There seems to have been a lot of 'new' Hsunchen types being proposed on the list recently - seals, walruses, etc. - and I'm waiting with bated breath for the full descriptions and playability analyses of the new Meerkat Hsunchen, or perhaps even Gopher Hsunchen!
It also seems that there is general agreement that you usually only get one type of Hsunchen in any one environment - bears in thick woods, etc...
The way I see Hsunchen is that they are simply pseudo-humans who are influenced and in tune with the "spirits of place". Their forms are malleable, and the totem animal of an area which is an innate spirit form that flows through that land is able to be felt and responded to by Hsunchen living in that area. It shapes their forms as they are quasi-magical beings, and react without conscious thought to their land's innate magical strengths and shapes.
The world of Glorantha, instead of having discrete and fixed Hsunchen types, has only one shapeshifting tribe, the Hsunchen. It is the varying land spirits that shape and define them; not an inherent difference between their type and that of a neighbouring Hsunchen tribe down the coast.
Where the land spirits are sea-otters, the Hsunchen are sea-otter folk. Further up the coast in colder climes, you find seal-Hsunchen. Around the islands in the ice-bound seas, they become walrus-Hsunchen, and so on...
In this way a travelling, adventurer Hsunchen may find as they move further from the lands of their birth, and the influence of the totem of their land and tribe, that their form may gradually start to alter until they adopt the new forms of the totems of their new lands.
Imagine the role-playing possibilities when your otter suddenly discovers that they are sprouting larger whiskers, putting on weight, and turning into a seal, merely from having moved to another town!
Flame at will!
Marion
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