Nandan births are magical births, major heroquest ju ju, major resource investment, and are going to be correspondingly rare. Most children conceived on the Other Side (Nandan or otherwise) will be major magic-bearers and potential heroes.
In terms of the cult, we should also consider its wider and less esoteric implications: male earth priestesses, master crafters, crop specialists, peaceweavers, domestic specialists. Like Vinga, there will also be elements of reconciliation and mediation.
IRW, transgenderism (however locally defined) has always had major associations with shamanic tradition (berdache, contraries etc.), and earth magic traditions have often been heavily centred on conception, sex and fertility. IRW too, homosexuality is often strongly associated with the warrior ethic and masculine values. None of these are particularly foreign to Heortling belief.
I think its a mistake to automatically connect Nandans with our own culturally-loaded conceptions of transsexuals or even homosexuality. Heortling society is remarkably relaxed about gender and sexual preconceptions and about sexual divisions of any kind. While they do have their liminal and taboo areas and blind spots, who people rub their genitals against doesn't seem to be one of them, at least in *the ways our own culture defines it*. Male/female role distinctions are relaxed, however kin/non-kin human/other species boundaries are strong, and are likely to be the areas where taboos and prejudice are more likely to occur.
If we wish to explore this issue, we should do it systematically. At base its another example of the 'SCA barbarian' syndrome, and the question of whether we regard Gloranthan societies as reflecting our own implicit and explicit C20 western, urban values and cultural ways of perception, or whether they have their own unique but coherent ways of understanding and ordering the world. Both approaches are valid, and most of us consciously or unconsciously use a mixture of both. In their pure form, one leads to creative sterility, the other to creations so esoteric and unweildy that you'd have to *be* a Heortling/Pelorian/Bongo Bongian for it to make sense. One reflects Glorantha as a game background, the second Glorantha as a creative frontier of itself. The issue for me is that we approach these things consciously - and in doing so understanding our own culture just a little better.
Cheers
John
nysalor_at_primus.com.au John Hughesjohnp.hughes_at_dva.gov.au
For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life; Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd. - - William Blake.
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