> That is what the Praxians themselves believe as recorded in
> numerous gloranthan publications. Moreover your analysis is
> flawed in that it obsesses over Waha's heroic deeds rather than
> Praxian culture, namely the laws and customs of society which
> Waha established.
Customs aren't established - at best, precedents for customs are.
The laws start as herd behaviour. Females care for the helpless and keep the herd together in the face of danger while males defend them or carry the attack to the foes. All of this was demonstrated by the Founders and Protectresses, and don't forget Storm Bull as the male cultural model and (to some extent) lawgiver, and Eiritha as the true source of the culture.
All of this was there - possibly faded from memory, when the chaos age demanded that all resources be piled on survival. Waha may have rekindled those memories. The males may have forgotten that they had the same sets of behavior before the chaos age.
The females haven't, at least not the priestesshood of Eiritha. They may have directed Waha as the role model for the bulls. Of course the males place all the praise on Waha - what do they know about the female mysteries? Waha's recent stay in the womb of buried Eiritha may have been his education.
IMO there was no Waha before the Devil was slain. I like Chris' theory about Foundchild growing up and taking the lead when the Founders were unavailable. But any deed ascribed to Waha prior to the battle between Storm Bull and Wakboth was the action of one of the Founders or their brothers, Storm Bull's equivalent of the Storm Brothers.
>> Waha is the hero of the survival period after the chaos battles. He >> emerges from the Paps with a quasi-cannibalistic idea to ensure the >> survival of both herds and riders.
> The moment I see pseudo-anthropological jargon ("quasi-
> cannibalistic"?), Wakboth kills a shadow-kitten. Avoid salting
> your arguments with them.
I'll have to doom an entire line of alynxes to extinction if you don't see my point.
Prior to Waha, bipeds and quadrupeds lived in kin groups, all descended from the same Founder and Protectress. In magical times, I suppose both Founder and Protectress kept refreshing the kinship between those two groups.
The bipeds may have cross-bred between herds - there are no biological barriers to stop them, and that's what apes do, however sapient. In magical times, I wouldn't be surprised if there were unions between more magical quadrupeds and bipeds, too. I don't see the distinct quadrupeds mating across herds, though. Only magical ones like the White Bull.
So, the herd beasts are close kin to the bipeds tagging along - and I think that a child riding a friendly quadruped is as natural as riding a biped father, mother, uncle, aunt, or elder sibling. If a biped child spends most of its youth on the back of a quadruped, why stop this when growing up? Unless you get too heavy for your quadruped kin, there is no real reason to do so.
We know that the beast riders were bred accordingly - that's why pygmy impala bipeds were more attractive than tall, heavy ones.
> As it is, I don't accept your premise that Waha is the equivalent
> of the Vingkotling Hidden Kings.
Closer to Vingkot or Heort in his role as focal figure of a culture, true.
The Hidden Kings are the best documented case of quasi-cannibalism during the Greater Darkness (sorry, kitten). What did they do? They took beast shape (wolves) and hunted other beast shape survivors (deer, direct kin of Heort). Without Heort stepping up, they may have become a similar role model as Waha, the example how to kill your kin in order to survive. A Vingkotling society like that at the dawn would have looked much different from the Heortling culture, probably much closer to the Praxians.
Practically all the Vingkotlings went cannibal, or at least corpse-eaters, at some desperate point during the Greater Darkness. The last inhibitions of society had to be shed or extinction had to be accepted. It is possible that some chose extinction over these methods. They helped feed those who chose another attempt at survival.
The important point about Heortling culture is that they stopped doing so, already during the Silver Age. And that's thanks to Heort and Ivarne.
In my book, that makes Heort more of a cultural hero than Waha, who stuck with the desperate survival mechanism and made it a rule to be followed even after the Darkness. True, neither Prax or the Wastes are overflowing with food alternatives, and Eiritha grants her fertility magics sparingly. Yet the Pentan-descended cattle of the Pol Joni do quite well in the better places of Prax (the same areas occupied by the True Horse Tribe until 220 years before Derek). Looks like Eiritha isn't that stingy.
> > He freed the Protectresses from capture with Kyger Litor. Compare Heort
> > rescuing Ivarne, or any storm hero stealing from Darkness. This is no
> > Lightbringers' Quest.
>
> Nobody ever said it was a Lightbringers Quest. Heort did not rescue
> Ivarne from Darkness, he woke her from her tomb. Lastly the
> Protectoresses are greater in power than Ivarne, a women's hero.
