From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@sartar.toppoint.de)
Date: Fri 29 Apr 1994 - 23:24:21 EEST
Loren Miller in X-RQ-ID: 3837
> Loren here, responding to Alex Ferguson
> IMO, cult and clan *are* unitary. Or if not then why is there a different
> Orlanth cult in Prax from the cult in Sartar? I believe that the Orlanth cult
> is different from each clan to the next, and that the only reason the
> rulesbooks don't mention it is that it would be unplayably complex to have all
> those different long-form cult writeups, one for the Colymar, one for the
> Lismelder, etc, etc, etc.
Why unplayably complex? I know Sandy used this allegory earlier for a larger scale comparison, but the differences between Orlanth worshippers from different tribes are hardly more dividing than certain different forms of protestant creeds. Even within one church, there are different services in each bishop's see due to slightly different liturgy, song-books etc. Add to this personal preferences of the ministring cleric, and not two services in different parishes are the same. Nor would you expect them to be.
> This goes back to the idea that every worship
> service is a heroquest that has the possibility to change the cult, if only a
> little, and that over time every congregation diverges from the cult as it is
> perceived elsewhere, even over the hill in the next village. Gradually the
> cult is infused with local accretions.
In this you say that all worship within one clan is conducted the same way, but the size of the cultic and cultural unit isn't the point you make, to which I agree.
> Eventually, given enough divergence,
> the local cult may become totally incompatible with the cult as worshipped
> elsewhere. It might not even worship the same god. Naturally, this proves that
> everyone else suffers from rectal-cranial inversion, not that *we* might be
> wrong.
How different does a local variation have to become that the deity worshipped will not be the one others worship.
> So, each locale and/or clan version of a cult would have different
> associated cults. If we had separate long-form cult writeups for every single
> clan's version of each cult they worship then it would handle my concerns. It
> would be compatible with what Greg and Sandy have said about cults. It would
> make Alex's and other folks' objections to pantheon-style worship unnecessary.
> However, nobody has the time to write all that stuff.
No single person, no. However, _most_ of the write-up would be the same for all Sartarite forms of Orlanth worship. Maybe if we created a modular system for cult write-ups we could manage this if a lot of us worked together?
> So... we need some way of describing both cult and society to produce a whole
> which is unique in every little village. Village initiation will then produce
> a religiously active adult, an adult who is initiated into the main cult and
> an associate member of the associate cults, without needing to spend 3POW
> because he doesn't worship Orlanth or whomever the "ruler" god is. Those who
> wish to initiate further into mystery cults may spend POW and do so. That's
> what I want. I'm not sure how to write rules for it either, anybody else got
> any ideas?
Simply say that the initiation into adulthood gives you an all-associate status, and costs one POW, and that you're expected to join a specific cult appropriate to your function, for the same point of POW. If you don't, you might have problems with DI etc, so you'd better do so. Only if your character wants to join yet additional cults, another set of POW-sacrifice, temple duties, tithes etc becomes due. By doing so, you remove yourself partly from your original initiation (similarly to the polygamy arguments Sandy gave).
This works on village level, where all have one clan in common, or as outsiders have their minor community. Large cities have the city-god as common denominator. Do Sartarite town wyters fulfil such a role as well?
Rich Staats in X-RQ-ID: 3839
> The Invisible God changed when the Great Compromise/Time came about just
> as the way sorcery was practiced changed. The Invisible God draws from many
> primal aspects/Runes, but he/she/it does not ``own'' any directly.
He does own Law (and Flamal Plant, and Uleria Fertility), but because he
always did so, he has Law and Infinity rather than twice the Law Rune.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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