Steve Lucek wrote that:
>i) every one worships one general purpose god (Orlanth / Ernalda), calling
>on the appropriate aspect of the god for the matter in hand. This is what
I
>imagine to be the Jeff Richard model.
That is not my model. Sorry.
>ii) typical clan members worship the pantheon as a whole, without the
close,
>and often exclusive, ties to ONE god as in the RQiii rules for initiates.
>This might work like the Alex Ferguson model, which emphasises the worship
of
>associate gods in the pantheon, though the individual still maintains a
special
>link to one god. A more extreme version of this is if the typical clan
member
>has no special link with any one god, but just worships the god
appropriate to
>the task in hand, though of course you get the (rather rare, unless they
are
>PCs) fanatic who ties themselves to one god. This form of pantheon worship
is
>very much the way I think that many real world multi-deity religions might
have
>worked.
This is much closer to my model. In ToDP all clan members are initiated into Orlanth/Ernalda, which provides a pantheon of worship - besides the plethora of subcults (King, Thunderer, Warrior, Barntar, Orendanae, Cow Mother, the Grain Goddess, etc.) there's dozens of dieties that O/E have associated with them - Asrelia, Babeester Gor, Chalana Arroy, Elmal, Eurmal, Issaries, Lhankhor Mhy, Mastakos, Maran Gor, Odayla, Ty Kora Tek, Urox, and Voria just to name a few. My beef is that the difference between a "subcult" and an "associate cult" for most clans is almost indistinguishable.
Look, clan members become adults by passing the rites of Orlanth/Ernalda - in rules terms, initiates of O/E. Quoting KoS: "Because most people wish to belong to the center of society, Orlanth and Ernalda are ordinarily the dieties which are worshipped; they are the 'normal' dieties. People within these cults may be associated with some minor aspect, such as bringing the thunder, calling to the barley, singing away the ice, raising children, or calling in the cats, but always as Orlanth initiates."
These associate cults don't provide the panoply of magic that the specialized tribal or city cults do. Issaries Pathfinder (an associate cult of Orlanth) provides Path Watch and that's it. If you want to be able to cast Market, or Spell Trading or Lock, you need to specialize.
Jeff [whose server has been acting up - hopefully there is no weird stuff at the end of this message and if so, I apologize for the waste of bandwidth]
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