Joerg

Fair is fair. Perhaps "outcry" would have been the better phrase - for all my practice writing English, this isn't my native language. I do think that there is some emotion in that response, though. "I am not roleplaying a bully." "These aren't murder-hobos." In my opinion, getting into the mindset of a Bronze Age character needs to shed some of the mindset you were brought up with. A certain way more pragmatic approach to death, including the character's own. Different standards for e.g. charity - try and convince an Orlanthi clansman that giving charity to a complete stranger can be expected of him. "But that's not my kin!" One of the interesting things in playing Vampire - the Masquerade was to identify with the monster in you, while keeping it in check. In a similar way, this applied to any fantasy game that has you wielding weapons. Playing a Humakti means playing a fanatical professional killer, a taker of lives. Playing an initiate of Orlanth means that you have to bluster and bully when appropriate, and there are plenty situations where bullying is appropriate. Playing an Ernaldan may mean to be manipulative, scheming and mean when the situation demands it. Being like your deity means being less human, and that often translates as being less humanitarian, too. This style of gaming is not for everybody, agreed. Many a group of players requires the knowledge that they are the good guys in an absolute moral sense. Such moral absolutes aren't exactly part of Glorantha, though. But MGWV, YGWV.

Sun cultists have various options for burials. There is cremation, and the holiest of the sun worshippers are expected to leave no ashes behind but those of the timber used. Some use magical fire. Those cremations which leave ashes behind may have rites to deal with the fuel part of the remains. One possibility is for the family of the deceased to smear themselves with these ashes as an exhibition of grief. In another twist, the cremation ashes of a person slain by a foe might be worn as spiritual armor or a charm on a campaign of vengeance. (The same might be possible among Orlanthi, maybe with the additional legal twist that while visibly wearing these ashes, a revenge killing won't be subject to weregild.) In such cases, the funeral ashes would become a magical ingredient. Grazer sun cultists (and presumably Pentans and Char-un, too) erect platforms for birds of prey (or carrion) to devour the mortal meat. Since birds are creatures of the sky, in the end this is a burial by fire, too. There is no indication that the de-fleshed bones of Saraskos were removed from his last resting site. Shiny burial goods probably will be taken away by birds like crows and magpies, too. What exactly does "initiates of Orlanthi" mean now that lay membership has returned big way? I expect cremation to be the main male burial mode in Theyalan (Orlanthi) cultures. I wonder whether all the ashes of an Orlanthi cremation are buried, or only those bigger lumps of remains that don't get airborne. Having the fine material of one's ashes go with the wind surely is a form of Orlanthi burial, too, isn't it? Those bigger lumps of bone will be mixed with the charred or melted grave gifts. Female burial rites appear to vary. Body burials of shrouded corpses in the earth appear to be one mode. (It doesn't make much sense of the procession carrying the sleeping Ernalda to her tomb only going to her pyre.) An extension of this might be mummification. There are however the Teka urns mentioned in Thunder Rebels, in the context of the Lowfire husbands of an array of Ernalda's maids, and I suspect that this might be a practice from southern Esrolia. River and sea cultists might have a range of burial options in wetlands (bog mummies), on the bottom of bodies of water, floating down the river in a burial boat or on a raft, possibly setting that boat on fire, or giving the dead body to their merfolk overlords to "return to Magasta's Pool". Darkness cults may have rites that include consuming the deceased - the trolls definitely do. Others might employ insects to de-flesh the bones before stowing them away. Zorak Zorani have the praxis of posthumous employment of their dead bodies until hacked apart beyond recognition. There are bound to be some cultures that display the (prepared or de-fleshed) heads of their ancestors in their houses, or at least at their temples.

