> I wouldn't be surprised to find entities resembling the
> Grotaron or Gold Wheel Dancers there.
Hmm. I thought the Gold Wheel Dancers being in the Garden were canon. Maybe I misremember. As for Gortarons, well, the fewer the better if you ask me.
> > Now it's the Chaos Age. Genert's dead and there's a lot
> > of humans wandering around starving. The Founder cults
> > are around fighting against chaos and the darkness but
> > they are unable to provide.
> > The herds are scattered because the Protectresses are gone.
> > Waha comes along and does something about it. He frees the
> > Protectresses, thus ensuring that the herds grow in number.
> > He assigns the humans to one of the herds using various contests
> > (midgets go to the Impalas etc) and inducts the men into the
> > Founder cult of that herd and the women to the worship of
> > Herd-Eiritha. Then he teaches the men how to kill animals
> > for food.
Interjecting for a moment to ask Peter a question that I think is just a clarification: Is it correct that your view of the ealrier Founder cults' totems is that the totems are the Protectresses to which the Founder is mythically married? Further, is there anything beyond that totem relationship that constitutes the "marriage"? What was the ealrier relationship between (a) women of the men in the Founder cult and (b) the Herd Sisters? Are they the same?
> I see a totally different story at this point.
>
> Genert's death also was the death for a large part of his
> population, even if Genert sacrificed himself and a huge
> portion of his forces in a rearguard action to allow them
> to escape.
I don't think he sacrificed a huge portion of his forces in the rearguard. I think he sacrified himself and the Copper Warriors (who became the copper sands). Everyone else who died either died in the battles leading up to his death or in running away.
> Neither Storm Bull and Eiritha nor their descendants are present.
>
> Storm Bull then gathered his sons (among them the Founders),
> their wives and children (the animal nomads, both two-legged
> and four-legged) and leads them chasing Chaos. Drawn onward
> by his rage, they are a lot less subject to the terror that
> would numb the refugees. While a lot less numerous than Genert's
> host, they move and fight with the cohesion of a herd facing off
> a dangerous predator.
>
> Through the struggles Storm Bull leads them on, hounding the
> Chaos forces. Finally he faces Wakboth. The fighting portion
> of his people are slain all around him, both two-legged and
> four-legged, and Storm Bull himself is all but slain. Eiritha,
> hidden beneath her hills, still sends him her aid, and he rises
> again from the Dead Place. Then the Block crushes Wakboth beneath,
> driving its body deeply into the sacred earth of Prax.
I don't agree with this at all. I think Storm Bull was alone in it from the beginning. I think the Founders and Protectresses had been scattered, killed, or captured. There was nothing else. Storm Bull was alone.
> > Once was once a minority practice on the plains has now
> > become the dominant culture.
>
> I really don't see the Praxians as the great adoptive and
> inclusive culture you describe them.
Waha clearly gathered together as many groups as would join him. But there weren't many left. The Oasis People were pretty much hiding. The baboons probably had their Monkey King. The Cannibal Cult presumably rejected him. Only the fairly distinct groups (distinct in the sense that they looked different then and still do) that became the Praxians followed him as significant groups. But even these groups were small.
The other scattered remnants were probably mostly individuals whom the Praxians enslaved, killed, or took in, depending on what they could offer. This is still their approach today -- but they have far less need of anything that anyone might have to offer. If they looked like one of the existing groups, then they could probably claim kinship: "I look like a bison man, don't I?
> To me, they are a tightly knit group of common divine
> ancestry shaped by their fights against Chaos and the
> retirement of both their main ancestral deities. Waha
> picked up the shards, made half of them sustainable
> sacrifices and subjected them to the Peaceful Cut butchery.
I don't disagree with this as much. But their common divine ancestry only describes the core of the culture, not everyone in it uniformly. And their fights against chaos mainly consist in losing. Storm Bull won, but was so torn that he could not reconstitute himself. And I really don't think that they were with him. If so, they would not have survived the moment when he collapsed.
Chris
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