>Jeff Richard laid out some very good reasons why Lodril and Barntar
worship
>is mutually exclusive, based on soil types and plow technology. (THough I
>recall an argument that the River of Cradels has soil much like the Oslir
>basin, so the Lodrilli are having good success there.)
I've been thinking about this and I no longer think it is the case. First point is that the Lodrilli don't plow much in the Oslir basin - they grow rice. Despite the presence of grain constellations, dry farming is not important in the daily lives of the Dara Happans in the Oslir floodplain. Rather, irrigated rice farming (with three grains of rice) seems to be the staple grain of most DHs. Now maybe the Lodrilli colonists are attempting to rice farm the River of Cradles, digging lots of irrigation canals, etc. That might work.
By the way, the agricultural technique god for the Tripolis rice farms is Mohenjar not Lodril.
Second point is that the Lodrilli plow was developed not for the Oslir floodplain, but for Naveria-Pelanda. The heavy plow originated in Pelanda/Naveria - where such a plow makes sense. Where it doesn't make sense is in the marshy rice growing flood plain of Oslir. This heavy plow allowed the Lodrilli to till the heavy soils of northern Pelorian plains that had just been cleared of forest. I don't think that the River of Cradles has the heavy soil of north Peloria.
BTW, on a completely unrelated tangent, did you all know that the brick-making dirt in Naveria is red? The Lunars love it, and so do the locals, who can make money by exporting dirt to for wealthy Lunars to build with!
>Yes - Lodril is a kind of "Uber EarthGod" for Peloria, who can be
>worshipped by folks from all over the empire with hardly a change from the
>local (Pelorian) earth god back home. But he is more than a god of
>peasants.
That is definitely true, and I hope no better thought that I was confining Lodril to being simply the "god of peasants". This is the aspect of Lodril most commonly encountered and where he has the most potential overlap with Barntar.
Jeff
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