Mythology, subcults and clans

[radmonger]

The mythology book has a new cult template, including some new text in the subcult section.

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a few minor cults may function as subservient cults in some areas an contexts, and independent cults in another.

Heler is given as an example, but this presumably also applies to at least Odayla, Valind, Mastakos and Yinkin. And likely also Engizi, Voriof, Barntar,  Yelmalio (as Elmal) and Vinga (if you use the independent Vinga cult write-up from six paths).

Somewhat confusingly the text 'the subcult has no existence independent of the larger cult' is still present, as is 'associated cults are deities worshiped as part of the cult that are also worshiped independently outside of the cult'.

The term 'subservient cult' isn't defined, and there is no explanation for how it is different from an 'associated cult'. 

I don't think this is quite an issue for the corrections thread, but how is this supposed to work? Are those cults intended to be played by PCs,  or NPC-only? if a PC follows one, do they write it in the 'cult' section of the character sheet, the subcult, both, they choose, or it depends?

If, as i think the rules as written imply, that Yinkin as a subcult of Orlanth is different from Yinkin as an independent cult, then are the crippling penalties (i.e. all rune magic becomes one-use) really supposed to apply  to anyone who switches from Orlanth (Yinkin subcult) to Yinkin? Are GMs just expected to break the rules here?

Furthermore, does that imply that in general there can be two cults for one deity? And so Tolat and Shargash are in fact independent cults, not subcults, and asserting an identity between them is, for all the discussion it causes, actually meaningless in rules terms?

Alternatively, which to me makes more sense, is a subservient cult just an associated cult that may or may not exist independantly? Then:

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Initiating into a subservient cult means you worship at a shrine to X in a temple to Y (often a clan temple). You write X in the cult section of your player sheet, and Y in the subcult (e.g. cult: Yinkin, subcult:  Orlanth's brother). You pay tithes and receive training from Y. You must meet the qualifications of cult X, and fulfill the obligations of both. You may not learn spells not available to both cults, or progress beyond the rank of initiate,  without travelling to a full temple to Y. Arrangement for this will typically be made by  the local clan/cult hierarchy. Switiching between subcults has no magical consequences. You are now just a member of Yinkin, subcult: the Hunter, and still have a single reusable Rune Pool.

This would also apply to worshipers of associated cults, such as a clan-based member of Chalana Arroy several days travel from the nearest full temple. In effect, they are worshiping Chalana Arroy (subservient cult at Bluetooth clan).

This way, a clan is actually a meaningful entity in Runequest rules terms; it is a shared temple between (typically) Orlanth and Ernalda. Anyone who has learnt a spell from a clan temple or  shrine has a connection to the clan wyter, and so can be said to be an initiate of the clan. This happens at adulthood initiation, and also marriage ceremonies and adoption rituals. 

Then there is a distinct issue that some deities (Orlanth, Barntar and Vinga, and presumably Tolat and Shargash) are cognates, meaning those who initiate into cults to both of them can share a rune pool between them. in turn, this means they can keep it fully reusable while worshiping at only one temple and paying one set of tithers.

 

Edited October 19, 2023 by radmonger

[Austin]

2 hours ago, radmonger said:

If, as i think the rules as written imply, that Yinkin as a subcult of Orlanth is different from Yinkin as an independent cult, then are the crippling penalties (i.e. all rune magic becomes one-use) really supposed to apply  to anyone who switches from Orlanth (Yinkin subcult) to Yinkin?

I believe the sentence "These spirits do not come into action when initiates transfer to an associate cult" is meant to apply to the second paragraph of "Leaving the Cult" as well (Mythology 144).

[Jason Farrell]

I think there are definitely more than one cult for some (many) deities because very different cultures worship them, frequently under different names, and the form of the power that they derive from that worship would be guided by their needs and circumstances.  That's strongly implied throughout the history of RQ/Glorantha. 

[Scotty]

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

The mythology book has a new cult template, including some new text in the subcult section.

it's updated to deal with the full writeups not available in the core rules.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

Heler is given as an example, but this presumably also applies to at least Odayla, Valind, Mastakos and Yinkin. And likely also Engizi, Voriof, Barntar,  Yelmalio (as Elmal) and Vinga (if you use the independent Vinga cult write-up from six paths).

