<< According the sample Heortling keyword chapter posted on the Glorantha website
<Most Heortling adults are initiated to a specific god. A few are devoted to one. Rarely, a person may be initiated to one god and initiated or devoted to another.>
Has this been changed? >>
Ah, yes, quite right. Devotion takes up 60% of your time, and initiation takes up 30%, so a devotee can join *one* other cult, while an initiate can join two others. I knew there was some limitation ;-)
Jeff Kyer:
<< >It is not possible to be a devotee of a hero unless you are
> a devotee of the appropriate god. Getting to use the affinity/feat of a
> relevant hero is one of the benefits of devotion as against simple
initiation.
This seems to contradict the rules I have....
According to what I have, an initiate can join a subcult and will receive the affinity and even get the feats... which, I admit, seems a bit odd.>>
As far as I understand it from the draft I have (somewhat larger and more recent than that on the website, I believe, but still not the one that actually got printed) this is how it works:
The God Learners classified gods and the like by giving them from two to five runes - the more powerful the being, the less runes it takes to classify it (nb: this is not the same as the runic affinities of the gods that we're familiar with from RQ, although these still exist in HW). Typical gods have four runes, great gods have only three, and heroes have the full five.
Starting in the middle, each level of access to the gods gives you an extra rune in each direction. Thus, a lay worshipper has access to a rune in the #3 position only - i.e. he must worship a great god such as Orlanth or Ernalda. An initiate gets the #2, #3 and #4 runes. The #4 rune is his god (or subcult of a great god, e.g. Orlanth Adventurous, Ernalda the Mother, etc.) while the #2 rune is his religion, which reflects his HQing ability on the God Plane. A devotee gets the full set of five, allowing him to access a hero via the #5 rune and giving him cooler HQ bonuses via the #1 rune (e.g. Theist). If he doesn't want a hero cult, the devotee simply has two copies of his #4 rune.
Non-theists have a similar system. Assuming I haven't misunderstood it all, which is always possible ;-)
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
Powered by hypermail