Our western dislike of suicide is, I believe, based in Christian religion, which classes suicide as the sin of despair. This is not the case in Glorantha, so I don't see a problem.
For the specific case of CA, who have sworn not to do harm to living creatures, there could be some debate on this issue. Is suicide "doing harm" to oneself? Looked at from a Christian viewpoint it is; but would a Gloranthan think that way? I doubt it. I believe that most Gloranthan cultures accept the notion of mercy-killing, they regard it as a release not as harm. A CA healer who suicides to avoid capture by broos is performing a mercy killing and is not doing herself harm.
I get the impression that I have a much more tough-minded and pragmatic impression of CA than most other correspondants on this digest.
I don't accept the notion that they are all vegetarians. This choice may occur in some cultures but it doesn't fit my image of CA in Orlanthi culture. I can see that CA would insist on humane killing of animals and might therefore refuse to eat wild game which may suffer in being killed. They may refuse to eat milk-fed veal or pate-de-fois-gras on the grounds that animals are tortured to make these products (but I doubt that the Orlanthi make these delicacies). I do not see that CAs would have any problem with eating an animal that was decently raised and humanely killed.
I don't see that CAs would stand and allow themselves to be killed or tortured if they could pick up a weapon and try to do something about it. They would be ritually unclean afterwards (maybe some or all of their magic stops working), and the situation would have to have been truly desparate if they were to have a chance of being cleansed afterwards, and the cleansing would be a difficult trial. So they will not commit violence lightly, but they can do it. Especially, I can see that they could do so to save lives other than their own.
Most of these rules seem to be intended to prevent power-gaming munchkins from making a mockery of the cult's pacifist nature. My solution is not to let players join CA. I may, some day, allow a player to join CA, if I believe that they are sincere about making their character into a good CA cultist, and I will reserve the right to retire/kill the character if the player can't live up to it.
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