Rapists and involuntary initiation from Jane Williams on 1997-09-20 (Glorantha Digest Vol 05)

From: Jane Williams <janewill_at_mail.nildram.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 18:42:03 +0000

Trying to catch up on rather a lot of Digests here: not only having been on holiday, but also mysteriously getting unsubscribed in my absence. Ordering the missing files from the archives meant they're now sorted into random order, so I'm not going to try to quote specific points here.

As I understand the general discussion, there is a suggestion that any act of rape, being by definition worship of Thed, may cause the rapist to become a Thed initiate (and hence a Broo). I can think of a couple of precendents for this: initiation into Malia by asking for her help against disease (not quite involuntary, then, assuming the victim knew the consequences), and the possible initiation into Krjalk described in the first "Drastic".

Objections seem to be that it isn't, and shouldn't be, possible to initiate into, say, Humakt just by doing a lot of killing. Therefore, for consistency, this shouldn't be possible for Thed etc. either.

It occurs to me that the three cults with possible involuntary initiation have one thing in common. They're all Chaotic. Does it not seem feasible that *all* Chaotic cults "cheat" by using involuntary initiation, and that all non-Chaotic cults could, but refuse to do so? Theymight, as I think someone suggested, send the candidate a dream suggesting that seeking out initiation might be a good move, but forcing initiation is akin to spiritual rape: they wouldn't do it.

Jane Williams                     jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/index.shtml

End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #156

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