I am not sure Maximum Game Fun in our RuneQuest campaigns is well served by the largely technical argument about what obstetric magics ought (or ought not) to be available through the various Earth Goddess cults.
If I were at all concerned by this issue, I'd start by using "RunePower" (cf. Tales #12 for David Cheng's fine magic system, posted to this list way back when) so as to avoid requiring specific written descriptions of the various Childbirth spells necessary, then apply the number of points of appropriate cults' magic used as a modifier to the mother's roll on a (Pendragonesque) Childbirth Survival Table. (The ability to abstract the "obvious" but unwritten magical powers of various cults in this way is IMHO one of the best things about RunePower; I understand rules lawyers hate it).
Presumably nobody out there is so mechanistically-minded as to actually kill off a favourite female PC or NPC as a result of a random roll during childbirth (broobirths excepted), so the question is largely academic. The RuneQuest rules rightly focus on what's important during play (sadly, this has usually been Combat); while giving birth is of course socially important, I doubt there are many games in which this is a major activity worthy of much as much rules-space (beyond, say, Pendragon's Winter Phase rules) as the more orthodox Healing and Protection magics.
When we are debating the Gloranthan experience of birth, or the customs surrounding it in various cultures, I'm far more interested; when the discussion tends to the rules mechanics that could be used to ensure safe delivery, like so many other men at this moment I feel squeamish and turn away...
> It would be interesting to know if the Malkioni have the same split
> [between God and gods]. By now, I suspect not, as they have a fully
> developed monotheism. Maybe before the Sun died?
All IMHO: In the Dawn Age, for a couple of centuries between Malkion's "I Fought, We Won" and the triumph of the True Hrestol Way, the Malkioni of Seshnela were polytheistic: their Wizards knew which of the many Gods should be appeased or called upon in particular circumstances. This unity (sharply contrasting with the isolation of the Malkioni people during the Ice Age) may well be a symptom of the "Universal Brotherhood" experienced during "I Fought, We Won" - or then again, it may be due to the departure of the Prophet from his Chosen People, and a subsequent fall from grace.
The True Hrestoli people (who were the first Malkioni Church) weren't exactly monotheistic, but their God was a Jealous God, and He did have it in for the evil Seshnegi Earth deities favoured by the ruling dynasty of Serpent Kings who had expelled Prince Hrestol from his homeland.
(This pattern of tolerance followed by a return to isolationist jealousy mirrors that seen elsewhere in Genertela at this stage of the Age, as the ancient Orlanth/Yelm rivalry, shelved at the Compromise, reared its ugly head once again in Peloria).
Of course, at this early stage in the evolution of their religion, the Malkioni did not even worship the Invisible God, who was "discovered" later on by the aptly-named Jrusteli God Learners. They knew, of course, about the primordial Creator, but assumed (wrongly, to modern Malkioni eyes) that the Prophet Malkion's Laws had been vouchsafed to him, either by the Creator Himself intruding into the world (this belief would now be heretical in any major modern sect) or through the exercise of his own perfectly Logical mind (this, too, is now heresy).
The Jrusteli, working after Arkat's Crusade Against Chaos and subsequent foundation of Stygia had so greatly disturbed the traditional ways of the West, determined that the remote Creator and their transcendent Invisible God were one and the same; that Malkion's prophetic revelations had been from the Invisible God; that the other, lesser gods were demonic beings to be enslaved or controlled through the superior power of Divine Law.
Of course, eventual abuses by some Jrusteli (who either worshipped these "demons," or commanded that they themselves be worshipped) led to the downfall of the Middle Sea Empire, and the general reaction by surviving Malkioni against the idea of any entanglement with the other so-called "gods," which leads us to the monotheistic mainstream Malkionism of today (Hrestoli, Rokari, and other sects).
Those Malkioni sects which were not influenced by the God Learners, most notably the Stygians of Safelster and the Carmanian exiles from Loskalm, preserve vestiges of the original "polytheism" which have been eradicated from mainstream Malkionism since the middle of the Second Age, first by Jrusteli contempt, later through survivors' fears.
(The above is entirely IMHO, and not necessarily supported by every existing source. For both "How the West was One" and my work on Carmanian history, I needed a theological explanation for the God Learner movement, and had to find out how the "polytheistic" Stygian and Carmanian churches fitted into the history of mainstream Malkionism. I know that my version is different to the "white lab-coated" model of scientific God Learners which has previously held the field; but I enjoy the Solomonic glory and downfall of this particular Jrusteli Empire).
(NB: I know I'm using "monotheistic" and "polytheistic" rather loosely above, but prefer doing this to digging up some obscure ethnographical term from theology which would be meaningless to me and to most of my audience. Deism, schmeism...)
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #153
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