>YGMV, but in case they do have a trickster on the
>ring, I suppose his personal power grows.
>Not because people suddenly listen to his wise advice
>nor because he gets more money or more cows for his
>official role, but simply because:
>a) he represents part of the magical resources of the
>community as ringmember;
>b) he keeps a seat no one else can occupy while he is
>in; so if he doesn't appear at ring gatherings, the
>ring misses maybe the odd member in important
>decisions; if he does appear and votes, he could
>represent the difference between a rejected proposal
>and an accepted proposal (usually the accepted
>proposal is the opposite the trickster said but an
>averagely tricky trickster would soon realize this
>fact and express in a way that makes even doing the
>opposite of what he does say a tricky feat!)
I don't think any ring would want to give a trickster the power to sway any decision significant enough for them to be called on to make. I feel there is much more consensus building in a Heortling ring than simple voting - after all a bad split on the ring means the clan itself is divided on the issue so there will be a lot of pressure on the ring members to find a solution acceptable to most which they can present as an agreement to the clan.
The trickster serves a different purpose, he is there to make mad and potentially insightful comments on the discussion in progress to get people thinking. He can also say the unsayable to force issues into the discussion "Are we really going to continue this feud just because old Bjarni can't forgive the Blue Dog Clan for the death of his son twenty years ago?" when everyone knows this is the main reason but no one wants to tell Bjarni they don't want to support him any longer.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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