Non-social beast totems, human-beast relations

[Joerg]

When discussing the Rhino tribe of Prax, I noticed that there are a number of beast folk forming human-shaped societies rather than their totemic beast's solitary life-style.

For the Rhino Tribe of Prax, the problem is solved by the magic of Waha's covenant. According to @David Scott, by entering a Covenant herd the rhinos stop behaving like the solitary behemoths they are and become a flock of bad-tempered individuals tolerating others of their kind within looking distance (i.e. very close by). Which places all of the concerns of how the society adapts to the human/beast bond on the herds. How is herd leadership arranged? What about mating rights? Do you get bachelor herds for excess males and "queen cow"-led herds of females with a stud?

Another difficult case are the Rathori. Bears are solitary beasts requiring quite a bit of territory to feed their bulk and get some fat for the winter. The only occasions that bears come together are salmon season or (in case of the non-Gloranthan Polar Bears) waiting for the sea to freeze over. If the Rathori pair up with bears that don't change into humans, they'll need lots of territory. Even the few people sharing a tent are way more social contact that a wild bear would tolerate.

Both with Rathori and Telmori, the human organisations appear to institutionalize the pup groupings under a mother (bear) or a mated pair (wolves). (The old myth of wolf packs having alpha males and non-related adults accepting that leadership results from observations of an artificial pack in captivity.) Pup behavior allows adults to remain with their leaders instead of taking off on their own. The result of this behavior of wolves in our world was the domestic dog - with some selective breeding to adapt the dog to the human signals, which isn't required among the Telmori because they have learned the wolf signals. Still, a pack of non-man-shaped wolves accompanying a Telmori group will behave much different from feral wolves. A group of bears in Rathori company must be in it for the salmon, or whatever other goodies the humans have to offer.

The human-beast bond with one specific totemic beast is another unusual relation. For most Praxians this is their personal mount, which may be awakened as an allied spirit by those strong enough in magic. Praxians, Pralori, Mraloti (?), Galanini and presumably the moose-, yak- and reindeer hsunchen form a rider-steed connection. (Thankfully the Telmori don't...) The steed benefits from an extra pair of eyes and weapons to defend it from predators. (Benefits for the riders should be obvious.) Communication between rider and steed is mostly tactile. A Sartarite riding a Praxian herd beast will have a lot less control over and communication with his steed than a Praxian riding his totemic beast - something of a problem for the mothers of the unicorn tribe, too - they get to ride the (step-?) mothers of their unicorns, or prospective heifers for mating.

Makes me wonder how a "cattle" raid by unicorn riders works out - the unicorn stallion singles out a heifer, impregnates it, and makes it follow him to the waiting women who welcome it into their herd?

Steeds (or beasts of burden) don't get to exhibit much of a feral beast's behavior while serving their humans. How much of a nomad's day is dedicated to letting his steed vent out it animal instincts, rolling in the dust (or mud), lazing around chewing cud or socializing with the other herd beasts?

The Telmori brother bond between human and wolf is another highly artificial behavior. The Basmoli of Seshnela appear to have had a similar bond, so I would guess that the same pattern can be found with leopard, tiger or Andrewsarchus hsunchen. The term "brother" indicates a litter-mate relationship without any of the partners in a superior role, or a situation where yearling or older siblings take care of their cubs (which role division may flip back and forth between four-legs and two-legs depending on the challenge they face), at least with pack predators like wolves or lions. With tigers, it could be an emulation of the mate bond.

I wonder what visiting a camp of wolverine hsunchen (after befriending at least one of them) would feel like.

 

[David Scott]

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

For the Rhino Tribe of Prax, the problem is solved by the magic of Waha's covenant. According to @David Scott, by entering a Covenant herd the rhinos stop behaving like the solitary behemoths they are and become a flock of bad-tempered individuals tolerating others of their kind within looking distance (i.e. very close by).

They are a herd of happy Rhinos happy in the knowledge that Eiritha has blessed them and their fellow herd mates. None of that bad-tempered stuff otherwise you'd be an idiot to try and ride one.

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Which places all of the concerns of how the society adapts to the human/beast bond on the herds. How is herd leadership arranged? What about mating rights? Do you get bachelor herds for excess males and "queen cow"-led herds of females with a stud?

The Rhino tribe are a low priority piece of work for me as are all the Independents. They are likely to get their own book or appear as a bunch of WF articles. Although there are the largest of the Independents, they are still pretty small (4500 men, 4500 women, 9000 children). I don't have the detail at the moment for a full answer, but based on Sandy's previous info they are likely to be similar to the structure to that of Bison - Bison form separate herds made up of a main herd of cows and calves, a bachelor herd of bulls and an occasional lone bull. I'd suggest that Rhino bachelor herds are small and eventually break into solo males. 