It can apply where you need it. As there's effectively no Odayla temples in Sartar, one of my players worships Orlanth Odayla.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

Somewhat confusingly the text 'the subcult has no existence independent of the larger cult' is still present,

Yes, because where the subcult exists at a temple there won't be the full cult nearby.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

as is 'associated cults are deities worshiped as part of the cult that are also worshiped independently outside of the cult'.

Yes, they aren't usually subcults. Take Barntar as an example. In Peloria he's a full cult, associated with Orlanth and Ernalda. In Sartar, he's a subcult of Orlanth, associated with Ernalda who worships him independently even though he's a subcult of Orlanth.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

The term 'subservient cult' isn't defined, and there is no explanation for how it is different from an 'associated cult'.

The Mythology book isn't stand-alone, so the definition of subservient hasn't changed in the core rules:

• A subcult is a smaller and often local version of a cult, which worships a local variant of the deity, a minor god subservient to the deity,
• Associate cults are deities worshiped as part of the cult that are also worshiped independently outside of the cult.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

I don't think this is quite an issue for the corrections thread, but how is this supposed to work? Are those cults intended to be played by PCs,  or NPC-only? if a PC follows one, do they write it in the 'cult' section of the character sheet, the subcult, both, they choose, or it depends?

It depends on your game, my Odayla player wrote Orlanth Odayla on their sheet. They have Orlanth Rune points.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

If, as i think the rules as written imply, that Yinkin as a subcult of Orlanth is different from Yinkin as an independent cult, then are the crippling penalties (i.e. all rune magic becomes one-use) really supposed to apply  to anyone who switches from Orlanth (Yinkin subcult) to Yinkin? Are GMs just expected to break the rules here?

There's no penalties. Either keep a Yinkin runepool or switch it to Orlanth. Switch it back if needed. My Odayla player has asked what happens if they find an Odaylan temple - the answer is nothing. There's no need to penalise adventurers for subcult/full cult shenanigans.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

Furthermore, does that imply that in general there can be two cults for one deity?

Yes, or even more, but they are usually geographically separate. 

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

And so Tolat and Shargash are in fact independent cults, not subcults, and asserting an identity between them is, for all the discussion it causes, actually meaningless in rules terms?

Sort of, Shargash and Tolat have different subcults not available to each other. You won't find Alkor amongst the The Marazi or Uxoral Ecstasy amongst Shargash followers

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

Alternatively, which to me makes more sense, is a subservient cult just an associated cult that may or may not exist independantly? Then:

This would also apply to worshipers of associated cults, such as a clan-based member of Chalana Arroy several days travel from the nearest full temple. In effect, they are worshiping Chalana Arroy (subservient cult at Bluetooth clan).

No, they go to a local shrine in a temple where Chalana Arroy is an associated cult. (Note subcult = subservient cult). For the Lightbringer cults there is also the option of a Lightbringers temple such as the one at Clearwine.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

This way, a clan is actually a meaningful entity in Runequest rules terms; it is a shared temple between (typically) Orlanth and Ernalda. Anyone who has learnt a spell from a clan temple or shrine has a connection to the clan wyter, and so can be said to be an initiate of the clan. This happens at adulthood initiation, and also marriage ceremonies and adoption rituals. 

The temples are usually separate unless one is missing. Have a look at the GM Screen Adventure book that lists all the tribal and local temples. There's also the following available in clan write-ups:

• Orlmarth Clan
• Varmandi Clan
• Ernaldori Clan
• Hiording Clan

Member of the clan, not initiate of the clan, is defined by Loyalty (clan). The connection to the clan wyter, is by having Loyalty (clan) and having given it magic points within the last season.

11 hours ago, radmonger said:

Then there is a distinct issue that some deities (Orlanth, Barntar and Vinga, and presumably Tolat and Shargash) are cognates, meaning those who initiate into cults to both of them can share a rune pool between them. in turn, this means they can keep it fully reusable while worshiping at only one temple and paying one set of tithers.

Yes. Keep it simple.

