Besides, the Heortlings do not rule out human sacrifice, although they keep it under pretty strict control. The thralls sacrificed to Humakt before the big battle go to Humakt, I'd think, not to whatever afterlife they would normally expect, and that's not that much better than being eaten and excreted into the Underworld (or whatever). Almost by definition, whatever the BHT demons do has to be less nasty than the Bat....
>If they're mostly doing this to captives and slaves I would think the
>Heortlings would be less annoyed. Sir Ethilrist is not associated
>with chaos and doesn't seem to have any intentions towards taking any
>more land than he already has.
>I suspect a combination of willfull ignorance ("Oh, those terribly
>powerful Black Horse County types are doing bad things to slaves and
>defeated captives, eh? Good things it's not us".), lack of unified
>will (have the Heortlings ever been unified?) and fear of what Sir
>Ethilrist would do to anyone who attacked him. I suspect he was
>attacked early on, his attacked got their arses kicked and he's been
>left mostly alone since then.
I'm sure the BHT are not any more awful to most Gloranthans (much less Heortlings) than, say, a large Uz settlement -- they can be reasoned with, keep their treaties (within reason), and generally behave like "people." The idea of demon horses eating people is awful, and you wouldn't want it to happen to your sister, but, if the victims are mostly losers and thralls, that's their destiny, right? If you would sell slaves to Uz or Alkoth, you'd sell them to the BHT.
Now, I agree that the horror aspect of the BHT shouldn't be downplayed -- they are really scary and nasty, and their employers probably have to take steps to make sure that friendly villagers, townsfolk, etc don't riot, flee, or whatever when the BHT approaches. Whatever arguments we are having about how unpleasant they are are infinitely greater in Glorantha -- so players and GMs should try to avoid "Oh, yeah, the Black Horse Troop, that's neat" in favor of "Storm! That's the Black Horse Troop! If they kill you, they eat your soul! Everyone of them is a Meldek and a 1000 years old! I don't care if they are our allies, they'll kill us all! Remember when Queen Gudrun hired them? All her household died!" They're not Chaos, but they are plenty nasty....
Peter Larsen
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