>Of course the best example of Death in the Service of Life comes from
>Peloria, Land of Enshrined Opposites. Shargash the Destroyer obediently
>kills the enemies of the All Father. As the Purifier, he destroys rot
>and evil to make it new again. As the Lord of Ashes, he is the Protector
>of the Dead on their Travels to and from Life. As the Preserver, he kills
>the things he loves to keep them safe and bring them back again.
Isn't this stretching the definition of a death cult rather widely? Shargash is just as much a Death Cult as Orlanth (both kill people and visit the Underworld) but I've never heard of Orlanth being called a death cult. Shargash may kill in order to preserve the Stable Land but he is not intrinsically Death in the same way Humakt or Zorak Zoran is.
Lewis Jardine:
Wrote in disbelief that the KoW is rated higher than the Horali or the Iron Dwarves. He misses, I think, the point that battles are not decided solely by individual prowess (of which the KoW comes in third) but also on the capabilities and resourcefulness of the commander.
HORALI: While the Horali are fearsome according to their immortality and constant training, most do not live forever. Arolanit which has the largest concentration of Brithini in Glorantha has not been intact since the Dawn. It was partitioned into the Kingdom of Baustin and the Duchy of Laufol during the Second Age and Malaskan Phillipe was merely the Bishop of Baustin and attended the God Learner 5th Council.
In the third age, Arolanit was part of the Kingdom of Seshnela when Bailifies was crowned and only threw off the Rokari yoke in 1496 ST. After that any traces of Rokarism simply died out.
Therefore the vast majority of Horali only have 100 or so years of experience. I do not believe that the Arolanit Horali have access to Plate Armour as Arolanit is noted as an impoverished coastal region in the Genertela Book. They would be more inclined to wear Lamellar as it's more traditional and cheaper.
IMO the Horali are not enchanted to the hilt. There are only half as many Zzaburi as there are Horali and the Zzaburi have got other things to enchant. I think that a Horali would only have 1pt of enchantments per 10 years of service if he's lucky and much of that goes to improving armour and weapons as an Enhance CON and Enhance STR are far less tiresome for the Zzaburi to cast than Strenghtening Enchantment etc.
So in battle, the Horali are superb. But they are not totally invincible and can be defeated (although the enemies victory is usually Pyrric). However because of the Talar's innate conservatism nature (Change=Death by Old Age), the Horali can be outmaneveured by the enemy commander far more easily than the Talar's age would indicate.
IRON DWARVES: They are fearsome. But in battle they are completely hampered by their taciturn, conservative nature. They go by the book for everything and flately refuse to innovate.
Yes, with their firearms and automatic crossbows, they are completely awesome. But look at the minus side: they are so shortsighted, they would need inch-thick glasses to see anything clearly beyond 100m. This does put some major crimp in their offensive capability on the battle field.
KINGDOM OF WAR: The average KoW warrior is only slightly better than the equivalent Loskalmi knight. Yet the KoW would be able to defeat an army of Horali or Brithini, because the leaders are trained to find out and exploit the weaknesses of the enemy. This gives them an advantage second to none over the leaders of the other two.
For example, if confronted with the feared Nidan Musket-and-Pike regiment, the KoW would disperse beyond the vision range of the Mostali. Then they would force the musketry to expend their ammo over a extended period by herding cattle, cute bunny rabits etc in the general direction of the regiment. After this has been done, they send in cavalry who close in and pick the dwarves of at their leisure with missile and magics. If the dwarves break out of the formation and charge, the cavalry quite happily retire leading the dwarves over a series of stake-filled Ha-has (In my glorantha at least, Crit-proofed dwarven Armour does not come complete with seatbelts and/or airbags).
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #556
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