>Any single sex social environment will tend to attract more than the
>average population of homosexual people. This may apply to the Vingans
>and Yelornans as well, other marginalised female groups, outside
>mainstream society.
Well, yes. They will also attact those who have been rejected by society, which in many cultures included rape victims. So they tend to aquire a fair number of people who seek out these cults to be able to legitimatly avenge themselves, most probably against a stand-in for the original victimizer.
The one time I really developed the Yelornans I had them as being pretty tolerant of whatever sexual practices one had. As long as you didn't go and give the cult a bad name they didn't care. Annoying other cult members was very bad, but they were hardly puritanical. No matter what they were going to be looked at askance, so they just dealt with it. So mine differed a bit from the original version.
Here is the appropriate part from my notes:
"The unicorn riding Star Lady best personifies Yelorna, so ideally, all Yelorna initiates should be totally chaste unicorn riders. This is impossible for a number of reasons, among them: lack of unicorns (as the reward for chastity is the unicorn), the fact that women sufficiently aggressive to want to join a warrior cult (and essentially reject normal society) often have a stronger sexual drive than most women, and the limited life expectancy of a cult that totally forbids sex. Therefore the cult has compromised by simply requiring that the initiates behave with decorum and restraint. Junior initiates cannot marry, and it is considered very bad to become pregnant out of marriage, but non-public relationships are condoned. Public displays of affection are considered to be in poor taste at best.
"The cult does not require the concealing dress of most other solar cults. Members are required to avoid public nudity and aggressive displays of flesh, but the cult does not require that the fact that most of the members are attractive women in very good shape be hidden or concealed. And most do not, wearing clothes loose enough to permit them to fight, but not particularly concealing."
This tended to irritate the other solar type a bit. But she didn't really care. Her power base was the temple and Zebra fort, as her followers were the most reliable troops that Zebra fort had.
The women unicorn riders were under completly different rules, but that was because the unicorns are horribly jealous, not because the cult really cared. But a rider cannot cheat on her unicorn without him knowing and the rider gets a lot more dependent on the unicorn than the other way around. So she cannot have a sexual relationship with anyone, regardless of gender.
Kevin
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