This, to me, explains the popularity of raiding. Any able bodied man can join a raiding party,and able bodied types who aren't set to inherit a Cottar's plot are probably encouraged to join the clan Warband or the raiding band of a famous leader. If a Cottar gets lucky and brings back as a personal prize enough head of cattle to form a plough team (or enough wealth to but his own starting herd), bingo! He's not a Cottar anymore, he's a Carl.
Of course, many Cottars simply aren't brave enough to emulate Orlanth or his sons in this way. Instead, it's safer to be a farmer and to walk in Barntar's foot steps. It seems emintently Orlanthi that the way to wealth and prestige would involve daring plans and bold action.
Also, Cottars really aren't interesting from an adventuring POV. This being an adventure based RPG, cults such as Barntar and the other homestead gods seem to give enough background material so that the needs of such sedentary folks are covered. Further, the Heortling pantheon is wide and diverse enough that Initiation being the common practice makes sense. The Storm Tribe deities provide enough in the ways of Affinities and Feats that common magic really isn't necessary, aside from children's magic used before Initiation. This makes sense for a people who stared Wakboth and Kajabor in the face and won. Unlike peoples to the North, who had things like magic domes to hide in, the Heortlings while almost killed to a man and woman, but made it through by sheer grit, forging immensely tight relationships with their gods. I remember reading a Lunar letter somewhere which describes even the farmers being heroes, and the whole Heortling culture revolving around personal heroism and ability, even amongst the women, which this Dara Happan Lunar found immensely alien. I think this is reflected in the Heortling practice to Initiate. Back in the Greater Darkness, you Initiated, or you died, or worse. This is also reflected, IMO, in the Praxian practice of nearly all Praxians becoming Practicioners, and the wide array of Shaman practices in Prax.
Heortling religious practices (Initiation, concentrating Theism) I think is ObGlorantha proof that while individual Gloranthans don't know what Hero Points are, that environment will dictate the intensity and effectiveness of religious practices. For pre-Dawn Heortlings, Initiation and concentration were literally life and death things.
CB
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