Yet another irritating newbie question...

From: GAZZA <gazza_at_wantree.com.au>
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 18:08:10 +0800


How common (in Orlanthi society) is membership in multiple cults? And specifically how common is membership in the Orlanth religion?

The reasons I ask are multiple. From RQII (which I've never played, but own), it seems clear that the majority of new PCs would be lay members of a cult. Since being a lay member requires minimal time and monetary effort, it seems likely you could easily be a lay member of multiple cults (and indeed the Issaries trader claims to be a lay member of the Earth Mother cult at one point).

RQIII changed this; we find out that people join a cult as an initiate, apparently as part of their adulthood ceremony. So lay members are now so ineffectual that they aren't really covered to any great degree in RQIII.

Now, I'm not saying this is good or bad, but it does raise interesting questions. Elves, for example, generally ALL are initiates of Aldrya. Some also have other cults (Yelmalio, or whatever), but they virtually all have Aldrya. Apparently, Elves that don't worship Aldrya are "rootless" Elves, which are essentially not really part of normal Elf society.

Is it the same for Orlanthi? That is, would non-membership in the Orlanth cult be regarded as suspect in Orlanthi society? In other words, would most (say) Chalana Array, Issaries or Llankhor Mhy initiates also be initiates of Orlanth? (I can see Humakti being sufficiently strange that they wouldn't be, but the Lightbringer cults are fairly closely associated with Orlanth. In fact, that brings up a secondary point - given that Humakt severed his Storm dies in GodTime, are Humakt initiates even ALLOWED to join Storm cults? Assuming, of course, we're not talking about Illuminates).

The reason I ask is that for my upcoming campaign (for which I'm going to offer a selection of pregenerated characters), I'm going to throw in a couple of Issaries initiates (maybe Llankor Mhy, too, although I'm leery about a beginning PC having a 90% anything), and I want to know if they would be expected to be initiates of Orlanth as well.
- --
GAZZA
"To know others is wisdom.
To know one's self is enlightenment."


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