[radmonger]

26 minutes ago, Scotty said:

There's no penalties. Either keep a Yinkin runepool or switch it to Orlanth. Switch it back if needed. My Odayla player has asked what happens if they find an Odaylan temple - the answer is nothing. There's no need to penalise adventurers for subcult/full cult shenanigans.

Can you acknowledge that rules-as written, there absolutely are? RQ:G p282 says that spells in a cult you have left cannot be replenished via worship (i.e. become 1-use). Unlike the previous paragraph, there is no exception for joining an associated cult. And having all your old magic still reusably available as you switched between radically different, but associated, cults would seem pretty weird.

By the rules, a member of the orlanth/yinkin cult knows the _Worship Orlanth_ skill, and does not know the _Worship Yinkin_ skill. It would take a lot of dedicated training to take that skill from a 5% base to a usable level. i could see the Lunars doing that for converts to the Seven Mothers, but not in most other cases.

 Obviously a gm is free to ignore whatever rules they want, but I feel the need to understand how things are supposed to work before I do so.

So what i will do going forward is;

- as per the mythology book Sartar cult distribution, a lot of people in Orlanthi clans are initiated into someone other than Orlanth.

- those people are  actually, in rules terms, initiate member of those cults (not some weird confusing subcult thing).

- they do their routine worship as part of the clan, travelling to a tribal or city temple for special occasions. As young adults, there will likely be some system of apprenticeship or fostering.

- they pay their cult tithes as per standard rules. But in practical terms, that money or time goes to the clan, who then use it to support the above arrangements.

- for some pairs of cults, Worship skills are transferable, perhaps in a similar way to related languages. So your worship Barntar skill could perhaps start at half your Worship Orlanth skill.

- This includes some cases of pairs of cults that are not associated, and might be surprising, or even shocking, to those involved.

- if a spell can be renewed by more than one Worship skill a pc has, they are free to move that spell, and the corresponding Rune Point,  between Rune Pools

 

 

 

[Richard S.]

Barntar is the only cult that explicitly says his RP can be transferred, in his case to Orlanth Thunderous. There's no provisions for the reverse though. Ernalda and the Grain Goddesses might be a reverse case - Ernaldans are automatically considered initiates of the local Grain Goddess without having to sacrifice POW, though it's unclear whether they can use the same worship skill. Grain Goddess initiates aren't automatically Ernaldans in return though.

Of potential note, Yinkin and Odayla are listed as associated cults in Lightbringers, not subcults like Barntar. Yinkin cultists have an easier time joining Orlanth Adventurous, but their RP don't carry.

[Scotty]

2 hours ago, radmonger said:

Can you acknowledge that rules-as written, there absolutely are? RQ:G p282 says that spells in a cult you have left cannot be replenished via worship (i.e. become 1-use). Unlike the previous paragraph, there is no exception for joining an associated cult.

It is not a completely separate cult, it's the same cult - a full cult acting as a subcult and identical full cult.

2 hours ago, radmonger said:

And having all your old magic still reusably available as you switched between radically different, but associated, cults would seem pretty weird.

If you wish to penalise your adventurers for this then that is up to you. As such in my game I won't penalise my Odayla player's adventurer if they transfer from Orlanth Odayla to Odayla as it's the same cult...

[radmonger]

7 minutes ago, Scotty said:

It is not a completely separate cult, it's the same cult - a full cult acting as a subcult and identical full cult.

I think you are now agreeing with me, but i can't be sure. The PC starts off worshipping Odayla at a temple dedicated to Orlanth, run by a clan following the Orlanth Thunderous tradition, with the usual tribal and city federation links. They then travel to temple dedicated to Odayla, run as an independent cult. This gives them extra options to learn new spells, but does not constitute switching or leaving a cult. So the rules from p282 do not apply.

You could call the first subcult they were in something like Odayla Thunder Brother. They have 'Worship Odayla' on their character sheet, and play that role in clan or city ceremonies. Without going to a full temple, they only have access to the myths about Odayla when he was at Orlanth's side, not when he was off adventuring in the wilds on his own.

in-world, in some clans, tribes and cities, there is no support for being from some cults. No temple exists that has an obligation to provide support to people from that clan, tribe or city. In-game, you can tell which cults these are by the fact that no PC chose them during character creation. 

