>So the God Learners arrive in Umathela, where they find those same
>troublesome storm worshippers their Seshnegi ancestors ousted from
>southern Jrustela. And then they went "bingo, let's get more of the
>useless pagan scum over here"?
The God Learners did not "oust" storm worshippers from Southern Jrustela - they conquered the transplanted Slontans that had been there. Some of the Arshu Phola did flee to Umathela but that land had already been settled by other settlers via the Waertagi and these settlers ranged from Brithini Exiles to heterodox Slontans, not "storm worshippers".
The God Learners brought Orlanthi to Umathela because they were cheap labour and could easily be controlled by the Monomyth.
> > An argument about absence of evidence is fucking weak when
> > when nobody's bothered to write anything about it.
>When David bothered to write something about it, it got you "fucking"
>pigs.
David's work was riddled with silliness such as the Elves being quite happy with Slash-and-burn farming, there being a narrow dividing line between the glorious freedom-loving storm worshippers and the dirty nasty Fonritan slavers, the storm worshippers not being Orlanthi but worshipping a bunch of mediocre gods with dull names, a supposedly fantastic Fonritan city who sole reason for being interesting was that all the blues were working the shadufs, that a simple five minute speech is enough to make a fonritan give up his worship of Ompalam etc.
I really would have just said "YGV" and left it at that but at the time we were trying to put together a decent book about adventuring in Umathela/Fonrit that the whole thing just collapsed.
As for the specific mention of pigs, David thinks the Umathelans worship pigs because the connection to Wenelia is so important. So the pigs they herd are boars? No. So why is the connection to Wenelia so important then? I never got a meaningful answer on that.
> > There's nothing to prevent the EWF or the
> > OOO from selling anything to the God Learners.
>The EWF was busy aquiring tributary peoples. Selling them makes no
>sense at all.
Look at Christianity and Islam. Both freely traded with each other including slaves. So why should the God Learners and EWF be any different?
>The OOO might have been happy to sell some. Strangely enough, Kethaela
>never was mentioned as a center of slave exports, except under enemy
>occupation. Should make a normal person think...
Why should slave exports ever be mentioned? Esrolia had so many people alone that slavery could be a minor source of income yet a major contributer of manpower to Umathela.
> > The EWF had plenty
> > of troublesome Orlanthi for example and selling them to the God
> > Learners as slaves is win-win.
>Binding them into their dragon-awakening scheme was what they did well
>past the time the Closing hit.
I don't understand this obsession with the God Learners are nowhere near Dragon Pass until the Closing strikes. Feroda in Prax is founded in 720 and Robcradle circa 780 ST. That's two centuries _before_ the Closing strikes. A dubious source places the God Learners in Esrolia as early as 570 and construction of the Machine City starts circa 790 ST. There's ample scope for trade and migration for up to a century or two before the Closing strikes.
> > Not half as repetitious as filling Umathela and Wenelia with
> > pigs in the first place.
>
>The Helerings should have brought or kept sheep, true, but Wenelia
>without pigs is about like Orlanth without storm.
Sheep is not intrinsic to Heleri worship so the Heleri in Umathela can get along fine without them. And the comment about filling Wenelia with pigs harkened back to a position of David's that all Orlanthi in Wenelia should be pig farmers of some shape or another when I was suggesting that the Wenelians other than the Harandings might be interested in something other than pigs.
> > What happened to goats?
>
>Vadrudi beasts.
That's a Heortling position. This is Umathela whose Orlanthi are free to have dogs and goats like everybody else.
> > Or sloths? Forest rats? Okapis?
> > Manatees? Tinimits? This is Pamaltela, it's supposed to
> > be different.
>
>If the Storm Barbarians had been natives, I'd go with that for a
>general culture.
What's to stop the Orlanthi from herding native creatures? Their religions and customs are being moulded by the God Learners.
>Goats are all over Fonrit.
Since when? I always filled it up with pygmy shoveltuskers
>You'd get
>a heroic subcult of the Storm God, Farming God or Herd Beast Goddess
>taming or allying these, and a limited distribution of these.
Why heroic and what's with the Storm God, Farming God shite? If you mean Orlanth then say Orlanth. Umathela is named after Umath while Kolatsfange is named after Kolat. Last time I looked (which was five seconds ago) Orolmarn's herding affinity is not restricted to cattle and pigs.
> > and they exterminated the Lascerdans for slash-and-burn
> > tactics.
>
>in areas which they wanted to claim for themselves.
That's not how the sources portray it.
>They failed to
>throw out the barbarian settlers arriving around 650 in the same
>valleys, though.