Don't forget Divine Intervention as the great villain's escape. The only way to capture someone with a remaining pool of rune points is to incapacitate them before they can use them if these rune points allow a magical escape. Offering ransom is a specific form of entering the hospitality of the captor. It is no coincidence that host and hostage have the same word stem. Breaking hospitality is secondary as a crime only to kinslaying. It does happen, it does impose a demeaning fine if your bonded Trickster did it (see the Lightbringer's Quest station at the bottom of the Obsidian Palace), and it will cause your allies to turn away from you. You end up as an outlaw. If you still don't trust your captive's oath, get a Humakti to cast a binding (Sever Spirit-inducing) Oath on you and your captive. That's about the best insurance that Glorantha offers short of maiming your captives. Actually, if you hold an oath-bonded Storm Voice for ransom, having him participate in your rites in a guest of the clan role is sort of mandatory. If he breaks the oath sworn by his deity, those will be the last RP he regained for a long, long time. Thanks to the Unity Battle and the World Council of Friends, there are few foes who won't be amenable to weregild. Chaos foes unbound by Lunar niceties, Zombies, and Tusk Riders aren't good prospects for surviving captivity. With trolls you have a fair chance, provided you know how to negotiate your ransom - read "A Tasty Morsel" in the collected Griselda stories. Heartland Lunars are no strangers to ransom and hospitality, although their definitions may be different from an Orlanthi's expectations. A ransom usualy exceeds the value a slave might have in the market. If there is a bounty on your head (or parts of it, like a beak), your ransom had better exceed that bounty significantly to make the extra fuss worth the while for the captor, including keeping other bounty hunters from snatching you up. Things get weird when your sworn in captor gets captured himself, or when you are robbed from your captor by a third party. But that's the scenario kind of complication.

If not as a scenario book, what would make this a RuneQuest Glorantha product? We do have an in-depth description of a clan in The Coming Storm and The Eleven Lights leading up to the Dragonrise. The actual composition of the clan leaders at the time of the Dragonrise is up to how the events of the Eleven Lights campaign turn out, but it is quite likely that the dithering clan chief with his Lunar-appeasing policy will be out of office before then, and otherwise that he'll be out of office as soon as the Lunar occupation crumbles. What we could do is an adaptation of what the Red Cow clan would look like after the Dragonrise in both HQG terms and in RQG terms. I had the opportunity to play in a test game of Ian's Dragonrise Heroquest scenario, and the characters Ian handed out would be a good guess for the next generation of Red Cow leadership, with a few political survivors of the previous ring mixed in. I hope that we can find a format which provides at least some ongoing support for the HeroQuest line. Possibly in the shape of the aperiodical Wyrms Footnotes, which would be a way for Chaosium to provide additional support for its line without having to adhere to the much higher standard of regular publications - black and white only illustrations still are the accepted standard for magazines, right?

