Praxian Beast Riders not of Golden Age Praxian Stock

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_toppoint.de>
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 98 17:07 MET DST


About a week (and oodles of digests) ago, someone challenged me for a source for the Beast Riders not being part of Tada's original kingdom.

The source is our most ancient source, Nomad Gods:

: [8.] THE FIVE GREAT TRIBES

: There were five "legitimate" tribes of Prax, all descendants of the
: original peoples who migrated from the Spike with their mighty leader,
: the Storm Bull. Each tribe was made up of several Clans or similar
: kin-based social structures (which were the basic fighting units), several
: Herds (which were the basic means of life for the people), its Khan, and
: its Shaman.

This is reworked in Cults of Prax, Storm Bull cult:

"In the Golden Age the Storm Bull led his sons down to the fertile lands of Prax where they befriended the peoples and wed the goddesses."

Quite evidently the Beast Riders were an immigrant culture rather than an indigenous culture, which existed before they arrived.

Ok, the genealogical table in the Eiritha cult (CoP p.31, not reprinted in Tales 14) gives Tada as grandfather of the Protectresses (through his and Ernalda's son the Good Shepherd, who fathered them upon Eiritha), and the Protectresses along with the Founders (the sons of the Storm Bull) as parents of the Ancestors of the People.

The reason this table hasn't been reprinted may be that it contains, well, "simplifications" which don't quite help in the understanding of Prax. Especially when the sequence of generations isn't that clear. Any Protectress is as much an aspect of Eiritha as she is a daughter of Eiritha. Before Waha's covenant, each Protectress seems to have had a human shape and a beast shape (much like the Founders), and only the Morocanth example of the Covenant holds memories about the (wo)man-shaped Protectress. The Good Shepherd doesn't really sound like a member of the sedentary Golden Age people of Prax, either.

Anyway, if that table were to include the Praxian Golden Age people, I guess they'd appear as children of Tada and Ernalda, much like Ronance and other spirits of the Paps. Of course, Eiritha-of-the-Paps and Ernalda need not be different deities...


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