Hmm, well yes. I can see how that works. My bitching players have only ever seen sorcerers in the midst of Divine/Spirit Magic using cultures. That may have biased them more than somewhat.
But Sandy remarks that this is how the Roman Empire held back the Germans. And that reminds me that they didn't. Not in the long run. In the long run the political and economic strain of maintaining the border armies proved too much.
This leads me to wonder about the long term strength and weaknesses of the various parts of Malkionism.
The Hrestoli have the advantage of a social structure that is even more open and democratic than that of the Orlanthi barbarians. (Amongst whom even a stickpicker can rise to become King.) This gives a social cohesion and esprit de corps that other countries can only envy.
But it is done at the price of loosing much of the benefit of specialisation. A Knight's son in the more "realist" parts of the West can begin serious training for his future role long before he is out of short pants. Likewise a future Wizard is deep in his books from an early age.
The Hrestoli insist on all people spending their first years in a caste which they must leave behind at quite an advanced age to start over not once but twice to learn first the arts of war and then the arts of magic. They loose all those years of specialisation.
They also gain the certainty that no-one qualified for a higher position will languish because their father was a stickpicker (or whatever the Malkioni equivalent is). But is it enough.
And let's look at the price the 'realist' heresies pay for their specialisation: the social division that wracks their society. Many of the peasantry are so downtrodden that they would have no loyalty to their feudal masters if faced with something better. (Not the KoW obviously, but say Lunar missionaries willing to do honour to the name of the Invisible God.) The merchant classes feel excluded from political decisions and conspire to gain power by manipulating the debts of the nobility.
It has always struck me as odd that there is no Malkioni sect that takes the obvious route out of this dilemma: the opening of all castes and occupations to qualified persons at adolesence. I even wrote a small adventure which was set in such a place emerging from the Ban. I felt I had to have it overrun by the KoW at the end of the adventure just to maintain Gloranthan continuity. They also had two additional heresies: Women are people too. (Their Revalation had come from a female Prophet.) and Non-Humans are people too. (My favourite NPC was Sir Arrrgh, a Troll Knight of the Mace. Sir Galahad with tusks.)
If anyone's interested I'll drag out my notes on them.
(PS I still can't find the Holy City of Malkonwal....)
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