[2 non-celibate sorts of Wizard caste dude.]
> (3) If you're basically incompetent or psychologically
> unambitious or have powerful enemies, you're going to end up as a nun
> or a monk, living in holy orders somewhere far away from the useful
> way of things.
> I believe that Rokari nuns and monks are sworn to celibacy,
> _and_ that they raise most of the wizard-caste youth.
This is interesting, as while it wouldn't mean most Wizards being celibate, they'd tend to grow up with rather odd ideas about marriage, sex, and The Gender Instituted By Wakboth. I've no objections to this idea, since it doesn't put much of a kibosh on the chances of the caste as a whole Breeding on us. (And it even sorta justifies Sandy's original sorcery rule, I concede.)
> I suspect the Rokari faith
> permits divorce, and that such annuls the marriage, so that the
> wizard is free to marry again.
I'm sure annulment is supposedly only granted for Good Reasons (clink, clink), generally relating to some alleged flaw in the original vows, consumation, or some such. Obviously, I think these conditions would _never_ be bent for social, political, or otherwise mundanely pragmatic factors. :-|
> Alex responds to my theory that women can marry "upwards" among the
> Malkioni, but not "down"
> >there's not the same theological basis for subranks, they just
> >happen along due to sociologically pragmatic reasons.
> But most of your social contacts are with folks from your
> same caste. How do you tell yourself apart? I predict that, at least
> among the Rokari, the intra-caste distinctions are even MORE
> important, socially, than the big giant theologic distinctions.
I dunno about that, but my principal drift was that these subranks would be much more ad hoc, and transient. So they might be completely different from Tanisor to Pasos, say. And importantly, there'd be relatively free (possible) mobility between subranks, according to competence, boot-licking, etc. (Well, maybe not so much for noble status, although this was pretty fast'n'loose at times in the Real World.)
> After all, it's no credit to you that you were born a Wizard, or a Noble.
Logically, and even Officially, no, but I bet there's an implicit belief that people are born into the caste they are Fit For, and an equally implicit "moral"/social ranking between the castes.
> >when a person dies, part of their spirit may form as some assorted
> >personality-free spirit.
> This is, of course, exactly what the sorcerers and dwarfs
> (for instance) claim about their afterlife, except that they claim
> that, eventually, the _entire_ spirit breaks up and loses coherence.
> It may take a while for the nugget vulgarly termed a "ghost", but you
> just wait and see if I'm not right (says the sorcerer).
Yup, and that part of a person in his god's bit of the Heroplane has No Personal Identity After Death, etc. If we are indeed writing "overarching" rules for such stuff, we should take such viewpoints into account; but then again, as few sorcerers or dwarfs will have any truck with spirits, perhaps not a lot. A tad tricky.
As a token example of people who (may) believe in Spirit Breakup, what about the Dara Happans? Of the six bits of humans, how many of them might be regarded as "spirits", of some sort or another? (At least a couple, I suspect.)
[The Storm Bully]
> > it seems obvious to me from KoS that Sartarites call him Urox.
> I'm entirely on Nick's pro-Storm Bull side here. All that KoS
> proves is that some folks that lived centuries after Argrath's time
> called him Urox.
Unconvincing; they didn't themselves worship Urox, or any of the Classic Gods, so why would they have a new name for him? Of course, one could argue that Urox and Storm Bull might well be different transl[it]ations of the same Sartarite name/word/title in any case, so any change is merely an artifact of the English (or other) Subtitles in our games.
[The <n> Earths]
> > >The God Learners only used one of the Runes and didn't bother to
> > >have a different Rune for benign and malign.
> Alex
> >Why do you say that?
> I say that because I believe it to be true. Who came up with
> the Malign/Benign duality in the first place, wiseacre? Well, Greg
> originated the concept of dualistic Earth gods, but to the best of my
> recollection I thought up the damn two Runes. So there.
And you're a notorious God Learner, Sandy, QED. ;-)
> The fact that the Malign Earth Rune appears in both Orlanthi
> and Pelorian cults doesn't mean that it _must_ be a GL artifact.
No, and I don't even think it is. I was suggesting the God Learners _recognised_ the distinction (as made by the Orlanthi, say, as Sandy suggests), and perhaps applied it more widely (e.g., ascribing it to Gorgorma, perhaps sight unseen), rather than having made it themselves. (My example may have served to confoozle what I meant.) Or that the Malign rune had gotten between the two cultures beforehand, and/or, the GLers split the difference between two already existing, similar forms. Now if, for some reason, the Six Earths cult only became explicitly dualised in the third age, for some reason, then Sandy is prolly right here. Convince me.
Alex.
Powered by hypermail