> If you can get hold of the Sartar Rising
> series, take a look at the really powerful NPCs, and
> notice that they're mainly initiates. Initiates with
> very high ratings in their affinities, but initiates.
> The few devotees are widely known to be religious
> extremists.
I don't know about 'mainly'. Of the eight leaders of the rebellion listed in /Orlanth is Dead/, four are devotees, and four initiates. And only one of the four devotees strikes me as a 'religious extremist' from his description (Elmalandti). Counting up their followers, eleven out of twenty-nine are devotees (discounting Elusu as a special case), which isn't all that low a proportion.
Having said which, it is, of course, the case that becoming a devotee in HQ is by no means a pre-requisite for being powerful, in the way that Rune Level was in RQ. Kallyr herself is one of the initiates, after all. And the eight leaders of the rebellion are hardly a random cross-section of Heortling society, either! But it does suggest that a campaign with relatively common devotees won't look all that odd, whether its part of Generally Accepted Glorantha or not. Devotees would certainly be a lot more common in my campaign than they would in Roderick's, but, of course, YGWV...
-- Trotsky Gamer and Skeptic ------------------------------------------------------ Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
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