> Andrew later points out that the tribes generally don’t mingle with each other in any case. This is certainly true. Praxians generally mate and raise children only within their own tribes. There are exceptions.
Starting with the children born to slave women which are treated little different from children born to regular tribeswomen. They may not inherit from their mother, but they do count as tribesfolk since they are the get of their fathers.
Male slaves don't propagate - they usually are gelded, to avoid questionable fatherhoods. Makes me wonder about Argrath White Bull...
> There are some children among the sun domers and the Oasis folk. But I would say that all the peoples of Prax have very strong and differing notions of beauty that dramatically reinforce in-group mating patterns through sexual selection. That is, a nomad’s bastard among the Oasis folk is unlikely to have children with anyone because they just don’t look right to either group.
Opportunity sex with slaves will create children, too.
> Without this, there's just no way to explain why there aren't pygmies born to Bison women, from interbreeding with impala men. And that would really mess up my mental images of the tribes as looking very different.
There are such semi-pygmies. The non-pygmie-tribes have less problems accommodating them than the Impala tribe, who cannot provide suitable mounts to such offspring. Their fate most likely is to remain unmarried, in case of males to propagate through slave women of their own, in case of females to seek membership in the Priestesshood of the Paps.
> > The Storm Khan of the Block is the husband of the High Priestess of Eiritha at the Paps,
> > and in the early 16th century, the High Priestess is a morokanth. Given the importance
> > of fertility rituals to the Praxians, it seems likely that these two copulate at some point
> > (in other words, it's not just a simple ceremony, but on some level a genuine union).
> I don’t think this is a genuine union. As Oliver notes, perhaps they use stand-ins. And perhaps Prax is less fertile when you they do so. But I think it is simply not necessary. The holders of these offices are usually genuinely married long before. Their official marriages are typically ritual.
I think that such unions take place on the Other Side, with the Storm Khan taking the shape of a winged bull, and the Priestess the shape of the universal cow depicted in the outline of the Eiritha Hills. It is major magic.
A slightly less transforming different shape would be when the Khan and the tribal priestess commune in the shapes of Founder and Protectress.
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