I expected some outrage like this, but I stand with my original statement. Might makes right, and those niceties that you cite only pertain to others of their peer group. Orlanth cultists feel no qualms whatsoever deliverin death and devastation on Darjiinians or Dara Happans, and Praxians (Storm worshippers of a different bend) have no such qualms visiting similar devastation to their Theyalan neighbors. Umath did institute hospitality, which is the temporary extension of personhood to outsiders visiting his camp. Without intermarriage to other clans, those clans would be as much outsiders as everyone else, but most Orlanthi would think twice about going off to kill their sisters' offspring. The initial interaction with the durulz of Duck Valley shows exactly how civilized Orlanthi were. The duck hunt of 1613 instigated by Fazzur exploited that weakness in Orlanthi character, too. Orlanthi show loyalty to sworn friends and oath brothers - like Orlanth and Heler (although that has lots of sexual undertones, too), and they accept adoption through marriage like Beren/Elmal (and the other four Vingkotling husband kings). These people become kin. The people who aren't kin aren't protected from Orlanthi power play. Orlanthi tribes are hard to establish and to maintain, and when central authority breaks away, any semblance of respect for some other former members of the tribe is blown away. Vadrus is the embodiment of this kind of Storm behavior, but Orlanth himself used to be one of the Vadrudi, and only Ernalda's wiles and influence imposed the measure of civilization on him and his people that ultimately made them the pinnacle of human civilization at the Dawn. Disorder is never far from Storm. Orlanthi outlaws and Praxian outlaws quickly end up in Vadrudi territory - the Praxians have Gagarth, the Wild Hunter, as patron of their asocial elements. The Barantaros rebel band that grudgingly followed Kallyr was effectively a Vadrudi-style hero band, too. Storm Bull within Orlanthi culture is another collection of sociopaths barely contained within their kinship rules. The same goes for Eurmali. Zorak Zoran or Vorthan (the Fronelan cult worshipping the war god associated with the Red Planet, known as Jagrekriand by the Orlanthi and as Shargash by the Pelorians) is another barely contained deathbringer cult without the veneer of honor that is associated with Humakt (and not all expressions of Humakt). Likewise, Orlanth can be very ugly viewed from other perspectives. In Esrolia, this is Kodig, one of the three (or four) Bad Men of their myths. (But then he is a fair match to the ugliness brought about by their Grandmother despots.) Harald Smith (aka @jajagappa) created Orlantio as much of a trickster god in his Imther myths. And that Hero Wars era stuff about Bad King Urgrain? That's Orlanth, too. The Yggites and their overseas descendants among the Wolf Pirates are an example of a Vadrudi society. Earth worship doesn't necessarily come with moderation, either. The Dawn Age Pendali of Seshnela were a hybrid culture, led by mixed descendants of the lion hsunchen Basmoli and the resident Earth Priestesses (demigoddesses), and their warfare against the Malkioni of Froalar's lease (from one of the sons of Pendal) was terrible. The Solanthi participating in the Lion King's Feast of 1616 were led by a distant descendants of these, and a typical Orlanthi leader of his homeland: Greymane. And the Serpent Brotherhood of the Hykimi in the Great Forest (of Ralios, Seshnela and Fronela) was earth-influenced, too. That didn't make the Pralori rule over the neighbors of Tarinwood and Pralorela any less brutal. "Wait, these aren't storm worshippers!" No, although many descendants of these groups now are Orlanthi, and they all were worshippers of the Land Goddess, which made their conquests possible in the first place. The Kingdom of Tarsh was founded with the cooperation of the Shaker Temple and subscribed to its blood rites. Sorana Tor may have been a pleasant to look at goddess or demigoddess, but she was the avatar of Ana Gor, the deity of human sacrifice. The Illaro dynasty (from which Phargentes and Moirades are descended on their non-Lunar side) took this to the extreme, until Hon-eel channeled those activities elsewhere (the Corn Rites). The influence of Sartar and his peacemaking was another mitigating factor on the Sartarites, who may be some of the nicest Orlanthi you are likely to meet. Yet, when irated, his surviving grandsons waged a very brutal and successful war of assassination against the leaders of Nochet.

To kill a man and refuse to pay weregild can be a powerful statement, though. While it does equate to a certain level of outlawry, it can also be part of a strong war clan policy to remind the other clans how powerful the party perpretating the deed is. Provided that the killing itself was done within what is considered honorable, and that the cause for killing this individual was tied to upstart behavior of the slain. Storm worshippers are bullies. This is somewhat mitigated in the Orlanthi culture by the influence of Ernalda, but then Ernalda herself can also have a vicious streak and a long memory for insults. While there are myths where Ernalda is eager to show her loaded Storm husband another way, there are other incidents where she releases that loaded weapon to get the better of long-standing foes, as in "The Making of the Storm Tribe" where she tricks her old enemies of Darkness into attacking the assembled bunch of violent leaders and their followers. Two flies with a slap - storm guys united, dark folk beaten.

You'll have to discern whether a person was captured in a slave raid or whether a fighter in combat yields in exchange for ransom. Most people who have some kind of offensive magic will be able to yield for ransom. Those that cannot will end up as slaves. The point is when yielding for ransom, the yielding person gives their oath. They will expect fair treatment and provision so that their captors can receive the ransom, but in exchange they are to obey the reasonable demands of the captors. Only captives who wouldn't yield honorably would be subjected to slave bracelets. Biturian using them on Norayeep might only have been a way to transport them, but then Biturian's dealings with artifacts of high magic are extremely unusual or exaggerated anyway, sadly distracting from the story told. Blindfolds and conventional manacles go a long way to subdue rebellious captives, too, as does regular infliction of pain - if only pour encourager les autres. Organized slave-taking expeditions e.g. by Lunar tax collectors in occupied territories might use slave bracelets. It is quite possible that there is a slave bracelet industry somewhere in the Lunar Empire. Even if so, it is highly unlikely that their output is anywhere high enough that slaves will carry such items for the rest of their lives. More likely they only carry them while on the road to their new (somewhat permanent) owners. The permanent owners might use branding or similar methods to both deface existing identity marks and to impose some other spell of retaliation. We know of the Fonritian noose. But then, the one slave revolt of which we have seen at least a few panels in Prince of Sartar - Beat-Pot's rebellion - doesn't show any indication of either slave bracelets or markings on Beat-Pot while in the kitchen or defaced tattoos on his fellow rebels. Apparently, the Lunar method of keeping slaves under control was to mix slaves of varied origin in order to make organisation among them harder. Offering conversion to a slave cult as a way to privilege might be another insidious way to ensure long term obedience. Those slaves who won't be tamed provide the meat for gladiatorial games, high risk jobs or sacrifices (e.g. to maintaining the Glowline or the Corn Rites).

