>As it happens, I've been thinking about this too. I was going to go with
>the "official" line, but allow Women with a devotion to Saint Elleisha
>(spelling?) to transcend this by joining special units in the army.
I actually wrote the following for the Loskalmi chapter and it was in Roderick's finished text but it didn't make the final cut (in which Greg had to cut out around 30,000 words just to make the font slightly bigger).
The Order of Saint Menena is a spiritual order that many
women join. It gives them freedom in religious and magical
ways that they can not otherwise get in male-dominated
Loskalmi society. Members of this order have the freedom
to keep and bear arms and other male rights. Many men
disapprove of them and feel that women should be content
with their God-given roles of Church, Kitchen and Children.
Menena is the wife of Malkion. Bear in mind that since this paragraph _didn't_ appear in the book, the details can be changed, plausibly denied, and so forth.
>This is mentioned as being the case in Seshnela.
There is a distinction between Seshnela and Loskalm that should be adhered to IMO.
The Ladies of Saint Elleish (written in to avoid the wrath of Jane) are warrior-maidens as they take up arms in the service of God. Because of their Rokari background against Caste Crossing, they wouldn't have any wizards and so they would be a low order.
Seshnegi women with innate magical ability are (in an excised section that didn't make Roderick's draft) confined to Nunneries (devoted to Menena again) where they are taught women's magic and beget future wizards for the church. They certainly don't do any fighting.
Now Loskalm has turned the Rokari precepts on its head (before the Ban, Rokarism was an influential doctrine in Loskalm). Hence any nunneries to Saint Menena would be turned inside out into producing grand-ladies (i.e. female wizard-knights).
I think that as well as women's magic that Menena teaches, her Loskalmi worshippers are encouraged to learn from other female saints (such as Xemela - Hrestol's mum and healer - and Elleish). There's probably also another order of valkyries that rescues the fallen (from whence Gunda semi-came).
As above, none of this should be considered set in stone.
>Has anyone fleshed out
>Saint Elleisha - all I have seen is a 4 line description in the Saints
>List on Nick Brooks site?
Her special Grimoire is "Death and the Maiden" and be full of combat spells (Armour of the Blessed, Sword of Justice etc) while her talisman is a sword.
Elleish will probably have a secret of Command Men: all menfolk of the Caster's sect must obey the caster as she was a man without hesitation. They may whine and bitch about it afterwards but until then they do as they're told.
--Peter Metcalfe
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