Rob - you have pretty much missed the point. Women warriors do not have to be lesbians. However, the cult of Vinga allows women to participate in men's magic - ie. Orlanth. In this regard, she is a complete parallel to Nandan. Now that is not a new revelation of Greg or mine - that's even the way the cult is written for popular roleplaying purposes.
Woman who participate in the rites that define masculinity are going to have some proscriptions - both social and religious - as to their own gender identity. For the cult of Vinga to allow women to function as men (and I don't mean fighting, I mean in terms of religious and magical roles) and not have a price to pay is just silly.
> How important she is, well thats a moot point, as she will be coming
> out of that pool of 15% or so who operate outside of the norm, and
> like I said I never really liked that change anyway. I liked it when
> a female warrior wasn't super weird.
Do you know any woman that have been in combat? Any women that served in Iraq or the Gulf War, and not in a purely logistical or administrative role? Every woman soldier that I have known (which admittedly is only about a dozen or so) that saw combat has been super weird. If you want to impose an idealistic version of 21st century cost-free feminism on a bronze age culture, I´m going to say that will not probably ring mythically true.
And this is obviously my opinion so I am not going to both with a boilerplate disclaimer. :)
Jeff
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