> I believe that the Seven Mothers cult is practically unknown in the
> interior of the Empire, and that it is a relatively recent cult --
> surely no more than a century or two old.
Very plausible. We could pin this to the (otherwise unglossed) "New Monks Revival" in the first year of the Fifth Wane (per the timeline in Wyrms Footnotes #14 p.30): happened about 150 years ago, and it's the first time that the "missionary cult of the Seven Mothers" is mentioned in the Lunar History (cf. Heroes magazine, vol.1 no.6, p.4).
> I can understand WHY the Lunars would think it would work, and HOW
> they think it would work, but I also see the Orlanthi scoffing at it,
> laughing, and more or less acting like drunk Vikings at a Revival Tent.
> (i.e. "Where's da women, where's da booze?"). So, how effective is the
> cult of the Seven Mothers at converting the Orlanthi?
Depends on the cultists, and on the Orlanthi. Obviously, some Bullies will kill Lunars on sight. (And they probably aren't too friendly to traders, either). Others will have witnessed or experienced acts of great kindness from the pious missionaries of the Seven Mothers. It's often a personal thing: it's easy to say "Of course they're all Chaos scum," but when they give your mother free healing magics to ease her pains, feed the destitute, open orphanages and poor-houses, and teach your children to read and write, it'd take a particularly dim "drunk Viking" to keep going on about how they're all "traitorous dishonourable chaos filth".
Mind you, we know those barbarians can be pretty dim... some of them are probably still slagging off King Sartar for introducing the "dishonourable, cheap, treacherous" benefits of cities and roads to the country.
Powered by hypermail