Praxian Tribal beasts are not terrestrial animals - a Bison diversion

[M Helsdon]

2 hours ago, kalidor said:

So, Urox-storm bull (air+eternal battle) = bisos (air+ life), i suppose Bisos is a pre- Great darkness myths of the great storm bull, right?

Apologies for the double post, but something I've posted on another thread may be relevant... or not.

Long before Time, the ancient Bull God was named Tawar, Tafer, Tavar, or KefTavar, according to different traditions. There may also be a relationship with the infamous Tarjinian Bull, defeated by Talor the Laughing Warrior during the Gbaji Wars.

In the northwest, the tribes of the bull-riding Tawari led the resistance against the small surviving Malkioni colonies after the Dawn. They ruled the other Enjoreli tribes, and worshipped a violent Storm God. Whilst perhaps not Hsunchen themselves, the Tawari were allied with and benefitted from the support of the Eleven Beasts Alliance of Hsunchen tribes in Fronela.

The Enjoreli were defeated by the Malkioni colony of Isefwal in 220, and retreated back to their farms and pastures. Those that later threatened Akem were defeated by Talor of Loskalm in 450, being driven eastwards. Many of the surviving cattle-raising pastoralists were quick to embrace the Theyalan gods.

The Enjoreli were distantly related to the legendary Enelvi, who were ruled by the divine Kereusi dynasty before Time in what is now Vanstal, south of the Sweet Sea. The first generation of this dynasty was fathered upon the goddess Esus by the Bull God KefTavar. Bisos was the younger brother of Kereus, and gave his name to the Bisosae, the People of Bisos. The Horned Bisosae Kings ruled before the Dawn.

Bisos and Esus are the Bull God and Cow Goddess of Pelanda. The violent Bull God Bisos is variously identified with Urox and Storm Bull by Theyalans, whilst Esus is identified with Ernalda or her daughter Uralda. In ancient times the cult of Bisos involved bull dancing.

The Bull Shahs of Carmania claimed their descent from the ancient Bull Lords of Vanstal.

Urox the Storm Bull is a war god in the Orlanthi pantheon, and especially the fanatical berserk warrior against Chaos. According to God Learner genealogies he is the son of Umath and Mikyh the Beast Mother – though they never had access to Peloria, and so their claims may be spurious. (Indeed, Hykim and Mikyh may simply be placeholders in the deific genealogies when the God Learners were unable or uninterested in determining the beast god ancestor.)

Urox himself fathered the first bull-headed minotaur upon a daughter of Uleria, or perhaps upon Velhara. The cow goddess of the Orlanthi is Uralda, a daughter of Ernalda, and Hykim.

In the ancient lands of the Enjoreli in what is now Junora and Jonatela, the Bull God is not entirely submerged by the Theyalan culture. The Oranor tribal confederation in Junora worship Orlanth as the bull-riding chief of the gods. When Charg emerged from the Syndics Ban it was ruled by Bull Lords who worship Urox and other war gods of the Orlanthi pantheon.

In Prax Eiritha the Herd Mother, daughter of Ernalda and Hykim, is the wife of Storm Bull, who is depicted with the head of the tribal herd beast.

The White Bull spirit was prophesized to make peace between the Bison and Sable peoples and lead the Praxians to greatness by destroying the foreigners.

[M Helsdon]

On ‎2‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 12:30 PM, David Scott said:

I'm considering bison priscus as it seems more fitting to use its look.

Some had really wide horns. Am using priscus as the basis for my bison...

[Julian Lord]

Yeah, I agree with OP, and I think I've basically always visualised the Praxian/Wastelands Bison as being most like the prehistoric European one depicted in cave paintings, so therefore that steppe Bison.

[Darius West]

On 3/9/2017 at 7:56 PM, Akhôrahil said:

What happens when you get an intelligent Herd-man?

I had an ex-herd man Stormbull character called Lemmi once.  He could trace his lineage to both Stormbull and Waha, and being gods, they didn't even have the moral decency to be embarrassed about it. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

30 minutes ago, Darius West said:

I had an ex-herd man Stormbull character called Lemmi once.  He could trace his lineage to both Stormbull and Waha, and being gods, they didn't even have the moral decency to be embarrassed about it. 

Well, I mean, Waha is Storm Bull's son, so it seems reasonably that if you can trace your ancestry to the son you could to the father.
Or did you mean there was some incest or inbreeding going on?

[Darius West]

On 1/11/2019 at 3:36 AM, Sir_Godspeed said:

Well, I mean, Waha is Storm Bull's son, so it seems reasonably that if you can trace your ancestry to the son you could to the father.
Or did you mean there was some incest or inbreeding going on?

It was more that neither deity was upset about being related to a herd man.  I mean "doing the help" is one thing...

Edited January 14, 2019 by Darius West

[g33k]

On 1/10/2019 at 8:04 AM, Darius West said:

I had an ex-herd man Stormbull character called Lemmi once.  He could trace his lineage to both Stormbull and Waha, and being gods, they didn't even have the moral decency to be embarrassed about it. 

I don't see why Waha would be embarrassed to be related to a faithful member of the Survival Covenant.  Arguably, the Herd Beasts (for whom Eiritha provides Her blessing directly) were the WINNERS of the Covenant, after all ...

Edited January 14, 2019 by g33k
F'ing autocorrect

[Atgxtg]

On 2/23/2017 at 7:30 AM, David Scott said:

Simon makes a good point:

Because they only look like our bison. Their diet is different due to the nature of the Wasteland's flora. They eat less and are magically sustained to a degree and their breeding cycle is different. I'm considering bison priscus as it seems more fitting to use its look. I just realised the pic I was looking at was missing from the links above:

Herd sizes are also different due to the covenant.