Niven's Known Space universe doesn't really have cockpits prior to the Pierson's Puppeteers selling their monomolecular hulls to the other sapients of Known Space. During the initial stages of the Man-Kzin Wars, space craft were sublight craft powered by plasma torches (which could double as weapons should some of the humans have skipped on their altruist medication). Those vessels had bridges rather than cockpits. Kzinti love boarding operations, for the thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction to feel their prey beneath their claws (and if pressurized, between their teeth). It is rumored that the Puppeteers used the Man-Kzin wars to cull the most aggressive and unsocial Kzinti traits out of the population by using them up in battles against those unpredictable space monkeys. Those fighter craft pilot felines were either the Kilrathi of the Wing Commander series or the Orions of the Starfire board game series (and books). The Kilrathi still hulk a bit above humans (at least above "aren't you a bit small to be a storm trooper" Mark Hamill), but are a lot less massive than the Kzin. IIRC, Orions are even slightly smaller of frame than humans.

If you already are at a 95% chance of succeeding, that's the best you can get while having to roll at all. There don't appear to be rules for magic that you can cast without making a roll.

The Countermagic debate with respect to e.g. Berserk and whether you can cast rune magic on top of it or whether you trigger the spell doing it in that sequence still isn't decided...

Now now, such threads show the true value of illumination or other ways to enlightenment (which are btw other such threads). You don't become any more stable, but you learn to compartmentalize. Mystics learn from austerity. The Glorantha tribe (aka its fandom) member goes where these questions are to experience similar conditions for their meditations.

Unless they have only the budget for slight latex add-ons to the faces, like Star Trek. The Ewoks of Star Wars are the equivalent of the ducks in Glorantha - diminutive, ridiculous, mean. The Other Suns "aliens" were just cheesy. The Kzinti are part of Niven's Known Space universe. Anderson had various cat-like humanoids encountered by Dominic Flandry (complete with primate-like mammalia in one case, IIRC), and also earlier a Cynthian ("dog-sized, bushy tailed and white furred except for a blue mask effect around the eyes") as one of the three crew members of David Falkayn's ship. The lion pride social structure apparently has its appeal for a carnivorous species with sexual dimorphism, like the Hani in the Chanur cycle. Niven's Kzinti with their females bred to not being able to speak are a weird inversion of that trope. But then the Gloranthan trolls are not that different except for the gender reversal. The Space Opera genre seems to humor the human habit for pattern recognition in its description of aliens. It usually has way too many chordate species, though. Even if you allow for a great number of endo-skeleton species, the chordata are a fairly unlikely candidate during the Cambrian Explosion to become a dominant life-form on the water planet, and having the spine as a carrying construct is plain bad engineering by evolution.

The bottle-neck in terms of production schedule seems to be art commission (but you'd need extra editors and layout folk, too). While Chaosium has succeeded to assemble a staff of talented artists for their Dragon Pass line. If another setting makes a splash, you'd need to assemble an additional team of artists and train them to produce the style of illustrations you want. Not necessarily an identical style, though, although it should be somewhat compatible with the styles used in the rules. The other problem is whether such additional teams would be economically viable. It looks like Chaosium has fairly broad shoulders as they have just taken back the Pendragon line and taken over the Seven Seas line and kickstarter fulfilment. But is the customer base broad enough that two different supplementt lines will sell? Judging by the need to reprint the rulebooks, it looks like there is quite some potential for customers, although scenarios etc. always sell a lot less than essential rules. Ensuring quality writing and editing shouldn't be that much of a bottle-neck if you look at the array of big names Jeff has mentioned. Chaosium does accept that putting out a publication that is up to their standard takes time, but that goes for each of these products, and in different steps. We might need a few clones of Jason, though. In terms of paper miniatures or miniatures, I think the way Petersen Games has gone to use their line of board game pieces as role-playing aids is the way to go. If we have such character cards, they should come with a board or card game you can play outside of the RPG.

