Re: Reaping Day (and others) from Chris Lemens on 2002-07-24 (Glorantha Digest Vol 09)

From: Chris Lemens <chrislemens_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 07:18:13 -0700 (PDT)

Perhaps, as someone suggested (but did not make as explicit as maybe it should be), the answer to the problem of the beseiged army is in modifying _how_ the beseiged Orlanthi worship on their holy days. It takes a leader with an ability to improvise, though. The leader, with support, would probably need to heroquest to prove up certain points. This raises the stakes, for the beseiged in an obvious way, but also for the beseigers if they launch an attack against an army that has the benefit of successful HQ. Examples:

On Reaping Day, the leader must somehow identify
(mythically, via HQ) the enemy with plants that have
been sown, then go kill a bunch of them. "This army is like a field, ready to be reaped; ready your scythes."

On Plow Blessing Day, the leader must identify the opposing army as the ground to be plowed. "This army is a field, ready to be cut open with the plow. Our cavalry is like Barnatar's sacred plow; you spearmen are like the farmer who pokes the seeds into the ground behind the plow."

In each case, the enemies killed form part of the sacrifice.

All of this is dependent on the power of analogy. Some analogies are going to be better that others
(compare the two above, for example). The better
analogies will be more successful; the more strained analogies will be less so.

(Improvisations might be defensive in nature. There's
nothing saying they have to be offensive. The fact that both of my examples are offensive was intended to show how some analogies will be better than others.)

Anyway, that's probably how I would handle it for Orlanthi. It seems to me like it fits their culture fairly well, because "Violence is always an option," which seems to me like it can be used to justify improvising any holy day ceremony to fit a violent need. This might be much less successful with other cultures that are more bound to specific ceremonies
(e.g., Dara Happans).

Chris Lemens

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