>So it's
>an odd redundancy that, having said clans are exogamous, Greg goes on
>to say that bloodlines are as well.
Technically, Greg doesn't say this, the unnamed author of Report on the Orlanthi does. If we take seriously the conceit that this is a piece of anthropological research from a within-Glorantha perspective (and I think we should) then RotO can't be read as gospel.
It certainly seems to be one of the more honest documents in KoS - the writer doesn't display any obvious cultural bias or political agenda - but it's still liable to error. Mainly, one wonders what the source material is. How many clans or tribes were studied to reach these conclusions? Many things must have been explained to the writer by native informants, and how reliable were they? Perhaps they felt it better to describe their idealized view of how things should work, rather than going into the confusing details of the actual state of affairs.
So I'd say that the debate on this list is fully in the spirit of KoS. ;-)
Powered by hypermail