Sartarite weddings

[Scorus]

I don't think "divorce from children" or "fosterage" is the right term. These are usually not marriages for life and children do not belong to the parents in the same way that we think of. They will be physically separated from them if they go marry into a different household/bloodline/clan, but the children are not just being brought up by the parents once weaned. This adds to the fluidity of relationships, status, and class.

The JC's "In a Merry Green Vale" has an interesting character who has taken advantage of the opportunity to have children with a number of important men throughout the clan through one-year marriages, resulting in a powerful cadre of supporters who have inherited their fathers' lands and titles and all look to her as their mother.

[Sir_Godspeed]

On 1/14/2021 at 10:17 PM, Scorus said:

In general, nobles probably send their "excess" children to adventure, the military, or the priesthood. Free children go to military, temples, and apprentice in skilled trades. Poor children go into skilled and unskilled labor. And there are of course exceptions for each of these, especially among the more free-wheeling Orlanthi.

 

 

On 1/14/2021 at 11:19 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

not sure for noble : I see military and priest as their primary activities. The excess  may be sent to adventure or inother clan for wedding.

This might just be me, but sending children off to "adventure" and "the military" sound very much like RPG-answers, and not really very realistic, or at the very least common, options for a subsistence culture. 

There aren't a lot of professional, full-time soldiers in Glorantha. There are probably exceedingly fewer "professional adventurers" (whatever we mean by that). 

I think it's probably a lot more common to take the excess offspring and send them off to live with relatives or neighbors who can afford to keep them, wherein they might become proper foster children, or they might live as servants (in which case they lose status). They may also be sent off to live with a local bigwig, again, as servants in all likelihood. There's also the possibility that the parents might make arrangements for a youth to be sent off to some urban center to go into an apprenticeship, or indeed make a deal with the chief to have their child take over an old tenant plot or clear a new one, which again can entail loss of status, if the parents were Free. Marrying them off to a family normally below your status probably also happens. It's entirely possible that you can only afford a decent bride price/dowry for some of your kids, and that you prioritize them in order to preserve the status of the bloodline overall, while "sacrificing" the other siblings' status.

Other options include donating a child to a temple, giving them a advance on their inheritance and sending them off with the best wishes and a vague plan (although this is indeed desperate), or sending them off to, well, beg, or indeed selling them off into slavery, prostitution or child marriage are all options we know occur in real life, and are done by the most abjectly poor, desperate families, but it does happen. Orlanthi culture is so collectivist that this would probably require much of the social fabric to have broken, and the social safety net to be virtually non-existent, but with numerous wars and famine, that's not unthinkable. Though whether you'd like to include that in a game is another topic entirely.

Kitting your kid out with whatever arms and armor you can afford (possibly as an advance on their inheritance) and finding a mercenary contract for them (possibly as a trainee/servant for some more experienced mercenary or retainer) is of course possible for the more well-to-do families, but I'd hazard to say that this is a much less common option, and probably very circumstantial.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Sir_Godspeed

[French Desperate WindChild]

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

This might just be me, but sending children off to "adventure" and "the military" sound very much like RPG-answers, and not really very realistic, or at the very least common, options for a subsistence culture. 

There aren't a lot of professional, full-time soldiers in Glorantha. There are probably exceedingly fewer "professional adventurers" (whatever we mean by that). 

My words "military" and "adventure" may be the wrong terms

I just say that noble roles are primary to lead the defense of the clan, so don't lose too much time in harverst or workshop, train your fighting skills (my word "military)  and to lead the cults.

So the noble excess (aka the clan cannot support more leaders), when not "used" as political resources (wedding-like), has to find their way by themselves outside of the clan (my word "adventure").

It can be a rpg adventurer-like of course but my thought was larger :

create another clan or become an holy man in a great temple for the most ambitious and lucky people. Just explore the world by curiosity, or live their own passion(smith, farmer, music, anything...) outside of the clan

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

 sending them off with the best wishes and a vague plan (although this is indeed desperate),

in fact that is exactly what I called "adventure"

 

14 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

donating a child to a temple

I used it for a character I created but I considered it as a very very exception.

Do nobles in dragon pass give their childs to a temple ? (True question, not controversy)

[Joerg]

28 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Do nobles in dragon pass give their childs to a temple ? (True question, not controversy)

That (and what happens to children born to the Annmagarn clan, if that clan has adoption only membership) is a good question.