Still, the SAN loss consequence rules are probably a good start for handling the exposure to the Kabalt liberating bolt attacks, once we get around to deal with Eastern Gloranthan mysticism.

I guess I'd go for LHBein, RVBein.

Look into the book that comes with the GM screen package for at least a few major Ernaldori characters.

You do know about The Eleven Lights and its time frame, do you? While it doesn't cover the Dragonrise itself, it does lead up to shortly before that. What we don't have is the campaign of Broyan's last years other than as Vasana's back story, or Argrath's journey that led him to be ready to step in at Storm Hill to deal with the Phargantite army from Tarsh, tying in with the Eleven Lights as one of his two magical units As I just wrote yesterday on rpg.net, the Mythic Iceland project by Pedro Ziviani should be progressing, and should be awesome. The campaign arc appears to touch all major hotspots of Viking activity. In my experience RuneQuest is a well-suited vehicle for fantastic Viking adventures, and I'd like to see one in print again.

Yelmalio lost his shield at the Hill of Gold. While his templars still wield the physical one, do they have to have the magical one?

can remain, for the German "nicht anwendbar" Zufalls- in combined words, like Zufallszahl for Random Number, or zufällig as adjective. Durchschnitt (as a noun), durchschnittlich (as adjective) I need to see the context for this. "Ohne Leerstellen?" 1/KR, I'd guess (Kampfrunde for Melee Round) rechtes/linkes Hinterbein Kuppe (with horses at least), Kreuz, hinterer Körper Brust (same as chest), vorderer Körper rechtes/linkes Vorderbein I'll check whether my android account still gives me access to a Google drive.

My 25 year old argument for Hallstatt era folk (Celts in the original, continental sense of the word, as far as I am concerned) still is the operative parallel - Jeff wrote "Urnfield" instead, which were the direct precursors. The people who had interaction with Scythians or related rider folk along the Danube. I guess that does give you "more ancient", in fact, more ancient than Ancient. Apart from the Megalithic monuments, there is very little in central, western and northern Europe from the local Bronze Age (that took over from the copper-using chalcolithic age before less than three centuries after the first bronze was used in the Fertile Crescent and lasted some 800 years after the Bronze Age collapse in the Mediterranean) that was built from stone, but there were quite a few significant structures made from the ubiquitious building material wood. This continued well into the early Middle Ages east of the Rhine, with sanctuaries like Cape Arkona on Rügen but also earliest Bronze Age henges entirely built from wood. Even the mediaeval castles in the region where I live were built from wood atop natural stone foundations. The best lasting archaeological evidence for fortifications are the grass-sod built earthen ramparts. There are no recognizable defensive stone structures from the Megalith era. Happier times?

All I know about the Six Ages background as an android user rather than Apple customer is the Six Ages wiki and some of the discussion here, so I cannot even speculate on the canonicity of the material without having seen it. I agree that the Theyalan syncretism and the subsequent suppression by Lokamayadon, then revival by Harmast collecting bits of myths from the Hendriki, Esrolians and (after returning Arkat) also the Ralian Orlanthi who may have been less suppressed by Tarumath than their Dragon Pass fellow worshippers, may have overwritten what used to be distinct identities or at least aspects earlier on. With my understanding of cyclical time in the Godtime, local events can be seen as reflections of universal events separated from other such reflections by both time and space, with true different names for the instances of the universal actors which we have come to identify as Orlanth and Yelm. Esrolian Orlanth might still have been identified as Kodig when Harmast visited draught-plagued Esrolia during the events of Ten (12?) Women Well Loved (which really should be published as Gloranthan fiction soonish, if only in a way similar to the later Middle Earth releases of the Tolkien estate, now that Greg cannot finish the manuscript any more). (If you wonder what this is about, this was another instance of Gloranthan fandom pre-empting internet crowd financing. In this case it was a Patreon-like initiative by Fabian Küchler to pay Greg for writing the Harmast novel during a period of financial hardship. The manuscript was made available to all the sponsors of the project, and well worth the money.) In the Antirius Hill of Gold myth, the enemies include the cruel god (who might be ZZ, or Shargash/Shadzor) and the Selfish God (who might be the Storm King). It stays silent about the cold woman. Assigning these epithets rather than distinct names might be the better praxis. Shargash and Jagrekriand both describe the dismemberer of Umath, but might be hard to identify by third party worshippers as the same entity that I prefer to call Tolat rather than Vorthan.

