Ali the Helering

I am afraid I cannot remember precisely, since it dates from touring castles 40 years ago. There were also many purely lead mining areas as well, so I wouldn't expect it to be localised to that extent. As you say, it was at gatehouses.

Apparently traces have been found under 'murder holes', so it was used. Lead was a by-product of silver mining as well as a directly mined metal, so it was reasonably accessible in the medieval, particularly since lead output doubled during the post-Black Death recovery.

In Britain, at least, boiling oil was not a thing, but molten lead was. It had the added advantage that it could be reclaimed after the siege!

Say farewell to any unsuspecting table you drop them on....

Returning to the OP, I don't think an Aldryan would kill another for food, but rather because they are an enemy. I don't see any reason to believe they would waste good nutrients afterwards.

And the Romans, and the Jews (with the Edomite deities)

Very true, but not applicable to the period about which we are corresponding. Yep. Occasionally being the operative word. As I said in my post, seldom. Unfortunately the extent of such success was normally curtailed by the reaction against it. I am not too sure what the Soviet Union has to do with this - can you explain, please?

Mythic Iceland has a great deal open to adaptation

Historically, that has seldom been the case, however. The use of violence by the elite or by those sanctioned by a local elite has frequently been accepted.

Ahh. The difference is that you originally wrote that that was the sole content of those libraries. 'Many of the cases' is a bit of a qualification, and with that I certainly wouldn't quibble.

Which is a true advantage!

Not sure about 'libraries', but you may know better than a member of the clergy.... A ranking member of the clergy in the UK once said to me concerning the very dodgy outcome of a disciplinary procedure "Ali, it's not what you've done, it's who you know." Unfortunately, the church is a human institution. All too human.😢

Actually, there are many cultures that have romanticised egalitarian social structures, including most western liberal democracies. I am in favour of such social structures, but not in favour of romanticising them! The Arthurian myths are not so easily 'lumped together' though - there is a marked difference between the Mabinogion and the French geste. While I am a great admirer of William Marshal, and his military abilities and atypical behaviour, I think that you over-estimate the success and effect of the Magna Carta. Representative government in the UK didn't truly exist until the Representation of the People Act in 1928, with female suffrage. Until then it was the domain of select and unrepresentative groupings.

Or a Nysalorian ability?

Would Salvor Hardin quip that "Amazon is the last refuge of the incompetent."?

May your year's end be joyous, and your New Year a hell of a lot better than this one😇

Your Tubers Will Vary?

Although there is nothing to rival the feel of Maran's feet hitting the ground as the books thump on the table.....

How stable are the demographics of the Empire? We need a birth/bloody slaughter balance indicator....

Thank you!!!! I have been looking for that document for two years, having forgotten where I saw it in the first place....

Sometimes one can bond over past hostility, as well. I knew two veterans of the war between the Afrika Korps and the British 8th Army who became firm friends, even though one of them might actually have shot the other's finger off! (They had actually identified precisely where they were on that day, and realised they were firing at each other from neighbouring sand dunes...)

One certainly wouldn't want Yelmalions to have any attitudes that might encourage people to join other cults, of course. After all, Elmali don't enslave entire populations...

Put him on a leash and use him for comic &/or disastrously inappropriate effect. 😁

Nope, not dumb at all.

Hey, get with the gig man, stop being so gender stereotypical... Carahue for Ogier, Alianora the Swan May for Morgan!