>I'm trying to investigate what happened when the Lifebringer
>missionaries established the methods of sacrifice among the
>peoples of the Barbarian Belt.
They didn't. They went among Orlanthi peoples, most of whom have maintained their Orlanthi ways since the Vingkotling Age and taught them the secrets of the I Fought We Won and the like. They were not successful in converting the Hsunchen for this reason, simply because the latter had no need of council secrets.
>During the
>Godtime, sacrifice was different, or Hantrafal's discovery during the
>Darkness and/or Silver Age would have been trivial.
Hantrafal lived in the Vingkotling Age (TR p61). What you are probably thinking of is Heort's discovery that the gods were returning to life and sacrifices were once again potent. I do not believe that sacrifices were different before and after considering that the Pelandan sacrifices showed no change (cf Entekosiad).
>I'm rather convinced that whatever the Lifebringer missionaries
>found when they came [to Ralios and Maniria], a lot of the practices
>were misapplied.
I don't think so. If the practices were misapplied, then their worshippers would have never survived the Great Darkness.
>IMO several Dureving peoples survived by using Hsunchen methods, retaining
>only a shred of their Orlanthi ways.
I strongly doubt it. Dureving ways and Hsunchenism are incompatible. Dureving is a god of farming while Hsunchen have a loathing of agriculture (an invention of the trickster).
>The surprising ease with which some of the Ralians were converted to
>Lifebringer Ways indicates to me that there were some hidden common
>roots, be they theist entities included in animist practices, or vice
>versa.
I really don't see anything that indicates the Ralians converting with ease. Several battles are fought there in the first age (Kvitti, Zebrawood etc) which at least implies the traditions being strongly held. Furthermore, there's no Orlanthi presence there in earlier ages, so why would there be common practices?
> >The Sylilans do not worship Orlanth as a bear. They worship
> >Odayla instead and are not former bear hsunchen.
>The Sylilans worshipped Odayla as their cultural deity when the
>Lifebringers appeared. The Lifebringers discovered or proved that
>core secrets of their Odayla worship and of their own Orlanth were
>identical.
They didn't have to discover or prove anything. They knew that who the Odaylans were and their gods relationship to Orlanth (and vice-versa). They only had to re-establish contact and teach them some magic secrets that they learned (I fought We Won). This more than anything explains why the Wenelians were so receptive to Lifebringer ways and why the Pralori, the Mraloti and the Zebra remained unconverted.
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