Pavis GTA says "The Rhinoceros Riders normally travel in small bands consisting of a Rider and his family, riding a single rhino with its young. A few families might make a clan, staying near each other."

This is one of the Prax book's boxes

"Praxian Tribal beasts are not Earth animals

 

Praxian tribal beasts may look like their Earth counterparts and be generally the same size and weight, but that’s as far as it goes in most cases. They eat different food, drink much less water, their general behavior, and their mating details are different. Unlike their Earthly counterparts, all but herd-men are ridden, and all produce milk for consumption. In the Wastelands, the major tribe’s herds are all the offspring of Storm Bull and Eiritha, so all males are bulls, all females are cows, and babies are called calves, regardless of their earth names."

 

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

A Sartarite riding a Praxian herd beast will have a lot less control over and communication with his steed than a Praxian riding his totemic beast -

I don't think so. You are assuming that there's a different kind of connection between Praxian and Beast - there's not. Awakened Beasts yes, but a Sartarite can have an allied spirit in his Herd Beast mount. 

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

something of a problem for the mothers of the unicorn tribe, too - they get to ride the (step-?) mothers of their unicorns, or prospective heifers for mating.

Unicorns are magical creatures brought back from the Green age. They don't breed. When their rider dies, they return to the Green Age.

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Makes me wonder how a "cattle" raid by unicorn riders works out - the unicorn stallion singles out a heifer, impregnates it, and makes it follow him to the waiting women who welcome it into their herd?

It works just like a normal cattle raid: diversionary tactics from one group, race and snatch by another.

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Steeds (or beasts of burden) don't get to exhibit much of a feral beast's behavior while serving their humans. How much of a nomad's day is dedicated to letting his steed vent out it animal instincts, rolling in the dust (or mud), lazing around chewing cud or socializing with the other herd beasts?

Just like modern day beasts of burden, they need to eat, rest etc. The herd moves at a slow speed (5 miles a day max). Steeds can be rotated in and out easily. I'm not sure there is a personal beast for each person. Awakened animals yes, Herd-men "mounts" yes. Only Waha khans have restrictions on animal riding - they can only ride their own herd beast, but others may ride any. The Covenant makes provision for this behaviour, they are not domesticated animals or broken for riding. In Sartar an offering to Eiritha will suffice. They are not those troublesome horses. 

 

[Joerg]

8 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Unicorns are magical creatures brought back from the Green age. They don't breed. When their rider dies, they return to the Green Age.

Is that an Official Change? IIRC the (Chaosium, not Mongoose) RuneQuest Companion (about to be reprinted) has an article on unicorns which details the breeding habits of unicorns.

 

10 minutes ago, David Scott said:

They are a herd of happy Rhinos happy in the knowledge that Eiritha has blessed them and their fellow herd mates. None of that bad-tempered stuff otherwise you'd be an idiot to try and ride one.

That's a bit like riding a stallion rather than a gelding - you get a much more aggressive mount, but it will act more on its other urges. For numerous reasons, some people still ride the stallions rather than a gelding.

10 minutes ago, David Scott said:

This is one of the Prax book's boxes

"Praxian Tribal beasts are not Earth animals

 

Praxian tribal beasts may look like their Earth counterparts and be generally the same size and weight, but that’s as far as it goes in most cases. They eat different food, drink much less water, their general behavior, and their mating details are different. Unlike their Earthly counterparts, all but herd-men are ridden, and all produce milk for consumption. In the Wastelands, the major tribe’s herds are all the offspring of Storm Bull and Eiritha, so all males are bulls, all females are cows, and babies are called calves, regardless of their earth names."

Your upcoming Prax book, I take it?

I hope that the Praxian rhinos have better eye-sight than our rhinos, then. I suppose a good deal of their reputation for being irritable is their short-sightedness which makes them check out any potential source of danger pro-actively.

No kicking out camp-fires, either...

Will there still be such slight oddities like High Llama riders dismounting to hold up ground-hugging foliage to their steeds that we learned about some twenty years ago when Sandy joined the RQ Daily.

 

10 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Just like modern day beasts of burden, they need to eat, rest etc. The herd moves at a slow speed (5 miles a day max). Steeds can be rotated in and out easily. I'm not sure there is a personal beast for each person. Awakened animals yes, Herd-men "mounts" yes. Only Waha khans have restrictions on animal riding - they can only ride their own herd beast, but others may ride any. The Covenant makes provision for this behaviour, they are not domesticated animals or broken for riding. In Sartar an offering to Eiritha will suffice. They are not those troublesome horses. 

So you say that a Praxian beast mounted cavalry would be easier to train than horse cavalry?

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Is that an Official Change? IIRC the (Chaosium, not Mongoose) RuneQuest Companion (about to be reprinted) has an article on unicorns which details the breeding habits of unicorns.

