Re: Re: Becoming a Devotee

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 17:13:34 GMT

Ian Cooper:
> >The ultimate logic of this reasoning is that (frex) devotees of
> Humakt couldn't possibly be weaponthanes, but have to be "magical
> specialists", which I think no-one would seriously propose.

> No, this is not 'the ulitmate logic of this reasoning'. A Humakti
> weaponthane is a specialist (he requires support by the clan) so he
> can be a devotee. IMO a Humakti weaponthane is a magical specialist.

I don't see the relevance of the support argument. Only people unable support themselves are candidates for devotees? The Barntar example is exactly analogous to the above: just as a Humakt Devotee weaponthane doesn't have to spend 60% of his time scourging and praying and the like (much of that time being spent doing "warrior stuff" that just conveniently happens to be sacred to Humakt), the same in true for our devotee plowman. Ritually plowing a field, moving rocks, etc, are the _purpose_ of devotion to Barntar, not a distraction from it. (To paraphrase a customer service notice from my old local Co-op.)

> Remember that full time warriors are only a small percentage of the
> clana about 1% for weaponthanes

Sounds a tad low to me, actually, but...

> backed by some full-time warriors,
> so this is not going to impact the 1-5% range much.

It's a little late of a Friday afternoon for mental arithmetic, but 20-100% of your positted 1-5% seems pretty significant!

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