>If you want to depict the Pentans as nasty and brutish you could use the
>Scythians as a reference point. Some ancient Greek geographer described
>them as trouser wearing cannibals if I remember correctly and I think
>they had a horse centered culture.
The Scythians aren't nasty, they're my Earthly analog for the Grazers. Herodotus wrote the most on them, I think, and I don't recall such a comment (he does talk about them drinking the blood of the first man they kill, which sounds like an initiation rite). They do take trophy heads and scalps, but so did lots of people (David took Goliath's head as a trophy). They blinded prisoners of war, and sacrificed slaves when kings died, but this doesn't seem excessively nasty, especially for its day. And Scythians made some quite nice bits of art.
It seems doubtful the Grazers blind their slaves (the vendref live pretty normal lives), but I do think the Grazers take scalps. (In Glorantha, heads are often associated with Thanatar, so I decided only the primitive Orlanthi take trophy heads.)
If you want someone nastier, use the Mongols. They're the ones who killed entire cities. Some reports claim they killed more than 2 million people during the sack of Harat.
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