Re: Digest Number 605

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 21:14:23 -0000

I don't think so, for a few reasons.
1- The Heortlings seem to have a decent level of vanity, and it seems to focus more on the body than on clothing. I'd expect that some degree of cleanliness is common if for no other reason than to best display oneself.
2- More broadly they see to embrace the material world as being a good and great thing, including their own bodies, so I would expect them to care for themselves quite as well as they can manage. 3- From what I understand the Heortlings don't have much of a nudity taboo (heck, the Orlanth Thunderous devotees are religiously required to go starkers on a regular basis). This makes bathing less problematic.
4- The storm tribe included members of the water tribe. Surely this has an influence, making swimming or standing out in the rain naked seem fairly respectable?
5- Although the presence of chaos and prevalence of broo seems to have been reduced in HW versus RQ, still the broo are classic examples of all the bad behaviors, and they are always described as being filthy, dung coated, etc. So I'd assume that by contrast the Heortlings would consider basic cleanliness to be a good thing. 6- Disease and filth may or may not have any relationship in Glorantha (do disease spirits like to lurk in sewage?), but if they do, I'd bet that healers would know this.

However, having said all that, I doubt that Heortlings have soap. So while they might rinse lots, scrape off dirt, even use something like a sweat lodge, they will still smell of basic bodily odours. Further they consume a LOT of dairy products, so they will smell quite strongly to any peoples who don't. Somebody on the list has suggested the lunars don't drink milk, if this is true, it would indeed seem to most imperials that the Heortlings smell, even if they didn't look particularly dirty. And if lunars have soap (or some equivalent, like the berry that was apparently used to wash clothes in china), they probably find heortling clothing to be dingy, dirty, and stained looking, so they may well conclude that the people wearing it are filthy too.

All just IMO, of course.

--Bryan

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