> >Likewise, it could create a tradition where
> >Humakti perform euthanasia on patients the Healers can not help and are
>
> >in terrible pain.
>
> A Humakti would be glad to bring the release of death to one in
> suffering, but then to live is to suffer. I doubt CA has a euthanasia
> ethic though.
Well, IMG, Humakti do perform this exact service, with the tacit approval of the CA Healers. Whilst the Healers' mission is to bring health back to the unhealthy, and mend broken bodies, sometimes they simply cannot assist. Once they have exhausted the available magicks, when their last appeal to their Goddess has gone unanswered (or when the hapless unfortunate simply could no longer afford their attentions -- after all, they can't be dishing out Divine magicks to all and sundry, there must be an economic brake on it, since they don't get their magic back any more quickly than the rest of the Gloranthans), they're left with an individual they cannot Heal, who is in extreme distress and is headed for their next existence anyway. Better to bring in an Humakti, who can wield Death mercifully and honourably (don't forget that honour is not an alien concept to CA either), than to leave the poor soul suffering their way to a certain grave, or surrendering their soul to some ghastly disease spirit.
(Some would claim that a CA member would say, "There is always hope." IMG, they're more pragmatic: if someone's definitely dying, using up CA resources and suffering too, it's the Healer's last duty to ensure the suffering doesn't endure. They can't wield Death themselves, for obvious reasons, otherwise they'd just administer a little too much poppy-juice, or similar, but they can -- with the patient's consent of course -- hand over the patient to someone more qualified to adminster their final treatment. A last resort, in every sense, and not undergone lightly, but sometimes wise.)
Shamans offer the Peaceful Cut to their prey and pack; Humakti do so for their comrades and fellow sentients.
> >I would even go so far as say that after a Humakti makes Sword, and
> >is initiated into the innermost secrets of the cult, he may learn just
> >how reliant Humakt is on Challana Arroy.
>
> _Reliant_?
Funnily enough, I feel there is a kind of mutual reliance. I see Humakti and CAans treating each other with a mutual -- if distant -- respect. An Humakti could trip on the buried stub of a fence-post, and impale himself on the next one. He would not be bound for an honourable Death, for a Death which would glorify his God. He then has a choice: call a comrade to administer Death, and waste his one, his precious and all-important Death on an accident caused by a broken piece of wood; or find a Healer who can restore his health, so that his next chance at Death could be a valiant one.
And, as I said above, Humakti -- under similarly limited conditions -- can be vital to a CA Healer's work, too. I don't think the relationship's exactly pally, but they each have their jobs, and sometimes they intersect, usually against the better will of the person who brings them into confluence, and there is a formal respect between these polar extremes of the span of Life.
Jon
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