Basically it is the question how much Orlanthland architecture survived (Orlanthland was the great urban Orlanthi polity that emerged after the Gbaji Wars and then turned into the EWF), and how much of the ancient Vingkotling ruins with their cyclopean walls remained below that. Personally, I prefer the city panorama of the Swenstown east gate in RQG p.162 over the aerial view of thatched roofs in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes p.240, but I did not expect this island mediterranean look in a Sartarite hillfort. That map/aerial view wouldn't be out of place on cyprus (except for the central European architecture the Venetians imported there). Blackmoor and his parentage: Blackmoor the Rabid was presented as son of Kallai in King of Sartar (Hardcover edition/pdf) p.120 (Composite History of Dragon Pass), but as Kangharl Blackmor Kagradusson in the Colymar King List, p.180. Apparently Jeff took the Colymar Book as more authoritative when he wrote Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, quite likely following how he had played several campaigns based on the Colymar (e.g. the Varmandi, as presented in "What My Father Told Me" for RQ3 Orlanthi when we first exchanged campaign notes on Heortland). However, the Chaosium house campaign probably was the source for the Composite History entry which had Blackmoor as Kallai's son. IIRC the Glorantha vault with all the unpublished notes from the house campaign and similar treasures only made its way to Berlin after Kingdom of Heroes was published, when Moon Design bought the rights to Glorantha from Greg, so this would have been material unavailable to Jeff when he wrote Kingdom of Heroes. Hundreds of arguments had been typed on King of Sartar exegesis, which of the contradictory timelines and name droppings to trust and which to distrust like e.g. the deaths of Moirades, 1610 in congress with Jar-eel, and at the conquest of Furthest after the Dragonkill. The new Fazzur segment in the Hardcover mentions Moirades as king in 1613, 1619 and after the Dragonkill, too. My personal theory is that Moirades ascended to the Red Moon during/after siring Phargentes on Jar-eel, but recovered (at least occasionally and returned to Furthest to meddle with the weak reign of his older son Pharandros. Relying on anything in King of Sartar is fraught with danger of being contradicted. Since the Guide is supposed to be 99,99% correct, I'll accept the deceased state of Moirades for 1621, but not for the mess after the Phargantite assassination of Fazzurites in 1625. It is possible that Moirades acted as an angelic guide for his at this point quite inept son, or that he re-took the reigns of the kingdom as well as he could while staying on the Red Moon most of the time. P.154 even credits Moirades (or at least his army) with killing Kallyr at the Battle of Queens. If there was lunar magic involved, that credit might be deserved.

I am fairly trained in gutting and even filleting marine fish and might be able to transfer that experience to other vertebrates, but I suppose I would suck big time at giving the proper grace right now. I have no idea how much this Peaceful Cut business applies to fishing, anyway, although it will be useful for Zola Fel river folk and Pelaskites to know. While it is good praxis to cut the fish so it can bleed out, that doesn't exactly kill them. Usually you just stun them badly by hitting their head with or against some wood before applying the cut, with a good chance that the stun is permanent.

Termites in Prax: I think that their presence or absence does make a great difference in the amount of food available to herd men, frogs, hyenas, birds of various kinds (that want something else than bluebottle flies). Termite presence also changes the landscape. There are no other grasslands to be inhabited by termites than on Genertela. I don't think that the Pamaltelan herbs of the veldt would support termites. (You can still get the type that infests dead wood near forests or where humans build with timber.) Bluebottle flies may have entered Prax only alongside the Pol Joni and their herds. The impoverished ecology of Prax and the Wastes has a few weird consequences. Take for instance fuel for campfires. The Beast Rider tribes have a ready source of fuel dropping out of the behinds of their herd beasts. How much of that do they collect? What happens to the droppings they don't collect, provided they don't collect all? This is where the insect population of Prax comes in. Are there scarabs? We know that the bogs do support teeming insect life, with giant insects around Corflu. What about the drier parts of Prax and the Wastes? What do the Men-and-a-Half use for fuel, and can they get more flame out of fuel than the Beast Riders, or do they have to go on gathering expeditions near Beast Rider herds? Do they even trade for fuel with the Beast Riders? They don't appear to raid cattle (they are absent from "Khan of Khans", too). What Praxian (or other) food do bachelor newtlings consume? Can they feed only in the Praxian wetlands? By "lost ancestors" I mean some of the past members of these tribes who might become available to their Axis Mundi, other than just the heroquesters and their beasts from Godtime. The Heroquesters could have contacted some of them in Godtime, too.

