> As for Chaos connections, I'll stick by my old story, that the
chaos god Than represents a vile chaotic perversion of the ancient
Orlanthi custom of head-taking.
I've always liked this idea. It makes the Than headhunters a very good Orlanthi chaotic enemy as it represents a chaotic corruption of their cultural habits, a sort of tapping for those evil Orlanthi magicians, in the hills.
Dave Dunham has always suggested the Ralian Orlanthi as still more archaic, more Celtic, than the more modern, more Germanic DP tribes so headhunting may still be more popular there.
As for trophy taking - the major 'canon' sources seem to be the trophies taken by warriors of Babeester or Erantha Gor and the scalp taking of the Marantaros women (one of the Exile tribes).
In working on the Exiles for UW1 I followed this chain as follows. The Marantaros women take trophies in the form of scalps. The women warrior cults of the earth practice taking of trophies and they have strong representation among the Exiles. The Exiles also indulge in ritual cannibalism. All of these suggest a belief in gaining power over conquered enemies from their body parts. The Exiles follow the 'darker' side of the Orlanthi religion so they may continue to practive rituals others now find distasteful. If head taking is an old Orlanthi tradition then it will probably be found here too.
However I suspect that binding your enemies breath into the trophies is still taboo having connations of the undead. Most use of body parts will be rituals that require some portion of your enemy as a focus for magic - boundary or warding markers, curses and the like.
It may well be that it is the dark earth cults that have more of this magic than the air cults.
YGMV. Ian Cooper
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