Thanks indeed, but careful, I could get a swelled head, and I'm already about a size 7 3/4", fedorawise. Even FGS said my comments were "basically right". <gasp!> Praise indeed. Does the Great Pantheon (nee, Cultural) Initiation Debate approach Concensus, after the fact?
> Increasingly, I am of the opinion that the very rigid initiatory
> status described in RQ2 and RQ3 is just plain wrong.
This is further than I'd go, but if I'm getting a free hit, I'll say that I'd like the rules on associates to be made more clearly and purposefully vague -- or rather, to explicitly admit flexibility and diversity, which may amount to much the same thing in rules terms. And the temple size rules are more in need of a chainsaw than an elastoplast (trans: BandAid). Some way of dealing with "temporary initiation" into friendly cults, without having to hand-wave away annoying details like the characters ending up paying 70% tithe and getting bounced by yay-big Furies would be good, too. (David Hall's comments on "specific big rituals" are most pertinent here. I won't include his message here and nod thoughtfully at each point, but for once just pretty much agree _en masse_.)
> Most worship of Issaries, Lhankhor Mhy, Chalana Arroy, and a host of
> other dieties, is done by "Orlanth initiates" at the "Orlanth Temple".
Yes, I very much agree with this. It's an understandable, if unfortunate, tendency to ignore these worthies in The Game, though, since these are not the guys who get all the Sexy Magic, and furthermore, aren't the guys who, in my view, lead even "pantheon" style worship.
To draw out an example: many clans and small towns will have CA gydor, maintaining small, but magically active, shrines. But by no stretch of the imagination are "twice 7 times 7" of the populace in such a place sworn Healers. More likely, she, a handful of actual initiates, and a group of the more active and keen "associates" will lead HHD and SHD ceremonies attended mainly by a hundred or so Ernaldans and Orlanthi, motivated by variously, a generic piety to the pantheon; hopes of getting healing magic, or at least, a decent distance up the Healing Triage Priority Queue; a sense of social duty; peer pressure; or that the today's ritual has their fave diety in an especially glam role. In other words, anything _but_ Arroyan zealotry. Without the "associates", the CA's would have no magical critical mass to make their ceremonies "work"; without the Initiates, the populace would have no effective focus or direction for their CA worship, or their wish to do so. (Specialised _symbiotes_, if you please.) I haven't given DH's SBRs as much thought as I should have (yet), but I can see it fitting into the same basic framework, except that now, more of the town turns out, they each sacrifice more (in whatever form), and some of them become "temporary initiates", which status to have its details haggled over later.
> Same can be said about the agricultural and fertillity goddesses being
> done by "Ernalda intiates" at the "Ernalda Temple".
Even more so, in many ways. I think the DP earth religions are so closely linked as to be, in some ways, intra-convertible, a factoid sadly ignored in the "current" rules. (Should we all start saying "The game system formerly known as RQ/Glorantha, now pronounced <COPYRIGHT CRIMETHINK>"?)
I do have to take issue, or at leats minor quibble, with the "cautionary quotes", though. I think these people think of themselves as _precisely_ Orlanth Initiates (mutatis mutandis, Ernalda), and are successfully described, to a first approximation, by RQ rules as such (m.m., somewhat less well).
And under, separate cover, about Resettlement era Dragon Pass: (sorry Jeff, it sounds like a _great_ campaign, but the title still uses my neurons as violin strings ;-) )
> When a child reaches a certain age, he or she is initiated into
> Orlanth/Ernalda and becomes a member of the clan.
