Joerg Baumgartner
>The lascerdans seem to have practiced agriculture, so they are at least
omnivorous rather than carnivorous. It is hard to
>believe that a purely carnivorous species would have suffered genocide
from the aldryami unless they were savannah hunters
>trying to lighten the forest cover with fire.
In the original lascerdan description, they were forest enemies
because:
- they dammed the rivers to make shallow lakes & swamps, which
destroyed forestland, though it did create some mangrove forests.
However, the elves of the woods at the time were mostly green elves, and
could not survive in mangroves.
- they engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture to provide their
extensive pens of manatees (and probably other aquatic livestock) with
cheap & fast sources of nutrient.
Even so, it's hard to see how they did all _that_ much damage to the
forest. The truth might be that they didn't, and that the elves wiped
out the lascerdans simply because they could. It's interesting to note
that when the lascerdan ghosts & ghosts were summoned from the dead
centuries later, they wreaked destruction not on the elves, but on the
humans who were then dwelling along the rivers.
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #544