'Violence an option" <---------> "Always another way"
For the topic at hand I'd add another key concept, one that is rarely put into words.
"Orlanth *Endured*."
Vinga *endured*. Elmal *endured*. Odayla *endured*.
The mythic backdrop of the Greater Darkness paints a pantheon where many of the gods endured through incredible suffering, despair and hardship against overwhelming odds to final achieve an impossible goal. In the Lightbringer's Quest, Orlanth endured beyond despair, beyond death, beyond hope into final victory, spurred on by his sense of justice and responsibility. Other myth sequences present the same endurance, though less explicitly.
IFoughtWeWon, lived out by every male initiand during their adult making
(and indeed being in one sense the eternal deed that *is* initiation), is
perhaps the strongest embodiment of this cosmic principle. Even if
*everything* is lost, when all life is extinguished and you are the last
sane being in the universe, you must endure. If you do, the cosmos itself
will ultimately come to your aid. It must, it is part of the sacred law of
being.
Those that survive IFoughtWeWon (and I'm sure some do not, driven mad by the weight of the experience) have a deep inner resilience against despair and desolation. Their psyches are strengthened immeasurably by the experience. They have learned to *endure*.
For this reason, I do not believe suicide is common in Heortling culture, except among certain death cults. If you have survived the dissolution of the Cosmos, you can brave personal hardship and loss, however crippling.
I also believe that, as situational-ethicists supreme, the Orlanthi have neither strong explicit taboos nor laws against suicide - if it happens, it happens - the person concerned had choices and made their choice. Praise their memory.
And suicide is not an escape. The psychic forces, the demons, the harsh realities that confront you in life do not cease in death - if you cannot endure, then death may see you reliving the horror endlessly in a personal, self-created underworld, a hell where you have the same problems but less resources to confront them.
I also believe that suicide may be a way of launching a heroquest, sacrificing yourself and utilising your bodily POWer/strength of Breath to propel your soul onto the hero plane, where you may have some hope of resolution for your surviving clansfolk if not for yourself.
(This is admittedly a romantic view of Gloranthan reality, and presupposes
an underlying principle of a balanced and ultimately just cosmos. Its a
roleplaying world view, and a roleplaying ethos. Other valid
interpretations exist both within differing Gloranthan cultures and from a
GMing meta perspective. The choice is yours.)
John
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