Hey I just wanted to add my enthusiastic agreement to David Hall's recent post about pantheistic worship amongst the Heortlings (who for me are all of the tribes established by Vingkot and who accepted Heort as High King). In Taming of Dragon Pass, everyone AND I MEAN EVERYONE who is a member of a clan is initiated into either Orlanth or Ernalda. PERIOD. (This particularly means player characters!)
When a child reaches a certain age, he or she is initiated into Orlanth/Ernalda and becomes a member of the clan. The clan as a whole worships the whole pantheon. Issaries is invoked for trade and travel (although Orlanth is invoked for communication), Lhankhor Mhy is invoked when the law is recited (although Orlanth is invoked for justice), Urox is invoked to fight chaos, etc. Same thing is true regarding the goddesses of the pantheon.
>The second level is to become a devotee of the god. To be initiated into
>Humakt or Urox, or whatever. You therefore give up being a farmer to
devote
>yourself to all aspects of your chosen god.
And that's the rub - giving up being a farmer/herder still means you have to feed yourself. There just ain't that much food to go around to "specialized parasites" as Illig Jarangson would call them. There's basically the chiefs hall-companions and that's about it. Everybody else on a clan level farms or herds at least part-time.
>Often, this may mean that you have to leave the clan, to serve at a tribal
or even kingdom level -
>not that these cults necessarily exist at those political levels.
Total agreement. Only at the tribal level are you likely to find the specialized cults - that is until Sartar introduces city-rings, but for me that's still centuries away.
Yours truly,
Jeff Richard
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