Orlanthi initiation rites

From: Viktor Haag <vhaag_at_...>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 10:53:30 -0500

Last night I read the brief sections in /Thunder Rebels/ about the rites for initiation into adulthood for Heortlings, and I have a few questions:

(1) How do these guidelines change now that we have a distinction

    between "common magic" and "normal worship", and     "speclialized worship"?

(2) Is there a reference to something on the 'net about what the

    rite feels like from the Not Adults' point of view? The     description in /TR/ is evocative, but not very detailed.

Motivation: I'd like to start off my campaign with the players-who-know-nothing-of-the-game as Orlanthi Not Adults who either have just passed through the initiation, or who will pass through the initiation in the first few sessions. I think the latter is more compelling, and will help immerse the players in the world more. But what I need now is descriptive scenes for Not Adult Orlanthi (both boy and girl) to help me paint a good picture for them.

I already have a rough idea about the events for the first two sessions (an adventure I'll call "Lost Sheep" and will put writeup to web upon completion), but I think including the initiation rites is a pretty important part of that process: ideally, they'd be the climax points for the adventure, or maybe the denuement, I have quite decided on that yet..

In that vein; has anyone does this with the game before? Does anyone have any tips for shepherding these novices into creating Orlanthi at a level that's younger than they otherwise might be? Start with scores of 15 instead of 17, frex?

Finally, I know that female and male rites happen on a different time scale amongst the Orlanthi:

• What time of year do these rites happen at?
• Is it odd to have the male rites and female rites happen at (roughly) the same time? I want to preserve unity of time in the sessions as much as possible, which means I must have the rites be close together chronologically (I have a group with two women and one man playing, and I'm nearly positive, therefore, that there'll be at least one female character, and most likely one male character, in the group.)
• Is it odd for men and women New Adults to be welcomed into the clan at the same (or roughly the same) age?
• How early do Heortling women begin menstruating (I kind of assumed 12 to 14, but I don't know any historical data on the subject.)
• How do Heortling women cope with menstruation; what cultural taboos/rituals exist around this cyclical event? Are there any common magic, or theistic secrets, or myths about the event?

  (To what extent to other groups playing fantasy rolegames deal   with this fact-of-female-life? Are there any essays on the net   on incorporating it, or accounting for it, in one's game?)

Digression: I feel blessed! A gaming group with more women than men! Any other women in Southern Ontario want to join our group to skew the stats even further?

--
Viktor