From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 09 May 1994 - 00:14:03 EEST
Martin:
> Paul Reilly sez:
> "I think that Troll society is sufficiently different from
> human that it is difficult to compare what 'adulthood' means.
> Certainly they continue to gain status throughout life, thus
> 'adulthood' may be more relative than absolute."
> Yes, except for that initiation thing. So there is at least
> one jump. And humans gain status throught life in most
> traditional societies, too, so where's the difference?
I think the trolls place great emphasis on adulthood, given their preoccupation with fertility. Thus a female uzko progesses through the stages of Child, Adult, Mother ("pure"), (likely) alternating with Mother ("impure"), and finally Elder. I'd guess a moderately Big Deal was made out of entry into each state. The status of male trolls isn't so important, or so well-defined, though.
The troll situation appears not unlike that of the Solar-worshipping Pentans, though of course both would be horrified by the comparison. If anything, trolls seem to be yet more monolithic in their identification of cult and society, not to say race.
> He also sez:
> "2. Trolls _must_ use a lot of onomatopaeia, and also 'echoic
> onomatopaeia' - the word for an object may sound a lot like its
> echo."
> Yes! A bit of convergent thinking--I had the same reaction
> to Sandy's statement that Darktongue was hard-wired.
I find it difficult to imagine _all_ of Darktongue being instinctive: perhaps there's a nounal (echos) and verbal ("echoism" (ow, appalling pun), at least for actions which actually make a noise) "core" language (compunerd, moi?), which has a "cultural" elaboration for more abstract concepts, compound concepts, names, etc.
After all, what's the echo for Kyger Litor?
There's also the small detail that echos are ultrasonic, while most of spoken Darktongue is in the human audible range (sensible, otherwise speach would confuse, and be confused by, Darksense sounds). Nothing a bit of hardwired fast fourier transform to do frequency shifting wouldn't fix, I'm sure.
> Speaking of disagreeing strongly:
> Will Joerg and Alex please restate their points of view about
> whatever it is that they're talking about?
I don't think Joerg and I disagree "strongly" so much as "at length". ;-/ Anyway, I agree that Joerg should: even I'm getting confused about what he's saying, but I'm sure it's wrong anyway. <smug grin>
> I think it was god v.
> pantheon initiation, initially, but I can't tell my players even
> WITH a scorecard, at this point.
Okay: I'm broadly in favour of the "cult" status quo, with some modifications and liberalisations. As one of the consequences as this, I don't think Adulthood/tribal/clanic initiation is necessarily, in all cases, a "full religious" (I would say "cultic", but that's half the argument, isn't it?) initiation.
In particular, I think there should be a greater stress on associate worship, a recognition that many, if not most, cults have some kind of meaningful "pre-initiate" (call it what you will) status, and perhaps also a a certain ammount of creative fudging of what this absolutist notion of "being an initiate of" a cult might mean, and consist of, in different circumstances. Temple size rules should probably also be inspiredly ignored in places, but not, I'd caution, in the direction or extent of powergaming free-for-all.
Given my essentially conservative position, I think that Joerg (or his cohorts) need to "make the case" that my stance and/or Zee Roolz <clicks heels> are broken in a significant way: hence, the petty quibbling about whether there exists a "hard case" someplace, where some poor hard-done- by group _really, really has to_ worship some inordinate number of gods in a manner which the current rules would make unacceptably (and unfudgeably) arduous. (As a benchmark, if I were convinced a sizable fraction of any significantly-sized community were _required_ to worship, as "full" initiates something like 30% time/tithing, I'd be worried.)
Personally, I think Joerg and co. are digging a hole for themselves with their stance on adulthood initiation, which they plan on then using as a rationale for all-pantheon worship. Myself, I'd suggest "stop digging", but I'd rather be stuck in the hole than that means of getting out of it.
We keep drifting off onto other topics, too, such as the Aeolian Church, which are certainly interesting in themselves, but which don't impinge directly on the initiation discussion in general. (Well, I think not -- certainly I think what Joerg describes is something of a special case, and I'm reluctant to get into bun-fights about someone else's own personal campaign material anyway.) I think I'll try to confine such stuff to separate threads, to keep things less mailbox-busting. (On which subject, Joerg is also one of the few people with a worse case of included-text- itis than me. ;-P Mind you, I have to confess, I have this _nasty_ habit of hitting the "reply" button, and finding myself replying to the whole "part" of the daily digest, not just the message I intended to. Oh, for a decent undigester...)
Now read on.
Alex.
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