unsatisfactory YT

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

From: Andrew Joelson (joelsona@cpdmfg.cig.mot.com)
Date: Wed 08 Feb 1995 - 15:36:05 EET

        Well, I'm stil not satisfied with things I am hearing about Yanafal Tarnils. However, I am a good deal less unhappy than when I first wrote in; even Nick Brooke seems to have drawn back from his statement that to join YT you had to first buy a Lunar Officer's commission. I will re-iterate my two premises, as the discussion as wandered widely (which is not necessarily a bad thing):

  1. A priest doesn't have time to be an army officer.
  2. YT is not an officer only cult.

        Number 1 seems to have drawn a lot of criticism along the lines of "priestly duties differ from cult to cult; YT cult duties ~= army duties". I feel to be this stance to be poorly thought out and/or overgeneralized.   More below.

        Number 2 seems to be conceded, with the wrangling centered over how many YT followers are officers vis common soldiers, and other such related matters. I should probably leave this one alone, but am not wise enough to do so; some of the related wrangling interests me.

        If you are bored by the YT debate, I suggest that you lean on your NEXT key. Heavily.

Section #1

    Dennis Hoover takes me to task for basing much of my arguments on   Cults of Prax, a charge which I gladly acknowledge; I said so in the   first place. What should I base my arguments upon, Gods of Glorantha?   This too is out of date, and my limited experience with it showed it   to be broader but shallower than CoP. The fact that I am using an old   source doesn't lessen the value of the ideas expressed within.

        I will now quote from page 7 of COP ((C)/Chaosium):

  "VI. RUNE LORD MEMBERSHIP

  1. GENERAL STATEMENT The duality of the statuses of the Rune Lord and Rune Priest lies in their focuses. the Rune Lord is more concerned with exploring the physical nature of the world and excels in dominating within the mundane plane. The Rune Priest concentrates upon the spiritual nature of the world, preferring to act upon the subtle natures of the magical plane. (The unification of both focuses is the action of a Hero Questor.)"

   et cetera, et cetera.....

        page 8 has the following statement

  "VII. RUNE PRIESTHOOD

  1. General Statement The priest of a cult are those persons who are the sources of magical communication between the diety and the people. The priests act as a bridge between the mundane world and the Other Side. The secrets of the diety, in the form of spells, are revealed to the world through the priesthood. Priests of a diety are closer to their god than even Rune Lords, and their attention is much concentrated upon their object of veneration. ...."

>---> The section above goes on to talk about the training/skill lim-
>---> itations on "many" cults. It quite explicitly states that some
>---> cults suspend these restrictions. YT is in all probability such
>---> a cult; Humakt certainly is.

     Based on the section above, I give ground on the YT priests's lack   of time. The priest's deeper knowledge and greater POW make it necessary   for him to attend to "temple" functions, rather than a lord; and the   majority of all priest would do so. But a priest interested in becoming   a Scimitar would be released from much of this. There is no reason why   a priest could not be attached to a regiment for a time, to gain experience.   But not permanently; a lord is more capable and better suited to fulfilling    military duties. And a priest that is also a lord is rare and   potent enough to tapped for more important duties.

 To continue, Nick Eden states:

 "... These days all these warrior cults don't have Rune Lords and Rune   Priests. They have Rune Lords, who are effectively RLPs.

  I was rather shocked by this when I first realised that this was what   had been done, but it makes a lot more sense really. ..."

        I don't see the sense of this from the game-mechanics angle.   Lords anf Priests had different advantages in the areas of Divine   Intervention & re-usable Rune Magic. A Humakt write-up sent to me   via a net inquiry showed the Sword with Lord-type DI, and Rune spells   that were one-use and some that were re-usable. This seems to me to   make such a character much more potent than an old Rune type. Even   an old RLP had the priest's more difficult DI. I also observed the   the new Sword also needed 6 skils at 90+, not five. This just goes   to make Rune types less common. Getting a character's POW up to 18   is easier than getting 5/6 skills to 90%. Isn't this one of the   reasons some players opt for priest instead of lord? CoP says that   Humakt priests all aspire to become Swords as well, what's wrong   with using the priesthood as a milestone along the way? It confers   status & prestige, if not that of a lord. It would certainly open   doors that might be closed to an initiate with the same long term   goal. (The role of priest would also be open to a lord that had been   maimed in some unalterable way.)

