Rolling Rhinos from Lewis Jardine on 1996-06-04 (Glorantha Digest Vol 02)

From: Lewis Jardine <JARDINE_at_rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 11:43:56 +0100 (BST)

Hi All

WRT Praxian Butchery Techniques:

Jokette about rolling rhinos onto their backs for neat little butchery.

Well, on a more serious vein! The rhino riders of Prax very rarely butcher their rhinos because:

Rhinos are VERY valuable, far too valuable to eat normally. Have you seen the value of a fully train war rhino?
Rhinos are very tough and not good eatting. Rhino clans are very small (generally one one family) and there is far too much meat on a rhino to use so it is wasteful to butcher one.
Rhino riders generally raid other tribes and steal their animals to eat.
Other tribes generally don't bother to raid the rhino riders as there are big risks involved (lances and horns) and even if they do get to the herd it is small in number and individuals weigh a ton, have poor eyesight and aweful tempers. Thus generally the tactic against rhino riders is to stay out of their way, preserve your herds and pelt them with arrows. Given that rhinos are generally slower this works quite well.

The rhino people are not one of the five great tribes of Prax. They are also IMO not fully part of the covenant of Waha. Sure, they signed up, but they got a very wierd trade a beast that is slow, dumb, short sighted, hard to eat and has a slow breeding rate! Thus the rhino riders are a fringe community who are specialized in the niche of "cattle raiders". The poor breeding rate means that the rhino riders will never be a major force, however, they are individually so tough that it would be very difficult to wipe the rhino people out. Also, perhaps because of their non-mainstream lifestyle they have a fair number of (mainly Orlanthi) Pol-Joni in their ranks which means they can also use non-Praxian cattle. Basically the rhino people have a much wider range of cults than other Praxians:

Chieftains: Waha & Orlanth
Warriors: Waha, Storm Bull, Orlanth & even some Humakti. Women: Eiritha mainly & some Babeeter Gori, Vingans and a few Earnaldans.

They also worship their ancestors via shamans, but this is generally in addition to other gods. The people do not find any problems with their pluralistic worship, probably because of their unusual circumstances. Thus Eiritha women look after rhino & captured Praxian beasts. Ernaldans look after any cattle. Vingans are generally the result of a raid which has killed their husbands and stolen/killed their property. BGs are just very scary when mounted on a rhino (the old Ral Patha rhino rider figure in plate with an axe might well be a BG!). Generally however BG rhino riders are largely independent and are quite happy to avenge crimes on *any* earth goddess worshippers! However, raiding by other Praxians is not considered a crime, just a way of life...

Well thats rambled on enough.

Cheers

Lewis

End of Glorantha Digest V2 #619

WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html