Spoiler warning - the example relates to consequences of events playing out in the Sartar Companion. Be spoiled at your own peril.

 

What does taking a tribal office do to your clan membership, and that of your family?

We already asked that about Dronlan's children in Apple Lane. Dronlan was an Ernaldori by birth before he became tribal thane of Apple Lane. He brought wife and children along to his (newly created?) post in Apple Lane, a hamlet that may have existed previously, but which then was given in tenancy to the new thane and the royal guest Gringle. (His daughter was a young adult when she joined Torath Manover, which indicates that she was born during Terasarin's reign.) What clan can his children claim? The household is part of the tribal Orlanth Rex temple. Are the children living in the household transferred to that temple? Those born during office?

If Dronlan left a widow, what was her status after his death?

 

A similar question about the formation of the Black Spear clan. If a hunter of the Black Spear (say from the Zethnoring clan) was married with children when successfully hunting the spear in the Colymar Wilds, would wife and children follow him to the new clan? What about children born to an adoption membership only clan? Does their adulthood initiation include the hunt for the spear? That would be the easy way. But then, what about their marriage partners?

Children who don't find the spear and yet survive the rest of the initiation might be married off to other clans, or given over to the tribal temple - possibly as tenants. Individuals unwilling to become a tenant (or be initiated from a tenant family into tenancy) are free to join a mercenary band, the Puppeteer Troupe, a temple, or try their luck in a tribal confederation city or Boldhome or Nochet (the city with the largest population of urban Sartarites, though not under Sartarite rule).

 

Joining the crowd at the tribal manor in Boldhome or in the confederated city probably results in a similarly vague situation. A tribe is not a clan, but it has the tribal Orlanth Rex temple which legally acts as a clan, and people directly serving the tribe - whether as thanes, free carls or semi-free cottars - are in all likelihood represented by the temple. A supra-clan temple like the Clearwine Earth Temple has a legal position semi-separate from the associated clan (the Ernaldori in the case of Clearwine).

The Greenstone Earth Temple (which may still have priestess lineages dating back to its re-activation by the Varmandi) is associated to the Orleving clan of the Varmandi in a similar way. (And this makes me wonder whether the Varmandi could originally afford to be a war clan as they had the parallel institution of the Greenstone Temple to deal with their fertility demands. Early Varmandi history sounds quite interesting.)

And the Three Emeralds Earth temple in Locaem lands may have a similar story. Possibly involving Balmyr and Orlevings, too.

What are the major earth temples east of the Quivin Mountains?

Other supra-clan (and in fact often supra-tribal) temples are those to the deities other than Orlanth and Ernalda. Lhankor Mhy in Jonstown and Derensev, Chalana Arroy (in Jonstown? Boldhome?), Humakt (Boldhome, Two-Ridge Fort), Yelmalio (Vanntar, Boldhome, Runegate, Alda-Chur), Argan Argar (Boldhome, Torkani lands?), and more decentralized Issaries and Geo (and possibly other minor cults to be revealed in the Sartar Starter Set).

(Don't even think about giving children to the Eurmal "temple", or having such a thing. Shrines are bad enough.)

What are the rules for marriages of temple dependants? As long as it is the office holder who marries, the marriage partner is likely to move into the temple holdings (unless there is a case like a priestess from the Three Emeralds Temple moving into a Locaem clan after they lost their clan priestess of Ernalda without a suitable local replacement). But what of the children of such unions?

We might know such a case - Vasana, daughter of an Ernaldori earth priestess serving in the Clearwine temple. Unlike her sister (who seems to be apprenticed to the temple) she has chosen a career as a follower of an exiled noble in the service of Broyan of the Volsaxi or some more direct form of vassalship. (So have Yanioth and Harmast.) After the victory at Pennel Ford which unchained the cult of Orlanth, they appear to have taken a sabbatical or a mission to spread the good news to their birth clan, and then Broyan perishes off-screen, leaving the Ernaldori trio and their new friends/followers in the service of Leika (who may have been the exiled noble they followed into Broyan's camp).

What if Vasana's (and Yanioth's) mother had not been an Ernaldori/temple born? Or does joining the Clearwine Temple as a priestess automatically result in adoption to the Ernaldori clan, as would a marriage?

