Busy time for the Digest! My In Box doth overflow. :)
Was it just me, or were there major disruptions to the Digest server over the weekend? The following is the first of several messages I'm reposting that have not appeared on the Digest.
HUMAKTI AND CLAN SEVERANCE: A FAR POINT EXAMPLE To illustrate my own take on Humakti and clan severance, I would like to introduce Broddi Clapsaddle, my main 'GM voice' character from the Tovtaros campaign in the gors and gallt of the Far Place.
BRODDI CLAPSADDLE First, a quote from "A Rope of Cedarbark"...
"Who [Cradledaughter] was no one really knew, for she had no kin.... Old Broddi Clapsaddle loved her, and trusted her, but Broddi was humakti, and therefore dead, no longer of the clan. No one should trust the dead in matters of the living, even though Broddi was otherwise much respected, for he was wise for a man - even the women said so - and he bred the finest fighting cuks in all the Far Place. Yet blood is blood only when it flows."
In 1625 Broddi is a grey, ancient (late forties!) Sword of Humakt residing in the Tresdarni founder's stead of Lagerwater. He was once a world-wise and energetic thane, a knower of the secrets of Orlanth, prosperous, well loved and blessed with a wife and five children. Broddi grew up midst the bitter kinstrife of the Yelmalio/Elmal struggles - father against son, Sun against Wind, blood against blood, a time when even the women argued against each other. He was never the less known as a fair man and a peace-giver. His Twin Birch bloodline was powerful, and it was expected that Broddi might one day be clan chieftain.
The Lunar invasion of 1602 initially meant little to the isolated Tovtaros
steads hidden 'midst the gors and gallt. In 1611, however, the minions of
Harvar Ironfist provoked the Righteous Wind, and Orlanthi everywhere rose
with sword and spear to crush Harvar's False Wind and his Yelmalian
allies.
Surviving the massacre at Gamla's Leap, Broddi fought on for seven
seasons, living as an outlaw, doing all the terrible things that had to be
done, somehow enduring while kin and companions fell.
He returned to Lagerwater to find his family (who had sheltered with kin in Ironspike) dead, killed in a Yelmalian purge. If Humakt had not claimed Broddi at Gamla's Leap, He certainly claimed him now. After seven days in the burning grounds, mourning without sleep or food or water, Broddi rose and rubbed charcoal over his Wind Lord's tattoos. He made no threats, swore no oaths, but walked without comment into the gors, leaving behind his battle-scarred companions.
>From Ironspike to Piddledown to Lagerwater and even to distant Alda Chur,
men died, women died, steads and byres were razed, even cattle were
slaughtered. Broddi struck silently and quickly, and was gone. Sometimes
there would be a challenge in a public place, more often a single blade
stroke in the night. He was neither Orlanthi nor yet Humakti, neither
given to life nor given to death. Broddi walked between the worlds.
Finally returning to Ironspike in 1613, he collapsed into a fever that lasted many months. Recovering, it seemed that Broddi might resume his old life. He was stricken by kinstrife, but was hardly alone in that. He resumed his place on the ring and in the cult circle, brokered arguments with a detached wisdom and compassion, served his clan and heroquested beside with his chief. He was betrothed in life-bond to Nalda Clayshaper, a young widow of the Orlarnii clan, with plans to marry in the Blessing Winds of Sea Season.
In a preparatory Sacred Time ritual that year, a Boundary Walking heroquest went badly wrong. On the Godplane, a broo shaman tracked the clan chief and his thanes through Lagerwater's wards, and led a mob of broo inside to defile the stead tree. The invasion was repulsed at he cost of most of the party's lives. Watching his chief's body raped and defiled, Broddi once again felt a new wind upon his soul. Bearing wounds that would kill most men, he walked calmly into the midst of the broo-kin. His sword danced: the broo died.
Only survivor of the ritual, Broddi returned to the stead with a horrifying chaos wound that took seven full seasons to heal. (The wound festers violently whenever Broddi leaves the stead's boundaries: he is effectively a prisoner within the inner clan tula). It was five weeks before his carers noticed that Broddi's Orlanth tattoos had faded, and that he was talking to a new spirit in his sword. They held his funeral the next day. Broddi Clapsaddle was dead. Broddi Clapsaddle was humakti. Though he has almost no contact with 'formal' Humakti cult organisation, Broddi knows what his god demands.
