Forbidden Marriages

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_toppoint.de>
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 20:17:13 +0000


Me:
>>IMG there will be a Lunar All of Sartarite Heortling clans which are
>>strictly (Yelmic sense) exogamous.

Stephen Tempest
> I'm getting confused here...

> I know an Orlanthi All is 85%.
> I'm guessing that a Yelmic all is 99.9%, or "100% because we refuse
> to acknowledge the existence of any dissenters".
> But what's a Lunar all? 50%?

51% or more, depending on whatever.

To repeat: >50% of the Sartarite Heortlings IMG are strictly exogamous. The rest will tolerate variant practices to varying degrees.

And none will make intra-clan marriages the norm.

Peter Larsen:

>Well, yes. I really don't have a problem with Ulerians in Sartar
>as much as Heortling worship of Ulerians. (On the other hand,
>the general conception (!) of Ulerians seems more like estactic
>priestesses and "Grand Horizontals" than the sort of prostitutes
>you'd expect to find in a conquered country.

True, the Ulerians practice the art, not the trade. And Lunar army units contain some female elements.

>>In the (for now hypothetical) marriage within a clan, giver
>>and receiver of dowry/bride price would be the clan. Maybe a
>>few cows would be redistributed among various steads or
>>households, but that's about it.

> Another good reson to ban intra-clan (and especially
> intra-bloodline) marriages: there's no economic percentage in it.

Neither positive nor negative - some marriages may give prestige, but are costly in economic terms.

> On intra-clan marriages: I suspect that much of Gloranthan
> reproduction and genetics has as much to do with mythic and
> spiritual issues as biological ones. Jane Williams has suggested
> that Heortling teens are infertile until Initiation -- the
> process of initiation makes them, literally, adults. Now that's
> not canon, and the age disparity in initiation throws a wrench
> in the process, but it's an interesting idea.

With Heortling females, this is quite close to real world biology. Heortling males with their highly variated initiation age I'm not so sure about (but what has male participation have to do with conception magics anyway? ;-).


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