Don't apologise, its always a case of YGMV. I still think that this is the sort of thing that Humakti must learn to deal with, not everyone will cross the street to avoid a resheathed Humakti but enough will for it to be an issue well worth putting in your game. Compare and contrast with racism where even a small proportion of the majority population who refuse to accept a minority population can make their lives pretty miserable. I would say that a substantial proportion of Heortlings would be reluctant to accept Humakti as "one of us" and that a minority would show a noticable amount of fear and/or dislike.
> >bear in mind that abandoning
> >family and clan is one of the worst crimes in Heortling society
>
> but they are not "abandoning family and clan", they are serving
them by
> taking a ritual and legal role essential in Heortling society...
>
If it was just a 1 hour ritual and then everything went back to normal then perhaps I would agree but in most cases the prospective Humakti leaves the clan for at least a year to learn how to be a proper Humakti amongst a warband. If they then resheath there is no particular reason why they should do so in their birth clan. By contrast most Heortling men never leave their tula.
>
> but I think they _do_ benifit from the emotional and ritual bonds
of society
> even if they do so indirrectly - for a real world parrallel,
everyone hates
> coppers and they consequently live largely outside of the rest of
society
> (only dating/marrying/drinking and socialising with other coppers),
*bzzzt* My sister is living with a policeman and she has most certainly never been in the police herself. Poor metaphor perhaps. A better metaphor might have been executioners, who used to wear a hood precisely to avoid the sort of reaction that I believe Humakti should get.
Humakti quite explicitly do not gain any ritual or magical benefit from communal worship, normal Orlanthi warrior by contrast do gain various benefits from it.
>
> >Of course the character who thought he was just invoking a legal
> >escape clause when joining the Humakt cult might make an
interesting
> >one, he might find he's got more than he bargained for and there is
> >only one honorable way out of the cult
>
> I'm sorry but I think you are missing my point. A proffesional
> soldier/warrior/killer will as a matter of course do things (like
killing
> people) that his family would normally be responsible for in normal
> Heortling law. Now a soldier/warrior/killer who really wants to
take his job
> seriously had better find a way to avoid this...
>
Not unless he fancies killing members of the clan. Killing people from outside the clan is just fine socially and if you do so on the orders of the clan chief then the clan chief will carry the can with the tribe/king/bloody lunars anyway.
> I apologise to those here that like Humakti as twisted
dysfunctional psychos
> the lot 'em,
Which is of course not what I have been saying at all.
>and I'm sure plenty of that type do exist (just as they do in
> the RW army)
A few do as a few do in RW armies (but I'd say less than you have implied for the RW armies, perhaps because I grew up near Sandhurst so I got to see more of them in normal life).
, but IMO they are a lot less interesting than the basically
> sane individuals (with family, wife and kids, who chose to deal
death as a
> profession (e.g. professional soldiers, mercenaries etc in the real
world)
In which case perhaps you could just use Stakval, Destor et al and don't bother with the Humakt cult at all. IMO the point of having cults like Humakt in the game is to allow for outsiders who are a bit different in attitude and outlook and who don't quite fit in.
-- Nic
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