We know they eat a wide variety of meat and plants, but that they value the bone bead of the STMM, and can be tempted into mercenariy service by a large shield and 2 greatswords, or with passage to distant mountains.
Their overpopulation problem doesn't seem to be about a lack of food in general. We know about their babies being able to feed and move immediately, so they do not have a reproduction problem. They have food, they're making babies, they seem to value mothers and hunting leaders, so why do they value the STMM so much, and why has the lack of it not caused the population to decline?
My view is that there must be a link between motherhood, being "acknowledged" as a hunting leader and the STMM. The most obvious link would be fatherhood - only the successful hunters of the STMM get to be fathers, and their embroidered hunting scenes can be used by the mothers. There are no STMM left in the Maidstone Mountains so only a few old males can father any children, leading to a increasingly desperate hunt by the young males who cannot breed, and are turning to war, and generally going bonkers. Whether the STMM works as a Grotaron viagra, or is a cultural requirement for fatherhood, or something else is not clear to me, but I like the idea that there are a few horny old Grotarons ("he's all hands") shagging all the young female Grotarons and producing ever more desperate young Grotaron males with scant hope of copulation.
Keith
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