The Survival Covenant, animals.........and animal spirits - a rambling multi part question

[Agentorange]

Now the Survival covenant myth explains why 4 legs ( mostly ) don't have intelligence and 2 legs ( mostly ) do and why 2 legs tend to prey on 4 legs. It certainly doesn't explain everything but it does cover the ground ( mostly ).

But this of course is the Praxian explanation for things and there's an awful lot more to Genertela than just Prax and the wastes, let alone the rest of Glorantha. So what's the explanation for the rest of the world. If I went to Esrola or Loskalm or Peloria and asked why animals were unintelligent and people were intelligent would I get the same story with some of the names changed, would I get a different story entirely that covered the same mythic ground ? Or would I get a strange look and people going " dude, animals have always been like that - it's just the way things are , what an odd notion to be sure " furthermorre....why did all the animals who weren't praxian animals end up like that ?

All of which mythic curiousity leads me to an in game question.

In the Bestiary the animals don't have INT or CHA....but animal spirits have both. The core rules say  of the spirit world" it maintains a loose correlation with the middle world" p371  and on page 372 that a praxian on the spirit plane might find an area where " living, extinct, or yet to be spirits reside"

Which leads to me ask why animal spirits have INT and CHA but animals don't ?

If all of this has been done to death , please feel free to go it's HERE....and I'll go and look

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by Agentorange

[Richard S.]

The survival covenant myth isn't about how humans and animals became different, it's about how praxian riding beasts and praxian people became different. The separation of human and animal is a thing from much further back, likely the middle to late green age as things were starting to diversify, and a few of the Hsunchen tribes are probably the only people to give it much thought.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Richard S.

[Agentorange]

15 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

The survival covenant myth isn't about how humans and animals became different, it's about how praxian riding beasts and praxian people became different. The separation of human and animal is a thing from much further back, likely the middle to late green age as things were starting to diversify, and a few of the Hsunchen tribes are probably the only people to give it much thought.

Ah, ok, is there a published myth or something I can read anywhere ?

[Eff]

So I'm going to drill down a bit, because I suspect that in most of the setting, if you went and asked people why animals don't talk, you would be met with incomprehension, an answer that suggests you're probably hitting the hazia a bit too hard for asking it, or in extreme cases, being accused of being a Red (Moon worshiper) who's attempting to contaminate our precious mythological fluids with fluorine. And occasionally someone will mention awakened animals, which do talk and are intelligent. Or they might point to Beastspeech and claim that animals can talk, you're just not listening. 

But let's leave all that aside for the moment and zoom right back out of Glorantha. The obvious, out-of-setting explanation for this is that nobody has ever worked on Glorantha from the assumption that animals and humans all were people back in the day and only diverged later. So Prax has this origin story because of the need for a mythological explanation for why we have these pastoral communities of humans (and some intelligent tapirs) which are all tied to particular animals, and that produces the mythological contests and survival covenant. But nobody else has a need for this kind of mythological explanation to explain why they milk cows and butcher them. This informs what I'm about to tell you as we zoom back into Glorantha at high speeds. 

There is no mythological explanation for why this is the case.

Indeed, if we look at the monomythical understanding, humans and animals come from totally different sources and so the idea that they were once equals is, while not impossible, is certainly unlikely. 

So from this point forward, I am going to be making things up profusely, because that is ultimately what needs to happen if this is bugging you and you want an explanation- you're gonna have to make things up, or take things that someone else has made up and adopt them. 

Now, maybe the intent is that Praxians only became human during the Silver Age and before that they were basically and for all purposes herd-people. But if it is or if it isn't, it's unaesthetic so into the circular file it goes. We're operating under the assumption that humans and animals were once both of similar intelligence and propensity for speech. So perhaps what we have here is the idea of the Survival Covenant writ large across Glorantha. To survive the Great Darkness, humans and animals largely took diverging strategies to heart. Humans focused on tool use and abandoned... something. Maybe our ability to live on grass? Animals abandoned speech and consciousness, generally, in favor of maintaining other useful attributes. With exceptions. Baboons, the giant otters of the New Fens in Maniria, arguably ducks and keets... these are all creatures that suggest this wasn't a binary split, but a continuum. 

