Andrew Raphael:
I submit that the whaling done by the Uz of Koromandol is within sight
of land, and so unaffected by the Closing, fog or no fog. Drifting out
to sea is still a bad idea. If the whale makes it out to sea, it gets
away. The Uz don't follow it.
I'm thinking of Eden and Twofold Bay on the South Coast of New South Wales here. Open boats launched from shore. No "Pequod" here.
as unlikely as it may seem, the PNW natives did extensive open-sea whaling, despite their lack of western "technology" often spending more than a week out of sight of land in their dugout canoes. You are absolutely correct to draw a distinction between this and the "Moby Dick" style hunts that lasted years, and caught many (hundreds?) of whales without returning to shore... The Koromandol uz will only hunt one whale at a time, but they (if my cultural analogy holds) are perfectly willing to follow the thing anywhere it goes.
Essentially, my argument is that there is good historical evidence that the Uz COULD hunt whales on the open sea (in their open boats launched from the shore), given that smaller, weaker, less magically powerful humans were able to do so in the RW. Thus, IMG they definately do so. MGF dictates that the HeroQuest of Hunting the Behemoth must contain a station of the lonely hunter lost in the trackless, featureless, wastes of the ocean... which is simply impossible if they have to turn back every time they loose "ping" of land ;-)
as an aside -- I think that the Native whalers would have taken great offense at being listed as "less magically powerful" than the Uz... but I'm a crappy western bigot who is more willing to believe in my own imagination than in their History... ;-)
danm
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