Since I wanted the player characters to experience an intact Holy Country before the turmoils of the Hero Wars, the events started with the PCs' initiation in Sea Season 1615.
The Hendriki are an Orlanthi tribes with strong Malkioni influences,
both ancient and recent. For the last 300 years, a dominant movement within
their religion has been the Aeolian Church of Heortland, a creed which
stresses the kinship of Orlanth and Malkion, and names Orlanth among the
three great saints of Malkionism. Having become almost the state religion,
the church is very inclusive, and performs traditional worship of the Orlanthi
cults besides their wizardrous ways. In the lowlands of the Heortland Plateau,
most traditional priests are regarded as members of the Aeolian Church.
As long as we have no official game system for Glorantha, it is somewhat
moot to discuss the similarities and differences between personal wizardry,
sorcerery and spirit magic. I found that they have a lot in common, especially
when looking at the "good old" RQ2 system for learning and casting spirit
(Battle) magic spells. In my vision of Heortland it is possible to learn
such spells at a temple, or from guild teachers who relay the guild secrets
to their apprentices and pupils, or from a roaming spirit master. Generally
those who adhere to the traditional ways get a few basic spells from their
priest, but may upon contact aquire other approaches, with a penalty for
different doctrine.
So, what about the Orlanthi hatred of the soulless sorcerers ("kill 'em on sight, don't let 'em touch you!")?
About as much as the Orlanthi hatred of everything Lunar, i.e. in some cases the individual Orlanthi will have to check his killing instincts, while in other cases the Orlanthi is perfectly willing to take advantage of that sort of magic. Is there anybody out there who thinks that every Lunar will be killed on sight by the average Sartarite? Ok, then forget about this website. I intend to have Lunar, Orlanthi, God Forgot and whatever villains and heroes in the campaign. The campaign will picture some characters as villainous who are simply too caught up in their own culture to behave in any other way - Tatius the Bright is a prime example for this. The campaign will present Richard the Tigerhearted as quite noble - even though he is, in his heart, a power-grabbing cynical adventurer. Sir Gerard de Montanpein, lieutenant and right.-hand-man of Richard, will defect his sworn brother and his creed for his chosen spouse, but this isn't all romantic - Heortland's saviour-to-come will be quite nasty to have around. Mularik Ironeye will be depicted as utterly ruthless, honourless mercenary; IMO that's exactly what he is. He is the main villain of the campaign, and may yet end up as an ally of the PCs now and then. I hope to spin the tale far enough to involve one or the other Argrath - not the nicest persons to meet.
Back to the Orlanthi attitude towards sorcery: IMG the various magic systems exist in a continuum between all the different approaches, something I will try to let the rules reflect. (I sincerely hope that this approach will be manageable in the upcoming new rules system by Issaries Inc.; if not, I will have to post my house rules based on the RQ4-AiG playtest rules.) If there is no great difference between a bladesharp spell learned from spirit interaction incited by the family wisewoman (as in the alfar/disir/landvaettir contact in RQ-Vikings), a spirit sent by a Kolating spirit master (shaman, using a control spell on a spirit held in his fetch) or a backwoods Storm Voice (using the RQ3 divine Spellteaching spell) or the scroll-taught spell by the urban Storm Servant (using something like the RQ2 mechanic for learning Combat Magic), then there is no real problem with a storm wizard teaching a "Bless <specific weapon>" spell which does not increase damage but does increase the attack (and parry) chance with that weapon, so what? A bit more variety in the Bladesharp variants listed above (duration, invocation - e.g. foci needed, spirit helper summoned?) apart from "Bladesharp 1" to "Bladesharp n", and the difference won't really be noticed.
The Aeolian Church has developed from an obscure subcult of Orlanth
teaching some sort of wizardous magic, Orlanth the Wizard. There are various
different myths about how Orlanth came to know sorcery - he stole the power
from Arkat, Zistor, Zzabur, Malkion (various forms of these are told by
village elders in the foothills of the Storm Mountains to explain why some
wizards are acceptable); he was given the secret of sorcery when allied
by Arkat (this is the official church line); or the God Learners made up
this cult to prove that the false God Worlath is a wizardry-using sorcerer,
with powers similar to yet less pious than Malkion's, his kinsman (one
of Vancelain du Tumerine's slanderous declarations).