I agree, it used to be precisely this. These are the Good Old Days, when youths dying in initiation ceremonies were Acceptable Civilian Losses, and would in any case _encourager les autres_... There would also likely to be much less "social acceptance of non-standard gender roles", especially among the ex Heortland clans. i.e., to be an Adult Male, you used to have to be an Orlanth Initiate. Modern Sartarites being semi-civilised wusses, this requirement gets separated out, and made less stringent, especially for city-dwellers. So now you become an adult and a full clan member in a "civil" ceremony, where the chief presides, and an Orlanth cult member in a "religious" one, where a Storm Voice does. So theoretically, one could be one, without the other, though remaining so would be Improbable and Peculiar in most clans, to a greater or lesser degree. That's my current working understanding, at least.
> Only at the tribal level are you likely to find the specialized cults -
> that is until Sartar introduces city-rings, but for me that's still
> centuries away.
And of course, a City Ring is a "tribe of tribes", and a Kingdom, a level higher again, so these are increasingly able to maintain successively more complex layers of such structures. This doesn't so much increase the amount of specialist worship though, as "factor it out" from normal clan religion.
Paolo Guccione joins in the orgy of agreement:
> David Hall described the Orlanthi practice of worshiping the entire
> Lighbringer pantheon through the Orlanth cult. He also suggests that
> this may become the norm in G:tG. It would be a very good idea, indeed!
For my money, it's already the norm in RQ3! Look up Orlanth's associates in GoG... If anything, actually, it's the non-Lightbringers who get a bad deal at present. Back home on the farm, the 7LBs are a whiz-bang trendoid city-folk thing, and Barntar, Voriof etc. are the principal subcults/associates/important pantheon members/choose term to taste. The rules don't reallt reflect this, causing head-scratching over phrases such as "mainly farmers of Barntar's cult". D'oh? -- do I get Mobility, or not?
> DH stated that most Humakti temples in Sartar are shrines in Orlanth
> Great Temples. But I have always thought that in Maniria Humakt had
> permanently severed his kinship to Orlanth and was no longer part of the
> Storm Tribe [...]
Good question. I believe that Humakt is formally not an "associate" of Orlanth, but in practice, is everything but. Thus, the shrine to Humakt is not actually _in_ the Orlanth Great Temple, but just _happens_ to be next door. There's no formal exchange of cult magic, but Swords mysteriously end up teaching Bladesharp ["You want _how_ many points?"] to rather a lot of Orlanthi. Humakt, and Humakti, aren't necessarily separated from the "tribe", but certainly from siblinghood with Orlanth, from his Stead, and very possibly from his Clan, depending on both local interpretation, and the intent of the cultist. ("No, you can't have a loan, _ex_-cousin. S--... separate off!")
I'm sure many Digesters are feeling somewhat bilious at my Umpteenth banging on about Associate Worship, but colourless term aside, I think it _is_ about the most useful rule-of-thumb for collective worship. I won't deny that Babs Gor and Issaries are in the same "pantheon", but worshippers of one in a temple of the other is not, I would contend, a routine occurrence.
> Orlanth initiates are
> in fact "Storm Pantheon" initiates, we all agree about this.
Well, personally, the terminology makes me want to reach for my Gift Carrier. It has all the evocative game-level colour of saying "(Stroke Shargash)" (c.f., "Stroke City", in The North is this bit of turf), every time a certain well-endowed amazonian divinity is mentioned. Orlanth initiates are, in fact, Initiates of Orlanth, who is "at the center of an exceptionally large and complete pantheon" (or words to that effect).
> I think
> that any healer or sage is already a godi, not just an initiate.
I don't agree with this, though for the reasons I discussed earlier, I do think that "high initiates" are proportionately much more common. But one doesn't become such overnight, so there remains the need for a initiate status, in each of the cults.
This isn't to say that all Orlanth initiates are created equal. Obviously, some are omni-pantheon quasi-slackers and ditherers, while some are mad-keen members of a particular Orlanth sub-cult or aspect. It may be useful to think of a "initiate" of Magic Weapon subcult, of Orlanth Adventurous, of Barntar, or of one of the Thunder Brothers, as a more direct analogue to say, a Lhankor Mhy Apprentice.
Lengthily,
Alex.
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