What exactly is the prayer skill?

posted by on 31st August 2006, at 2:01am

Chapel.jpg When you pray at an altar, what happens? Your prayer points get recharged so that you can use prayers. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? But what really happens when you pray? The Gods hear thousands of prays each day, with players who kneel in front of every altar all around Runescape asking for protection and boosted ability, so how are they able to answer each of them so easily?
The prayers are all Saradomin’s protection, so why would you gain Saradomin’s protection from praying at an altar dedicated to Zamorak? And when you throw bones in an ectofunctus, the gods recognize the deed 4 times more then simply giving them your blessings in a quick funeral. How exactly do prayer potions and super restores work?
What is the prayer skill really? And how are the gods able to make it work for everyone? There are a number of theories as to what the roles of the Runescape Gods really are. Saradomin is the Holy God of Wisdom and Protection and Zamorak is the Corrupted God of Power and Evil. Between the 2, and the various others like Guthix, Itchlarin, Seren, Armadyl, and Zaros, there is only 1 set of prayer abilities and summoning from the gods (aside from the God spells), and all of them are linked to Saradomin’s holiness. The symbol of the prayer skill is of Saradomin, anyone who ever talks of prayer speaks of Saradomin, and the prayers guild is dedicated to Saradomin.
So why can you recharge Saradomin’s holiness at altars recognizing the abilities of these other gods?
My theory is this: Saradomin is the messenger of the Gods.
It sort of makes sense, if you think about it. Wasn’t Saradomin the first of the Gods to re-establish contact among the mortals long enough to answer a number of prayers in letter format? Isn’t Saradomin a whole lot better at answering questions with clarity and wisdom then Zamorak (Purple money monster in the wilderness? WEAK! … ok, chaos elemental doesn’t count)? Maybe He is just the God of Wisdom … or maybe He’s more used to answering the prayers of others.
Let’s consider recharging Saradomin’s blessing at a Zamorak altar. If Saradomin was a messenger, He would receive the prayer, deliver them to Zamorak, and Himself respond with Zamorak’s … blessing in his own form. If Zamorak told Saradomin to blast him with a bolt of fire, Saradomin would pass it on and give the player recharged prayer points instead. If Zamorak decided to blast the player with a pillar of fire until their bones are reverted to ashes, then take the ashes and run them through a diseased mortar and pestle, throw the ashes into an incinerator running at temperatures hotter then the sun, and then blast each leftover individual piece with a bolt of unholy lightning, one at a time … well, I think Saradomin might let him do that himself. Maybe He’s a secretarial messenger and responds to everyone’s prays, even those not actually praying to Him, while Guthix makes a murmur (Wudevah.) and Zamorak has a good laugh and responds with “Do your best and try to live while I get all the popularity”.
Why does Saradomin give prayer points instead of asking for postage, then? When it comes down to it, the bones you bury ARE the postage. The more postage you send, the more you can receive, hence the prayer level. And with a certain amount of postage comes extra benefits. You would think that the Gods have some sort of system going on. The ectofunctus simply humors Zamorak a lot and out of his “good” nature, he tells Saradomin to give the player more credit (prayer exp) for humiliating the creature the player killed even after it died.
What about prayer restoring potions, though? They don’t really have any holy significance and are not aligned to Saradomin or Zamorak. Well, of course not. Remember the druids in Taverly are the founders of herblore and they teach new members the skill. Well, don’t they also house one of Runescape’s only Guthix altars? Perhaps the only way they get the abilities themselves is aligning their spirits with Guthix, who controls nature and supplies them with their herbs. The reason that Guthix doesn’t have more altars out there is because He doesn’t settle merely for altars dotting the land in certain locations and only a select few people owning one. That’s not being “balanced” if only a few people offer the blessings of Guthix.
So He instead created these certain potions that everyone is able to own and use in order to boost not their prayer, but their spirits to the frequency in that they are able to quickly ask Guthix for assistance. And of course, we already know that it is Saradomin who takes the calls around there.
The last question that remains a mystery is how the Gods respond to the hundreds of thousands of players that simultaneously ask for the same thing over and over while maintaining the world of Runescape? Maybe Saradomin is very quick at his job, maybe they have some sight-seeing process where they take orders before the player gets to the altar (maybe when they enter the church) and then send them the blessing almost immediately, maybe they use a system like assembly line production where they pack up blessings and have them on standby at certain altars? Or maybe Saradomin has hired a number of assistants to help Him deliver his blessings. I have no real theories for this one, except that Saradomin lives in a space where a second for us equals a year for Him.
One thing is for sure, though. The Gods of Runescape don’t merely watch over the land. They interact with us in more ways then you think.


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