New Hrestolism is arguably a more radical religious movement than even the Lunar Way. I don’t mean the “class mobility” features, that’s just a subset of it. With the Ban, the divine King Siglat the Wise was able to implement a philosophical experiment that would have put Lycurgus and Solon to shame, and made Plato mad with envy. Recall that during the Ban, all of Loskalm was cut off from the rest of Glorantha. No neighbors, no invasions, no war, no trade, etc. It was a closed system, like a university campus.
Siglat proposed a philosophical Republic, with himself as the Philosopher-King. People are to be assigned to the caste they are best for, the rulers need to understand the experiences of the ruled. Old half-measures were gotten rid of, such as personified cults of elemental and power Runes.
So everyone starts as a Dronar – a worker. Those who showed promise as a youth are selected and trained as Guardians. They need to read texts, display physical excellence, spiritual virtues, etc. Of course that meant Loskalm needed schools-gymnasiums for the Guardians, to train them. And so in every city we get one.
The best of the Guardians are recruited to become Men-of-All, who learn sorcery, wander around like sheriffs in the old west, righting wrongs, stamping out lies, and so on. Some of them are recruited to become full-time wizards. Of course this means we have lots of examinations – Guardian Examinations, Men-of-All Examinations, Wizard Examinations, etc.
We can fully rely on the wizards for magical blessings and the defeat of spiritual dangers. They also aid us in our labors – and I suspect many buildings are at least in part raised by earth elementals and spells. We don’t need to offer worship to Frona for grain, the wizards handle that. There still might be the occasional Spirit Cult with a disreputable shaman leading it (who clearly all hang out in Gaema Village), but they are rare.
As Men-of-All start learning sorcery much later in life, does it mean that they are less powerful than sorcerers of other sects? some of the sorcerers that trained in SIglat’s First Generation a hundred years ago are still around. But in general the Hrestoli have more sorcerers but of lesser specialisation and skill.
Did any pre-ban sorcerers convert or are those lineages fortuitously extinct? I am sure plenty of pre-Ban sorcerers from different lineages ended up participating in Signet’s experiment. Others might have tried to remove themselves from active participation by living in towers or whatever. Which of course means that the sorcerer in the Lonely Tower is likely very powerful and probably evil. Definitely a heretic.
A last thing – at least until the Opening, Loskalm was pretty poor. I am pretty sure that they had some useless currency like stamped notes, metal rods, seashells, that kind of thing.