This is simple, straightforward and playable. if there is some Gloranthan lore reason why things should instead be fractally complex in a way that puts players who want to have different magic available into opposing, or just remote, factions, then can someone please explain it to me?

[Lordabdul]

17 hours ago, radmonger said:

By the rules, a member of the orlanth/yinkin cult knows the _Worship Orlanth_ skill, and does not know the _Worship Yinkin_ skill. It would take a lot of dedicated training to take that skill from a 5% base to a usable level. i could see the Lunars doing that for converts to the Seven Mothers, but not in most other cases.

AFAIC there is no "Orlanth/Yinkin cult". My understanding of the rules (I could be mistaken of course) is that you're simply an initiate of Orlanth, or an initiate of Yinkin, with the associated Rune Points and Worship skills and all that. Why would it be any more complicated than that? (before you answer that, skip all the text below and read item 4 at the bottom)

The one thing that does get complicated is the question "where do you worship?" (including where do you get your Rune spells and skill training and so on). This is where temple sizes come into effect. So if you're one of the few Yinkin initiates in a tribe, you have no temple to Yinkin (specifically) nearby. However, because Yinkin is an associated cult of Orlanth, there might be a shrine to Yinkin inside the local Orlanth temple. If that Orlanth temple is a Major Temple, it has the infrastructure for one associated cult worship in it. If it's a Great Temple, it has infrastructure for all associated cults' worships. Most tribal centres have a Major Temple to Orlanth and Ernalda, so in our games we sort of decide as a group what associated cult is at each town or city temple we visit, and then it's written in my GM notes for future reference (we do the same for what Rune spell is taught at what shrine, for instance). If your Yinkin initiate is lucky enough to live near Boldhome or Nochet, then bingo, they have a place to worship Yinkin and replenish Rune Points and learn spells and so on since I belive they have Great Temples to Orlanth.

We do have a few problems though:

1. There is confusion between "temple"/"shrine" (the colloquial terms), and "Temple"/"Shrine" (the mechanical terms)... This is a broader problem with RQG rules, but it's particular exacerbated with the Worship rules because it's common, for instance, to have a Shrine that happens to be a temple in-world, or vice-versa. For instance, Chalana Arroy often has Shrines in cities that are, in fact, entire buildings akin to hospitals. So in-world people would say "let's go give offerings to the Chalana Arroy temple". A lot of in-world text in the books would use those terms and this leads to confusion.
2. The RQG rules say that Major Temples have one single associated cult, but they don't say what size of Temple that would be, mechanically speaking . I play it that Major and Great Temples have Shrines (in a mechanical sense) to associated cults. So that Yinkin corner in the local Orlanth Major Temple would be a Shrine.
3. Figuring out what associated/sub-cults might be present in Minor and Major Temples is either an exercise in world-building or in gameplay balance. If you're like me, you would build some cult distribution spreadsheets for the entire City Confederation that the tribe is part of, and then allocate worshippers and lay-members to Temples and Shrines until you run out. Yinkin would probably never make the cut for anything above a Site except for, say, some uncommon clan/tribe/city that might have Yinkin as their local patron deity. Depending on what the player said during session zero, the campaign might magically happen around one such clan/tribe/city. Otherwise, that Yinkin initiate will have to travel to the nearest cult holy place (like, say, Boldhome or Kero Fin), but that can all happen during downtime between adventures if we want.
4. Yinkin does of course have a "special" connection with Orlanth that goes beyond a simple associated cult: the Lightbringers book specifies that the cult often functions as a "subcult of Orlanth Adventurous". To me, this doesn't mean any sort of Orlanth Yinkin cult separate from the Yinkin cult.... the way I understand it is that, yay, you can now correct everything I just said about Shrines and Temples, and consider that Major Temples to Orlanth have a lot more chances to have a Shrine to Yinkin specifically in them (RQG says that Major Temples host "several" subcults, so it's still up to you, see previous point), so now maybe there are Yinkin Shrines also in, say, Jonstown or whatever.

