Your post has some interesting material in it, but I don't beleive that some of it is well supported; hence, a rebuttal and/or questioning of it.
Lunar training of heroes;
This sounds like a neat idea, but how do you pick you recruits? The age of ten sounds a bit early for selection by talent or potential, particularly when the gloranthan calander year is supposed to be only forty weeks long. Since the gods cannot look into the future, omens & divinations don't really exist. As for training by bloodline, this only sounds feasible in the (arish-?) EEL clan. I beleive that this family has been running a centuries long breeding program on itself, with help from Moonson. The general idea being to produce a female vessel capable of partially incarnating the Red Goddess. Hon-eel and Jar-eel are the two notable successes. (Somebody please correct me on this if I am wrong, as I cannot recall what the source of this idea is). At any rate, the Dragon Pass game only calls for one Lunar super-hero (Jar-eel), and two heroes; Moonson and Beat-pot Aelwrin. The latter is described as an escaped slave who clubs people to death with a set of cooking pots from the kitchen wherein he served. Hardly sounds like the product of a training program.
Belief in Chaos:
The Prax/Empire belief-breeds-Chaos doesn't seem sensible to me. The point of organized worship is to support your favored gods, not their enemies. The rituals involved channel/focus the energy to your patron. There was a lot of talk at RQ-Con '94 about heroquesting that supports this line. The prime example was of a Yemalian going through the ritual of the Hill of Gold, and doing so well that he gained Fire powers & spells. Of coarse this meant there was a ZZ troll out there somewhere who did poorly/got beat-up, and didn't have Fire powers. It was stated that if enough Yemalions could pull of this sort of stunt, Yelmalio & the cult in general would gain/regain Fire and that Zorak Zoran would lose it; Yelmaio would have beaten ZZ at the Hill. (This sort of alteration of GodsTime events is what got the God Learners in trouble. If Yelmalio beats ZZ, then the elves don't sympathize & become friendly...... serious repercussions abound.)
Prax has a lot of Chaos 'cause it's a wasteland where there are lots of nooks and crannies for it to breed in. Chaos is tough there for the same reason the nomads are; the enviroment is harsh and bleak - only the strong survive. The Empire is pastoral because the Imperial legions have drafted the managable chaotics into service, and the unmanagable have been fed to the BAT.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I Andrew Joelson joelsona_at_cpdmfg.cig.mot.com -+- AKA Rupert von Harl, Seven Mothers/Yanafal Tarnils and Humakt | "Contradiction? No, I always did tend to kill chaos creatures anyway." / ------------------------------
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