>> "Then the women of the tribe began worshipping Eiritha"
> You would be better off indicating your source. It's the cult of
> Waha which also describes him as providing the basic lifestyle
> and survival needs for the men. No silver age hero has that
> importance.
All the Silver Age heroes led their miserable people out of that "we do anything for survival" culture and established better ways.
The Praxians still stick to the desperate measures. They take pride in that, too. When they are faced with better living conditions, their culture erodes quickly, as the Dara Happan portions of the tribes demonstrated. Only the Sables managed to stick to a semblance of their Chaos Age culture by choosing to occupy the Hungry Plateau. Even there, I'm not sure Waha is any more than a Darkness Survival Hero and Law Giver, such as Heort and Tessele.
> What Waha is equivalent to is deities like Orlanth and Vingkot,
> Lodril, Pamalt, Hyalor and so forth rather than a silver age hero.
I disagree. Vingkot is the only acceptable comparison in that list, but Vingkot made his laws before the Chaos Age. Hyalor did create a nomad society, but he too did so in the Storm Age, like the Founders of the Beast Riders. The main difference in what Hyalor did is that he adopted a non-kin spirit as his steed. That may be at the core of the problem the Praxians have with horse riders. I wonder how they would react to Pralori.
Orlanth, Pamalt, Lodril are deities that led their peoples out of the struggles of an earlier change of Ages, so there is a parallel there, but none of those changes were nearly as apocalyptical as the Chaos Age. All of them are Great Deities in the cosmic scheme, too - all Waha is is a fringe culture's male role model.
If you insist on pulling out the rules mechanic "Waha has two runes", well, that makes him the equal of Pelaskos or Diros. Or Gagarth and Thed.
>> The women discovered the worship of their ancestress. Only now? >> Eiritha and Protectress are often interchangeable in the tribal >> myths.
> Eiritha and the Protectresses are not interchangeable in the tribal
> myths.
"Sable Eiritha did X" (and the same story told with bison, rhino, whatever) describes many of Eiritha's deeds.
General Eiritha was buried by Tada (sent to a Dark Underworld). The Herd Eirithas were imprisoned by Kyger Litor (sent to a Dark Underworld).
Same story, slightly different actors.
> The Protectresses are defenders of the Herds, not Providers.
The herds are the providers. They thrive even on dead foliage and straw, they turn dead matter into the stuff of life.
The Herd Eirithas don't have any magic to call forth growth from the land, true. But to the beast riders, all important provender comes through the herds, even though they supplement their diet by raiding, trading, hunting and gathering (to a total of up to 90% of the food consumed, e.g. when resting at an oasis).
> Lastly they began worshipping Eiritha because the Protectresses
> were now available to defend the herds. Before they couldn't
> worship Eiritha because there weren't any herds - the Darkness
> kept scattering them.
The few straggling survivors taught by Waha were the herds - bipeds and quadrupeds together. Their limited numbers may well have limited their access to the herd magic, so one thing Waha might have done could be to gather all the animal nomads in one place and create a meta-herd, thereby giving access to the herd magic of an unspecific Eiritha.
>> The herd-worship of the Protectresses can hardly be a new thing, >> and that's what the plains ape portion of the herds had done >> previously, too.
> And how does this pose a problem with my theory that many of Waha's
> special deeds are actually golden and storm age myths?
I share that theory to the extent that a lot of the deeds attributed to Waha that would have taken place in the Storm Age weren't done by Waha. They were done by the Founders, or by Storm Bull himself, and by Eiritha and her daughters (nowadays known as Protectresses).
In Orlanthi myth, Orlanth was the first to marry and build a house. In Orlanthi myth, Durev was the first to marry and build a house. Durev is ranking as a Storm Brother (whether he actually joined them in their activities or not). His myth is the instance of the mythical cycle of the Storm Brothers.
What if Orlanth hadn't made it back from Hell, but the world had been saved by some other entity? Might not the hypothetical surviving Dureving culture have attributed all of Orlanth's deeds relevant to them to Durev?
That's how I see Waha's role.
There was no Waha in the Golden and Storm Age, so he couldn't have done those deeds. He only inherits the credit.
> Stylistically, could you avoid calling the proto-Praxians
> plains apes?
I have been doing so for a reason - I think that their grip on the man rune was rather loose, about as firm as Storm Bull's grip on civilized behaviour. I could say proto-herdmen instead, although modern herdmen have lower intellectual capacities than the bipeds roaming Genert's Garden in the Golden Age had.
Raising their humanity while sacrificing that of their herds is the Great Thing that Waha did, that and the Peaceful Cut. Everything else is vanilla hero stuff, things Belintar or Heort did.
