[I proposed having the Rokari give special bonuses to their wizards
who swear celibacy]
Alex:
>>Isn't that the wrong way round, though? Rokari clergy _aren't_
>>celibate (so far as I'm aware), whereas other sects may well be.
Back to Sandy
> Hrm? I thought 'twas the other way round. My belief is that
> Loskalmi clergy are NOT celibate, and that Rokari are expected to
> be, at least, the upper ranks.
Alex retorts
>>Trouble is, the more inflexible one makes Rokari castes and ranks,
>>the less feasible this gets.
I then reply:
The cultural evidence (as in G:CotHW, frex) is that these dudes ARE pro-celibacy. Let's work on this a bit.
What are the career opportunities for a person born into the Rokari Wizard caste?
(1) If you're qualified to be a sorcerer (in raw rule terms, if your Magic bonus is 10+), then you can become a "real" wizard, with a job attached to the military, to a court, or to the church -- three of the four corners of Rokari society.
(2) If you're not so hot, but you're otherwise reasonably talented, you're probably going to end up as a cleric, casting mediocre spells on the peasantry -- supporting the fourth corner of society. If you're smart, dedicated, and have connections, you may still rise high in the church, becoming a bishop or whatever. But in the army or court, you'd never be much more than a chaplain (not that that's trivial, of course, but it does put a stopper to your maximum advancement).
(3) If you're basically incompetent or psychologically unambitious or have powerful enemies, you're going to end up as a nun or a monk, living in holy orders somewhere far away from the useful way of things.
Now, where does celibacy fit into this? In My Opinion, which I'm hoping to have bolstered or defeated by the wiseacres subscribing hereon, here are the Official Rokari Rules.
I believe that Rokari nuns and monks are sworn to celibacy, _and_ that they raise most of the wizard-caste youth.
I believe that other Rokari wizards are allowed to marry, but _not_ to remarry if their spouse dies (much like Orthodox priests). Children are normally raised in a convent. I suspect the Rokari faith permits divorce, and that such annuls the marriage, so that the wizard is free to marry again.
Storm Bull vs. Urox
Nick:
>I'd have no problem if barbarian characters still referred to their
>god as "the Storm Bull", as all our Gloranthan experience
> shows that they do so.
Alex:
> it seems obvious to me from KoS that Sartarites call him Urox.
I'm entirely on Nick's pro-Storm Bull side here. All that KoS proves is that some folks that lived centuries after Argrath's time called him Urox.
Alex
>Let's not get carried away, this is hardly another (Y)elmal(io).
Yeah, well, that chewed, too. As I've said before, in my own campaign all the Elmal/Yelmalio activity occurred in the First Age; the likeliest time, IMO, for it, as the first big cultural exchange between Dara Happa and Orlanthi, plus they were friendly then, which hasn't really happened since. So nowadays, all the would-be Elmals are wholly replaced by the combo Yelmalio cult. As I said, in my campaign.
Me
>The God Learners only used one of the Runes and didn't bother to
>have a different Rune for benign and malign.
Alex
>>Why do you say that? 'Cos the Malign form has no ("Greater God")
>>source?
I say that because I believe it to be true. Who came up with the Malign/Benign duality in the first place, wiseacre? Well, Greg originated the concept of dualistic Earth gods, but to the best of my recollection I thought up the damn two Runes. So there.
The fact that the Malign Earth Rune appears in both Orlanthi and Pelorian cults doesn't mean that it _must_ be a GL artifact. Those two cultures _have_ spent a fair amount of time interacting, y'know. I believe that the Malign Rune is an Orlanthi discovery that proved useful to the Dara Happans.
Alex responds to my theory that women can marry "upwards" among the
Malkioni, but not "down"
>I'd be surprised if one could be promoted more than one caste by
>this route,
Me, too. No argument here.
>there's not the same theological basis for subranks, they just
>happen along due to sociologically pragmatic reasons.
But most of your social contacts are with folks from your same caste. How do you tell yourself apart? I predict that, at least among the Rokari, the intra-caste distinctions are even MORE important, socially, than the big giant theologic distinctions. After all, it's no credit to you that you were born a Wizard, or a Noble. But if your dad was a duke, or a bishop, then you're Someone. I still maintain that a Bishop will feel more comfortable in the company of a peasant Guildmaster, a duke, or a general than he will amongst a pack of hedgerow wizards and village priests. The former are _his_ peers. The latter merely cattle.
Alex:
>Sorcery clearly already breaks this law [of Conservation of Magic],
>as you don't have to learn it from spirits.
Yes, well Sorcery's not "real" magic, is it, just learning certain natural laws. It sure doesn't come from a higher plane of existence. Mere tomfoolery.
>when a person dies, part of their spirit may form as some assorted
>personality-free spirit.
This is, of course, exactly what the sorcerers and dwarfs (for instance) claim about their afterlife, except that they claim that, eventually, the _entire_ spirit breaks up and loses coherence. It may take a while for the nugget vulgarly termed a "ghost", but you just wait and see if I'm not right (says the sorcerer).
