An Esrolian perspective might fit better with our ideas of BG as female PC warrior archetype.
On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:06 PM, David Cake <dave_at_-5srfbogLeasOT-PeYU-cfmVMp4fW-CemfHm2aP0ehIZ-vSCLX467jglyv2Cv92HgA2tIsIdp4pqg1fD.yahoo.invalid> wrote:
> At 4:24 PM +0000 3/5/11, Jeff wrote:
>> > My Glorantha varies. I think the direction that BG has been
>>taken in Hero Quest is a pointless nerfing of a good, and much
>>needed cult that has made it virtually unplayable. So I ignore a lot
>>of the HQ take on her in favor of a more Rune Quest approach.
>>That's actually my approach to a lot of HQ religious developments.
>>
>>Do you mean in Storm Tribe or in Sartar Companion? Or both?
>>
>>Babeester Gor, like Humakt and like Urox, is a transgressional cult
>>that is tolerated because it fulfills specific social AND mythical
>>needs in Orlanthi society.
>
> FWIW, I agree with everything Andrew says. I felt BG has been
> made far more transgressional than either Humakt or Storm Bull, and
> also more or less psychologically plausible, by the sentence
> forbidding them to love or even display affection. This is in both
> Storm Tribe and Sartar Companion.
> It also pretty much ruins them as interesting characters - as
> they are more or less locked in emotional stasis, there simply are
> very few interesting stories to tell about them. They kill, or fail
> to kill, but you essentially can't tell a story about how they *feel*
> about anything.
> I also believe this is a drastic change to the cult as
> previously depicted in the RuneQuest era - historically, Babeester
> Gor has *never* been loveless, or even slightly celibate. "Although
> young, she is no virgin, for her deeds would be too awful to do
> alone. Her husbands or lovers vary, and there are some children as
> well." - Wyrms Footprints. When the cult was written up for RQ3, the
> restrictions on the love life of Maran Gor cultists were documented,
> but no such restrictions mentioned for BG.
> So I never played them even as celibate (and hey, they are
> strongly associated with beer and drunkenness). But if it was really
> felt that the cult had to be significantly changed from its historic
> roots, I could have lived with celibacy as a cult requirement. It
> would be a change that I find unnecessary (we already have an earth
> goddess obsessed with celibacy and barrenness, in Maran Gor, making
> BG too much like Maran isn't particularly interesting), but a
> plausible version of the cult.
> But a BG cult that can't care about the children they
> protect, that can't develop some affection for the priestesses they
> guard, that can't love the community they guard, that can't display
> cameradie for her Axe sisters, that can't even show affection for
> their own mothers? Just doesn't work for me, seems both implausible
> and dull to play. They wouldn't be a small, rare, cult, they'd be a
> miniscule one, and an unsustainable one (should one of them be
> psychologically undamaged enough to display affection for a newborn
> relative, or their mother, or such, they risk becoming the target of
> their own cult, as they are both forbidden to love if they remain in
> the cult and forbidden to leave the cult). And it isn't even
> consistent with the myths in the cult write up (in either version) -
> Babeester Gor is embraced by her loving mother.in both sources
> Humakt and Storm Bull might professional killers, Uroxi are
> essentially tamed monsters, but they can be something else in between
> all the murdering. That works fine. Transgressive, but not one
> dimensional. Even chaos cults might be full of warped sociopaths, but
> aren't actually forbidden from displaying some form of affection.
> But BG cultists were changed so they were literally forbidden
> to ever be anything but dead inside, and it pretty much ruined the
> cult for me. They went from being a fun cult to play, to being
> unplayable as a PC, and hard for me to believe in. Sorry.
> Cheers
> David
>
> *and to make that reference a little more high-brow, the BG beer myth
> is essentially a Gloranthan version of the beer story of the Egyptian
> goddess Sekhmet - and Sekhmet absolutely was not celibate, and her
> festivals more or less drunken orgies.
>
>
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