Chaparral

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_bigfoot.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 19:52:34 +1200


Ian Gorlick:

>If cattle and horses couldn't live in Prax, then the nomads
>wouldn't have to worry about them.

Not so. Prax is _not_ all chaparral and some of it is quite fertile (the Good Place, the River of Cradles, the Oases) etc. Outsiders have taken control of these places, despite the inability of their beasts to live on the chaparral, and the Praxians must fight them for this for any place is better than the Chaparral.

The Chaparral is defensive terrain for the Praxians as they can live there and nobody else can. If every man and his dog can survive there as you suggest, then the Praxian advantage will be _gone_.

>Here's a possible idea to really drive the conflict: Cattle and horses
>not only survive in Prax, but as they interact with the environment (or
>as their owners perform their various annual rituals on the land) the
>land becomes modified to improve their survival and becomes less well-
>adapted for the native animals.

I like to think the Prax and the Wastelands is uninhabitable to most people because it has been damaged by Chaos and not because Eiritha Beasts modify the ecosystem to keep out competitors.

>Someone asked what the value of Waha's Covenant was if cattle could
>live in Prax? The Covenant is a deal between the humans and the
>beasts: the humans get to live off the beasts, the beasts get the
>protection of the humans.

So why can herd-humans of the Morokanth eat the chaparral which no ordinary human can?

Powered by hypermail