Gul Re'jal wrote:
Nerys Ghemor wrote:
Mine inflamed the people's anger so much that enough people did want to destroy the old culture--anything that even slightly reminded them of the Oralians--that they could win the revolution and then start working on killing dissenters.
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I think what saved lots of culture of my Hebitia is that not all of it was Oralian in origin in the first place. Some things pre-dated Oralians. The Oralians weren't the first religion in Hebitia and when they were destroying that "predecessor," they also didn't eradicate all customs--for the same reason: people would turn against them if they forbade them doing something that they had been doing for generations (a bit like Christianity absorbed some of pagan rites/rituals and made their own). |
The Oralians weren't the first on my world, either. How they related to the "predecessors" really depended on the situation. In some cases I think they did well--they convinced people peacefully, and people genuinely felt, "I want to become Oralian." I think the Oralian missionaries, in those cases, had every right to use that kind of respectful persuasion, and those who converted had every right to change religions, or go from no religion to becoming Oralian. In other cases, they did
not do well. The near-genocide of the Hăzăkda people (Daro and Telle's ethnicity) was the most flagrant of these failures.
But I know that Akleen on my Cardassia was so angry at religion and so insistent on the power of the state that he destroyed it all (Oralian, pre-Oralian, whatever...he didn't care). ANYTHING that could be a rival god...he attacked it almost like a conquering Hebitian, way back in their world's past, would intentionally desecrate their enemy's holy sites. Such acts were intended to demoralize and to break the will of the conquered. Akleen never admitted it, but he was exhibiting the EXACT same behavior as the type of Oralians, or members of other faiths, that he hated the most.
I think that the only thing that Akleen decided he
dared not attack was the family.
That was the thing that would have caused my Cardassians to lose all respect for him, the one thing they would not tolerate.