>They 'look like us and call us cousins'.
I'll have to defer to John Hughes as to what that actually means.
>This still suggests to me
>that we should not think of them as too divergent a culture from
>other 'Orlanthi' [I use this term in the Gods of Glorantha sense].
They aren't too divergent as they have a lot of commonalities, most notably their shared mythical history (up to the great darkness) and the worship of the earth tribe. But even in RW cultures with that level of commonality, they can end up quite different.
>I
>guess that is why I had a stab at the Iroquois,
I expressed surprise merely because I didn't know anything about Iroquois matriarchy. In any case, the Esrolian matriarchy is much stronger in that women govern, provide the elite troops for the queens, and generally treat men as they deserve.
AFAIK there's also a magical element in their control over men based on the principle that "if you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will soon follow". The important men of Esrolia (Priests, Officers, Scribes etc) are all eunuchs. The severed member is magically preserved by the queen in a clay jar. Using various rituals (I shouldn't have to describe them) the queen ensures the undying loyalty of the Eunuch. That way, there's no essential dissent by the leading men against the rule of the Queens (although this is not known to foreigners).
The Queen also has the ability to cast the eunuch's magic (hence given them access to a potent range of magical tools). However this reduces the Eunuch's access to his own magic unless he has a clay jar belonging to an inferior eunuch. Eunuchs do not have the same loyalty inducing magics and so underling eunuchs plot and scheme to undermine their superiors so as to serve the queen directly with the rewards of increased happiness.
>IMHO there is
>information there that could be merged with Heortlings (i.e. take
>some of the social and political structure of the Iroquois and merge
>it with Heortlings (things like longhouses etc in both cultures make
>this simpler to concieve)
Longhouses aren't fundamental to being an Orlanthi AFAIK and I haven't heard of them in Esrolia before.
--Peter Metcalfe
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