Re: Pentan shamanic tradition

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_hmXsNLBuyoXZagcEk_t-kD1p-1HtWXiZxkcSyPyZMASjwWfN4r9lclAcOrMaCCHekvA>
Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:22:54 +1300

On 10/8/2012 5:59 AM, David Cake wrote:
> I've got a PC that is a Pentan shaman in training. I want to run a heroquest to acquire a fetch for him. What myth would you use for that?
> I've been picking over various sources - very few have much to say about Pent directly, though there is a lot more about other Kargzant traditions such as the Char-Un and Grazers. The only direct write up of Kargzant as a Pentan tradition was the one in MRQ2 Cults of Glorantha book (with the Kargzant battles the Darkness myth, which could be a potential choice). There are other candidates though (the Grazer Denbitos tradition in the HeroQuest rulesbook, the Char-Un Sun Stallion writeup in Sons of Kargzant, Lendarshi myth, etc).
>

WHY I HATE COWS - a Pentan Shaman Speaks

You ask what have the Cows done to me that I should hate them so? That is not the right question. The real question is what have I not done to the Cows to make them fitting of me?

You have heard it said, no doubt by that idiot Khan and others, that Hyalor found a sky creature broken by others and made it the first horse. This tale is lies believed only by those fit for tending slaves. Hippoi was an evil monster that gorged itself on the flesh of the first people. You may still find her kind in the depths of our land if you are unlucky enough. With the might of Kargzant in him, Hyalor sought Hippoi out and broke it to make the First Slave, our horses. Others followed Hyalor's path and made more slaves so that our kin may have children, fight with weapons of bronze and iron and so on even though they do not deserve it.

This will be your duty should you chose to follow me - to make new slaves of the monsters that plague us and our kin. There will be nothing that we cannot break. The demons of the north were once strong and mighty until we broke them. Now they spawn the most weakest of wretches and tremble with fear. whenever we are near. The Dead of Orathorn wanted to drink the blood of our kin but we broke them to be the basest of slaves. Everything in our land that makes our kin strong is there because we fought the monsters and broke them into our slaves.

Everything that is except for the cows, they were never broken. Our kin found them in a strange land and brought them back to make their lives easier. They refuse to let us break them because the resulting slaves were no good. And so our land is blightd by these creepy monsters with their weird unblinking eyes, their horns of sharp doom, their evil plotting while they chew their cud and their hideous udders...

--Peter Metcalfe