Re: Hamites in the Vineyard

[Joe_Sixpack]

I had a player request to be a black Dog, and this is what I pounded out in a few minutes. My take is more divorced from history than what most folks were thinking with "Hamites", but I'm okay with that, as I wanted to mimic the way the book talks about Mountain People--just a enough description of racial politics to get the wheels spinning.

In the Book of Life it is written that those who Sin will be abandoned by the King of Life and subject to the Demons' wills. It is proven true Back East, where just about all are enslaved to occultism and papism, though perhaps none more so than the Clay People. Sharing properties with their namesake, the Clay People are blessed by the King of Life, even while they are trod upon again and again. The Clay People face the cruelest of Eastern sorceries, but still they do not turn to the King of Life.

However, not all of the Clay People are so blind; some of them broke their shackles of Sin (perhaps through mercy by the King of Life) and made the trek with the rest of the Body of the Faith to the Deseret territory. Nowadays the Clay People are integrated members of the Faith, who serve the King in any office they choose.

Still, there are prejudices that linger from the East. There are those among the Faithful who believe that the gross ancestral Sin of Clay People is not so far away after all. Some even that the Clay People's perceived disloyalty to the King lies in their clay-like appearance—earth tone eyes and skin, as well as fertile curls of hair. There is also another type of prejudice, a sneaking sort, which admires the Clay People's history of survival, expecting a person to be simultaneously strong-backed, resolute, and humble, with little respect for those who fail.