These days, Broddi is valued for his wisdom and experience, though (as the opening quote illustrates) he *must* be ignored when he speaks on matters pertaining to "the living". He knows his fate is to die when that fatal heroquest is relived (as it must) on the mortal plane, when a chaos band comes to defile the stead. He waits, trains the young, quests the Boundary Walk each year, and is as vigilant as an Elmali GateKeeper in his attention to stead defences.
Broddi has changed a great deal. His life energies have diminished, his sex drive has died and even his former love of romantic passion has gone forever. (The closer you cleave to Death, the more your Life/Fertility energies diminish. All those rumours of Humakti 'group marriage' in the barracks, and the cult's notorious indifference to the sex of initiates probably spring from this.) Unlike some humakti, however, Broddi retains his empathy and compassion, and so the clan's respect for him is strengthened by love.
Broddi remains friends with his former kin, but has no part in kin-duty, and is free from all blood-obligation. For their part, his former kin have taboos against uttering his name to his face, and must speak of and to him in the third tense. He is still part of the cycle of gift-giving and receiving, yet is treated as a dead ancestor: his gift in return will be non-material, in the form of blessings or protection for the whole clan. No longer a thane (because of his limited mobility, not because of his god), Broddi is none the less regularly gifted by the clan chief (who perhaps realises his own part in the chaos rising to come, and his reliance upon Broddi to save him).
Broddi lives simply yet amply. To the surprise of all (and against all received wisdom relating to the cult) he retains his enthusiasm for cuk breeding, and though many eggs are infertile, he raises the greatest fighting cuks in all the Far Place.
Unique in such a communal clan, Broddi has his own lodge, dug from the soft earth beneath his pyre on the burning ground. The lodge is often full of young men and women eager to hear tales of Jumping Mouse and the Animal tribes, of strategy and herodom, and of the secrets of cuk training. His 'widow' remains committed to him, and attends to his needs dutifully, though they were never man and wife. The changes wrought upon her are as great as those upon Broddi himself. (Nalda has her own story and destiny, to be told another time).
As can be seen, Broddi is no ordinary humakti. Isolated by his circumstances from formal cult hierarchies, he embodies the Caregiver hero archetype rather than the Quester or Destroyer archetypes more typical of the cult. (These circumstances make him a near perfect NPC, knowledgeable and respected, a trainer of the young, yet requiring others to act on his behalf beyond the stead).
I don't believe many initiates will choose Humakt as their first god; in early adolescence they are just too full of hormones, too preoccupied with sex and passion and the possibilities of LIFE. Among the few exceptions would the temple-born, children of humakti conceived before their parents' fertility waned.
THE ULTIMATE ORLANTHI TABOO David Weihe asks:
>If that is the penultimate, what is the Ultimate taboo?
And Non-Bloody Geoff replies:
> Why, cooperation with the hated _____ (fill in the name of the clan in
the
>next vallet), of course!!! Seriously, Orlanthi take their feuds and
>rivalries very seriously....Orlanthi tragedies are replete
>with heroes who went "too far" in the prosecution of their feuds.
Personally mate, I think you're wigglin' a bit. :) Chaos is the ultimate enemy, whether its that scum that forms on top of your yogurt overnight or the filthy minions of Nysalora the Moon Woman.
However, to add my three clacks worth, if I *had* to nominate a taboo
greater than Chaos, I would have to choose 'Kinstrife'. This is a
variation
on your 'feuding', but the thing is that though shameful to all, kinstrife
is in fact so common among Orlanthi that nobody really wants to talk about
it...
You can hit Chaos over the head and not have to worry about your spouse sulking about it. But do it to kin, especially consanguineous kin...
"Blood in the air,
Blood in the eye,
Blood on the burnished blade."
Kinstrife.
Cheers
John
===
"Out of the south she came, as mysterious and violent as the blessing winds of Sea Season, and just as beautiful. Out of the south, through gors deep and gallt wide, 'cross ice-shielded streams and shadow-dark valleys. Out of the south, till at last she came to the stead called Lagerwater, home to the Bluefoot Tovtaros, the true Orlanthi folk at the very centre of the world.."
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #556
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