I don't know where the Orlanthi myth about cannibalism is, just like we don't know most of their myths. We know many, but not all of the most important ones but they must have a huge corpus of myths we don't have any information about yet.
I think Peter's second point is quite right here though. Whether or not a person knows they're breaking a taboo is no protection whatever.
To jump posts slightly:
> The definition of cannibalism is eating the dead flesh of your own
> species (or to be more precise -
> http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cannibalism ). Otherwise you can
> get the crazy situation where a cannibal can avoid being corrupted by
> chaos by having somebody else do the killing (and no, I'm not at all
> impressed by the legalistic solution you proposed).
Tabboos can be extremely legalistic. Myth and folklore are full of examples of a taboo being broken in a highly technical way and incurring the full consequences. Just look at Celtic Geasa or Talmudic scholarship.
Nevertheless, just because a particular language doesn't have discrete terms for different forms of an act doesn't mean those differences aren't meaningful. Some Great darkness survivors took heads or ate people* and are our ancestors. Others did those things and became chaos monsters. They are both risky things to do, and I don't see why it's contention to suppose that there are some ways to do them that are more risky than others. To me that just seems like common sense.
I'm just speculating further than that and supposing that accidentaly eating the flesh of a stranger is a terrible violation of an ancient taboo that leads to curses and ruin, while deliberately killing someone expressly to live off their flesh leads to Chaos.
Breaking taboos has always been a dangerous and powerful thing. For most people it leads to curses and catastrophe, but it's also possible to use that energy to your own gain. That's black magic. So I suppose the Cannibal Cult has a way to harness the magical backlash from taboo-breaking cannibalism while (usualy) avoiding invoking Chaos.
> Rape is chaotic. No exceptions.
>
> Cannibalism is chaotic unless practiced by the Praxians, the
> Uz, the Saliligori of Homago, the Cannibal Cult, the Earthshaker
> Priesthood of KeroFin, a couple of Vingkotlings, just about
> every other cannibalistic culture except the Ogres.
>
> The first is nice and clean. The second had more exceptions to the rule
> than people who are actually caught by it. Until you can put forward a
> nice clean definition of chaotic cannibalism, I think we're done.
I can do that. Chaotic cannibalism is killing members of your own species in order to exclusively sustain oneself on their flesh. I think that's a one-way ticket to Ogreism.
I think there are degrees of cannibalism. Killing the victims yourself is worse than someone else doign it. Sustaining yourself exclusively on your own species is worse than occasionaly consuming them. The risks of Chaos taint from ngaging in less extreme forms of cannibalism likely drop off, but probably never vanish completely.
Simon Hibbs
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