In all honesty I suspect those things would exist in some cases, if for different and magical reasons. Mallia's venereal disease spirits, inbreeding making a bloodline weaker against Chaos...
It does, however, stand to reason that the physical results of inbreeding could be countered somewhat by healing magic - much like childhood death rates. Which, of course, should underscore the important of healers and all kinds of healing magic, and demonise anyone or anything that might threaten that.
Also, note that this is probably not a very good analogy. Ptolemies were a small ruling dynasty, after all. We are talking about far bigger groups here.
>
> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Stephen McGinness <
> stephenmcg_at_...> wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > Yeah, but they lived in the real world. IMG an inbreeding tribe, if they
> > are mythically healthy will have healthy babies. They will also have babies
> > that conform to clan norms - so no huge Impala riders even if the father
> > was High Llama...
> >
> But doesn't a small population soon lead to such abominations as incest,
> which we KNOW is bad news in Gloranthan cultures? I know that Glorantha
> isn't the real world, but this takes away some of my suspension of
> disbelief, the way that there are no venereal diseases in Glorantha does.
>
> Guy
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>