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by Lordabdul

[Cassius]

I think I completely agree with @Lordabdul.

Another point worth noting is that a Temple (in game's meaning) is not always a temple (a building). The Hill of Orlanth Victorious is a Major Temple but not a building. And a Temple can even be mobile ("The Boldhome Orlanth Rex temple sometimes travels to the Hill of Orlanth Victorious for part of the Sacred Time rites", as Jeff said).

What makes a Place of Devotion (= a Site, a Shrine, a Minor Temple, etc.) is certainly a specific place and the sacred objects needed for the rituals. But it's also the number of worshippers and the presence of 'holy persons' like a God-talker or a Priest (or their absence in the case of Sites).

 

How, then, are we to understand the daily religious life of Venderusa, an initiate of Yinkin, or Targar, an initiate of Odayla, within the Orlamani clan of the Culbrea tribe?

1) They must each have a small wooden statuette representing their god in their home, placed in a special, clean place, free from the rest of the instruments of the everyday life. In the morning, before setting off to hunt, they look at it, talk to it and sacrifice a piece of raw ham to it. In the evening, when they are satisfied with their hunt, they thank it and offer it a bone or a claw from their prey.

2) They are not the only initiates of Yinkin and Odayla in their clan. The Orlamani clan has around 450 members, and it is likely that there are 5 or 6 initiates of one or both of the two gods, who form the small group of hunters who provide meat other than that from sheeps, chickens or cows, as well as skins and furs and rarer ingredients used in cooking, clothing and traditional medicine (bird feathers, hare liver, wild boar tusks, etc.). They are the ones we call when a predator threatens our herds. They are also called upon when scouts are needed.

This small group of initiates of the hunting gods are also lay members of Orlanth. They are integrated into the clan community and take part in sacred ceremonies devoted to the Storm God. If the clan has a building (a 'temple') dedicated to Orlanth, and not just a natural place dedicated to him, there will be a wooden statue of Yinkin and Odayla as well as other objects of worship. The priest of Orlanth keeps them in a chest or they are displayed in small alcoves on one side of the great hall. So, during the seasonal holy days of their god, Venderusa and Targar can worship their god: after the priest of Orlanth asks the King of the Gods to welcome the homage to his half-brother or son, he withdraws and the small circle of worshippers purify themselves, pray, sing and make offerings*.

There is no priest of Yinkin or Odayla, and probably no Godtalker either. It's the equivalent of a temporary Site, just enough to replenish your rune points.

3) Above all, Venderusa and Targar aren't the only initiates of the hunting gods within their tribe. I think there are times when initiates of minor cults, particularly hunting cults (but also crafting cults) meet beyond the borders of their clan or even their tribe. This can happen on seasonal holy days, but particularly on high holy day.

At such times, the hunters disappear from the clan, no one knows where they have gone, they take paths that only they know and that are passed down from initiate to initiate, they meet in a place known only to the hunters. They find other hunters, those from the other side of the river, those from the cherry hills, those who cover their faces with ashes... They meet friends and enemies. They spit over their right shoulder to leave behind their resentment and hatred. Arrows are offered. And the great mystery of the Cat or the Bear begins!

There are around 500 followers of Yinkin and 500 followers of Odayla in the whole of Sartar. That's more than enough to form a Minor Temple or even a Major Temple for the very long period (three weeks) of the Great Hunt. How many Great Hunts are there in the whole of Sartar? Just one? One to the east and one to the west of the Mounts Quivin? That's a GM decision.

And of course, there are priests. For the rest of the year, they live alone in secluded and sacred places. Their presence is known and feared. There's this woman, The-One-From-The-Forest, whom no one has ever seen, let alone approached. All that can be seen, at best, is a Shadowcat on a branch, staring and seemingly smiling. There's this man who is said to live on the mountain, in a deep, secret cave with sculpted, painted walls.

At these large gatherings, Venderusa and Targar can replenish their rune points, learn new spells and train some skills.

