Camels

[BigAl]

So this will be a bit of a weird question but I was wondering if anyone had stats for Camels in RQ or BRP?

 

I'm planning to translate an old (very old) DnD scenario called the Great Jebezan Camel Caper for use as a RQ one off adventure but cannot find Camel stats anywhere.

thanks in advance.

[Bren]

Camels seem like they fall in between horses and Praxian High Llamas. Averaging the stats would probably work out close. Then remember the camels much better ability to travel long distances without water and walk on soft sand.

[AndrewTBP]

The only mention of camels I can recall is in the Ratslaff article. 

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/prosopaedia/deities/r/ratslaff/

[soltakss]

This is for Mythras, but it should be easy to convert back to RuneQuest.

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 5/16/2023 at 11:25 AM, Bren said:

Camels seem like they fall in between horses and Praxian High Llamas.

Camels are just a kind of old-world llama, actually. You can breed them.

[g33k]

4 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Camels are just a kind of old-world llama, actually. You can breed them.

n.b. the "Bactrian" camel (domesticated) turns out to be an entirely-different species (by over 1M years' divergence) from the Wild Bactrian Camel.

Pretty sure nobody bred for nothin' 1MYA.
Unless you're into the religion/science crossover, wherein the Almighty works His(Their) creation -- at least in part -- via the means we're slowly discovering through science.

Or we're crossover'ing into the Mythos, and Mi-Go / etc breeding programs.

[jean]

In the thead

New Monster-Mantikhoras

You have stats for various kinds of camels for BRP

 

Jean

 

 

[Qizilbashwoman]

11 hours ago, g33k said:

n.b. the "Bactrian" camel (domesticated) turns out to be an entirely-different species (by over 1M years' divergence) from the Wild Bactrian Camel.

Can you provide the info here? My understanding is as follows (sample source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899786/ )

They are distinct populations but the domestic Bactrian is a limit gene-set from within the Wild Bactrian population probably dating to about 3000+ BCE. Bactrian domestication was likely in northestern Central Asia and the Subarctic, but it really became popular in the Iranian region.

The dromedary is a recent domestication, within the 1st milennium and probably in the Arabian Peninsula.

The three old-world species of Camelids are dromedaries, domestic Bactrian, and wild Bactrian. They can all interbreed with each other, and they produce sterile offspring with the two New World lineages (Vicugna and Lama).

The New World lineages (llama, wanako/guanaco v. vicuña and alpaca) can create fertile breeds as well despite being in two separate suborders.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Qizilbashwoman

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Can you provide the info here? My understanding is as follows (sample source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899786/ )

They are distinct populations but the domestic Bactrian is a limit gene-set from within the Wild Bactrian population probably dating to about 3000+ BCE. Bactrian domestication was likely in northestern Central Asia and the Subarctic, but it really became popular in the Iranian region.

We may actually be saying the same thing...?

Camelus bactrianus (domesticated) vs Camelus ferus (wild); some experts consider them species & subspecies, but AFAIK the broad consensus is that they differ.  Many people just call them both "Bactrian" camels, in English; sometimes (tho not always) using "wild Bactrian" (or just "wild camel") for ferus.

It is, I suspect, simply the informality & ignorance of layman's usage.  As informal terms, there is no precise Mandalorian "this is the way."  The fact that there *is* a difference of opinion among the experts is likely part of perpetuating the lay usage.  It also means that a literature-review or citation-list is unusually long; if you want me to assemble one, I'll PM you as that'd be *WAY* off-topic for the thread!  The balance of this is, arguably, of some relevance to Gloranthan camels... so onwards I trudge into the desert wastes!

The separate (un-domesticated) Bactrian species (I believe called C. ferus because it was taken to be the feral of C. bactrianus) is both morphologically and genetically similar, but not identical; they diverged about 1.1MYA.  As best I understand, there are no purely "wild" populations of C. bactrianus; humans have moved them about and their genetic diversity is more geographic than following a wild-vs-domesticated pattern.  Isolated populations of C. ferus differ genetically by up to 3% from C. bactrianus.  Genetic & other research is ongoing.  C. ferus is critically endangered.

There is *some* drift between C. bactrianus and C. ferus -- some owners deliberately breed their bactrianus cows to ferus bulls, and as human populations expand into ferus ranges, their bactrianus herds sometimes accidentally interbreed with ferus.

There are feral populations of C. bactrianus; but AFAIK they do not tend to merge with C. ferus herds.

C. dromedarius (the 1-humped Dromedary) is also a domesticated species.  There is (afaik only human-forced) hybridization between C. bactrianus with the Dromedary; this complicates genetic studies of ferus-vs-bactrianus tremendously, as C. dromedarius shares some genetic markers with C. ferus that are not in the C. bactrianus population, so a dromedarius cross 200 years back could show up as ferus; I am insufficiently expert to know just how much these lineages can be distinguished from one another in the bactrianus population.