The settlers arriving weren't barbarians and the Lascedans were destroyed about 150 years before. 654 ST is the year the God Learners destroyed Vralos which indicates they were there some years before.
>You might assume that those barbarians did not slash-and-burn. Makes
>me wonder how they established their agriculture in the river valleys
>without fire, though.
Gosh that's a hard question. But then again like all Joerg stumpers, it's not. There was still plenty of clear land and the first settlers inhabited those. Later when the Elves were defeated, people felt quite free to use fire to clear away large tracts of land. However sash-and-burn refers to a specific practice of agriculture.
>Making them horticulturalists occupying ecological niches might be an
>idea. Pulling something analogous to the "black soil" agriculture of
>the Amazonas basin might be a better idea, even though it involves
>-gasp- fire and charcoal.
Horticulture is what I think the more primitive Orlanthi would be doing _now_ in Umathela (and I was thinking of PNG highlanders). The Orlanthi are under the elvish green thumb and so would have plenty of fertility magics to restore the soil fertility. Not to mention the fact that the peas are legumes that would be highly unlikely to exhaust the soil as to require slash-and-burn.
> > Come to think of it, if the elves were comfy
> > with the concept of being burned to death then they
> > wouldn't be having a beef with the Lunar Empire for
> > Rist and Erigia.
>There is a substantial difference between pruning and uprooting a
>forest. (Same goes for burning some stretches of forest that is alive,
>or entire forest areas that are dead).
So let's see what Heroquest voices says:
But [Pamalt] is far from here, across the great waters so
you need not be frightened of him.
I find it strange that the Genertelan interlocutor does not then add that the Elves of Umathela have somehow reconciled themselves to fire and allow the local humans to burn down their forests at regular intervals.
> >> Some plants went way over the top to eradicate all others,
> >> taking the lizard riverfolk with them en passant.
>
> > Nope. The lascerdans were wiped out circa 500 ST _after_
> > harmony was reached between the elves around 364 ST.
>
>I recall this as "the last lascerdans".
So the elves made peace and took over 100 years to wipe out the Lascedans? A bit of an odd chronology, wouldn't you say?
>Well, elves aren't people (except to some extent, they are). There
>won't be political parties struggling for the course of an elf forest,
>but there will be ecological differences that the various groups will
>somehow settle.
Except that you suggest that one faction resorts to, well terrorism basically in order to improve their ecopolitical position. How do you think the other elves would react to that?
> >>However, forests come in many stages, and the colonist tree species
> >>all thrive on the aftermath of forest fires.
>
> > Tell me. When was the last time the Black Forest had a major
> > fire?
>
>Who said anything about major fires?
What is being discussed is whether the elves would tolerate widespread clearance of land through fire such as occurs in Oz or California. Since the Black Forest doesn't have major fires, fire isn't necessary for forest regeneration.
>The most recent "catastrophic" events in the Black Forest were
>hurricanes. The regions hit worst are recovering fine right now, with
>a healthier mix of species than the previous monocultures.
There you go.
> > If the God Learners can clear out Enkloso of Aldryami, they
> > pretty much would have cleaned out Vralos which is the
> > smaller forest and was hit first.
>YGMV. It is the green elves of Enkloso who are reported missing, then
>reappearing with a vengeance.
Two hundred years after the God Learners had smote Vralos and which was bordered on the other side by Elf-hating Fonritans? I think Vralos was cleaned out much earlier so the God Learners never had to worry about it.
> > Why this doubt? If they could reach Jolar then they could go
> > through any elfless forest.
>
>They reached Jolar through the forest-less gap where the Greenwood
>used to be. Better traveling for horses than trackless forests, or so
>I am told by riders.
I still don't see why the God Learners would be unable to go through Enkloso to reach the Tarmo or Tarien in the three centuries they were there.
> > Going by that logic, Prax must be full of Redwoods while there
> > are still forests in Rist and Erigia.
>Just you wait...
...until you can come up with an effective retort?
>The fire in Prax occurred during the long death, when no seeds could
>awaken, and all the possibly fertile ash was mindlessly blown away by
>Storm Bull. Hence the Redwood seeds had no chance to grow.
Ash isn't "possibly fertile" by a long shot and if the seeds were buried then they should have been able to awaken at the Dawn.
>Enkloso has never been burned.
Except through the regular slash-and-burning that is allegedly so vital and necessary to regenerate the forest.
>Semi-unrelated question: who was behind the disease that caused the
>extinction of the Errinoru race?
In my Kareeshtu article, I blamed it on Kalabar in a bungled attempt to enslave the jungles. That the Kalabari were attempting to enslave the jungles at the time is probably a fact. Whether they were the cause or that it was somebody else is really a mystery.
--Peter Metcalfe
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