do it if he wants to. This implies a ritual suicide performed during a Five Duck Friends shamanic ritual. The duck that takes this path is called a Friend for Death of the god.

Five Duck Friends Cult shamans must be Best friends of Ty Kora Tek.

Three of the Five Duck Friends are gods with a death relation. In fact, ducks have a very special connection with death. Death has a completely different mean for durulz then it has for other races, especially men. Durulz don't fear death and don't think about it in a negative way (most of the time they don't think about death at all). It happens, that's all. For durulz what is mysterious is life, not death.

Those We Serve

Ducks revere the five Duck Friends above all gods. But there are several other gods to which ducks pay cult. They are known as Those We Serve. Those gods belong to duck mythology as gods that ducks contacted in the greater darkness and were helpful in the survival of ducks. Yet, those contacts didn't turn into friendship in the lines of the Five Duck Friends.

What is specific here is that ducks pay cult to these gods in purely duckish ceremonies independent of the cult organization of other races.

That means, ducks pay cult to river gods independently of human and other races cult to the same river gods.

The most important gods considered under that label are the river gods and spirits of the Creek and Stream rivers and Issaries.

Creek and Stream Gods

The first was the river god. In fact, if ducks survived the chaos frenzy, it was not only because they did find some powerful friends, but also because the river was open to offer them shelter wen they needed. Since then ducks have lived by the Creek and offer cult to its god.

Issaries

Once, when the ducks were searching for food in the bogs of the Creek, they saw someone nearby. They recognized-it as being Issaries (on its journey to join the Light Bringers). The god was trying to cross the river. Ducks decided to boat him to the other side. The short encounter was not long enough to initiate a friendship but since then Issaries accepts ducks in his following.

Glorantha is a trademark of Issaries, Inc. Gloranthan material is copyright 1997 by Sergio Mascarenhas de Almeida and Greg Stafford. Glorantha is the creation of Greg Stafford, and is used with his permission.

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