Yes you are correct on the RQC. No official change yet and some of my work won't survive editing. However they need horses to breed in that article. Given the popularity of horses amongst the Praxians, I doubt there would be any bred Unicorns in the Wastes. Much more fun to have them fetched on a dangerous HeroQuest back to the Green Age. I'm not saying that other Unicorns don't breed that way, just these don't have the opportunity.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Your upcoming Prax book, I take it?

Yes, I need to get people thinking magical fantasy world not real world animals.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

So you say that a Praxian beast mounted cavalry would be easier to train than horse cavalry?

I don't think they need training. It's a relationship brought about by a magical covenant. In Sartar they need training. Horses aren't part of the Covenant, they need breaking and training.

[David Scott]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Will there still be such slight oddities like High Llama riders dismounting to hold up ground-hugging foliage to their steeds that we learned about some twenty years ago when Sandy joined the RQ Daily.

Having seen wild giraffes drinking water from a lake, I think high llamas will have little trouble eating from the ground. You must have seen that funny behaviour of sheep and goats kneeling to eat. I bet they can do that too. I'm sure Eiritha makes it easy for them to get their food. Remember the animal were the real winners in Waha's contests.

Some real world info:

http://www.llama-training.co.uk/Teaching%20a%20llama%20to%20kush.htm

 

Edited December 1, 2015 by David Scott

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Quote

So you say that a Praxian beast mounted cavalry would be easier to train than horse cavalry?

I don't think they need training. It's a relationship brought about by a magical covenant. In Sartar they need training. Horses aren't part of the Covenant, they need breaking and training.

I wasn't referring to training the animals, but the riders and coordinating cavalry maneuvers. If the Praxian beast gets its basic training from the Covenant, the rider can concentrate on getting it to run in formation etc.

Horses are tricky because they are (in Glorantha) carnivorous flyers reduced to running on the ground and feeding from grass and (if they can obtain them) grains. At least the Hyalor/Hippoi ones - the Galanin or western breeds might be different. They have no trouble interbreeding, though. In fact, I guess that hippogriff-descended horses should have been added to my list of naturally solitary beasts who have been forced into a gregarious herd lifestyle. (Or would you prefer to encounter herds of hippogriff hunting you and your lifestock?) Breeding the mundane horses out of the lineage appears to be non-trivial.

 

Re: Unicorn procreation: I seem to (mis?)remember that unicorns would mate with virgin herd beasts suitable for riding - a Sable Antelope bears as much similarity to a unicorn as does a horse. (I admit that the other Praxian herd beasts - excluding herd men, but possibly including Morocanth - may look a lot sillier.) The offspring will be male and inherit the race of the father (one thing unicorns have in common with broos, although the mothers appear to contribute the shape to broo offspring). I have no idea whether a beast that has given birth to a unicorn can have more offspring - I would suggest not.

The Green Age heroquest thing you suggest sounds fine. You don't tame a unicorn, you need to make The first contact to be allowed to ride it. The prospective rider needs to be pure to enter the riding/adoption heroquest. Just sending in a virgin girl won't tame the unicorn, probably wouldn't even get his interest. I guess it is about the sexual attraction that only works in a Green Age environment. There are bound to be entire libraries on the symbolism and esoterics of unicorns.

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Yes, I need to get people thinking magical fantasy world not real world animals.

I am not that fond of that approach, really. Once upon a time in Nomad Gods, we thought that all Praxian herd beasts were content to feed on the brown grass of the chaparral, but then we learned that that wasn't the case because those different herd beasts had urges and preferences that coincide with those of the real world animals (in case of bison, impala and sable antelope).

I will grant you that the beasts and plains apes followed their founders down the slopes of the Spike into Genert's Garden, with plains apes and beasts having created a special ancestral bond through Protectress Eiritha and the Founder. The plains apes were creatures of storm: rowdy, randy and rough. And probably as bright as minotaurs (who may be regarded as a male-only race that retains the founder shape in the following generations, probably because of the non-involvement of Eiritha). (I like the notion that the eaters were cursed with increased intelligence by the outcome of the Covenant.)

If we are to think magical fantasy world, then why the vegetarian Morocanth? What's wrong with meat eating tapirs feeding on the herd men who are fed a hay diet, in a magical fantasy world not real world animals?

Mind you, I enjoy the implications of herd men meat from culling the herds used to feed the breeding herd men. We only got there because the plains apes don't have the ability to ruminate, even though the covenant magic could have given that to them.

Some changes in behavior etc. are fine. Dropping most of the real world animal parallels for Praxian herd beasts (or alynxes before) will lead to alienation and a loss of suspense. Next thing we start to over-analyze why Gloranthan horses aren't, and how that manifests, and why you need to do the Hyalor quest in order to be able to ride even the least of them - while retaining real world facts that mules or cavalry zebras are sterile etc etc.

