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Marriage in Prax


Zit

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It has been discussed a lot about marriage by the Heortlings, but what about Praxians ? What are the rules and customs ? There are some rules exposed in Cults of Prax, but they are sometimes very restrictive and may be not canonical anymore. Are there any ressources about that ?

Wind on the Steppes, role playing among the steppe Nomads. The  running campaign and the blog

 

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5 hours ago, Ludo Bagman said:

The Guide to Glorantha and the "What my Father told me" articles have some information on marriage.

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/issaries/fiction-reference/heroquest-voices/what-the-priests-say-and-what-my-father-told-me/

Can't recommend strongly enough, personally, but if one's concern is acutely about canoncity, we should note that Jeff's soft-reset the post-canonical dirty bit on the whole thing, and hard-reset for unspecified specific cases.  i.e. some of them are now no longer canon.  @David Scottmight be willing to chime in as to whether it's wildly off-base for his current thinking.

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21 hours ago, Zit said:

It has been discussed a lot about marriage by the Heortlings, but what about Praxians ? What are the rules and customs ?

For me, there are several typical modes of marriage among the Praxians:

  • Eiritha-Waha: The normal mode, where members of the cults of Eiritha and Waha marry. Marriage is normally within the same Nation, so Impala Riders marry Impala Riders, for example. Occasionally, marriage can be to a member of another Nation, but I would think that this is rare. This emulates the marriage of Eiritha and Waha.
  • Eiritha-Storm Bull: This is a more primal, bestial marriage, designed to produce lots of calves. Unlike the Eiritha-Waha marriage, this is often used to marry someone from another Nation, for their union predated the Nations.
  • Tada-Esrola: The foreigner marriage, used by Praxians to marry foreigners. Although Tada predates the Praxians as we know them, Praxians still remember him and remember how he married a goddess from far away. He also gave his daughters as wives to Vingkot, another foreign marriage. My giess is that this is the form of marriage that Bituran Varosh used.

 

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

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15 hours ago, Alex said:

@David Scottmight be willing to chime in as to whether it's wildly off-base for his current thinking.

It's worth remembering that the Praxians were effectively Orlanthi until the beginning of the First Age and considering the proximity of Sartar and the existence of cross-tribal and cross-cultural cults, all of the Orlanthi marriages are a good bet. I would also hesitate to paint all of the tribes as having identical practices, as it's not a monolithic culture (due to animal difference).

See Guide to Glorantha, Praxian culture, Gender relations, page 29.

Using the Marriage Status box on RQG page 427, with some tribes emphasising some more than others. All of these likely have different names but let's keep it simple

  • Husband and Wife -  roles maybe reversed
  • Husband and Underwife
  • Wife and Underhusband
  • Esrolian Husband
  • Yearwife or -husband
  • Love-spouse

There are specific forms of these categories:

  • spouse is from another tribe (eg. an cross-tribal cult, or the sacred marriage of the Most respected Elder and the Storm Khan - currently Morokanth and Sable)
  • spouse is a foreigner (such as an cross-cultural cult, or met in foreign lands).

Note that if the spouse was once a slave, but becomes a full clan member, they are not considered foreigners.

Note that bride price is always herd beasts (usually containing at least one of each major type) and is not returned if the marriage ends, and dowery is always the tribe's herd beast type and is always returned if a marriage ends. For year-spouses, these are usually just herd tokens (that can be redeemed).

There's enough variety here to cover most roleplaying opportunities.

Edited by David Scott
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15 hours ago, Alex said:

we should note that Jeff's soft-reset the post-canonical dirty bit on the whole thing, and hard-reset for unspecified specific cases.  i.e. some of them are now no longer canon.

soft-reset the post-canonical dirty bit

?

Edited by David Scott

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3 hours ago, David Scott said:

Note that if the spouse was once a slave, but becomes a full clan member, they are not considered foreigners.

some questions about that

 

let's say our good guy (not so good of course) raids this other tribe and take / gain a woman as captive. Let's say she is a "good" praxian too (Eiritha)

what status could she have ?

1) a slave, no sexuality with her master authorized, of course nothing with other too, until she gains the "free" status (if possible ?)

2) an automatic concubine, because  a "stallion" does what he wants with his "herd"

3) a concubine only if priests/shamans(Eiritha, Waha, etc..) bless the union. If no blessings, she is just a slave as 1)

something else ?

