Mongols/Longbows thread : Umm, could we move this off the Glorantha list, people ?
Sandy's/Graeme's stuff : Great stuff, but some comments.
Lunar Way of War :
Partly true, IMO. Whilst massed magicians would be useful, they are not the primary reason for Lunar military superiority. The reasons can be summed up as the professionalism of the Lunar military and the existance of a formal career structure for Lunar heroes.
Firstly, Lunar professionalism. An Orlanthi citizen must farm for 80-odd percent of their time. Only the 5-10 percent of the population who are huscarls or nobility can train for war. A Lunar soldier is just that, and can spend a much higher proportion of their time learning their job.
Likewise for Lunar officers. They can learn about tactics, setting up a supply line, how to deal with spirit x, how tribe y fights etc etc. They can drill their men, so that orders like "Disrupt Highlighted flat" or "Disrupt highlighted boost five" can be obeyed.
Lunar units are also established for long periods, and internally standardized. All troops would be similar POW, know the same spells and be part of the same corporate identity. Each regiment would have a guardian spirit - a sort of regimental godlet - that would help glue the unit together as a unit. In a magically-charged world like Glorantha, a unit of 800 men that have been marching together for 4 years, where each man would know the regimental history by rote, where each man knows himself to be part of something greater than himself, would be a thing that enemy magicians could sense, and enemy shamans would gag on.
The Lunar Empire starts training it's heroes when they are ten. Suitable individuals (whether chosen by birth, talent or potential) would spend four hours a day in the Gymnasium, four hours in the schoolroom six days a week until puberty. They would learn skills at arms and scholarly skills, and Lunar ideology at every step.
At puberty, they would begin their spiritual education - getting ceremonially drugged, learning how to deal with spirits, becoming illuminated, learning about differents faiths and the facets of the Lunar Way. Field trips would be arranged, and unofficial ones winked at.
After eight years of this, the student would be magically powerful, skilled at arms and with a good grounding in history, theology and the sciences. Then four years as a junior officer in a good regiment, as a trainee Magician or in a Civil Service post.
The trainee hero would then be sent on appropriatly-judged missions and tasks, both in the Mundane and the Otherworld. At every step the Trainee would be watched, judged, weighed up and assessed. Debriefing would happen, detatchment would be trained in, weaknesses discovered and remedial action taken.
In short, rather than the hit-or-miss methods of the Barbarians, the Lunar Way of Heroes is based on Will Guided by Knowledge and Inspiration Choosing Path.
This method has disadvantages - arrogance for one, a potential disrespect for the Unknowable and vulnerability to political pressure, nepotism and the like. But it does produce Heroes, regularily and in quantity.
Kralorea/Lunar magical ecologies :
I think you are missing the point somewhat with the Sun cultures. For them, worship is a social duty, not a means of individual enhancement. It is far more a case of you are part of a faith because you a part of a culture, rather than the reverse - if you want to be (or keep being) a Kralori citizen, you worship Godunya, regardless of whether or not it directly does anything for you. I mean, isn't the Splendour and the Security of the land enough ?
More widely, I believe that when a worshipper worships, they are providing support not for the deity they are praying to, but to their world-view in general. Worshippers in Prax see Chaos as being something mean, nasty, just-over-that-hill and only just held off - so Chaos gets a large chunk of the magical energy a worshipper generates. Worshippers in the Lunar Empire know Chaos to be safe and reliable - and if Chaos ever does go feral, the Government (who, after all, are there to help you) will send someone to get rid of it, and they will. Therefore, Chaos occupies a weak role in their world view, and it therefore gets a small to zero chunk of the magical energy generated by worship (this, btw explains why there is so much Chaos in Prax, and so little in the Empire).
Likewise, worshippers know that if the Empire falls, a small cabal of heroes will reincarnate the Red Emperor and/or Goddess, or he/she/they will really have just been hiding or something, and therefore the magical power neccessary to cause these things will be available. On the other hand, if the Emperor is dead and Glamour over-run, then the Imperial Bureacracy will surely be disrupted (on the other hand those blasted Tax Demons will survive *anything*) - the worshippers believe this, so it becomes true, the bureacracy runs out of power and starts to decay. Fast. Similarly, everyone knows the Army is invincible, so it is, until it isnt, then *suddenly* oh Gods, *SHENG SELERIS AND FIFTY MILLION RAVENING HORSEMEN* *RAMPAGING ARGRATH WITH ALL THE SPIRITS OF HELL* - these things are believed, and therefore become true.
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #250
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