Here's my take on it. Orlanthi are fairly conservative sexually. Too much has been made of the "decadent Pelorians" to assume that tulas are swinging pits of sexual license. The clans need children, because a lot of adults (especially men) die fairly young. Because Orlanthi are concerned with family relations, they like those children to be born within marriage because it makes bloodline and clan issues clear. (If you didn't know who your father was, you could commit incest unwittingly and bring chaos down on the clan.) So adults are expected to have children, and children are expected to be born within some sort of marriage. Premarital sex is OK, but adultery is not. So sexual experimentation is acceptable for young adults but, once married, you are supposed to give it up. I suspect that a certain percentage of young Orlanthi experiment with same-sex relations as young adults, but most outgrow it. A homosexual man or women would likely be seen as odd and wrong by most Orlanthi.
Fortunately for same-sex affectionalism, there is always another way. Some gods break boundaries and, what is odd or wrong for "everyone" is OK for them. Heler is a great example who breaks a lot of boundaries, social and sexual. Nandan is another. Vinga another. I think Humakt is another. Yinkini can get away with a lot, possibly even adultery, as long as they move along afterwards (ie, play their mythic role). A Eurmali can sleep with anyone they can convince, although this might reflect poorly on the "convincee." I think a lot of Orlanthi are uncomfortable around these nonconformists, but the minority gods are still acceptable to the community. Initiates and devotees of gods who do not grant these licenses may still break sexual taboos in certain ritual situations -- the priest of Orlanth and the Priestess of Ernalda may be married to other people but still have non-adulterous sexual relations during rituals. Urox and Heler devotees might literally become bulls and rams and mate with cows and sheep during certain rituals/heroquests -- this is not bestiality; it's magic in its proper context. During a heroquest a hero might have sex with a tree, a stone, seven notes of music, the sky -- these are all acceptable in their way. So, sex is fairly defined, but specific exceptions are tolerated and even necessary.
Now, Nandan and Vinga are more or less reflections of each other. They are the way that men and women get access to each other's magic (as opposed to some aspects of Heler, who let menwomen get access to menwomen's magic). We know there are two types of Vingans (Vingi?) -- "career" and "temporary (or revenge)" worshippers. The first are women who, for whatever reason, cannot live as Heortling women and need to "become men" magically. The others are women who need access to men's magic for a specific purpose (although that purpose may take a really long time to achieve). I think this second group is sometimes individual (ie Freka's husband is killed; she swears revenge and worships Vinga until that revenge is satisfied) and sometimes social (ie. 80% of the Blueroot clan's men died in battle; the clan desperately needs warriors, so some women chose or are chosen to follow Vinga until more men can be found). The question is: what is the ratio between these two groups? I suspect that the number of "career" Vingans is relatively small -- smaller, at least, than the population of other second tier Orlanthi cults like Humakt and Issaries -- with the number of worshippers being filled out by women who are, in theory, temporary worshippers. (Remember that "temporary worship" could be for forty years, if that's what revenge takes.) Nandani are similar -- some men cannot live as men, some men are called to Nandan because of a crisis. I think there are fewer temporary Nandani than temporary Vingans because a clan is a lot more likely to lose a lot of men than a lot of women. Occasionally a man may find a need to, say, weave something because of an oath or a ritual and temporarily initiate to Nandan, but this seems a lot less common (perhaps because "you killed my father; prepare to die" resonates with more gamers than "my mother died, and the kids need a mom").
Anyway, the issue of marriage wouldn't come up with the temporary worshippers (except maybe for a year-marriage) because they are only visiting the world of men or women. For the career initiates and devotees, I think they are socially men for Vingans and women for Nandani. They ought to have have male or female fertility (although this would require a heroquest to manifest). So do all career Vingans marry women? I lean toward yes, but perhaps Vinga is one of those "gods with license." Perhaps she had relations with male and female beings, and therefore her followers can be either (the same, or, rather, the reverse, would go for Nandan). If this is the case, I expect that Vingans and Nandani would tend to make their preference known fairly early -- they would be attracted to women or men but not generally both (or Heler would have called them). The point of these cults is, after all, to uphold social order, not endlessly muddy it.
Peter Larsen
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