a comment by (sorry, can't remember):
> << OK, so he wasn't heroic at *being* a tax collector,>>
>
> Aha! this is my point.
>
> << but then the farmer
> types you mentioned from Icelandic sagas and Westerns aren't remembered
> for
> their heroic farming, but for what they did once they stopped farming
> (generally against their wishes). >>
>
> The point being that Dara Happan peasants (Pelorian peasants, more
> exactly) don't stop being peasants until they are dead. Orlanthi peasants,OTOH,
> often stop being peasants and become Heroes, fighting Dara Happan Soldiers.
Chinese folk tales often (this is based on a course taken many years ago, so I could be terribly wrong) feature bureaucrat heroes who beat impossible odds by following the will of heaven. I remember one story in particular about bridge building where the officer in charge uses magic to solve supply and engineering problems. Deadalus was an engineering hero -- not much combat but a lot of magic. Odyssius was an OK fighter, but became legendary for his cunning (and procrastination). Marcus Falco in the Lindsey Davis is a (fairly low level) hero with only average combat skills -- he's not a tax collector, but he is an informer. In Glorantha, Hon-eel had definite combat skills, but her real heroism (as I recall) came in agriculture and diplomacy.
A different way to look at this is that Orlanthi society tends to put all its hero eggs into the combat basket. Other societies have a much wider range of heroes -- bureaucrats in Peloria and Kraloria, ascetics in the West and Kraloria, religious sculptor/architects in the East Isles, etc. Which means that the Orlanthi tend to excel at beating things up but not at having, say, a stable political or legal system (or hot water or roads). Sartar is a notable exception.
Peter Larsen
(who is using a webmail program he really doesn't like and apologizes for if it
does something weird).
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