Otkorion:
>The rulers are malkioni noblemen who worship other gods to gain more
>power (case 1).
The rulers in the north are Orlanthi noblemen worshipping the Invisible God for the added political power, plus the service of wizards who can maintain spells.
>And here I disagree
>strongly with Nick about being a sorcery-using Rune Priest of Orlanth,
>even assuming the cult allows you. Sorcery requires dedication and a lot
>of time spent in lonely studies upon crumbling old books, while being a
>RP requires a lot of distracting services: teaching mundane skills to
>initiates, performing week-long heroquesting rituals, casting blessings
>for one's initiates, etc...
Yes, that's true for the village priest Storm Voice. And that's why the more civilized Storm Voice within the Henotheist hierarchy will have time enough to study the lesser wizardous arts, and gain the knowledge of an Apprentice in no time short. Some of the "mundane" skills taught in a Henotheist church are sorcery, after all, and teaching helps oneself learning.
>A Storm Voice would be a very inefficient
>Sorcerer, even though Sandy's system somehow mitigates this. As for
>knights, I think that most are standard Malkioni Horali,
In my Glorantha, Horali are foot soldiers, while knights are horse soldiers. Riding is a lordly privilege, fighting is not (in the original Brithini sense).
>but: if you were a brave knight of Ralios, would you not be tempted to
>join Humakt like Arkat did?
Why not skip Humakt and join Zorak Zoran?
>The farmers, instead, are the original Orlanthi populace who have been
>forced to accept the superiority of Malkion's god over Orlanth, but with
>little changes to their lyfestile (case 2).
Not necessarily. Otkorion has been a Malkioni land a long long time, and the Orlanthi immigrated only recently. This makes the situation more like the Romano-Britain farmers (Malkioni) vs. the Saxon invaders (Lankst Orlanthi), at least in parts of Otkorion.
If How the West Was One is correct about the Galvosti, Otkorion has been quite strongly Galvosti until Surantyr introduced his way. In this case, I doubt many pagan farmers remained...
>They still have barbarian-style temples where spirit magic is taught,
>because they are too illiterate to have access to effective sorcery.
IMO sorcery spells can be formulated by runes, which would be learned by the sorcery users quite quickly. Think algebraic formulae...
Henotheist Churches as tools of power:
Of course they are. Every state church anywhere alway was. Surantyr's pan-Korioni church is even more so. Give the church a weak leader, and you'll get fewer converts than dissidents.
>At this point, one could object that the Hrestoli or Rokari Church have
>political power, too. True, but in a different way. First of all, Church
>and State are different entities in both Loskalm and Tanisor.
Not at all true in Loskalm, IMO. Every Ruler is a retired/promoted priest.
>And,
>moreover, the Ecclesiarch has in no way the same strict control over the
>traditionalist and privileged Rokari hyerarchy as the heads of the
>Henotheist Churches have over their small and young sects. After all,
>_they_ are the church, while Theoblanc is just the last one of a long
>list of Rokari "popes" who have already showed an unforunate tendency to
>being found guilty of heresy or being assassinated.
In a state church, the ruler is the head of the church, and that lineage can be longer than any episcopal sequence.
>Guess who was killed
>at the Seventh Council of Malkionism (LARP): Foyalfine, Surantyr or
>Theoblanc?
Theoblanc, because there were a dozen Rokari bishops from Seshnela and allies, but only one other Henotheist bishop other than Foyalfine and Surantyr, and that was Darmangon of Borin... In Rise of Ralios, Surantyr had a fair number of followers, and promptly he received a backstabbing as well as a heroic effort to re-convert him by his last loyal knight (twice at least).
Henotheist churches have existed in Ralios ever since Arkat re-introduced the concept of worshipping both "ordinary" deities and the Invisible God. The later God Learners who completed the crusade against Emperor Paslac were Henotheists as well, for they had adopted much from the people the (former) Return to Rightness crusade had subjected. We know that in Slontos the God Learners actively worshipped "ordinary" deities.
Their popularity has grown and faded with the power of the controlling state. Surantyr's church _is_ special because it operates over his own diocese in neeighbouring countries (Sentanos, Tinaros, Kustria).
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #249
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