 

A character I am playing in @Bill the barbarian's Torkani RQG game rolled both his father and his significant (maternal) grandfather as Lhankor Mhy philosophers from the Jonstown Temple, marrying into the Torkani clan. Both of them perished in the warfare with the Lunars. I know his father's marriage was matrilocal, but I am not quite sure whether his mother grew up in the clan or whether she returned to the clan with my character's grandmother after the grandmother was widowed. Both women were/are literate Ernaldan initiates (i.e. lay worshipers of LM, which should satisfy the marriage requirement). The Jonstown temple doesn't really need widows of their initiates hanging around in temple-owned town houses, and while they probably would hang on to initiates of their cult, or skilled crafters in cult-adjacent crafts (like alchemy, perfumers, jewellers, ... stuff that profits from literacy and book knowledge), household management is not necessarily what they are looking for in great numbers. While they have a demand for such jobs, they may have a pool of other marriage partners married to living initiates who can manage minor urban temple holdings.

 

Another can of wyrms:

During the occupation, some local Seven Mothers temples will have accepted orphans in the cities and the Lunar-friendlier clans. What is their status following the Dragonrise, when those temples are disbanded, their property plundered or confiscated and their leaders killed, captive, or fled?

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

thanks @Joerg

It gives a lot of information. But all your cases are based on accident (death of parent) or birth into the temple. What about a child born for example in a noble red cow clan with healthy and wealthy parents ? I don't imagine the child (before adulthood) being sent to any temple without very exceptional reason. Am I wrong ?

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

thanks @Joerg

It gives a lot of information. But all your cases are based on accident (death of parent) or birth into the temple. What about a child born for example in a noble red cow clan with healthy and wealthy parents ? I don't imagine the child (before adulthood) being sent to any temple without very exceptional reason. Am I wrong ?

 

While the person having the noble status is holding the office, no children will be "given away". This is about losing that status (whether by death or to a political rival), having to leave the house and land that comes with the office.

Nobility requires maintenance. Read: many tenants. Once the office holder has lost the office, his children may be able to serve some other office holder in the way they observed from their parent's sidekicks. If not yet initiated, the parent may call in a few outstanding favors to place the more promising children is such positions of future service.

Service with the tribal king is service to the tribal temple.

There is a reason why rolling up the significant parent and grandparent helps integrate characters in RQG. These boasting rights are all that remains of former or loaned glory. They put your character into enough spotlight to get a chance at proving themselves in a leadership position. Whoagain son of Nobody won't that easily get that chance.

 

Dronlan's daughter pretty much does such a thing pre-emptively. (She also refuses to become diplomatic chattel on the marriage market that way.) She joins a temple. Her brothers may have received somewhat prestigious brides, but without rising to some tribal office by themselves, that prestige may be fleeting. Assuming they survive the demise of their father, what is their future? They are somewhat competent as freeman farmers, but they don't have a freeman's stead any more. Who is going to give them one? Which other household will lose that stead?

Much of the wealth of the parents stems from their standing in the clan. They manage clan resources rather than their own odal property, and while re-arranging the belongings of bloodlines requires a very strong chief or a strong outrage, it can happen. A noble being sent into exile may mean that his family has to leave the prestigious stead. Now what?

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

What about a child born for example in a noble red cow clan with healthy and wealthy parents ? I don't imagine the child (before adulthood) being sent to any temple without very exceptional reason. Am I wrong ?

It depends on how you see Gloranthan nobility.

One way of it seeing it is that the first child will rule, the second child will rule if the first child dies, the third and fourth children serve the first or second child, any more are spares and the family don't know what to do with them. They could becomes tradesfolk, if that is possible, or can be donated to the temples.

Some even donate several children to different temples as a form of fosterage. The children know who their parents are and get to visit with them a lot, but they are part of the temple. If they become Temple Leaders then the noble families get some influence with a lot of temples.

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

thanks @Joerg

It gives a lot of information. But all your cases are based on accident (death of parent) or birth into the temple. What about a child born for example in a noble red cow clan with healthy and wealthy parents ? I don't imagine the child (before adulthood) being sent to any temple without very exceptional reason. Am I wrong ?

Drawing on some Hindu examples, like Devadasi and others, parents might "donate" a child to the temple as a form of sacrifice or gift, possibly with the unspoken understanding that they are not able to support them, but not necessarily. Additionally, a youth might have a spiritual experience that leads them to want to join a temple by themselves. Perhaps specifically to avoid marriage pressures, or simply for devotional reasons.