In message <463082.60858.qm_at_...> Jane Williams writes:
>
>From: Joerg Baumgartner joe_at_...
>
>>> My traditional stand on the Volsaxi was that they were quite
>>> conservative.
>>> The chariot idea was rather a way to illustrate this than a required
>>> fact.
>
>Hunting through story drafts, I find Kallyr's comments on a Volsaxi
>clan she's got to deal with - somehow. She's expecting problems, and
>looking for someone to act as an interface.
>
>"I'm told they're isolationist, they're so backward they don't even
>have cows, they'd never met a Vingan until a few days ago and don't
>like them, in fact they don't trust anything that comes from more
>than a mile from their stead and hasn't been the same for the last
>hundred years."
>
>Now, that's second-hand info, coming from a biased speaker, and
>both she and her source may well be wrong, but as an extreme case
>of Volsaxi, does it sound about right? (Incidentally, they're well
>over a mile from Whitewall.)
When I wrote the story that follows from I didn't envisage the stead
as being backward. They don't have cows because they're poor and the
land is unsuitable for cattle or plowing. So there are no carls, they
herd sheep and grow vegetables. None of them have been further than
the clan centre where they might have seen a Vingan. They know of them
only though myth. It becomes an issue because there isn't a separate
loom house so the main hall has "women's space" and "men's space" with
the inevitable question - is a Vingan a man or a woman?
--
Donald Oddy
http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/