hipsterinspace

I think it's implied here that Vasana had her adulthood rites with the women (given that she's younger than the others), but that because she found Vinga she goes with the rest of the boys to learn how to actually be an adult:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/websites/facebook/runequest-on-facebook-july-2021-highlights/#ib-toc-anchor-29

If you are intent on leaning really hard on the Orlanth/Ernalda male/female bimodality, it's probably most straightforward to just presume that kids go into one of the two typical initiations based on their primary and secondary sex characteristics, but that the gods show them another way. They are placed on a path unlike that of their peers and continue on that path afterwards into their adulthood. Perhaps, like Vasana doing I Fought, We Won in her adulthood rites, someone destined for Nandan may find their place acting as Ernalda in the underworld and facing her terrible aunt to get what's needed to feed the tribe (or some other Ernaldan feat) instead of facing the trials of the uncles and finding their star heart.

I'd imagine most people who are both-fertile are probably more often that way as a result of powerful magic rather than as a (mundane) consequence of their birth, so it's probably wrong to describe that phenomenon using a medical or scientific account. I'd hesitate to use Androgeus to represent those people—or for much of anything positive more broadly—given the intensely negative and malign (even apocalyptic) connotations around their children and the events that have transpired around them.

1 hour ago, Zelmor said:

There are no books on the peoples, cultures, cults, societies, the setting that is the strength of this whole product.

They exist in abundance to the point of being a little overwhelming, but it's mostly in the form of supplementary resources. The Glorantha Sourcebook is a great place to start, and the enormous 2-volume Guide to Glorantha together with the numerous Stafford Library titles add a lot of depth. While they're not officially part of the same product line, they do exist, and have helped me get to a point where I understand the setting well enough to both play and now run campaigns as someone totally new to Glorantha. I do understand your frustration, especially as someone who does want more clarity and structure to build things on, but over the last six months it really hasn't been that disruptive to running a game.

57 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Are you arguing that cult restrictions based on sex or gender can be basically ignored, especially by PCs?  Since they have agency, and also magic or gender flexibility?

I'm not against this concept, and of course YGMV, but I'm not sure that it is the designers' intent.  Otherwise, I think they'd write "Only women can join", or, for Waha, "Must be a male tribal member", in a more flexible or inclusive manner.

If the designers wanted to narrowly define gender through anatomical determinism there wouldn't be six genders explicitly set out under Heort's laws. Praxians don't use Heort's laws, but gender variance might be somewhat common among certain shamanic traditions including Waha.

On 7/23/2022 at 11:30 AM, Rob Darvall said:

Why is this your go to? It completely misses the point I'm making.
Babeester Gor (IMG) will not accept anyone who is not a woman. Ergo if you are accepted you are a woman.

[…]

Not only that, it addresses the necessity of having experiences that would incline the initiand to "hear the call" and the Goddess to notice. Which in a game about myth strikes me as being somewhat important.
What about that is reductive and biologically deterministic?

I was addressing a concurrence with your post that did seem to be implying certain ideas with the wording, I agree with you 100%. The social construction of gender, combined with the omnipresent magic of the setting, and the socially and ritually recognized paths codified by Heort’s laws make those definitions fundamentally inclusive, which in my view is both good and far more interesting. Whether someone is a woman by accident of birth or otherwise, it shouldn’t and doesn’t matter in such a world, and I was trying to make that clear. Too many people in our world use narrow notions of experiential gender, especially gendered childhood socialization, to gatekeep and invalidate the experiences of people like me, so I apologize if I seemed a bit quick on the draw.

On 7/23/2022 at 11:13 AM, Dragon said:

There is always the possibility that a woman Babeester Gor initiate or Axe Sister found a certain black elf-made potion in some loot and decided to test it by drinking it. Or maybe the local Eurmali had one and convinced the Gor to down it in a drinking contest. Said Babeester Gor may now be male.

Perhaps she is now nandani, a different path to womanhood, but I don’t think that so fundamentally changes her sense of self. She may be eager to return back to her original form, perhaps it is somewhat traumatic for her to be in a body that feels alien to her, but I don’t think she (or her goddess) would suddenly understand herself as not a woman. Perhaps there would be others in her cult who have faced a similar trial before, maybe she would need to seek out the priestesses of Maran Gor or a powerful worshipper of Heler.