 

 

* thanks @soltakss you just show me that is not Eirithra but Eiritha... one century after I discovered her name...

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In my current campaign, I'm confronted with the difficult case of a Sartarite Storm Khan -actually a Devotee, since we play HQ:G- engaged with an Oasian woman (still too young to marry, they have to wait) but in love with a High Llama shamaness (you know, Sabera from Borderlands). In cult of Prax, the restrictions for SB rune lords are very strict (they can marry only Eiritha priestesses), but I'm wondering what are the actual up to date Praxian customs, or even for Satarites Stormbullis.

@soltakss I had a look at your marriage HQ, I may borrow the Tada one to allow an exogeneous marriage

Wind on the Steppes, role playing among the steppe Nomads. The  running campaign and the blog

 

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6 minutes ago, Zit said:

In my current campaign, I'm confronted with the difficult case of a Sartarite Storm Khan -actually a Devotee, since we play HQ:G- engaged with an Oasian woman (still too young to marry, they have to wait) but in love with a High Llama shamaness (you know, Sabera from Borderlands). In cult of Prax, the restrictions for SB rune lords are very strict (they can marry only Eiritha priestesses), but I'm wondering what are the actual up to date Praxian customs, or even for Satarites Stormbullis.

@soltakss I had a look at your marriage HQ, I may borrow the Tada one to allow an exogeneous marriage

Storm Khans of the cult may marry only Earth priestesses

The option here are very simple - Oases folk worship Ernalda, so she could easily become an assistant priestess, wise woman or full priestess. She could also be Voria:

Any adult female virgin who has never been initiated to any other cult may join Voria as a Priestess-initiate

She'd be an Earth priestess too (fertility / earth).

Alternatively, just Love-spouse (concubine)

 

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40 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

let's say our good guy (not so good of course) raids this other tribe and take / gain a woman as captive. Let's say she is a "good" praxian too (Eiritha)

what status could she have ?

Slave, unless she becomes a clan member.

Further than that, it's an area that I would avoid in my group, as it veers sharply into Lines & Veils (slavery may well be beyond some groups line's). 

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25 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Slave, unless she becomes a clan member.

Further than that, it's an area that I would avoid in my group, as it veers sharply into Lines & Veils (slavery may well be beyond some groups line's). 

Thanks you for that timely reminder about Lines & Veils David, I once had a player tell me I was not playing the game correctly as I did not feel comfortable with slavery or other unmentionable forms of violence. I very much reject such unprogressive thinking and it is nice to see I have some support at Chaosium for my views on this. 

I sincerely hope those who disagree with this opinion do not hijack this needed thread to disagree with me and let me know that I AM NOT PLAYING THE ONE TRUE GLORANTHA!

Cheers

Edited by Bill the barbarian
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... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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6 hours ago, David Scott said:

Storm Khans of the cult may marry only Earth priestesses

The option here are very simple - Oases folk worship Ernalda, so she could easily become an assistant priestess, wise woman or full priestess. She could also be Voria:

 

The difficulty is more for the Daka Fal shamaness.

Wind on the Steppes, role playing among the steppe Nomads. The  running campaign and the blog

 

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1 hour ago, David Scott said:

soft-reset the post-canonical dirty bit

?

To translate that from "gratuitous out-of-context computer nerdery":  has indicated that some (but not necessarily all) of the pieces are no longer canon, so they'll all need to be redone,and we won't know until then (as I thought I'd elsewhere said in other words).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bit

 

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

It's worth remembering that the Praxians were effectively Orlanthi until the beginning of the First Age [...]

Interesting.  For me this either sounds like a super-loose take on what "effectively Orlanthi" entails (yay) or an ultra-monomythic interpretation of certain God Time events (boo).  But either way, 1600+ years is a loooooong time for marriage customs to vary rather a lot.

 

9 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Thanks you for that timely reminder about Lines & Veils David, I once had a player tell me I was not playing the game correctly as I did not feel comfortable with slavery or other unmentionable forms of violence. I very much reject such unprogressive thinking and it is nice to see I have some support at Chaosium for my views on this. 

I sincerely hope those who disagree with this opinion do not hijack this needed thread to disagree with me and let me know that I AM NOT PLAYING THE ONE TRUE GLORANTHA!

