The ever-learned Joerg Baumgartner (nice improvements to the web-page
BTW!), responded to Mr. Tines' disbelief about the Sartarite cities:
>Well, it didn't start out like that, but Orlanthi have always had an urge
>to cluster to cities even despite clan or tribal differences.
>The First and Second Age Orlanthi chieftains (princes) were a splendid
>combination of barbarian warlords and shrewd merchant princes, ruling
with their
>sizeable hird of warriors from their fortress cities, which provide them
>and their warriors with almost all the speciality craft skills needed.
Part of the confusion of the issue surrounds the word "city". In the First Age and Second Ages, the Orlanthi "cities" were, by and large, similar to the archaic Greek "civitas" - basically a fortified community gathering site where there would be holy sites, public gathering sites, maybe the king's hall, etc. Most folk would have lived outside of the walls. Remember, one of King Heort's techniques for triumphing over the darkness was to build forts for his peoples. An example from the Dawn would be Stravulstead east of the Kordros Island in what is now Tarsh, which was a town and temple enclosed by cyclopean walls, or Berensted on the Black Eel, which was a hillfort village and temple center.
I believe that trade is what transforms some of these fortified "temples and public meeting sites" into "cities".
>Third Age Orlanthi suffered from Alakoring's curse of disunity, aka cult
>of Orlanth Rex, which propagates small tribes with lots of tribal "kings"
>who are little more than glorified chieftains. Often they overcame this
>problem, as in Sylila, Tarsh, or Heortland, only to become a target for
>other large nations. As soon as Sartar reached this stage, look who
>invaded...
Actually, I think that the Third Age dilemma is more complicated than
this. One problem is that the traditional large-scale political
institution that unified the Heortlings - the actual Kingdom of the
>Heortlings - "became the EWF" and never returned. In the Second Age, the
>Ring of the Heortlings was taught draconic wisdom by the Hunting and Waltzing
>Bands and formed the EWF. A pyramid scheme, the EWF gave a tremendous amount
>of power to a small handful of people. Many priests were amongst the first
>people to learn the draconic way and thus
>were prominent in the EWF. However, most of the Heortling peoples were not
>privy to the higher mysteries of the draconic path and continued to follow
>their old ways - albeit as supporters of the EWF. The old tribes became
>increasingly fossilized and irrelevant and were eventually discarded by the
>increasingly arrogant EWF.
>
>Alakoring taught new rites of kingship that gave the king power over the
>priests and "took his war to Aggar, and to Holay" but was slain before he
>could reestablish the Ring of the Heortlings. Instead, the Foreigner King
>Verenmars managed to assemble a Ring of Peoples against the EWF and founded
the Kingdom of Saird. With the destruction of Dragon Pass at the
Dragonkill, the regalia of the Heortlings has been scattered, lost,
destroyed or forgotten. Thus the plight of the Third Age Orlanthi.
Sartar used his "City-Rings" to establish new centers that could be used by several tribes each - an attempt to unify the Quivini through trade. Remember that along with the Grazelanders the Sartarites occupy a key choke point in trade from the rich lands of Kethaela to Peloria.
Oh yes, I wanted to emphasize my agreement with Sandy Peterson that THE LUMP IS WRONG. In fact, to show how much I agree with Sandy's conclusion, I want to express that I completely disagree with Sandy when he wrote:
>I don't care for the Elmal history myself, so I just ignore it. I advise you
to do the
>same.
Just to give an example how you too can ignore the pundits of the digest - - my advice is to ignore Sandy on this one and embrace Elmal. Dump Yelmalio outside of Prax (where MOB's retentive Sun Domers are too good to get rid of)! Sartarites need there own Sun god, not some wanker elf god.
Jeff
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #212
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