I am not a Gloranthan scholar but, since I brought this up recently, I thought I'd have a go at an answer. I hope some of the Scholars will jump in here and correct or elaborate on what I say.
As I understand it, a Dart Competition is a euphemism for a struggle for political-social-economic power within the Empire. The Hearlands are run by a relatively small number of great families or clans. Normally there is a certain stability to the balance of power among the families, but from time to time one of the families tries to make a grab for more power or to chip away at one of their rivals -- a dart competition. Most often these would result in subtle shifts in power; if the shift in favor of one family were too sudden, other, neutral families would join in against the victor. Once in a while, however, a particularly brilliant maneuver does cause a sudden shift, as when the Yanoriao-ilart clan seized the Doblian Sultanate in 1575.I don't think these normally turn violent (except maybe on a personal level), though sometimes they do (there is a reference in tFS about 2 of the 3 families that know how to make Moon Boats being eliminated).
I wrote before:
> I am now playing a Lunar citizen on his way to the
> Grantlands, a victim of a Dart Competition.
Steve Stairs responded:
>Shouldn't you be making a new character if your last
>character was a victim of a Dart Competition?
Although I don't think it specifically mentions it in RoC, I have always assumed that the Lunar Grantlands were in part populated by people whose families were victims of Dart Competitions.
Something like this went on in the Roman Empire. AH has a rather interesting boxed game called _The_Republic_of_Rome_ that simulates this sort of thing -- a very nasty game. I've played it 3 or 4 times, and only once have the families cooperated enough to keep the Empire from falling apart.
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #180
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