>Good point - I had been concentrating so much on the RQ I had missed
>this essential point which comes out more strongly in HQ.
Some of it has developed since RQ.
>This brings things back round to my other interest just now - opposing
>magics. Would this mean that animists were more effective at dealing
>with disease or just that Gods like Chalana Arroy are actually
>anti-animist specialists whose magic is designed to deal with this
>particular foreign magic.
Well Chalana Arroy is seen as the most powerful source of healing in Glorantha. I suspect the reason is one of organisation. Animists can individually be very powerful if they get the right spirit assistance but that depends on the particular practicioner or shaman. A theist cult gets their magic from re-enacting myths and passes on this knowledge from one priestess to another. Those myths have had centuries of improvement. They are also specialists to an extent not possible in somewhere like Prax. CA healers are usually totally dedicated to the profession. In Sartar only the bigger clans will have one although most tribes will have several. They'll get the difficult cases which the Ernaldan healers can't sort out. The Praxian tribes aren't big enough to support that level of specialism.
There's also a non-magical element to healing and disease prevention. Knowledge of what practices discourage disease spirits such as always using water taken from upstream of where animals drink to clean a wound. Now the Praxian equivelent would be always take your drinking water from an oasis before allowing the animals to drink and a healer is entitled to use drinking water to clean a wound. Chalana Arroy will have more and wider knowledge than a Praxian. However in a specific case the Praxian may well know what the CA does not. I'd suggest there is a CA healer in Pavis who has collected knowledge about specific Praxian diseases and injuries.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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