----

I don't think my vision is 'canonical', but it bothers me to consider Odayla (for example) as a subcult of Orlanth. I prefer it to remain an associated cult. I understand that making it a subcult is a way of allowing players to create an Odayla hunter without penalising them in terms of rune points or runic spells, but I think there's another way of doing it. In what I'm suggesting, 'Odayla as a subcult of Orlanth' only means that Orlanth and his priests protect and shelter the cult in his consecrated places. This will preserve the Bear God's particularites and mysteries and ensure that everything isn't diluted in Orlanth's cult. The player will be proud to have a separate cult, even if it's a bit harder to get runic magic.

-----

* : This small group of hunters gathered in a circle in a large room reminds me, I don't know why, of those 17th century Dutch Protestants who used to get together to talk about the Scriptures, outside any Church.

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by Cassius
Note

[radmonger]

21 hours ago, Cassius said:

I don't think my vision is 'canonical', but it bothers me to consider Odayla (for example) as a subcult of Orlanth. I prefer it to remain an associated cult.

Looking from the top down, maybe it is is useful to maintain a distinction between cults that actually run clans, tribes, nations, cities or guilds, and those that don't?

For example. Telmor is currently the former. In the canon timeline, it presumably becomes something like Yinkin once Argrath is done with it. And Yelmalio obviously made the opposite transition a generation back.

However, looking from the bottom up, that risks writing up the cults, and then making them unplayable due to bad rules.

As everyone above agrees, an Orlanthi clan is not monotheistic, It contains members of many cults. This is what makes it suitable as a base for PCs, in a way a city-based temple with a congregation of mostly initiates of a single cult struggles to match. There is no reason that setup can't be adjusted, via tribal and city federation obligations, to accommodate the presence of any reasonable PC cult choice.

 

[AlexS]

On 10/19/2023 at 10:59 PM, radmonger said:

This way, a clan is actually a meaningful entity in Runequest rules terms; it is a shared temple between (typically) Orlanth and Ernalda. Anyone who has learnt a spell from a clan temple or  shrine has a connection to the clan wyter, and so can be said to be an initiate of the clan. This happens at adulthood initiation, and also marriage ceremonies and adoption rituals. 

This is the approach that my co-authors and I have taken in the 'Homelands and Cultures' resource book on which we are working. Every adult is assumed to be an Initiate of the Clan Wyter, but they are also assumed to be Lay Members of the cults of the three most important local deities. Of course, they might also be an Initiate of one of those deities – but even if they are not they will have basic familiarity with the cult, because in our view simply having the experience of participating in collective worship for the deities whose cults govern the clan's most important activities should make you a Lay Member of their cult. That is the logic we followed when we developed the idea of 'cultural traditions' that characterise different clans, making them more specific (and interesting) than the Homeland or Region-level 'Culture / Religion' characterisation that is in the RQG core rulebook. As @radmonger puts it:

23 hours ago, radmonger said:

it is is useful to maintain a distinction between cults that actually run clans, tribes, nations, cities or guilds, and those that don't

In order to operationalise this for character generation, for each cultural tradition we list three major deities (or magical traditions, in the case of shamanistic or sorcerous cultures) for which anyone who comes from a clan that has that tradition is assumed to have the basic 'lay member' level of cult lore. The first two on the list will generally be the main ones for the dominant pantheon (i.e. Orlanth and Ernalda for most Heortling cultural traditions), while the third is the one that sets the cultural tradition apart (e.g. Maran Gor for Earth Tarshites or Argan Argar for Dark Orlanthi).

In other words, the leading deities of the pantheon tend to be 'cults that actually run clans', while the others listed for that specific cultural tradition are more indicative of the local specialisms (such as horse-breeding for clans that have Elmal as their third deity, or river navigation for those that have Engizi). This means that an adventurer from a clan with a strong Elmali (Light Orlanthi) influence, like the Enhyli clan of the Colymar or the Blue Jay clan of the Dundealos, will have a Lay Member level of Elmal cult knowledge even if they are an Initiate of Orlanth, as well as vice-versa.

We also used the 'clan cultural traditions' idea to develop a rule of thumb for determining whether there is a temple or shrine for any given deity in an area. The assumptions are similar to those outlines by @Lordabdul above, but the rationale is linked to the specific cultural characteristics of the clans who live there.