Section #2

  James Polk puts in the following usefull comment:

  "That parts of the cult (subcults or Scimitar status) are limited to    the officers. (This idea is for those who don't like to limit membership     of the whole cult.) After all, worship of Orlanth the King is    limited even though worship of Orlanth Adventurous is much less so."

        This goes along with my suggestion that Nick stick the officers    in the Scarlet Scimitar sub-cult. I propose something like this: 

			Yanafal Tarnils
			      |
	----------------------------------------------------
	|		    |		   |		   |
   Scarlet Scimitar    'Legionnary'    'Loyal Simon'    general
      for army		 for the	    for		  everbody else
      officers		  common	 housecarls,
			 soldiers	 bodyguards,
					   etc.


	Yanafal Tarnils would certainly be an unusual cult if it didn't
  have any sub-cults or hero cults.

        Nick wrote a long response concerning YT's role in the army, and    its function as a common thread between differing units. Without    getting into a paragraph-by-paragraph debate, the problems with his    ideas are these: 1) Nicks states that there may be a few Yanafali    around that aren't officers, but that they are a small minority (if    I misunderstood that part, my apologies), and 2) that 85%+ of all    officers in the army are YT.

  1. Yanafal Tarnils (as spelled in CoP) is the major war cult of the empire. No cult can make such a broad claim without having a vast following amongst the common soldiers. Otherwise, there just aren't enough YTs to justify the boast. There was also talk of all YT regiments. Such bodies would have enough soldiers and NCOs to outnumber the officers by 10 or 20 to 1. How can the foot sloggers be outnumbered by the officers? The more formations that are all YT, the smaller the officer ratio.
  2. Nick puts forward the idea that in an army of such cultural diversity, a unifying element is needed, and that the common thread is having all the officers be YT. An interesting idea, as it would help encourage common ideas & standards as to battlefield tactics, etc. Unfortunately the idea is not really feasible. One of the best ways to get into a fight with someone is to try forcing your religeon unto him. This is true now, and would be even more true in a bronze age setting, were the gods manifest themselves in visible ways. There was a mutiny/rebellion in the English army in India, back in the last century, by the muslim soldiers. This mutiny was sparked be a rumor (utterly false), that the gun cartridges were greased with lard (_pig_ fat; unclean). I mention this as an example of how quickly a religeous squabble can break out into serious trouble. Nick gives an example of a Char-un hetman (sp?) who brings in his levy, and is forced to pay lip service to Yanafal Tarnils. Baaad idea. First, you can't honestly claim that this guy is a follower of YT. Second, what are you going to do with the hetman if he says no? Think quick, 'cause you can be absolutely certain the Light Son leading in a Yelmic regiment from Alkoth is going to refuse outright. All that this accomplishes is a negative attitude in commanders that must be reliable in combat. This is no way to build esprit d'corps. Worse, it flies directly in the face of the Lunar Way: tolerance and pragmatisim.

        It would be far better to encourage non-Yonafali to join, even    temporarily. Co-operation , not coersion. Inviting the hetman to    attend YT rituals is an act of friendship; you offer an honorable    place to a guest, and you offer to share the blessing of a wargod.    This is an act of comraderie (sp?). If the hetman still says no,    don't try to force the issue. Why alienate an ally? 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Andrew Joelson				joelsona@cpdmfg.cig.mot.com
AKA Rupert von Harl, priest of Yanafal Tar'nils, follower of Humakt "Contradiction? No, I always did tend to kill chaos creatures anyway."
Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:50:22 EEST