Thanks for indulging. rather. That's what my purely rational observation of the animist world view has led me to believe, too. But then, Human wasn't born as a hunter, he needed to be taught to hunt (and later even butcher his herd kin) in Praxian myth. Is it really a different form of personhood, or is it native destiny of the carnivores (and carnivorous omnivores) vs. cultural acquisition of killing for life? Sorry that I ignore all the Amazon jungle context, but this is the Prax thread. We know about the log walkers from Wendaria and their Golden Age hunting that allowed the creatures they had hunted with their version of the Peaceful Cut (which involved paintin the likeness of the beast onto a wall, to give it a temporary home until the next morning, or otherwise a place to re-emerge, accepting the painting as its new manifestation in tomorrow's reality). Basically the same deal Thor gets when slaughtering one of the billy goats drawing his chariot (Thor needs to collect all the bones undamaged inside the hide to re-awaken his beast). In Golden Age Wendaria, there would have been carnivorous beasts, too. The beast myths (e.g. the Fiwan witnesses of Earthmaker's Creation) are from all types of beasts, probably to the chagrin of God Learner propoinents of an universal elemental progression. (But then the beast progeny matrix presented in Anaxial's Roster comes up with a quite unexpected 5 by eight table.) The coming of Death ended that..Beasts that got hunted stayed dead, and needed to be slowly reborn rather than re-emering after a short period of absence. This would have affected all hunters, whether beasts or humans. And human hunters had to shft their efforts from greeting the slain beasts back into life the next morning to ensuring their safe passage into the spirit world, from where they could be born again. Now to the question at hand - was this rebirth in a new generation rather than the return to their old self in a reconstituted body the ancient way that happened to all beasts eaten by other beasts, or did they have their equivalent of invisible villages, shamans etc. to get this going? Is this what the oriastic and bloody Wild Temple rites which have both beastmen and ordinary-appearing beasts participating are about? Did Genert's Garden have a version of this? Looking through the cult skills, I notice that neither Telmori nor Yinkini receive Peaceful Cut, while Foundchild, Odayla and Waha do. This might mean that all children of Fralar are exempt from this rite, possibly having it as an innate ability. Odayla, although a bear god, doesn't seem to have a claim on Fralar as his ancestor (any more). Yinkin does, despite his choice to stand with his maternal half-brother rather than his paternal ones. The Telmori have no need for Foundchild or an equivalent for Brother Dog, Telmor fills all these needs. Yinkin is part of a much more complex environment, but either he doesn't need anything like this, either, or he just doesn't care. I am curious how this will turn out for the Basmoli Berserks when they get their RQG treatment. The only other Hsunchen in the region (Harrek) is long past such considerations. I do note that it was Teknor who ate the sun, without any reard for its return. Baboons don't have Peaceful Cut, either. But then neither do Men-and-a-Half, who do have Foundchild as one of their cult options. Do Praxians who worship Daka Fal or Storm Bull get Peaceful Cut? Does Lay Membership convey this skill? Not so fast... I don't think that there are carnovorous beasts that are part of the Covenant. The carnivore beasts had to adapt along with Foundchild in the Lesser Darkness, not along with the Beast Riders at the end of the Greater Darkness. Eiritha still is "in" the compact of the hunted, along with Frog Woman and probably a number of other spirits. The Covenant is unusual in making her offspring (humans, Morokanth) part of the Eaters rather than the hunted/eaten. True. This is a question to (and from) people on the track of holiness, e.g. assistant shamans. I don't think it takes Enlightenment to arrive at such questions, rather that people who have such thoughts volunteer themselves for religious duties. I would differentiate between pastoralists slaughtering a herd beast from their herds (Covenant, whether raided from other tribes or beasts from their own tribe) or hunters killing wild prey (which may be unaligned Eirithan beasts, too, like e.g. wild zebras).