To start, please be patient with the long running YT thread. I am aware that not everyone is interested, but the same could be said of the names of Kralorean Emperors, or Chalanna Arroy vegetarianism. Moreover, this debate has potentail impact on material that will be published in the not too distant future. Isn't it better to discuss this sort of thing in advance, rather than afterwards? I have heard many complaints that people (in general) have no chance at input to works in progress...
To start, a quote from Nick Brooke,
> Even Nick Brooke seems to have drawn back from his statement that to
> join YT you had to first buy a Lunar Officer's commission. <----AJ
When and where have I *ever* made such a statement? <----NB
In the same thread NB asks this question he says:
"Consider, please: if 95% of the regiments in the Lunar Army have Yanafal Tarnils officers, and 5% are all-Yanafali regiments,......"
An all-Yanafali regiment has between 70% and 90% foot sloggers (depending on organization); these are the grunt Yanafali. (This is not the first thread mentioning all YT formations, but is the first one that I can definately attribute to Nick.)
Nick further asks:
"Does Yanafal Tarnils even look like a god who could have a vast
following among the common soldiers of an army?..."
Why not?
Although YT is similar to Humakt in many ways, he is not a carbon
copy. His single most significant act was to assist in the rebirth
of the Red Moon Goddess; an act of immense ritual magic! Yanafal
is not tied to the Truth Rune, to the best of my knowledge (?), and
obviously had some different ideas from Humakt, or he wouldn't have
gone a different way.
Aden Steikne has answered the Obverse/Reverse subject fairly well, but I am left with one additional question: Why should Nick and the authors of Tarsh war beleive that "Joe Average Lunar", is any less decent than "Sven Average Orlanthi"? To start with, Joe is a composite of the racial averages of Dara Happa, non-DR Peloria, Carmania, and numerous Dragon Pass countries (doubtless I've left a few out). What makes such a 'vanilla-flavored' average indecent or dishonorable? Also, according to World of Glorantha, the 'Barbarian Belt' of Orlanthism extends well into Peloria. When the Lunar Empire came through, these people mostly switched from the worship of Orlanth & Ernalda to Barntar & Ernalda; retaining most of their orlanthi cultural ways. How do these people get to be less 'decent and honorable' than their cousins?
Lets go back to Nick's 95%/5% paragraph for a minute.
"Consider, please: if 95% of the regiments in the Lunar Army have Yanafal Tarnils officers, and 5% are all-Yanafali regiments, then most people in the Lunar Empire will think of Yanafal Tarnils as god of officers. After all, while there are (say) 5,000 men who worship him in five regiments, there are 95,000 who know that only the top handful of men in their own regiments worship him. We're writing up the Empire-wide cult, in its most typical perceived/functional role: army officers. Lunar Army officers can be met everywhere in the Empire; whole regiments of Yanafali can't."
I see two large holes in the argument above. First, the concept of 95% of the Army's officers being YT is itself under debate; it is thus a poor prop to base the proposition on, (more on that bit later). Second, if 5% of all regiments are all YT, what about the other 95%? Not a single Yanafali in any of them? This hardly seems likely; while some regiments would have regimental cults, others would not necessarily have a fixed cult, and some would be partially Yanafali. That last part is easily understood considering the following two examples.
In response to Ian Gorlick's plea for a little moderation:
That suits me fine! Your suggestions are flexible, and I have little trouble accepting them. Unfortunately NB is not being flexible; he flatly states that YT=officer, and vice versa. He also "posits" that all units have regimental cults, leaving no room for Duke Yanafal, Yara Aranis, Hwarin Dalthippa, or anybody else; one regiment=one unique cult. It is these unwavering mandates that I am arguing against. It is all very well and good to say, "if you don't like it, don't do it that way. But I am afraid that the majority of the judges who buy the product will play it EXACTLY as written, and it will become 'cannon'.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Andrew Joelson joelsona_at_cpdmfg.cig.mot.comAKA Rupert von Harl, priest of Yanafal Tar'nils, follower of Humakt "Contradiction? No, I always did tend to kill chaos creatures anyway."
Powered by hypermail