> > FATHER OF INDEPENDENTS. This pathetic wretch, slave to man and
> > god, claims to be the Founder of the many small Tribes, or Independents,
> > and will gladly tell his amusing lies to all who would listen. Yet it is
> > ridiculous to think that such a wretched thing could birth the powerful beings
> > who need neither god nor support to live in the chapparal. According to the
> > Father, though, he was a victim of the Gods War and crippled to become
> > the ferryman to the gods. Yet he escaped. Returning to Prax, he was
> > again captured and put to a similar task in the Dead Place where he
> > still serves with admirable ability.
> >
> > Does this psychopomp who uniquely knows his way around the Dead
> > Place sound like anyone else we might know under another name?
>
> Nope, not to me.
Let's nibble it from the other end for a bit.
"Ancient philosophers," probably working from the Sartarite side, equated Daka Fal with Grandfather Mortal at some point. He's the Judge of the Dead, the psychopomp of the Wastes. (Cults of Prax)
Cryptically, "in Prax his worship has had no actual power in the face of the gods. In times of crisis, when the gods fail their worshippers, this cult gets very popular."
So in normal Waha-oriented Praxian contexts, Daka Fal is actually something to be disdained if not scorned, a powerless if not "ridiculous" ritual complex.
Meanwhile, the Dead Place was once more magically bizarre than the super-desert we all know and dread today. In Nomad Gods, how the mechanics actually worked is that everyone got slow and hungry (herds don't go there and support is impossible), "gods are reduced to a mean status" and spirits "function as normal physical units."
In other words, the Dead Place is so dead that the normal separation between life and death, body and spirit that Daka Fal enforces does not apply, at least as Nomad Gods conceived of the place.
And the one person who knows his way around the Dead Place is the Father of Independents, that crippled, pathetic "victim of the Gods War," the ferryman of the gods.
So:
DAKA FAL: judge of the dead, the dying god, the former sacrifice, the psychopomp, "no actual power" in normal times
FATHER OF INDEPENDENTS: ferryman of the gods, the cripple, victim of the Gods War, ferryman of the gods, "wretched thing"
I'm not equating the two figures by any means, only pointing to this as a way into more dynamic readings of Praxian religion.
We all know Daka Fal plays an accepted if not terribly honored (as of Cults of Prax) role in Wahaist society. The Father of Independents was at some point (within history?) again defeated and his spirit ferryman function restricted to the Dead Place, where normal Daka Fal rules break down.
Maybe the FOI is some piece of Daka Fal that was severed or lost or forgotten at some specific point and now the Wahaists mock him and honor the other. That's as far as I'll go there.
When things get bad, as we've been dancing around, Waha and the others fail their worshippers and "occasionally" are eclipsed by the more desperate Daka Fal practices. This doesn't necessarily mean that the Peaceful Cut and other terms of the Waha rider/riden pact are abrogated, only that they become less central to what the mass of Praxians are doing. Here's another piece of that cycle of Waha getting marginalized sometimes within history.
When things get really bad, when you've been pushed into a Dead Place, you apparently need to get in touch with the Father of Independents.
And the other thing we know about FOI is that he insists that he's the ancestor (Daka Fal again, Daka Fal is how we keep our ancestors close but not too close) of the independents. Which back in Nomad Gods days were an extremely heterogenous bunch of foreigners, non-humans and people who manage to be both, as well as the Rhino Riders and the Bolo Folk.
Maybe the FOI is in fact lying. But if it means so much to him that the lie is actually built into his name, maybe the lie conceals some deeper secret about the way the Wastes actually work.
I don't know what that is, yet. But if the outcasts and atavists and foreign transplants are all somehow connected to this *other* psychopomp, this *other* flavor of spirit ferryman, it's summer fertile ground for the MGF.
Right now, I suspect that if the FOI says you're his, you don't follow the Waha pact in quite the same way. Maybe you provide lip service. The Rhino Tribe probably does. More likely, you don't. Most of these people aren't riders or herders. If they have the Peaceful Cut, they learned it at some point in the historical past. They're converts of convenience or necessity or some other reason.
And here's the other thing: I doubt those early Wahaist tribes (however many there were then) at the Dawn were talking about how Humakt the Sword killed the first man and that's why we have Death.
They seem to have had a Grandfather Mortal type.
What *I* would argue at the pinnacle of crazy is that the ur-Praxian Dying Man was named Genert and we call his pathetic shade the Father of Independents. He who once led the freaks and vestiges of the Garden before Waha taught his people another way. He who can navigate the Dead Place. Prince of hyenas. Garzeen's quest. The old law.
The Independents are the other survivors who found another way or were adopted into the Wastes at various points in history.
Daka Fal can take you many places but not everywhere.
> I prefer to leave him ambiguous, so that he can be whatever become appropriate for the story your PC's create. Certainly he is not "native" to the Praxian mythology. If he was, then they would know truths about him, instead of dismissing him as a liar.
I like having undigested nuggets inside Praxian mythology. Because then it means they must've had a specific "meal" (good to eat / good to think) at a specific point in Gloranthan history. FOI is either primeval or he's very new. When did he come in? Who brought him?
Actually, more to the point, who captured him, altered his job and drove him to the Dead Place in the first place?
We can always blame Sheng but let's hold him in reserve, otherwise it gets to be like C3PO in the prequels.
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