Various miscellany.

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From: MSmylie@aol.com
Date: Wed 17 Jul 1996 - 21:44:00 EEST

Hello all.

First off, I will readily concede David Dunham's point that there's little
reason in pursuing the BUTS idea heavily until some sort of "approval" from
either Chaosium and/or AH has been obtained, though I had taken Eric Rowe's
seeming enthusiasm as a good sign; consider my scenario-laden "wish list"
withdrawn. As a side note, Pete Maranci mentions the handy old book o'
_Foes_, and it occurs to me that on a certain level some of the things which
will come up in a BUTS discussion are actually more along the lines of
publication suggestions for AH and/or perhaps RMM. An updated _Foes_-like
book (given how Stat heavy RQ is), perhaps along the lines of the recent
character formulations in stuff like LoT (description + STATs + scenario
hooks), seems to fall into that category of "product I'd like to see and
would probably pay money for".

Nick Brooke, in response to my 'orphan' theory:

>Really "for all their *alleged* anti-Lunarism" -- I was taking the low
>incidence of civil unrest as an argument against the "You hold her down,
>I'll slash her throat" attitude to Lunar priestesses, charity workers, etc.
>which some posters have posited is held by all Sartarite Good Ol' Boys.

"Alleged" it is, and I agree with your position, btw; I was just tweaking the
argument a bit. In fact, I would be willing to suggest that rebellions
rarely involve large portions of a subject population anyway, at least
directly; I can't help but suspect that most Orlanthi, even if they don't
like the Lunars, watch (bemusedly) from the sidelines.

Jane Williams poses an interesting question in the "Celtic or Saxon" thread:

>Another random thought: should we also be comparing with Heroic Age Greece?
>Trojan War, that sort of thing? Clan based, pantheons, heroes wandering off
>doing their thing, no regular army, just a mob out for loot. And it's
>genuinely Bronze Age, too. Sounds possible to me, but
>I don't really know enough to make a proper comparison.

A good point, IMO; my instinct is to reach for Moses Finley's _The World of
Odysseus_. He draws an interesting -- well, essentially speculative --
picture of Dark Age Greece which actually has some "Orlanthi" resonance,
including --

* A bardic oral tradition, primarily concerned with the (pre-polis) age of
"heroes" and the heroic figure;
* A quasi-aristocratic class of noble-warriors, different from everyone else
yet not entirely hiearchical; with an elite class of specialist craftsmen,
the "demioergoi", 'those that work for the people', which oddly enough has
echoes of the current smith/craftsmen argument going on;
* An interesting emphasis on the concept of "treasure" -- i.e., the hoard, in
particular much-sought-after metal goods -- and the 'raider' tradition;
* An emphasis on gift-giving and counter-gifts (in fact, taxes and dues were
also described with the same word as gift), open-door hospitality mixed with
suspicion of strangers;
* The stressing of honor/dishonor as standards of judgement, at least amongst
the aristocratic elite;
* Some interesting distinctions between heroes and Kings that echoes to some
extent the "chieftain" question recently raised, with an emphasis on
assemblies and some form of discussion amongst putative subjects; etc.

The parallel isn't exact, obviously, but it does seem as though there's some
room for exploration there. The emphasis on the "estate" or household rather
than the clan is seemingly more Pelorian at this point, though as the
dominant social connections seem household and kin based it does make it
*virtually* "clannish", and there seems to have been an anti-trade attitude
(trade as the province of the Phoenicians?) amongst the nobility that doesn't
mix well with the Issaries cult.

Erik Sieurin and Michael Raaterova continue their crafts/smith dialogue:

>Among certain Celts (no, I don't remember which), those who practiced
>certain crafts (such as jewelcraft and weaponsmithing) were counted
>as "aes dana", "skilled people(?)" right along with druids n' their
>ilk. Is that the case here - some crafts are thaneish, others not?

I think Erik is thinking of the Irish "Celts" in this case, "aes dana" being
"men of art"? In a really reductive, Dumezillian way of putting things, the
ancient Irish -- at least at one point, IIRC -- included bards, priests
("druids"?), seers, artisans, and craftsmen as the third "class", alongside
the noble/kingly class and the warrior class. I think I've seen references
to the effect that craftsmen held a similar status in 1st century BCE Gaul,
so maybe this can simply be taken as more evidence pointing to the difficulty
of using the term "Celt" or "Celtic" in any meaningful fashion. Seems to me
that the Orlanthi vary so much from place to place that there's room for both
"valued" artisan-crafters being held equal to thanes in some places and
proto-serf crafters as veritable thralls in others.

A final note, I like Michael Raaterova's speculations on the directions that
pantheon initiation might take; the idea of letting sacrifice and other
rituals have some sort of efficacy, even in cases where there is no
(initiatory) link on the part of the sacrificer, makes a lot of sense, though
there is always the danger of making them reductively instrumental. It might
be possible to relate sacrifices/rituals to potential "blessings", rather
than divine "spells" per se, though that's a pretty big wrinkle. I would
still think of cultic practice as being pretty specific to individual
divinities, but agree with the idea that there are clear connections and
groupings between divinities that wind up being part of a single "tradition",
i.e., the cults of farmers as opposed to that of warriors. Keep it coming.

Just my 2 cents.
Mark

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