hipsterinspace

Orlanth Rex is at the top of the social order and is the cult responsible for dispensing "law" in Sartar, to the degree that they have magic to compel priests and worshippers of other cults to cooperate with their rulings. Additionally, if the man killed was an Orlanth worshipper (initiated or lay, and basically all Orlanthi men qualify as one of those), it is Orlanth's business.

I'd imagine that access to divination generally prevents the biggest mistakes and provides rather clear answers when mistakes are made. Your best chance to appeal is probably to have your clan's chief or Storm Voice take the complaint to the Tribal King and the tribal-level Orlanth cult, have them ask Orlanth about it, and based on the result the temple will probably be forced to pay his wergild (there's some handy Orlanth Rex magic to make that happen) or your brother wasn't so innocent after all.

As the seekers of truth, Lhankorings can be that other sort of investigator, they’re the cult who have the magic for it. Figuring out who killed someone is ultimately yet another form of knowledge and rests within the Knowing God’s purview, though it would probably be a rather strange thing to specialize in. That said, Dragon Pass really doesn’t have anything resembling systematic justice. Having a judge, jury, and executioner in the form of a very scary woman with an axe dispensing frontier justice makes for a straightforward and rather effective deterrent: if you do something bad enough, there will be no wergild to pay, no honor to satisfy, no mercy to call on. Having a duo of the two is ripe for some comedy, I can definitely imagine some buddy cop action happening in Nochet with an oddly hard-boiled Lhankoring and unusually thoughtful Gorite uncovering assassination plots and navigating the endless intrigues of a Great House

The Eleven Lights campaign makes it clear that a lot of people die, on the order of a few hundred in a relatively large and wealthy clan of 1500. Lots of people and animals die, it’s genuinely dire even coming out on the other side of it. Broyan, Kallyr, and the rest of the rebellion in Heortland and Sartar are still weak and on the defensive, it will take years to recover, which makes extreme options like calling on Harrek or the Dragonrise very attractive. Even after the decapitation strike that was the Dragonrise, the population in Sartar will take a long time to recover while the post-occupation baby boom grows to adulthood.

Such a thing is clear grounds for a feud!

Secret murder is a breach of Heort’s laws, a violation of the oaths the people take to become full adult members of their community, I don’t see how that would be outside of the Gorites’ purview. Adding to that, the Axe Sisters are some of the best investigators around, responsible for tracking down and killing rapists, kinslayers, oathbreakers, and those who transgress against the earth. They worship a vengeful goddess born in the bloody entrails of her murdered mother. I would imagine known secret-murderers are probably not always killed by Gorites, sometimes they might be killed by Humakti or Storm Bulls, maybe even killed by a relative of their victim(s), bonded into slavery, or just banished and outlawed: it probably depends on the magnitude of the offense. One thing that has been made clear is that executions do not qualify for demanding wergild and that there are some offenses that wergild can’t stand in for.

Historically wergild was also at times demanded in the case of duels, and in the Eleven Lights book it is mentioned that if certain characters are killed — even in a sanctioned duel on Isle Dangerous — that the family is likely to demand compensation. Excepting secret murder, which is seen as chaotic and will probably get you a visit from the nice ladies with axes should you be found out, one of the main Orlanthi maxims is “Violence is always an option”. Duels can escalate into feuds, which can escalate into wars. As such, wergild is a manifestation of Ernalda’s maxim, “There’s always another way”, in this case a way to keep the escalations managed while still answering a challenge. All the same, “Nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do”, and it’s best to be prepared to answer for an insult if payment is not offered.

Ompalam very straightforwardly has the chaos rune, and as the god of slavery it stands to reason that practicing his teachings strengthens him. This is one of the great contradictions of Praxian society, the ubiquity of slavery — something that arose from chaos — amidst their fervent hatred of chaos.

What's been posted here about Barntar is effectively that he's the same as Orlanth Thunderous, but with the three rune spells of Tame Bull, Command Bull, and Plow. Unless you're in Esrolia or in the Empire, that's what Barntar looks like.

The RQG core book would refer to them as Philosophers. The Torvald Fragments—the source of Lhankoring sorcery—is still sorcery all the same, but is rather limited in scope to what is actually useful to a scholar. They may practice sorcery, even expand their knowledge of sorcery beyond Lhankor Mhy’s typical offerings, but they are ultimately still Lhankorings, scholars devoted to the Knowing God, not Zzaburi, actual professional sorcerers.

When I say sorcerers and sorcerous perspective I mean Malkioni, Brithini, et al., the scope of “atheists” being referenced. Lhankorings have a broadly theistic perspective, and while they sometimes dabble in sorcery, they are scholars, and their sorcery is not fundamental to that role like it would be for a Zzaburi.

I mean, those sorcerous perspectives still recognize the gods as in some sense real, they just don’t recognize them as being worthy of worship. They’re fully willing to accept that theistic worshippers are seeing some portion of a truth, at least truth as they experience and draw on it, but that’s qualified by the fact that it’s only a part of a greater entity within a much, much bigger story (hence the monomyth). There’s a reason the God Learners could (and did) tap myths and otherwise twist and alter them to gain incredible power, and why the gods themselves broke the compromise to doom them.

Absolutely, I think it’s a great change. Some of the personality recommendations I’ve seen for Moon rune are introspective, contemplative, or open-minded, which I think are all things that make a lot of sense for a would-be Orlanthi hero.

Vasana the Vingan, one of the RQG pregen adventurers in the core book, begins with Moon as her second elemental rune. The Hero Wars era stuff was quite a bit more extreme on some of these things and I suspect that’s a big part of why they’re not canon. On the other hand, embracing the chaos rune is something different, but at that point I’d suspect it’s a consequence of something beyond the unfortunate initiand simply “choosing evil” or some-such.

