Welome back.
>
> The Pol Joni are described as Storm-worshipping horse nomads, with a
> similar lifestyle to the Praxian nomads. I think animism would be a
> better fit for a nomadic people than theism. So, I'm thinking the
> Pol Joni would follow a spirit tradition modelled after the Orlanthi
> Pantheon (with mis-applied) worship. Does this seem in line with
> them?
>
I spent some time working on this and even worked up some keywords and such. The crux of my decisions was that their ancestry is Heortling (and primarily Dundealos) but that they had grown by accepting new members from all over - including Praxians.
My thoughts were:
Most Pol Joni worship their gods theistically although some of the details of the religion are interpreted differently (for example Uralda is far more important in Pol Joni myths and is considered to be the wife of Urox).
A significant minority of Pol Joni follow spiritist traditions either picked up from Praxian converts to the tribe or from the allied clans of Grazer/pure horse ancestry. Worship of Little Brother (Orlanth), Sword Man (Humakt) and other misapplied worship of deities is more common in the Pol Joni than elsewhere but primarily amongst those descended from Praxians who still have strong spirit natures. These entities are considered unusual but acceptable within the Pol Joni version of the Storm Pantheon.
Storm Bull and Eiritha deserve special mentions as they are considered by the Pol Joni to be the same as Urox and Uralda. In most clans there will be both spiritist and theist worshippers of these entities. While nobody else agrees with their views on Uralda/Eiritha they seem to have proven their claims sufficiently to satisfy the priestesses at the Paps.
Naturally YGMV but those were the ideas I was planning to use.
One other thing to note - I had a very strong initiation ritual for Pol Joni creating initiation bands which work much like hero bands. I struggled to see how such a disparate bunch could be held together without some very strong (and magically/mythically based) bonds.
-- Nic
Powered by hypermail