Gypsy Comet, who must have had very cruel parents:
> Lhankor Mhy and Chalana Arroy ARE "advanced," but this is readily
explained
> by the impression that they are originally foriegners who were adopted by
way
> of the Lightbringers Myth. The Healers weathered the adoption with no real
> changes, since many of CA's behavioral strictures affect the way a Healer
> interacts with others. The Sages changed, though, since "learn everything"
is
> not a strict guide on how to deal with others, meaning that the Sages are
a
> different bunch from, say, the cities of Nochet or Pavis compared to the
> Orlanthi steads north of Dragon Pass.
There are two aspects to this, Gloranthan manifestation and player interpretation, and for both CA and LM I think the second is more significant.
CA Healers/White ladies were ministering to Harmast Barefoot's clan before he invented/reenacted/rediscovered/bricolaged(depending on how you're feeling today) the Lightbringers Quest. Interestingly, Heortling healers can exit to the Golden Age on the Other Side. From Harmast Saga, they seem well established in the First Age, though significantly the healer who first administers to Harmast is foreign, from Esrolia:
"And you, Healer," urged Vargast. "What tribe are you from?" "Esrovuli," she said. The Esrolian tribes lived to the southwest, along the bay and coast westward past the Obsidian Palace. Most of their customs were similar to the Heortlings, and in fact old stories told how the original Esrolian Grandmothers had broken away from Heortling rule."
LMs certainly seem an oddity among the Heortlings, even more so since the barabarian turn of KOS. For me, this has always been a rules artefact problem, a holdover from the early days of RQ when they were generic DnD sage-types. As long-established literates in an essentially-oral culture, they survive because of their cultural ineptness. Heortling culture displays little if any of the signs of general acceptance of literacy - centralised state and law, orthodoxy, standardised myths and rituals, centralised cults etc.
I've always played the written maps, letters and written clues of scenarios as essentially game glosses for what are actually pottery shards, fragments of poems, half-rememered hymns etc.
CA has suffered a little along the same lines. (Resurrection now seems to be a cult secret and therefore rarer and more difficult than the 3 point Rune spell every party just had to have. For that, there is rejoicing in heaven.) Our conceptions of both cults have evolved over time into something uniquely Gloranthan.
John
nysalor_at_... John Hughesjohnp.hughes_at_...
"Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes
for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the
stars to pity."
- Flaubert. "Madam Bovary".
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