Doing this at the clan level also helps deal with the difficulty of working out how we actually use the Homeland level cult membership numbers that @Jeff has included in the Mythology volume for the Cults of RuneQuest series. Knowing that there are x thousand members of a cult in a particular Homeland doesn't help a GM decide whether or not there is actually a temple to that deity within a day's ride of wherever the party happens to be right now, but knowing whether or not the local clans follow a cultural tradition that venerates that deity should help the GM to make that call.

In the 'Homelands' bit of our resource book, we list the main cultural traditions followed by clans that live in any given tribal (or city) territory. We then assume that in addition to the temples of the main 'cults that actually run clans' (Orlanth, Ernalda, etc.), if any of these cultural traditions has the god or goddess of a minor cult as one of its three named deities then they will have a temple. By default this will be located at the clan centre (hill fort, large village or whatever), but it could be at a particular holy site (sacred hill, riverbank, forest glade etc.) if that sounds more appropriate or MGF.

We also list minor cultural traditions (often associated with settlers or specialists like merchants or crafters from outside the region) who are present in the territory, but assume that their deities will only have a shrine, unless we're talking about a major city like Furthest, Boldhome or Nochet.

On 10/21/2023 at 3:14 PM, Cassius said:

I don't think my vision is 'canonical', but it bothers me to consider Odayla (for example) as a subcult of Orlanth. I prefer it to remain an associated cult. I understand that making it a subcult is a way of allowing players to create an Odayla hunter without penalising them in terms of rune points or runic spells, but I think there's another way of doing it.

I agree with @Cassius on this, but I think that this rule of thumb gives a workaround for the default position that specialist or minority cults like Odayla, Heler or Elmal are only ever present as subcults in 'mainstream Orlanthi' regions. If they are a major deity for a cultural tradition that has a significant presence in a region, then they should have a temple and function as a cult in their own right there.

Thus, there are probably 'proper' Elmal temples in Runegate and Swenstown, given that they are the urban centres serving regions with a substantial presence of Light Orlanthi clans. Anywhere else there will only be an Elmal shrine in the Yelmalio temple, if that.

You could use this approach to invent a 'Bear Tarshite' cultural tradition that is followed by a group of clans in some part of Old Tarsh (maybe their founding lineages were from Sylila?) and has Orlanth, Ernalda and Odayla as its three named deities. This mens that Odaylans travelling through these clans' territory would be likely to find a full temple where they could worship, rather than just a shrine within the Orlanth temple.

However, if your deity is not listed for any of the cultural traditions present in that territory, then the assumption is that opportunities for worship will depend on getting to a regional centre (e.g. one of the confederation cities in Sartar) and using the shrine that should be present at the Great Temple of the deity with which they are associated or for which they are classified as a subservient cult.

On 10/20/2023 at 11:48 PM, Lordabdul said:

Figuring out what associated/sub-cults might be present in Minor and Major Temples is either an exercise in world-building or in gameplay balance. If you're like me, you would build some cult distribution spreadsheets for the entire City Confederation that the tribe is part of, and then allocate worshippers and lay-members to Temples and Shrines until you run out.

I also agree with this general approach for regions with no Great Temple (i.e. no large city or major non-city-based holy site like Heruvernalda, Maranaba or the Hill of Orlanth Victorious), but it is quite heavy to do that much world-building for regions that adventurers are just passing through and looking for somewhere to refresh Rune points, rather than those in which they are going to be based for a Season or more.

If you know which cultural traditions are present in a region then it is much easier to do your world-building on the fly. If the region is not one where Jeff has already posted information about temples (which he has done for some of the Sartarite clans, as @Scotty has pointed out) then you can use resources like his clan distribution sketch maps to decide where there might be temples or shrines. For example, if you're looking for somewhere to place a shrine to Yinkin in the Dundealos lands, then the territory of the Wild Cats Clan sounds like a good bet.

Anyway, that's our take based on where we're at with the 'cultural traditions' project – feedback and suggestions for improvement welcome!

[Cassius]

15 minutes ago, AlexS said:

This is the approach that my co-authors and I have taken in the 'Homelands and Cultures' resource book on which we are working.

It looks like a very useful resource book !

[Malin]

Yep, I want it 💚