Sounds a plausable explanation. An alternative is that they are a magic item which has become extremely rare in the third age. In that case most were taken by the God Learners and lost when they disappeared forcing people to relearn to interact directly with their gods.
>Second, there is the subject of whether a practitioner of Theist magic
>should be a priest or not. In the "old way", i.e. in RQ 1-4, you had to
>be a priest or acolyte to performe the most powerful theist magic. This
>is no longer true in HQ: an Initiate is a person who has a deeper degree
>of Affinity with his god and his principles, to the point that he may
>emulate his god with Feats if he is a Devotee, while a priest (godi or
>god-talner), is the one who performs the Holy Rituals, i.e. the boring
>stuff, and teaches others the cult doctrine. He has probably a higher
>Relationship to the Cult, in HQ terms, but he is not closer to his god
>or more capable of invoking him. It turned out that MRQ rules produce a
>similar approach, intentionally or by mistake, by not making any
>difference between Priest and Initiate. This is a bit of a rulesy
>subject, but since most systems currently in use seem to point this out,
>it would be a good idea to clarify this point in a debate that
>supersedes the rules.
Well among the Heortlings all godar will be at least initiates since the vast majority of adults are. Priests are probably also at least initiates in other theistic pantheons. I think you are making a false distinction between performing Holy Rituals and emulating the god. The purpose of those rituals is to invoke the god - i.e. get them to appear in one of the participants. For routine rituals that's usually going to be the priest performing the ritual. To illustrate, Ernalda has a subcult Roitina the Ceremonialist. Many godar of Ernalda but few other women will be initiates of that subcult. I'm not sure why Ernalda has a subcult for godar when Orlanth doesn't. At a guess it's to do with Orlanth being more individualistic and less cooperative than Ernalda.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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