"This fanatical clan were man-eaters, and knew obscene rituals to draw strength from a man's soul as they ate his body. This gave them great powers, and struck fear into all who opposed them."
> Unless, of course, you want to present
> the urge to feed as more of a weakness than a strength -- that Ogres are
> more or less addicted to the taste of human flesh, indulging when its
> against their best interests.
This is indeed how Cacodemon was originally presented:
"Whenever an ogre comes within eight kilometers of any Cacodemon holy place, the natural blood-thirst of the race asserts itself. This may occur without the ogre being aware that he is betraying himself. Of course, when a party members asks why he is eating his dead friend, even the ogre should realize that he blew his cover. Many of these ogre holy places are well-known and, more likely than not, heavily populated by members of that race. Other spots, however, have been forgotten and lay dormant, secret even to ogres, and are hazards to those ogres who attempt to pass for human."
http://glorantha.com/library/religions/cult-cacodemon.html
> Honestly, probably not. I think that Lanbril "cults" are barely cults at
> all. Certainly, he doesn't seem to grant much in the way of interesting
> magic to his followers, who rely more on skills and devices than cult
> magic.
Skills and devices *are* interesting cult magic.
> I can't say I am all that keen on Glorantha being crammed with cannibals.
> It's a pretty strong taboo in the real world, and, if every other culture
> eats its neighbors that's a) pretty weird and b) not very interesting. Is
> it possible that these are stories told by the neighbors of the "cannibals?"
Out here on Earth, there's a Hindu sect called the aghoris, or "corpse eaters." Turned out that whenever the anthropologists found a guy living in the cremation grounds, he'd always deny being one of those sinister "left-hand" cannibal aghoris. But he'd usually heard of a guy nearby who did it. Problem was when the anthropologists asked that guy, he'd deny it and point to someone else.
Last I heard, they never found the cannibal.
I suspect some Gloranthas have a separate species of ogres and others have isolated clans of violent, inbred degenerates. And in some Gloranthas, even the degenerates are literally an "urban" legend like the Jukes and the Kallikaks.
> Huh. I would think Waha's law would be more absolute and less
> loop-hole-filled. "Don't eat this plant; eat that kind of animal."
> Presumably, Waha laid down some sort of laws that define what separates a
> person from an animal.
Morokanth explicitly have magic that allows the reclassification of "eaters" to "eaten" under ritual circumstances and Waha doesn't mind.
One weird detail I liked in Rough Guide to Pavis, by the way, was that herd men or "gern" were integrated into the Pavis urban economy and might have even originated in it. That would open up a lot of exotic possibilities for where the tapir tribe "really" comes from.
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