Civilized agimori & more cats from Nils Weinander on 1996-01-04 (Glorantha Digest Vol 02)

From: Nils Weinander <niwe_at_ppvku.ericsson.se>
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 09:21:52 +0100

Peter M:
>But the Agimori of Central Pamaltela have always been nomadic save for
>a brief period when the Doraddi were enslaved by the Six-Legged Empire.
...
>Even now, there is a trend to increasing sedentary behaviour among the
>nomadic Agimori. The Kresh are a clear example of this.
...
>As for the Artmali, even they were in the beginning hunter gatherers.
>They just became more civilized before anybody else IMO.

I was of course over-simplifying the situation to make a point. But that does not change the fact that the official Doraddi ideology is that they (or perhaps human life in Pamaltela) have _evolved_ from the bad urban ways of the artmali to the good semi-nomadic ways of the doraddi.

The Kresh are semi-nomadic too. You could argue that their wagons are mobile cities, but that would be a bit contrived IMO.

Me:
> It's much easier to say that in the God Time Yinkin, the god of
> cats helped Orlanth, the god of storm and was his foster brother.

Nick:
>But *why* do they worship him? Because they like cats? Because they keep
>shadow-cats? Because they're hunters, or night watchmen, or have good eyesight,
>or always land on their feet? What is the social benefit of worshipping Yinkin.
>

...
>Just my take on this. Saying "He exists, therefore he is worshipped" seems to
>miss something out

The social benefit is that you reinforce the myth of course. By worshipping Yinkin you reaffirm him as one of Orlanth's more important god-time companions and thus honour kinship and tradition and all the other mushy stuff that keeps society safe from revolution and bad foreign influences.

Then there is of course the added benefit of a nifty runespell.

If the cliff toad god had been Orlanth's brother too, tere would have been myths about that and some sort of a cult to him, IMO.

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