Waha is the hero of the survival period after the chaos battles. He emerges from the Paps with a quasi-cannibalistic idea to ensure the survival of both herds and riders.
Ok, the difference between Waha and the Hidden Kings of the Vingkotlings (who also hunted and ate their kin) is that Waha's example is followed by all the tribes. Waha made this abominable survival strategy stick.
What else is new?
He freed the Protectresses from capture with Kyger Litor. Compare Heort rescuing Ivarne, or any storm hero stealing from Darkness. This is no Lightbringers' Quest.
"Then the women of the tribe began worshipping Eiritha"
The women discovered the worship of their ancestress. Only now? Eiritha
and Protectress are often interchangeable in the tribal myths. The
herd-worship of the Protectresses can hardly be a new thing, and that's
what the plains ape portion of the herds had done previously, too.
"and people owned herds"
The Animal Nomads had been mixed groups of two-legs and four-legs
migrating through the Garden all along. Associating plains apes with the
herds is what the tribal founders and their mated protectresses did,
giving birth to either offspring and teaching them to care for one
another, and to travel together. Waha's cult may well claim this, but only
by virtue of subsuming the Founder cults.
Waha fought Wild Fire and tamed it.
Oakfed had been set free by the Tada-shi and burnt up all of the Redwood
savannah of Prax, leaving noxious ash in his wake. After the trees were
gone, Oakfed ran out of fuel, and only lingering embers were left. A hero
claimed this fire for the tribes, admittedly a cultural innovation for the
plains apes and the morocanth.
How do you fight a wildfire? By depriving it of fuel. Maybe Waha did have
the foresight to make the herds bare a stretch of chaparral so that the
wildfire would run out.
Learning the use of fire probably was a big step for the plains apes. I
would expect the oasis folk to play a role in this, though.
Waha dug the Good Canal (using earth powers – exactly like Belintar redirected the Creek-Stream River). I think that this act can only have occurred after the Ritual of the Net, when the shards regained a topography again beyond mere topology, but still before the Dawn.
"When the body of the Devil was gone many souls were released from bondage"
I never stumbled over this before. The Devil held souls in bondage, rather
than feeding them to the Void?
I read this as a reference to the 48 Old Ones.
On to cop-nomadgod.html:
"He freed the Protectresses and liberated the Founders. "
Liberated the Founders... from what fate?
"He taught men all these skills too, so they could survive without his
immediate presence. "
What skills? Freeing the Protectresses and liberating the Founders?
"Then he taught men the Peaceful Cut which would send an animal's soul
home to the Mother of Beasts when it was butchered. "
Waha reveals the necessary evil to survive the Darkness. The herds adopt it.
"Finally, he taught men weapons work, so they could protect their herds. "
What about Foundchild who taught the men weapons work so they could hunt?
It has ever been the role of the bulls to fight any threat to the herds.
Waha made them use hunting tools to do so? Every male chimp is a weapons
user when he goes through one of his tantrums trying to impress other
males. The ape descendants of Storm Bull would hardly do any less, would
they?
"In those ways he taught them how to survive in the harsh world, and
established the customs of the tribes."
So: the Praxian culture is sticking to the desperate survival tricks of
the Darkness. Butchery is Waha's great innovation, fire and weapons are
claimed by his cult, but IMO on spurious grounds. Making a future khan
kill chaos at the Devil's Marsh is a homage to Storm Bull.
Waha did take the nomadic life style of the herds accompanied by the apes that was established by the Founders, and modified it so that one group eats the other.
Giving the herds the ability to take nourishment from the chaparral is a great magical achievement. Awakening the plains apes to human intelligence is quite a feat, too, but compare the arrival of the Lightbringer missionaries at the survival group of the Talastari – I'm not sure that this was achieved before contact with the Lightbringers. Working together as a herd with only the butchering, sharpened sticks and fire as new things was the Praxian culture.
Speaking of this... looking at the sorry existence of the Oasis Folk, I wonder whether they still are stuck in a Darkness-survival-like stupor? They seem to thrive only where in contact with Lightbringers. From discussion of certain pieces of the Nomad Gods board game, I suspect that their culture comes and goes just like fertile places in the Hidden Greens come and go. Occasionally the Tada-shi roam the plains in power.
The Ergeshi – enslaved Kitori in Sun Dome County – are behaving similarly, and the Vendref slaves of the Grazers fare little better. All of these enslaved subcultures have in common, that they are separated from their origins. Chris Lemens said that this is true to the Animal Riders' mythical history in the Garden, too. Maybe that's why they stick to a Darkness-survival mode?
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