How do sorcerous cultures survive? from Nick Brooke on 1995-02-16 (Glorantha Digest Vol 01)

From: Nick Brooke <100270.337_at_compuserve.com>
Date: 15 Feb 95 19:01:43 EST

Mike Cule asks how sorcerous cultures survive in the face of barbarians with superior casting-chances. It's simple. The civilised sorcery-using types those magic-using barbarians must first get through in order to ravage the limp-spelled folk in the villages are professional knights, backed up by professional wizards. The peasants aren't particularly good at fighting, which is why they have those hunky guys wearing more plate armour than you'll find in most barbarian kingdoms, riding horses bigger than anything you've seen, and filled (in some cases) with an almost fanatical devotion to the Prophet. These knights have long-duration magic cast on their armour, their weapons, and their selves, which doesn't even lower their own magic points (as it was their Lord's wizard who cast it).

This is called "civilisation". IMHO most world and game backgrounds would expect a barbarian farmer/warrior to be handily able to cut up civilised peasants in the absence of any highly-trained, highly-spelled defenders. Only in the breakdown of society are sorcery-using peasants as vulnerable to the onslaughts of pagans as your example supposes. Think of Arthurian knights versus the Picts and the Saxons: the little people of Britain are indeed defenseless before these savage, barbaric foes, which is why they need chivalrous and pious knights to defend them.

BTW, here's a Hrestoli sorcery spell from Sandy which adds to the fun:

Suppress Paganism
ranged, temporal

If the target fails to resist, his chance to cast spirit magic spells is reduced by 5 percentiles per intensity.

[Wizard class spell, New Hrestoli Idealist college of magic]

Alex:

> the Vikings were particularly exercised about _passive_ homosexual acts

Romans, too. An excellent book called "Catullus and his World" has a fine analysis of Late Republican attitudes to buggery and being buggered. You might enjoy it (the book, of course). As I recall, the poet threatens critics of his verse: "I'll stuff you and bugger you, effeminate Aurelius and Furius the pervert!" (pedicabo vos et irrumabo...), or something like that; I couldn't find the text just now.

And even the Greeks could get uptight about it: Aristophanes frequently pokes fun at two prominent Athenians for their effeminacy and (passive) homosexual practices. Greek sodomites mocked in public? Whatever next!

Nick