Re: Re: Chalana, Lhankor Mhy and other Incongruities

From: Doyle Wayne Ramos-Tavener <dmtavener_at_...>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 19:05:32 -0500

John Hughes wrote:
>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 get the impression (from where I could not tell you) that the modern (C. 1621) Lhankor Mhy temples in the cities of Sartar are products of Esrolian (Nochet exclusively?) LM Temples, which are themselves a survivor of EWF days, which was the social, magical, and technological height of advancement of the Heortlings.

Whew. Did you get all that?

Anyway, the EWF culture seems to me to be the most likely candidate to produce something the likes of the Jonstown LM temple, though perhaps I am underestimating Esrolian culture (a notoriously easy thing to do).

Further, if we assume that temples like this don't really exist, and that illiteracy is the dominant condition in Heortling culture, it makes the coming Illiteracy Plague a little less tragic, don't you think?

Doyle