I would think that most farmers in Loksalm or other stable "sorcerous" places would also have a hard time stopping a spear or sword. In fairly peaceful farming communities, why would you even want to commit a third of your efforts to developing some weak personal magic, when with a fraction of that time and effort you can support much more powerful community blessings? Perhaps the blessing available are limited, but they will generally be well tailored to your lifestyle. And should you want to be more involved in the whole magic side of things, you can become a liturgist!
On the other hand, I think venerators who are in regular conflict with sword and lightning weilding barbarians are apt to spend more time training as a militia, and more apt to follow a practice with blessings useful in repelling the barbarians and their foul magics. No doubt they will have poorer farms, and less time for cottage industry, music, and what-not, but that is always the cost of war.
I agree though that this makes it hard to start off heroic characters from western lands! Who wants to assign all the cool magic stuff to someone else? One of the things that excited me when I first was introduce to RuneQuest was that *everyone* did magic. High skills that let you do dramatic things are great, but magic always adds that extra _wow_ factor. In RuneQuest non-apprentice users of sorcerous magic already had less scope for coolness (although they did have some fantastic spells, if they could ever cast them). In HW they generally seem to have no personal magic at all. From a maximum game fun point of view, I have to admit playing in the west didn't appeal under RQ, and appeals even less under HW.
In short, I think the society makes _perfect_ sense, it just doesn't appeal much to me as a player.
(Yes, I can imagine a fun campaign where a bunch of peaceful farmers suddenly have to figure out how to turn farm implements into weapons and try to discover blessings that will let them deal with a hostile foe....but I think I'd want to do lots of playing elsewhere before I got around to that setting).
--Bryan
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