Peter Hindman has some questions about hsunchen and beast men :
> Can anyone point me to references on the distinctions between
> beast-men
> and hsunchen?
Well the difference is that hsunchen look like ordinary humans if they are not using their transformation magic while beast men always have a human and animal part.
> There don't seem to be many deep references on beast-men;
> the most information I've seen is in stuff on scorpion men, who aren't
> necessarily representative.
Indeed. Scorpion men seem be no beast men if you follow the description in Elder Secrets (Elder Races book, p.78).
> I suppose the big question, mythically/ecologically speaking, is why
> Glorantha contains both types of beings in more or less the same
> regions
> and ecologies.
And I have no answer for this at the moment. Perhaps beast men are humans who abandoned their humanity long ago in favour of animal powers (much more than hsunchen and irreversible). But it's only a guess.
> They're clearly related (Bagog offers spells to gain a scorpion's
> carapace and claws) but not the same (Bagog doesn't offer Become
> Scorpion).
I don't think the scorpion men fit in this example well (chaos is always something different) but I also see hsunchen and beast men related, yes.
> And while I'm at it, are dragonewts really just a kind of dragon
> hsunchen (probably not)?
Never heard that before. As far as I know Dragonewts are Dragons which hatched from not properly fertilzed eggs.
> And does that make newtlings newt hsunchen based on a dragonewt rather
> than a human model?
I don't think so. Never saw a newtling change to a dragonewt. And Elder Secrets does not mention _anything_ about this (Elder Races Book, p.89).
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