Which is clearly heretical to any Rokari or Brithini. Which amounts to arguing that the Hrestoli have successfully redefined caste rules to suit themselves. Presumably, the same argument would get trotted out for Valkarist magic used to command, Arkati magic used by those in totally non-caste societies, Carmanian magic used to enforce their own quite different caste system, etc.
I think that claiming that caste is terribly important for magic, and then going on to claim that the various magicians we know who have a very different set of caste rules are all people who have cleverly managed to redefine caste, annoyingly circular reasoning. And pointless, because it doesn't solve the problem - the issue of 'why don't zzaburi overthrow the talars?' then becomes 'why don't the clever zzaburi cleverly redefine the caste rules to enable them to overthrow the talars?' - and given that zzaburi have done so at least once (Valkaro) it is clearly possible, which just gets us back to the starting point.
In addition, I think the whole idea of a bonus for correct application undermines the whole idea of sorcery being very specific and exact. It should work, or not. A sorcery spell should be 'bless weapon' or 'bless horali weapon' not 'bless weapon but that works particulary well if the weapon happens to be held by a horal'.
> > But magics that use community support, whether used to
>> empower the appropriate members of the community (blessing all the
>> defenders of the community, for example) or for other great magical
>> efforts, work correctly only when caste rules are being followed.
>Why should it work correctly only when caste rules are being followed
>when this does not apply to any other gloranthan societies? It's
>community _support_, not behaviorial orthodoxy.
For the same reason that sorcery works differently to other forms of magic.
Sorcery is far less flexible and more specific. Just as spells are more specified than charms etc, so sorcerous rituals for community support should be less flexible and more specific than other forms of the same ritual. I think many Malkioni community support rituals demand that particular roles are played by people of particular caste, and the ritual needs to be redesigned and changed if they are not available (whereas an Orlanthi ritual that specified a member of a particular cult etc would just make a substitution based on some other handy myth, and hope it worked out).
And I am not saying that community support can not be used to support heretical purposes, not at all - merely that to use community support in unorthodox ways requires intellectual effort. The rituals need to be adapted and changed. Sometimes this may be very difficult. Meanwhile, the orthodox already have their rituals, have probably performed them before, they are well tested, everyone knows their places - it is just a lot easier.
Of course, once any given group of heterodox sorcerers have the time, they can invent new rituals and it all works fine. As the Valkarists, Hrestoli, etc clearly have done.
> > Note also that the spells available generally favour the
>> status quo. The Abiding Book contains spells that enforce caste
>> restriction (based on the various stories of Malkion instructing the
> > castes in their right duties). There are no spells in any Orthodox
>> Grimoire for zzaburi to instruct talars.
>Malkion instructs the King is mentioned in Revealed Mythologies as an
>Abiding Book story and so would be used by wizards to instruct their lords.
Presuming you can use the words of Malkion that are presumably explicitly preaching the correct caste role in way that is twisted to explicitly subvert the correct caste role is a bit of a big ask, IMO. Rather, I would think it more likely that one of the things Malkion instructs the King in is the correct methods of putting down uppity zzaburi.
> > Wizards who wish to overthrow the
>> status quo, on the other hand, have to first learn or research such a
>> spell, which may take considerable time and effort.
>Except that according to you the spells are effective regardless on who
>they are cast upon. So the Wizard has no need to research spells in
>order to overthrow the status quo. For example the Bardan Wizard does
>not need fighters to operate the arrows that he blesses.
It seems much simpler to me to assume that - the Bardan wizard needs fighters to operate the arrows that he blesses because the fighters have spent years learning to shoot things with a bow, and he has not, while the Hrestoli wizard does NOT need fighters to operate the arrows because, as it happens, he spent years learning to use a bow as a younger man. - this seems to me to rather simpler than assuming that every single spell has an implicit 'But Works a Bit Better for the Right Caste' tacked on to the spell description.
> What I'm
>suggesting is that the his arrow blessing magics are more effective than
>his own magic missile/arrow spell because the first spell follows caste
>whereas the second doesn't.
And I'm suggesting that if the arrow blessing magics are equally effective, in the majority of Malkioni societies the wizards will still be far less effective at shooting people with the blessed arrows, so why introduce an extra complicating factor merely to accomplish what is already true?
We don't need to make special rules to make wizards who have spent their lives in quiet study less effective at using magically blessed weapons. They already are.
And we certainly don't need to introduce special rules to make wizards less effective at using weapons when they already are, and then introduce a whole set of special exceptions to those rules to make wizards that should be effective at using weapons (eg Hrestoli) just as effective as they would be if we hadn't introduced the first unnecessary set of rules in the first place.
I offer a cheery suggested design heuristic for any suggested rules to do with sorcery - if a set of rules has to then be special cased to not apply to Hrestoli, Arkati, Valkarists, etc, that indicates an intrinsically flawed approach and is probably a bad idea.
Cheers
David
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