RE: maunderings

From: Sandy Petersen <SPetersen_at_ensemble-studios.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 11:04:38 -0500


First off, apologies if I sounded curt in my last posting - my bursitis was acting up and it made me grumpier than usual.

Simon Bray asks:
>In a recent posting Sandy said that no cloven hooved animals dwell on
the Veldt, we know you >get Titanothere and Baluchithere wandering around. What about creatures such as giraffe, >elephants and cameloids?

        "Hooved" =/= "cloven hooved". There are heaps of hooved animals, just no artiodactyls, if that's meaningful to you. This means no giraffes or camelids. Here is a brief, but incomplete, listing of the herbivorous wildlife of the veldt:

ELEPHANTS: plus mammoths, mastodons, deinotheres, gomphotheres, shovel-tuskers
PERISSODACTYLS: rhinos, brontotheres, chalicotheres, and even tapirs, though the latter are far more common in the jungle. ARSINOTHERES
UINTATHERES: the ugliest mammals of all time. CONDYLARTHS: "generic" mammals
EDENTATES: glyptodonts, ground sloths

>On the coastal regions and in the forest do you find hooved animals
such as small deer?
Artiodactyls are not common anywhere in the Pamaltelan wilds, though I hesitate to say there are none even outside the veldt. Most of the ecological niches are filled by other creatures, such as deer, elephants, chalicotheres, large herbivorous reptiles, etc.
>What are the common domestic animals amongst the coastal peoples? A lot
of the Fonrit stuff >refers to goats, which are being exported to Kumanku and I would assume can be found >through out the coastal area. Fonrit has horses, sheep, goats, cows, and so forth. Ground sloths are domesticated, and elephants are extremely common as beasts
>What do people use as beasts of burden? Not horses, but what about
oxen? I guess that man >power is the most common. Elephants make fine beasts of burden.

Trotsky
>some Digest contributors, notably Thomas Gotschall, have > proposed
that Hsunchen are not >human

        What is "human"? Certainly Hsunchen claim to be descended from animals - frex, the Telmori have two types of tribesmembers: those with fur on the outside (wolves), and those with fur on the inside (humans). In the latter case, the fur on the "inside" is not to be taken literally.

        And there are non-Hsunchen who agree that the Hsunchen are descended from beasts: the Kralori know that the Hsunchen derive from Wild Man's mating with beasts, and the Brithini claim that _all_ other races of mankind came from mating with animals (except the Vadeli). The Doraddi are perfectly willing to accept the Hsunchen explanation of themselves.

        BUT - in Glorantha, "human" is not a Linnean taxonomic reality. Being Human is a spiritual, rune-based level of existence. Thus, the Hsunchen are truly human. This does not prevent them from also being beast, and descended from beasts.

Thomas Gotschall
>I still believe them to be very different from ordinary humans.

        And you are absolutely correct.

>And I always thought Telmori kill chaos if it enters their territory
(in Dorastor)

        The Telmori in Dorastor are chaotic themselves. They teem with chaos. Their king is chaotic, their werewolves are chaotic, their god is chaotic. Just not overwhelmingly so. They don't kill "chaos" that enters their territory - they kill threats to their dominance of the Nangtali: thus, they'll fight off krjalki, broos, and scorpion folk, because if a band of these creatures got established on the Nangtali, it would represent a serious rival.
But they don't try to exterminate stuff like gorp, grayskins, slime deer, etc. In fact, their main diet consists of grayskins and slime deer. Plus the gray deer of the Ash Flats. For that matter they'll fight off Poisonthorn elves who enter their land, because they're a threat in the same way that the intelligent chaos beings are. The Dorastor Telmori are basically bad guys - they hunt and kill (and eat!) humans who enter their territory, unless presented with overwhelming reasons not to do so. They're only "non-chaotic" and "good" by comparison with what's all around them. Given that they're mean sons-of-bitches (literally), I have to admit that they are princes of honor and kindliness compared to, say, the krjalki. Luc Lavergne
>What is the connection between Gloranthan Ducks and their animal
cousins. Do Ducks herd >animal-ducks, are they sacred to them or are they eaten by them ? Are animal-ducks Ducks >with fixed INT !!!?

        "Animal ducks" are not just Ducks with fixed INT, because ordinary quackers are far far smaller, are able to fly, and have disproportionately small head-to-body ratios, compared to the large intelligent Ducks with a capital D.

        I'm sure that ordinary ducks are kept by Ducks as pets quite often. I bet they eat their eggs, too. I know for a fact that Ducks will eat chicken and other birds. Why not? Humans eat mammals, don't they?

        BUT ... I'm quite certain that Ducks in Sartar don't eat ducks, at least not in public. And furthermore they are offended when humans eat duck when a Duck is nearby. Not because of any kind of kinship feeling - just because of all the jokes and persecution and taunts made to Ducks about their edibility. If your campaign is anything like mine, the Ducks have to endure endless sly taunts and hints about their edibility. Orange sauce is mentioned way too often when Ducks are around, and this entire subculture of mockery has to have taken a toll on Duck's tolerance of duck-eating. Not that Ducks are all that patient and tolerant to begin with.

        Anyway, I do know of one single Sartarite Duck who ate duck meat: but he was a Storm Bull Duck (the only Duck I've encountered who actually had a damage bonus). He only ate duck meat once that I remember, and he said it tasted nasty, leading him to the conclusion that humans only ate duck to annoy Duck-kind, not because they actually liked it.

        The Keets of the East Isles don't eat a lot of meat, but they have no injunctions against it. The most common domestic birds are ratites anyway, which are about as unlike a duck as imaginable. Monkeys are actually pretty common food in the East Isles, and Keets eat them with annoying relish. A large minority of keets are vegetarian or even vegan.

Sandy


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