Let me hijack it to very much agree with you.  Not only is YGWV the least variable part of Gloranthan doctrine, even more fundamentally all roleplaying should be a consensus and consensual experience as it happens at the table.  Ideally people would get roughly onto the same page on desired tone and content in the "pitch" or the Session Zero, etc, but that's no reason not to take people's concerns seriously and sensitively as and when they arise.

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15 hours ago, Alex said:

Interesting.  For me this either sounds like a super-loose take on what "effectively Orlanthi" entails (yay) or an ultra-monomythic interpretation of certain God Time events (boo).  But either way, 1600+ years is a loooooong time for marriage customs to vary rather a lot.

 

It basically means that the modern Praxian Beast Riders appear to be derived from the same God-Time origin as the original Orlanthi, being groups of Storm-worshipping, animal-herding pastoralists that migrated northwards from the Spike. They were perhaps like cousins of the Vingkotlings, to oversimplify things.

As you say, 1600 years is a long time, and they've evolved very differently in that period. The Beast Riders got the Survival Pact and integrated groups with no apparent Storm origin, etc. On the other hand, the Theyalans spread/converted groups across most of Central and Western Genertela, became mostly sedentary, and integrated their mythology into an overarching Orlanthi-Pelorian synthesis of sorts, which would later meld with Malkioni ideas to form the current Monomyth as we know it. At least that seems to be the gist of it.

This is not terribly relevant to the discussion, although what is more relevant might be the more or less constant cultural interaction between Prax and Dragon Pass, with lots of cultural exchange there, throughout Time.

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On 11/9/2021 at 2:55 PM, Zit said:

but in love with a High Llama shamaness (you know, Sabera from Borderlands)

18 hours ago, Zit said:

The difficulty is more for the Daka Fal shamaness.

Assuming that either you've made Sabera(k a gender fluid shaman or just female, and) a Daka Fal shaman-priest(ess), they will be a member of at least one spirit cult. As a women (or gender fluid shaman), they would likely be a member of Helpwoman's spirit cult (who is actually Earth Witch), and as a such technically an Earth priestess. Praxian religion is quite variable for this kind of thing. Or Sabera can just be a love spouse, no marriage required (or concubine).

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

It basically means that the modern Praxian Beast Riders appear to be derived from the same God-Time origin as the original Orlanthi, being groups of Storm-worshipping, animal-herding pastoralists that migrated northwards from the Spike. They were perhaps like cousins of the Vingkotlings, to oversimplify things.

No, they were contacted by the Theylans in 35ST and integrated in into the First World Council. Their origin is the Garden of Gerert when Storm Bull and his sons came down from the Spike and married Eiritha and her daughters, giving rises to the Founders and Protectresses of the tribes. The Orlanthi connection is via Storm Bull. It was a two way cultural merging, the Praxians only numbered about 3k in 35ST and were still in Prax, not truly entering the Wastes until the start of the Second Age. Their major export (other than Praxians) was the Storm Bull cult, while they imported the Lightbringers, Humakt, and Yelorna. 

 

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On 11/9/2021 at 2:55 PM, Zit said:

@soltakss I had a look at your marriage HQ, I may borrow the Tada one to allow an exogeneous marriage

Of course.

 

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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4 hours ago, David Scott said:

No, they were contacted by the Theylans in 35ST and integrated in into the First World Council. Their origin is the Garden of Gerert when Storm Bull and his sons came down from the Spike and married Eiritha and her daughters, giving rises to the Founders and Protectresses of the tribes. The Orlanthi connection is via Storm Bull. It was a two way cultural merging, the Praxians only numbered about 3k in 35ST and were still in Prax, not truly entering the Wastes until the start of the Second Age. Their major export (other than Praxians) was the Storm Bull cult, while they imported the Lightbringers, Humakt, and Yelorna. 

 

This is all true, but not what I adressed above.

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On 11/8/2021 at 10:13 PM, Zit said:

It has been discussed a lot about marriage by the Heortlings, but what about Praxians ? What are the rules and customs ? There are some rules exposed in Cults of Prax, but they are sometimes very restrictive and may be not canonical anymore. Are there any resources about that ?

The best source for Praxian marriages is from the Travels of Biturian Varosh under the Waha entry.  It is the only written account of a Praxian marriage ceremony I am aware of.

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