Paul Snow
>I am happy to admit that the average American is happier than the
>average Brit because he comes from a culture that believes in itself
IMPORTANT NOTE: Sandy's distrust of misused cultural relativism does NOT mean that he thinks that the U.S. culture is therefore the "best". Far from it. I don't think it's even the "best" in the modern era. But I do think that the average American is happier than the average Brit based solely on personal interviews with Americans and British. Or maybe the British are just better educated, so _know_ they're not well off. Hmm. That aside, on to ...
>It seems to me that we assume that Gloranthans are a happy little
>lot with a negligible infant mortality rate and little hunger and
>disease.
We do tend to believe this, probably because we live in a modern society with these same features. Also, the media (fantasy books, movies, etc.) all support this belief.
What benefits are derived (in game terms) from having a high infant mortality rate? None as far as I can see, so the hell with it. If one of my PCs has a kid, it would be cruel and unusual to force the kid to roll percentile dice at the age of 2 to see if it caught measles and perished. Not much more interesting than having the PC do the same at the age of 22. Now, if the kid's sick and the PC needs to get some medicine from somewhere, that's different.
I have had regions of hunger and starvation in my campaigns. I don't think hunger is considered the "normal" state of affairs for most Gloranthans -- population densities are pretty low in many areas, because of the horrendous effects of wars, curses, and dread magic effects. In fact, populations are SO low that there's sizeable groups living solely on hunting (many Hsunchen). Where are there hungry people?
FREQUENTLY HUNGRY: Fonritian slaves, Praxian nomads, Kimos natives, Jonating serfs
SOMETIMES HUNGRY: Doraddi nomads, at least in Tarien; most hunting Hsunchen
VULNERABLE TO FAMINE: any dense populated areas -- Fonrit, Dara Happa, Kralorela, Teshnos, Esrolia, plus any city, really. A bad winter can devastate the Pent nomads, and a bad summer can really hurt the Doraddi.
How about disease? I think there's heaps of disease in Glorantha. While the "major" diseases of Glorantha are less likely to cause death than Smallpox, Scarlet Fever, or Sleeping Sickness, they _are_ likelier to permanently debilitate their victims. I predict that if you walked into an average Sartarite village, the average person would be one or two points down on several stats; i.e., sicklier, perhaps stupider, because of bouts with disease over his lifetime.
There are three basic types of disease, as far as effects on populations go -- Brain Fever is the least dangerous, because most people have high INTs, so will resist before the disease manages to kill them. Creeping Chills is the _most_ dangerous, because resistance to disease is based on CON, and this attacks CON directly - -- a sort of Gloranthan equivalent to AIDS.
For instance, take a typical peasant village with 100 inhabitants. If all are exposed to a disease (easy enough; a broo fouls the well, or someone's kid gets it and exposes all the other kids, who take it home to mom and dad -- a scenario all-too-familiar to us parenting types)
If the disease is Soul Waste, Wasting Disease, or the Shakes, on the average 1 person dies. The average stat loss from the disease is 1.1 stat points. (Obviously some folks lose more than this, and a few won't lose any, because they'll resist, but still ...).
If the disease is Brain Fever: on the average around 0.8 of a person dies. but the average loss is, of course, the same -- 1.1.
If the disease is Creeping Chills, then 7-8 people die, and the average stat loss is 1.5.
This is if the disease attacking is the normal garden-variety CONx5 type. It has long been my contention that more serious diseases also appear in Glorantha, and are greatly feared. Here's some statistics for deaths in our village if the Shakes (say) strike with more intense varieties:
CONx4 = ~3 deaths per 100 -- avg DEX Loss = -1.7 CONx3 = ~6 deaths per 100 -- avg DEX Loss = -2.5 CONx2 = ~14 deaths per 100 -- avg DEX Loss =-4.2 CONx1 = ~34 deaths per 100 -- avg DEX Loss =-8.8 (!)A CONx4 or an epidemic of CONx3 may strike every decade or so. CONx2 or x1 is probably a once-in-a-generation pandemic.
NOTE that unlike earthly diseases, most Gloranthan ailments grant you no immunity after your hit -- so the next time you're attacked by the Shakes (to continue our example), you're MORE likely to be killed. Almost no one could survive two attacks of CONx1 Shakes - -- the first would knock your DEX down by 8-9 points, and the second is virtually certain to kill you.
Even a relatively mild bout of CONx5 sickness lowers the average person's relevant stat by 1, which makes them that much more subject to death next time around.
Martin Crim:
>I'll probably get a big "eat me" from Sandy for this one.
Hah!
>The God Learners were clearly scientists, of the sort that gives
>science a bad name. Scientists mostly don't believe in subjective
>world views
Actually, I think you're right -- at least I think that many God Learners were this type -- though I think that many others were the type of scientists that give science a good name.
Martin now attacks my statements about cultural relativity. I won't go into great detail in an attempt to defend myself, because this isn't the proper theatre for it. Despite Martin's statement that he doesn't want to go into the subject, he then spends quite a while doing so, and (presumably inadvertantly) wounded me.
What were the God Learners? The RuneQuest Sight, as I stated before, _knew_ that it was subjective. The God Learners did NOT believe in subjective world views -- they knew that there was one, "true" way of looking at the world, but they also knew that you could never actually comprehend that one true way, because the net of illusion hides it. So they were actually more sophisticated than modern scientists in that respect -- they simultaneously believed that they were wrong (in adhering to a subjective view) and that they were right (in knowing that all views are subjective) at the same time.
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