Don't be shy about disagreeing with me. I'd far rather people did that than that they ignored my ideas completely.
You are correct that in my vision of herdmen, they and the morocanth do compete somewhat for food. This is different from the other praxians and their beasts. I happen to see the morocanth as being very different from other praxians, so this doesn't worry me. I believe that they are exploiting food resources that are underutilized by the other praxian nations, so they can get away with this.
I can accept that the herdmen may be able to eat some foodstuffs that the morocanth can not. I just don't believe that herdmen can eat an almost all cellulose diet. Their digestive tract and their teeth are completely unsuited for such a diet.
Some people may insist that we should not try to impose real-world physics, biology, and chemistry on Glorantha. I accept that in a limited sense. I want to stick to real-world models as long as possible, it makes the world more plausible. Only when real-world models completely contradict what I want to achieve in Gloranthan reality do I throw out the real-world. Then I have to work really hard to make a plausible Gloranthan physics/biology/chemistry explanation.
In the case of herdmen, as I said above, their dentition and digestive tracts just aren't suited to a grazing diet. There is no evidence that Fix INT spells cause a massive physical change in the target creature. If there were such changes then it would be easy to identify awakened creatures or normal humans hiding among herdmen.
You could assume that they are made magically able to digest that diet despite the physical limitations of their physiology. I hate to use magic that way. It feels like a cheap cop-out to me.
You seem to feel that it is important under the Covenant of Waha that herdmen and morocanth will not eat the same food. If that is really important in your view of Glorantha then we will just have to agree to disagree. The only thing that is important for me about herdmen is that they are beasts that are physically indistinguishable from humans. I don't really care what they eat, but I feel a plausibility gap open up if they graze on grasses and leaves so I give them a primitive hominid diet instead.
You said:
>IMG the thing that separates herd men from human beings is that herd men are
>animals. They lack foresight, understanding, and can only react to basic
>stimuli.
I agree. I just happen to believe that the key thing that limits them in this way is the lack of language, the ability to manipulate abstract symbols and concepts. I don't think that we are in disagreement about the effect though we may disagree about how the effect is achieved.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #646
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