>warrior cult.
By strict interpretation, there _are_ no Yanafal Tarnils' priests at all -- only Scimitars of Yanafal Tarnils who act as lord-priests. It's an exact parallel of the Humakt cult.
David Cake:
>I would love to see more info on Vormain.
I've done some work on Vormain, its deities, and its history. Here is what I think has been going on there.
In the Godtime they survived the travails of the Gods War by cutting themselves off from the rest of the world, With the dawn, they opened up a little bit, but near the end of the First Age, a party of powerful magicians sailed to Vormain with the intent to there begin a great ritual to dissolve Theya's Net (the East Isles name for the magic unity-in-diversity that binds the Isles together). The magicians failed in their attempt, apparently because they succeeded -- the net dissolved around Vormain, and then was gone, so the magicians' spell could not be communicated further.
In the early Second Age, the Vormain folk joined with the Waertagi in an attempt to destroy the East Isles' sea power, which the Waertagi saw as a threat to their own. The battle ended in essentially a bloody draw, with one major East Island sunk, but the Waertagi driven back. Vormain once more withdrew into isolation, especially after the Eastern Seas Empire was founded over all the East Isles.
Now Vormain is starting to awaken once more, and there seems to be a real possibility that they may ally with the Ratuki (shark Hsunchen) in attacks on the Isles. Vormain pirates are already a serious threat in the northern parts of the Isles.
Government
Vormain is ruled by an Emperor who lords it over many separate lordlings. The lords do _not_ derive their power from the emperor, but are expected to obey his lawful commands. The fact that the Emperor is the religious head of Vormain gives him a fair amount of power. Plus he has his own private army. In practice, during the time of a weak Emperor, the lords are essentially autonomous, even to the extent of carrying out private wars. If the weakness lasts too long, one or more of the lords can take control of Vormain and rule it as a sort of de facto Emperor. Of course, when there is a strong Emperor, the lords have to keep their rivalries and ambitions a bit more sub rosa. If there has been weakness for a long time, it has been known to take several strong Emperors in a row to regain Imperial power. Sometimes an Emperor and a lord fight wars. Though the Emperor can never be deposed, he can be forced to accept terms.
The current situation is quite worrisome to outsiders, as it is a combination of a strong Emperor, facing a cabal of strong lords. To keep from coming to a clash, the Emperor has cleverly directed the lords' ambitions outward, and so the Empire has become expansionist, for the first time in many centuries. But this expansionism essentially stems from internal Vormain politics.
Culture
There are three castes of society: peasants, warriors, and the Emperor's family. Intermarriage is not forbidden, but the offspring of a mixed marriage is always of the "lower" type, with the exception that an Emperor's children and grandchildren are always of the Imperial caste (the Imperial household is forbidden to inbreed, so at any given time there are no more than a few dozen members of this caste in existence, tops).
Priests form a fourth "caste", but are not hereditary -- the child of a priest is the same caste as the priest's former class (before ordination). All priests must be ordained by a member of the Imperial household, who may exact promises from them at that time. This is the main tool of the Emperor to control unruly lords -- refraining from ordaining new priests for that lords' territory can lead to serious internal problems for him over time. There is one lord's land who has not had any new priests ordained for over five centuries. He offers high bounties for priests willing to immigrate, but this is offset by the Emperor's oath not to ordain any descendants of priests who have immigrated to the proscribed land.
The castes are internally subdivided. Among the peasants, this subdivision is done along the lines of age and wealth -- older peasants or more wealthy ones are considered higher caste. The peasant offices are handed out by the peasants themselves. The peasants appoint their own village headman, for instance. The warriors' only recourse if they dislike the peasant's choice is to kill him, thus forcing the peasants to vote anew. Of course, the threat to kill is usually enough. The peasants are allowed weapons, but they are not supposed to ever fight a member of the warrior caste. Peasants are allowed to own land but in practice most do not, but work the land of a warrior-lord.
The warriors also make up the nobility. The subdivisions in the warrior caste are done by authority and independence. There are, in effect, six different categories of warriors:
RELIGION
I'll save this for another posting. It's a sort of mix
between Kralori mysticism and sorcery.
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