There are occasionally throwbacks, naturally awakened animals. And with the proper knowledge and techniques, the dormant potential for speech can be awakened again, consciousness flickering back to life. The barrier is not permanent and impermeable, but it is one that most people assume is natural and eternal, making it one of the strongest strands of Arachne Solara's Web. Unless someone starts plucking it like a banjo string. 

I'll leave the details up to you to invent and adapt.

[g33k]

To me, a critical component is the place.

This is what happened in Genert's Garden, to the 2-legs and 4-legs who were there.

Why were all those animal-looking 4-legs actually sentient people???  Dunno.  Ask Genert.

 

[Agentorange]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

 

 

So from this point forward, I am going to be making things up profusely, because that is ultimately what needs to happen if this is bugging you and you want an explanation- you're gonna have to make things up, or take things that someone else has made up and adopt them. 

 

You know what set me off ? It was simply wondering why animal spirits had INT and CHA and animals didn't and why there was a difference. you know how it is, one thing leads to another and before you know it you're pulling apart why the entire world works the way it does.....

The difference between the 2 does still bug me though 😁

[jajagappa]

40 minutes ago, Agentorange said:

It was simply wondering why animal spirits had INT and CHA and animals didn't

Clearly the experience of Death is a transformative experience that endows the animal spirits with newfound intelligence. 🙂

[Joerg]

What changed aren't necessarily the animals, what changed are the humans. The Hsunchen still are able to talk to and understand their totemic beasts, and to some extent their prey and their predators, too. It is by engaging in agriculture and non-Hsunchen forms of pastoralism that the humans lost that ability.

This can be seen as a loss of innocence. Intelligence in the RuneQuest sense may be a thing similar to illumination, an acquisition that cannot be undone (other than by the ritual applicable to the Praxian covenant and divine intervention or similar).

[soltakss]

11 hours ago, Agentorange said:

If I went to Esrola or Loskalm or Peloria and asked why animals were unintelligent and people were intelligent would I get the same story with some of the names changed, would I get a different story entirely that covered the same mythic ground ?

You wouldn't get the same story, for the Survival Covenant only applies to Prax.

11 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Or would I get a strange look and people going " dude, animals have always been like that - it's just the way things are , what an odd notion to be sure " furthermorre....why did all the animals who weren't praxian animals end up like that ?

Maybe not. Some cultures would have a story as to why animals cannot speak. They won't always be the same.

11 hours ago, Agentorange said:

In the Bestiary the animals don't have INT or CHA....but animal spirits have both. The core rules say  of the spirit world" it maintains a loose correlation with the middle world" p371  and on page 372 that a praxian on the spirit plane might find an area where " living, extinct, or yet to be spirits reside"

Which leads to me ask why animal spirits have INT and CHA but animals don't ?

In my opinion, animal spirits are closer to the intelligent form, before animals lost their intelligence, so they retain it.

 

[Brian Duguid]

11 hours ago, Richard S. said:

The separation of human and animal is a thing from much further back, likely the middle to late green age as things were starting to diversify, and a few of the Hsunchen tribes are probably the only people to give it much thought.

IMO most or all of the Hsunchen tribes will have a myth to explain why some of their tribe have 2-legs and some have 4-legs. There's an example in Jamie Revell's book on Jonstown Compendium, Bearwalkers, of this type of myth, and I've written at least one more for the Hsunchen book I'm working on. I think the Hsunchen will typically have myths only to explain the division within their own people, or other peoples they have close dealings with. I doubt they give much thought to the wider issue of animal/human separation: that stuff is for the God Learners. If they think about it at all, my view is they will view most or all non-Hsunchen humans to be "fallen" Hsunchen, who lost their beast connection by abandoning the Hsunchen way of life. There are echoes here of the expulsion from Eden, and of the real-world historical development from hunter/gatherer/animist -> agriculturalist/town-dweller/theist. The shift from animist to theist goes along with an externalisation of primary magical power: humans come to rely upon the magic of gods, mediated through a priesthood, rather than through direct contact with spirits and their own internal beast soul.