I know that a lot of people are afraid to work real world insights (let alone science) into their myths, telling me they can't be bothered. I fail to see why. As long as the result is a myth that feels like an organic story that can be told in a sweat lounge or in a holy site, and not a rote "this is how we perceive things must be" snippet for completeness' sake, why not use the real world as inspiration?

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Having seen wild giraffes drinking water from a lake, I think high llamas will have little trouble eating from the ground. You must have seen that funny behaviour of sheep and goats kneeling to eat. I bet they can do that too. I'm sure Eiritha makes it easy for them to get their food. Remember the animal were the real winners in Waha's contests.

 

The ridicule for llama riders by other Praxians for their steeds' inability to feed themselves properly wasn't my idea, it is something I read, and I seem to remember Sandy's name attached to it.

The picture I get from giraffes bending down to drink is that they spread their forelegs rather wide in order to reach down to the water - basically the equivalent of a push-up position, and probably not that comfortable. They also appear to need some time to return into a fleeing position. All the advantages they have are lost.

I am quite dubious that Eiritha makes it that easy for the covenant beasts to get their food. IMO high llamas used to browse the trees of the Praxian savannah before the Oakfed fires, and still prefer to do so whenever they get the chance. The best browsing vegetation in the wastes is found along the rivers and wadis (aka serpents), possibly with wet ground, which is why the llama riders have the water rune as their tribal element. (Looking at the feet of their beasts, I doubt that they are well suited to wet ground.)

The high llama tribe has a lot of advantages - an easy time for their herd beasts isn't one of them, though.

[soltakss]

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

Yes you are correct on the RQC. No official change yet and some of my work won't survive editing. However they need horses to breed in that article. Given the popularity of horses amongst the Praxians, I doubt there would be any bred Unicorns in the Wastes. Much more fun to have them fetched on a dangerous HeroQuest back to the Green Age. I'm not saying that other Unicorns don't breed that way, just these don't have the opportunity.

They could breed with any virgin animal, as I recall, normally horses, but other creatures as well - Including their riders!

I can see a unicorn happily tupping a herd beast, especially a zebra.

[Mark Mohrfield]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

They could breed with any virgin animal, as I recall, normally horses, but other creatures as well - Including their riders!

I can see a unicorn happily tupping a herd beast, especially a zebra.

The RQ Companion article states that they must breed with non-sentient animals.

[Steve]

12 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

The RQ Companion article states that they must breed with non-sentient animals.

Aren't most animals sentient?

[David Scott]

The RQ Companion p27 says "To reproduce. unicorns mate with lesser animals. including mare, does. or fine-boned hinds.

...

Unicorns do not mate with human females

...

because unicorns must mate with non·sentient creatures. "

The confusion is that lesser and non·sentient are used in close proximity to each other. Using the description in RQ2 it clearly means a creature without an INT score "The characteristics for the beasts will be a bit different. There will be no INT or CHA rolls". in RQ3 this became Fixed INT.

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Unicorns do not mate with human females

Normally ...

 

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

The RQ Companion p27 says "To reproduce. unicorns mate with lesser animals. including mare, does. or fine-boned hinds.

If mares, does and hinds, then zebras are fine and so are antelopes, including sables and impala. If cows, then bison and rhino are fine.

Not sure about Bolo Lizards and Ostriches, though. 

[TRose]

Can a Unicorn mate with a Herdman( Or should I say herdwoman in this case)Or how about an awaken animal?

[David Scott]

5 minutes ago, TRose said:

Can a Unicorn mate with a Herdman( Or should I say herdwoman in this case)Or how about an awaken animal?

The article in the RuneQuest Companion says not women and only lesser or non-sentient animals so no.

[TRose]

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

The article in the RuneQuest Companion says not women and only lesser or non-sentient animals so no.

 Well Herdmen have animal intelligent so are not considered sentient but the woman part might still apply.

[M Helsdon]

On ‎12‎/‎1‎/‎2015‎ ‎4‎:‎54‎:‎31‎, David Scott said:

Having seen wild giraffes drinking water from a lake, I think high llamas will have little trouble eating from the ground.

 

Whilst relating to giraffes, the following may be of interest in regard of high llama grazing habits in Prax, which surely corresponds to a nutrient-poor environment.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7Qd-AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=giraffe+grazing+ground&source=bl&ots=_n9499VZNR&sig=bR8mnM30GVt2LDmha4Pdl165LoU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBhvP_ob7JAhWIORoKHTSSCtUQ6AEIOTAG#v=onepage&q=giraffe%20grazing%20ground&f=false

Edited December 2, 2015 by M Helsdon