> Peter & Mark:
> > 1) Hrestol combining the castes was not an intentional act of but a
> > > desperation move. Previously the Malkioni had known that Caste Crime
> > > could cause immense spiritual damage. So Hrestol joined all the castes
> > > and went off to fight the Pendali in the hope that an angry god would
> > > nuke Hrestol and take out the Pendali as collateral damage.
> >
> > Wow! That sounds like something a player-character would come up
> > with! I wonder if there is any chance Hrestol was a PC in some early
> > Chaosium house campaign? Probably not, but it's fun to think about.
>
> That's a MGF theory for sure! It's not going to become my go-to interpretation, but nice creativity :)
The one aspect of this that I'm not so happy about is that it sounds a lot like Hrestol trying to manipulate God, which shouldn't really lead to any kind of spiritual reward, even an unsought one.
I would personally think that this would be more along the lines of a theological and/or religious revolution, more along the lines of Henry VIII saying No to Rome, or Luther posting his 95 theses -- or the other more Gloranthan possibility, of Hrestol's knightly Order having a certain spiritual Virtue promoting struggling and self improvement leading eventually to this concept of caste mobility.
But of *course* this is a huge crisis point in Malkionism, so that it must be thematically linked with certain historical facts, and wars, and Church positions, and counterarguments, and earlier heresies, and politics, and skullduggery, and cloak and dagger, and player character types mucking about in the sidelines, and (...)
> This is a good lead in to an important topic, the powers granted by knighthood. As I wrote before, I'm interested in things as they were at the Dawn (for some reason my interest in the West wanes after the Serpent Kings pass from the scene). My theory is that these early knights were quite powerful, more so than we've seen in sources detailing the knights of later Ages. I'm not sure what the cause of this decline is...
>
> Why were the early knights so powerful? Because they were the successful response to the Pendali military emergency said to threaten the Seshnegi with annihilation. That the lion hsunchen kingdoms were a powerful foe is clear. For example, they wipe out a Brithini expeditionary force sent to assist Neleoswal (and the Brithini are known to be skilled in combat). On the surface, it's hard (for me at least) to see what the knight caste provides that is so groundbreaking. They are mounted warriors, able to take command like talars, with some rustic knowledge from the dronars and some sorcery. No doubt the mobility of horses is an advantage, but what here is so important that it justifies a second Malkioni Prophet and changes to an ancient, immortality-giving ordering of society?
I'm not really a Western expert, but as far as I know the Orders of Knights are intrinsically powerful, and do not _need_ (although they usually _desire_) support from priests/wizards. Greg has in the past described these Orders as distinct pathways towards God, not really requiring submission to the local Church authorities nor doctrines -- although this is of course often required politically.
My own take on this is that a Knight's relationship with whichever Grimoire or other formal source of magic will tend to be transmitted as an oral rather than a literary tradition, although more scholarly Knights, chivalric bookworms, and well-read elders of the Order are certainly all possible too...
What I understand is that each Order of Knights has its own methods and traditions and magics ; even though these can be formalised fairly easily into simple rules terms, due to their overall flexibility.
Bottom line though, the real reason why Knights were and are so powerful is that they are their own source of power ; although I'm sure that analysis of the History and the religious aspects will also be illuminating as to the relative impact of that power in the Malkioni societies :)
>From my own point of view though, *the* most interesting understated implication of this is that the *fourth* caste of the malkioni, the peasants and workers, must *also* be their own source of power, and yet *every* malkioni society (setting aside for these purposes the particular Brithini notions) is dumping them at the bottom of the pile, all except for the absolute purest form of Hrestoli idealism which exists, well, almost nowhere :D -- but even there, the idea is that the fourth caste is something that you progress up from, and so is implicitly inferior ; not a caste which is powerful in and of itself. I'm just not sure that non-marginal peasant uprisings and Grand Seshnegi Revolutions ("Mort aux Aristos!!") are thematically or historically or spiritually appropriate for the Hero Wars, or more of something for the Fourth Age for example ... ;) I'm sure though that others will have thought more deeply about this than I have.
Julian Lord
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