> Mentally, I've always had a hard time squaring the EWF with
> Orlanthi/Heortling culture. Where Heortlings are conservative and
> traditional, the EWF was innovative to a fault. How did a culture
> devoted
> to Orlanth and Ernalda spawn such a weird empire?
I think that the Heortlings are more conservative now than they once were. Watching a bunch of priests and magicians pitch their "new thing" and seeing it blow up in their faces (and pretty amazingly, too) no doubt put the fear of innovation into more than a few Heortlings. Not to mention a sort of cultural Darwinism -- the most innovative people, philosophies, and organizations were those most likely to have been lost in the fall of the EWF. The EWF, the Dragons, and the angry Heortling survivors all took aim at these groups, whether they were responsible for the carnage or not. (I'm sure Alakoring and his followers took a "Kill them all; Orlanth and Ernalda will know their own" approach to suspect priests.) So the current day conservativism of the Heortlings has as much to do with bitter experience as cultural tendencies.
Peter Larsen
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