On 7/21/2022 at 8:53 PM, svensson said:

I think I like @Rob Darvall's explanation of 'experiencing the Mundane Plane as a woman' for those who are drawn to Babeester Gor. And I think that applies to most, if not all, the other cults with gender restrictions [Ernalda, Vinga, Yelorna, etc.].

[...]

For those who identify as alternate gender identifiers, if you're looking for a war cult Humakt doesn't care who or what you are provided you're not Chaotic or Undead. If you want to play the 'gender bender' role, there are a bunch of trickster cults or other cults that don't have specific gender rules.

Experiential womanhood can be a difficult enough thing to quantify in our world, let alone a world where magic of all sorts is omnipresent, material reality is mutable through the manifested power of gods and spirits, and ritually recognized gender-variance. If you're defining experiential womanhood solely through a reductive and biologically deterministic account, that both denies the fundamentally social reality of womanhood and seems like a flattening of the diversity Glorantha offers, especially for player characters who often follow the inherently transgressive and norm-breaking path of heroes. In that sense, relegating those people who exist outside of the Orlanthi all to a singular "other" bin subverts the mythic and social diversity of the setting in a way that is ultimately unsatisfying to my reading, but every Glorantha varies. In my reading, these definitions can be expansive, and the power of heroquesting assures that expansiveness is rarely limited.

10 hours ago, svensson said:

I'm an amateur historian. As such, I've trained myself to NOT cherry pick information that supports an argument for this or against that, but to look at the historical record as a whole and try to perceive societal trends. That record includes laws, newspapers, letters and diaries, and every other form of written record. Ask any cultural anthropologist or sociologist, and they'll tell you that social progress is a spectrum of achievement just like technological advancement is. There is a good deal of step one leading to step two leading to step three. And then there are the outliers where step three leads to step seven.

Professional historians, anthropologists, and sociologists are trained to avoid whiggish, eurocentric, and presentist perspectives: history and culture aren't a linear teleological progression towards a nebulous ideal. The ancient world was a pretty terrible place in a lot of ways, but it's relevant to note that many of those societies were far more diverse (if not always fully accepting) in terms of gender and sexuality than those Victorians who codified many of the tropes about the ancient world. This goes doubly when you break outside of the western fixations of pop history: gender variance is not a novel thing and was long tied to certain shamanic traditions. It would be pollyannaish to presume any of these cultures had modern sensibilities, but flattening them into a teleological line is a mistake. While most historical societies weren't nearly as tolerant as the Orlanthi, if we actually want to understand how those societies operated (or how the Orlanthi might), it's important not to project our biases and social constructions directly onto those societies and let the social realities of their cultural and ritual roles speak more clearly for themselves.

From what I’ve read in other threads, the big thing with a spirit society (vs the spirit cults) is the shared rune pool between a collection of related spirit cults. For the Twin Stars Society, the only details I’ve really seen are that they typically offer the rune spells Charisma (fire/sky) and Benison (moon), are associated with Moonbroth which offers Divination as per the Blue Moon, and a couple other moon spirits which were named but not really remarked on in any detail: Silver Deer and Redwood. I am very curious about the canon side of things, but the flexibility of spirits means making things up on the fly probably works as well as anything else.

Heler invaded the sky with Lorion, so having the spear skill makes some amount of sense.

As a related question, I’m curious, are there taboos around fraternization between Pure Horse People and Vendref, and if those taboos exist, how strict are they? Is coupling between the groups forbidden or just frowned upon, and would there be consequences for that occurring? Would the children of such a union be born disowned/illegitimate or would they inherit one of the status of one parent preferentially?

I would imagine those sorts of interactions are bound to happen even in a society as rigid and patriarchal as the Grazers. Having played Six Ages recently, I can’t help but think about the PHP-Vendref relationship as it compares to the riders-rams taboo, especially due to the significant role those interactions play in the game’s story. Any information on the topic would be of great interest to me.

On 11/17/2021 at 5:25 AM, Scotty said:

Starting Skills: Cult Lore (Heler) +15% Worship (Heler) +20% Meditate +5% First Aid +15% Spear +10% Swim +20%

I'm honestly surprised to see Swim here. Given the centrality of dance to Heler's cult in previous editions, I'd have thought that would be included in the starting skills instead. I'm curious about the rationale, especially given Heler's role as the deity of water in the middle air as opposed to a river or sea god.