Does this also apply to the Enhyli, who in the GM Adventures book are stated to have Elmal chiefs, or the Torkani who worship Argan Argar as their primary men’s god, or are they the exception that proves the rule?

I suspect it is typical but not required. The chief of the Enhyli clan of the Colymar is said to always be an Elmal initiate, while many in the Torkani tribe are led by Argan Argar chiefs. In the HeroQuest publication The Coming Storm, the Red Cow's rivals within the Cinsina tribe, the Dolutha clan, are led by an Elmal chief, though I suspect this is probably no longer the case in the current material. In the same book the Emerald Sword of the Dinacoli tribe are led by a chief who is an initiate of the Seven Mothers.

People are also called to be a shaman most of the time. The Horned Man chooses them and they follow him. It’s something that pervades their life and experience, it’s not what they do, it’s what they are. The thing about shamans is how direct their connection with the spirit world is, they have spirits who are their personal friends and personal enemies in addition to those who they have cultic friendships and enmities with. If someone’s entire perception is rooted in the personal, immanent, transcendent experience of the spirit world, it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to internalize the impersonal materialist sorcerous perspective, which for someone who is a shaman would constitute an incredibly dramatic detachment from what they’re used to. Plus, who has the time to spend literal years training in an entirely different way of approaching the world, let alone reconciling the two? I believe it’s actually the opposite. Arkat Kingtroll, the Uz route to sorcery, is something that was added to the established paths of darkness. If it’s anything like the human Arkat cult, it requires illumination to fully enter the secrets and receive teaching in sorcery. Now, I’d think the reason it’s rather easy for mistress race trolls to learn sorcery, in addition to their assumed shaman status through Kyger Litor, is because they have that time that most other beings don’t, as they are effectively immortal.

If I had to guess, it was probably something to with the longstanding conflict between the Dinacoli and the Cinsina. I believe the former were very resistant to Argrath’s rule.

From the RQG core book, p. 114: The vendref are not always complacent serfs, and sometimes serve their overlords as warriors or join invading armies, and have even moved en masse to a new location... The Pure Horse People must be careful how they treat the vendref, and their rule is far lighter than that of a slave and its owner. From the next page, regarding the Feathered Horse Queen: She is guarded by fanatical Humakti from the Hiia Swordsman subcult. The Humakti Vendref, as referenced in the Well of Daliath link I posted upthread, follow Hiia Swordsman, a hero of Humakt who joined with the Feathered Horse Queen to serve her during her "revolution". The subcult who take their name from him remain the personal guardians of the Feathered Horse Queen, who serves as the protector of the Vendref as well as the queen of her people. This seems to be the most up to date reference for how their society actually fits together. The article even mentions that the Vendref have Orlanth Adventurous among them, again tied to the Feathered Horse Queen.

They are the personal guardians of the Feathered Horse Queen, they also ride. They serve as the enforcers of the Queen's will and defenders of the Vendref. I would guess that that's another section of the guide that has changed since publication, kind of like initiation being rare and illiteracy being strictly enforced among the Dara Happan peasantry.

Nearby Esrolia had a rather large civil war take place, civil wars tend to create refugees. Supposedly most of the Humakti are drawn from the Vendref. In the GM Adventures book there is a Pure Horse Orlanth cultist in Apple Lane, so I would presume some Orlanth presence among them too. Another deity that makes an appearance among the Pure Horse People in an adventure book is Polaris (in The Smoking Ruin), I would think his cult is a decent share of the miscellaneous group.

It seems like the intuition and spiritual immanence, for lack of a better term, required to make contact with spirits on their terms is directly at odds with the detached, materialist, rationalist perspective that sorcery requires. Sorcery has tools in its suite of magic that allow practitioners to exert control over spirits and the spirit world, perhaps even enter it, but that is very different than making yourself permanently a part of it.

If someone can’t contact an entity directly, that’s often why they would use a spirit cult or society instead, there’s a lot more flexibility. It’s very common in Prax, with several spirit societies forming important parts of the cultic landscape, the most important one of 1625 probably being the intertribal White Bull Society which is integrated into Storm Bull, Waha, and Orlanth. For the Grazers it’s a place for a more esoteric approach to the Yelmic religion. There’s already a short-form write-up in the RQG core book, and there are some theories out there about possible ties between Golden Bow and the lost Sun of Genert’s Garden, Splendid Yamsur.

He’s not proselytizing Yelmalio, he’s suppressing Orlanth worship. He is using his cadre of Yelmalio worshipers to prevent the Orlanthi from accessing their holy sites and performing their rites by force, same as the Lunars have the Sun Domers doing at the Hill of Orlanth Victorious after Starbrow’s rebellion. It’s antagonistic, sure, but doesn’t involve forcing people to initiate into a different cult, I don’t think most gods would accept initiations done under duress rather than a genuine call to them. Again, they are of Tarshite culture and speak Tarshite. This is pointed out explicitly, they are originally from Tarsh. Tarshites mostly come from Saird, Holay, Vanch, Aggar, and elsewhere in Peloria’s barbarian belt. This is a significant cultural difference from the Heortlings who constitute most of Sartar’s population and is notable enough to warrant mention.

If you look at my post, Jardan isn’t the little sun, he’s Yelm the Archer (initiate subcult) and offers a way to Yelm’s shaman path, as laid out in the RQG core book. Golden Bow is also said to be the name of a Grazer warrior society, one of their leaders is featured in a minor role in the eponymous adventure of the Smoking Ruin adventure book.