>Me>[I] cannot understand why Maniria has to be populated
> > by seven indistinguishable tribes of pig-worshippers.
>Pigs have large litters, and their worshippers seem to have a hard
>time getting along.
And this makes seven tribes of pig-lovers interesting? Not to me, it doesn't. There are over half a million people living in the Solanthi, Ditali and Nimistori valleys. The Praxians for the same population are split up into five main tribes and ten lesser ones. The Sartarites have a Darkness tribe, a Dog Lover tribe, a Duck tribe, a Werewolf tribe, a Slave-owning tribe, a Goatherding tribe, a Dog-loving Tribe, a nomadic horsefolk tribe, a Spear-using tribe, a Humakti tribe and so on. When it comes to the Great Lunar Empire, they have Western Knights, Cossacks, Swamp-dwellers, Sun-worshippers, Crazed Death-Obsessed Maniacs, Star-gazers, archaic hellenoids, Sable Riders, Goat-herders, Savage Horsemen, Aged Matriarchs, Broos, Bird-people, Bear worshippers and Hill Barbarians.
But when it comes to Maniria, it has to be pigs, pigs, pigs, yet more pigs, still more pigs, even more pigs and is-there no-end-in-sight-to-these-godforsaken pigs? Why must this be so? Because pigs have large litters and their followers have difficulty getting on? In a land which never achieved a focus for unity, we are seriously supposed to think that nobody came up with the bright idea that "We are all pigs"? I feel that a plot has been lost somewhere.
>I don't think the seven tribes of pig-worshippers mentioned
>in the sources are necessarily indistinguishable, however.
>One major point is that some are animists and some
>theists.
Which happens to be the only point that anybody can think of. Even so, this can be accommodated by two out of the seven peoples of the area. Why do you need the other five to be pig-lovers? What possible _fun_ does it give us?
>It's also possible that the Heortling and
>Malkioni maps are both correct, but are from a different moment
>in time.
No, it's not possible. The two maps are the same period in time, the late Storm Age.
> >Tradetalk #11 describes the Wenelians as having the totems of Stag,
> >Otter, Lion, Badger, Boar, Fox, Bull, Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Stallion and
> >Hound. Hence to consider them yet another tribe of pig-lover is
> >wrongheaded.
>Nothing says that hsunchen (sorry, I'm using the generally accepted
>term and not your narrow version)
What generally accepted term is this? The only significant in-depth treatment in the Player's Book: Genertela describes a beast-totemic animist culture. Under that definition, the Wenelians aren't Hsunchen because they are theists.
> have to have the same totem,
If you actually read the above passage with care, you would have noticed I'm rebutting Joerg's assumption that the Wenelians are pig-lovers, not that the Wenelians are Hsunchen (which Joerg wasn't arguing)
>nor
>that "evolved hsunchen" have to all worship the same deity.
I don't understand what you mean by "evolved hsunchen".
>They're pig-lovers because they are (or were) Entruli.
Were they? The only source for that assertion is Shannon's article which is hardly authoritative. Thunder Rebels and Arcane Lore on the other hand paint a far more interesting and attractive picture of the possible influences in Maniria. I fail to see why we should ignore all that because it's all under the Solkanthi now so we can stuff Maniria with yet another tribe of pig-lovers.
--Peter Metcalfe
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