Heort did a Great Thing, too - he fought the I Fought We Won battle, which is integral to the success of the Lightbringers' Quest, and he broke the dullness imposed by the Chaos Age, starting a civilisation again (one might say, he gave the Heortlings back their humanity, too). Everything else he did is vanilla hero stuff, too.
> You probably don't mean it but it's coming across as perjorative
> rather than clever.
To some extent, there is that intent. The Praxians live in a Chaos-Age survival culture. They have externalized most of the more civilized achievements to the Earth Temple at the Paps in their attempt to cling to their identity.
> One doesn't go around describing the Orlanthi of the Storm
> Age based on what the contemporary Dara Happans said about them.
I'm not using the term as any other external observer than myself. The animal nomads had a cultural level somewhere between homo erectus, neanderthals and very early homo sapiens while wandering through Genert's Garden. I suggest that they and their herds shared a simple language, had a range of rituals and customs. Humans might view the uz culture of Wonderhome similarly while being unable to grasp the importance of Darkness. I guess the animal nomads had a sense of "Gaia" (or rather Gata or Eiritha) that may have given them as much magical and mythical depth, but their non-magical culture was nothing to write home about. I suppose they were tool users to some extent, biped and quadruped alike, with all the physical limitations of the quadrupeds taken into account. (Perhaps the TV series "Dinosaurs" is a good model for that situation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_%28TV_series%29 )
>> Waha's cult may well claim this, but only by virtue of >> subsuming the Founder cults.
> Except that the Founders are not part of Waha's cult.
Well, what cult are they part of? Certainly not Storm Bull's cult, and yet they are a male thing.
> The ranking Waha Khan may know the secret of summoning the Tribal
> Founder, there's very little Founder magic in his cult.
Much was lost. Possibly some may have been retrievable, if Waha's way had not obviated the means to achieve that. Awakened herd beasts might be in a position to quest there, but the presence of their riders would bind them to Waha's way.
>> Waha fought Wild Fire and tamed it.
>> Oakfed had been set free by the Tada-shi and burnt up all of the >> Redwood savannah of Prax, leaving noxious ash in his wake. After >> the trees were gone, Oakfed ran out of fuel, and only lingering >> embers were left.
> Debatable. Who set Oakfed free is not stated, only that they
> are men and that they did it to keep him alive.
They are the inhabitants of Tada's Land.
> That doesn't make them Tada-shi as there were others in Prax.
Who?
Zola Fel River Folk don't strike me as likely to release Oakfed.
I don't think that this was done by animal riders, either.
The Basmoli have no ties to Oakfed.
The Men-and-a-Half might. Still, I think that the ancestors of the Oasis Folk are the most likely to do this deed, and I identify those as Tada-shi.
> Secondly since the Wild Fires are reportedly capable of burning
> stone, I doubt that only lingering embers were left.
Even burning stone leaves ashes that are unsuitable as fuel and poisonous to any fire. The Dead Place is full of that stuff, carried there by two millennia of (quite abundant) rainfalls.
> My belief is that Waha taming Fire was a Golden or Storm Age
> myth.
Sure - I see the biped proto-Praxians and their quadruped kin as fire users, too.
Only there was no Waha involved, being yet unborn. More likely Daka Fal or the Good Shepherd (a kind of biped Founder?).
> When the Great Night came, his worshippers used him to burn down
> the forests and then used his magics again to bring the fires
> under control.
I read "his worshippers" as the worshippers of Oakfed and the Lowfires (who reportedly have the magic to do this).
>> How do you fight a wildfire? By depriving it of fuel. Maybe Waha >> did have the foresight to make the herds bare a stretch of >> chaparral so that the wildfire would run out.
> The Wildfires are not scrub fires but elemental demons (Nomad Gods
> terminology). Ordinary fire-fighting tricks (such as creating a
> firebreak) would thus be powerless against them.
Ordinary fire-fighting tricks are part of the Lowfires magic.
> Waha and his worshippers
At least those who worship the lowfires, too...
> would have magical means of fighting the wildfires, like
> tricking it into lighting an inescapable bundle of fibre and wood
> (Sartar Companion p276).
This is an animist society. Animists turn to those spirits and traditions most helpful in a given situation. Say Waha ordered the magicians of the Lowfires to stop the fire. No fire-fighting feat of Waha is required, and still "Waha stopped the Wildfire".
Compare how Argrath Sharpsword relit the Flame of Sartar (the CHDP-version) to see how Waha ended up getting the credit from his own cult.
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