Well, I'm stil not satisfied with things I am hearing about Yanafal Tarnils. However, I am a good deal less unhappy than when I first wrote in; even Nick Brooke seems to have drawn back from his statement that to join YT you had to first buy a Lunar Officer's commission. I will re-iterate my two premises, as the discussion as wandered widely (which is not necessarily a bad thing):
Number 1 seems to have drawn a lot of criticism along the lines of "priestly duties differ from cult to cult; YT cult duties ~= army duties". I feel to be this stance to be poorly thought out and/or overgeneralized. More below.
Number 2 seems to be conceded, with the wrangling centered over how many YT followers are officers vis common soldiers, and other such related matters. I should probably leave this one alone, but am not wise enough to do so; some of the related wrangling interests me.
If you are bored by the YT debate, I suggest that you lean on your NEXT key. Heavily.
Section #1
Dennis Hoover takes me to task for basing much of my arguments on Cults of Prax, a charge which I gladly acknowledge; I said so in the first place. What should I base my arguments upon, Gods of Glorantha? This too is out of date, and my limited experience with it showed it to be broader but shallower than CoP. The fact that I am using an old source doesn't lessen the value of the ideas expressed within.
I will now quote from page 7 of COP ((C)/Chaosium):
"VI. RUNE LORD MEMBERSHIP
et cetera, et cetera.....
page 8 has the following statement
"VII. RUNE PRIESTHOOD
>---> The section above goes on to talk about the training/skill lim-
>---> itations on "many" cults. It quite explicitly states that some
>---> cults suspend these restrictions. YT is in all probability such
>---> a cult; Humakt certainly is.
Based on the section above, I give ground on the YT priests's lack of time. The priest's deeper knowledge and greater POW make it necessary for him to attend to "temple" functions, rather than a lord; and the majority of all priest would do so. But a priest interested in becoming a Scimitar would be released from much of this. There is no reason why a priest could not be attached to a regiment for a time, to gain experience. But not permanently; a lord is more capable and better suited to fulfilling military duties. And a priest that is also a lord is rare and potent enough to tapped for more important duties.
To continue, Nick Eden states:
"... These days all these warrior cults don't have Rune Lords and Rune Priests. They have Rune Lords, who are effectively RLPs.
I was rather shocked by this when I first realised that this was what had been done, but it makes a lot more sense really. ..."
I don't see the sense of this from the game-mechanics angle. Lords anf Priests had different advantages in the areas of Divine Intervention & re-usable Rune Magic. A Humakt write-up sent to me via a net inquiry showed the Sword with Lord-type DI, and Rune spells that were one-use and some that were re-usable. This seems to me to make such a character much more potent than an old Rune type. Even an old RLP had the priest's more difficult DI. I also observed the the new Sword also needed 6 skils at 90+, not five. This just goes to make Rune types less common. Getting a character's POW up to 18 is easier than getting 5/6 skills to 90%. Isn't this one of the reasons some players opt for priest instead of lord? CoP says that Humakt priests all aspire to become Swords as well, what's wrong with using the priesthood as a milestone along the way? It confers status & prestige, if not that of a lord. It would certainly open doors that might be closed to an initiate with the same long term goal. (The role of priest would also be open to a lord that had been maimed in some unalterable way.)
Section #2
James Polk puts in the following usefull comment:
"That parts of the cult (subcults or Scimitar status) are limited to the officers. (This idea is for those who don't like to limit membership of the whole cult.) After all, worship of Orlanth the King is limited even though worship of Orlanth Adventurous is much less so."
This goes along with my suggestion that Nick stick the officers in the Scarlet Scimitar sub-cult. I propose something like this:
Yanafal Tarnils
|
----------------------------------------------------
| | | |
Scarlet Scimitar 'Legionnary' 'Loyal Simon' general
for army for the for everbody else
officers common housecarls,
soldiers bodyguards,
etc.
Yanafal Tarnils would certainly be an unusual cult if it didn't
have any sub-cults or hero cults.
Nick wrote a long response concerning YT's role in the army, and its function as a common thread between differing units. Without getting into a paragraph-by-paragraph debate, the problems with his ideas are these: 1) Nicks states that there may be a few Yanafali around that aren't officers, but that they are a small minority (if I misunderstood that part, my apologies), and 2) that 85%+ of all officers in the army are YT.
It would be far better to encourage non-Yonafali to join, even temporarily. Co-operation , not coersion. Inviting the hetman to attend YT rituals is an act of friendship; you offer an honorable place to a guest, and you offer to share the blessing of a wargod. This is an act of comraderie (sp?). If the hetman still says no, don't try to force the issue. Why alienate an ally?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Andrew Joelson joelsona_at_cpdmfg.cig.mot.comAKA Rupert von Harl, priest of Yanafal Tar'nils, follower of Humakt "Contradiction? No, I always did tend to kill chaos creatures anyway."
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