11 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Ah, ok, is there a published myth or something I can read anywhere ?

There was an interesting text fragment (presented as a bit of Lhankor Mhy or similar lore) in Tales of the Reaching Moon #9, which I've copied below:

Quote

According to our oldest records, the Brithini once claimed to be the descendants of the only ‘true’ humans on Glorantha … it is well known among Western scholars that the Brithini refer to almost all non-Western races as ‘animal-men’, or, more precisely, ‘animals with human form’ … during the Golden Age, when they were much more open, the Brithini claimed that as they had travelled around the world they ‘awakened’ various animals and taught them to assume human form. This was apparently their explanation for the origin of the Hsunchen, and no-one knows if it is true. Some of these animal-men then proceeded to lose touch with their beast-selves and attempted to imitate human ways and even civilization, especially the ape-men and monkey-people.

This is only a Brithini claim, obviously. Perhaps they are also ultimately "out of animals" and in denial of the truth. However, see also page 75 of the Glorantha Sourcebook, if you have that, which has an in-world account of the view that:

Quote

before the War of the Gods most of the Surface World was peopled by the pure races of the Hsunchen. There were Goat-People, Horse-People, Cat-People, Bull-People, and many others. But due to the influences of the War of the Gods and the War with Chaos the nations mingled, losing their brotherhoods with the animals

Actually, that's also online here. If you thing there is a grain of truth in either account, then what is clear is that "ordinary" humans are the oddity. Beasts, and beast-people, were the norm at one point in mythic development.

11 hours ago, Eff said:

Indeed, if we look at the monomythical understanding, humans and animals come from totally different sources and so the idea that they were once equals is, while not impossible, is certainly unlikely. 

For this one, we have the Glorantha Sourcebook again, page 87. This indicates that in the Green Age, the Form Runes were made in order: Dragonewt -> Plant -> Animal -> Man. This doesn't necessarily imply that the human form came "from" the animal form, but there's certainly a progression: humanoid races could not be created until after beasts were already present in the world. In my Hsunchen book I'm speculating further about this. Involving baboons, inevitably.

10 hours ago, Agentorange said:

You know what set me off ? It was simply wondering why animal spirits had INT and CHA and animals didn't and why there was a difference. you know how it is, one thing leads to another and before you know it you're pulling apart why the entire world works the way it does.....

The difference between the 2 does still bug me though 😁

I see this just as a game-book simplification, but you could tie this to Eff's suggestions above. Imagine that the Hsunchen still represent the "purist" example (albeit much compromised) of peoples who saw beast and human forms much like garments to put on or off. They know that their human members and beast members are the same people at heart. Their souls can incarnate into either body. If such a Hsunchen soul is found in the spirit world, as an animal spirit, why would it not have INT and CHA? It will need them if it is incarnated into human form in its next life. One view would be that they are retained when embodied (at birth) in animal form - just suppressed, or inaccessible, or frankly, still there, but the animal normally sees no need to express them. The aspects of the soul that are expressed depend on the natal form.

I think it's important that these remain speculation, that there is no one answer to the question, but just a range of possibilities that might then emerge within individual myths and stories. Otherwise we're just back to the God Learners again. And that's never good.

[French Desperate WindChild]

note that, just to complexify, there are  among animals, some wih INT and CHA. At least one fish is  a Zola Fel priest , after all !

so from my perspective, I would say :

 

there was a time when all living creatures where "full" (INT, CHA, etc...)

Because a lot of different events (curse, own decision, war, convenant, chaos, ...) some species lost their "sentience" , but their ancestors (spirits) continue to have it, and sometimes, some individuals emerge with sentience. Having the rune may protect  from a curse, at least partialy.