 

Some questions:

Do you have a bigger version of this picture?

And do we know if there is just one type of Bison, or multiple types? Do we know if species actually evolve in Glorantha? Or if such changes would be considered a chaotic thing? I wondering if there are multiple species of creatures, or just one (or a few). If there are multiple species then what are  the in world, mythic reasons for it? 

 

 

[M Helsdon]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Do you have a bigger version of this picture?

Came across this when looking for reference material for Bison Priscus (didn't use it, save for scale).

[Lord High Munchkin]

On 1/14/2019 at 9:51 AM, Atgxtg said:

Some questions: And do we know if there is just one type of Bison, or multiple types? Do we know if species actually evolve in Glorantha? Or if such changes would be considered a chaotic thing? I wondering if there are multiple species of creatures, or just one (or a few). If there are multiple species then what are  the in world, mythic reasons for it? 

 

 

RQ2 'Griffin Mountain' has Northern Bison with differing stats.

[Atgxtg]

36 minutes ago, Lord High Munchkin said:

RQ2 'Griffin Mountain' has Northern Bison with differing stats.

Yeah, but that might just be edition related. There was a change in the stats of a few creatures between RQ2 and RQ3, and beyond. For instance BRP BGB and, appropriately, RQG horses are smaller than their RQ3 counterparts. Probably to reduce the horse's db from 4d6 back to the +3d6 it was in RQ2. But does than mean that horses (or at least the most common breeds) are supposed to be smaller in BRP and RQG or just that SIZ increases faster?

 

In fact it is the RQ2 T-Rex stats that contribute to my disapproval of going back to RQ2 category modifiers. 

Edited January 15, 2019 by Atgxtg

[Sir_Godspeed]

With regards to speciation: as much as I dislike using the terminology of Young Earth Creationism, I could easily envision Glorantha working along a logic of "kinds", where there is a certain continuum along closely related animals (eg. big cats as one group, cloven cattle another, or bears another), which can interbreed internally pretty freely, but then a more steep division between more distantly related clades (ie. cloven cattle and goats/sheep). So brown bears and grizzly bears would be more of a case of subspecies and demes in RW lingo than true species, even where they would be different species in the RW. For example, turtles and tortoises comprise over 350 species in the RW, but in Glorantha they all seem to come under the totemic auspices of Sofal. I'd imagine that they could conceivably crossbreed due to this logic. I'd imagine "totemic orientation" is more important than any RW biochemical compatibility. Of course, Sofal might have many "sons" or "daughters" pertaining to the specific species, kind of like how the totem gods for lions and tigers are distinct, despite these falling together in my "kinds"-schema.

Then again, I believe there is some kind of pseudo-Linnean system used in Anaxial's Roster that tosses that view aside, but I haven't read it yet, so I don't quite know.

EDIT: Of course, there are evidently ways to get around reproductive limitations regardless of how things works biologically in Glorantha. The Praxians have that whole weird survival pact thing going on where apparently llamas and bison and impalas can all interbreed (albeit rarely), due to their shared ancestry/patronage/pact-membership, and gods and heroes getting on with "impossible" partners is kind of par for the course.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Sir_Godspeed

[Julian Lord]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

the terminology of Young Earth Creationism

It's actually the terminology of the Pagan Graeco-Roman Antiquity, FWIW

Young Earth Creationism is an invention of the late 19th Century ...

More Glorantha-wise, you're describing quite well the processing of the differentiations of Life back in the Godtime

[g33k]

 

3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

EDIT: Of course, there are evidently ways to get around reproductive limitations regardless of how things works biologically in Glorantha. The Praxians have that whole weird survival pact thing going on where apparently llamas and bison and impalas can all interbreed (albeit rarely), due to their shared ancestry/patronage/pact-membership, and gods and heroes getting on with "impossible" partners is kind of par for the course.

And that whole "Pavis" thing ... crossing ( humans X plants X earthen/human magical constructs ) ,  all into one heritage ...

Edited January 16, 2019 by g33k
Glaring oversight.

[Sir_Godspeed]

13 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

It's actually the terminology of the Pagan Graeco-Roman Antiquity, FWIW

Young Earth Creationism is an invention of the late 19th Century ...

More Glorantha-wise, you're describing quite well the processing of the differentiations of Life back in the Godtime

Are you thinking of Aristoteles' usage of "kinds" in the Categories? I can see where you're coming from, but just to be clear - the way "kinds" is used by modern YEC (which, I am aware, is a modern movement) has to do specifically with trying to counter the abundance of evidence for speciation, and perhaps most clearly trying to deal with the limited space within Noah's ark as it is described in the old testament, when compared to the sheer, literal, volume of species of animals that exist today.

It's essentially a type of classification that allows speciation within artificially constrained clades - so for example, you can have speciation within "cat-kind (lions, tigers, cheetahs, housecats, etc.)", but none of them will ever deviate from the basic cat-archetype that was present on the ark. It's nonsense, of course, and quackery of the highest order - HOWEVER, due to Glorantha running on evidently non-Darwinian evolutionary logic, and its phylogeny being radically different (f.ex. molluscs and insects being closer to each other due to shared darkness ancestry than insects and vertebrates, which would be more closely related in the RW), I think it's a model that would fit fairly well there (exceptional events notwithstanding).

[soltakss]

3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

It's essentially a type of classification that allows speciation within artificially constrained clades - so for example, you can have speciation within "cat-kind (lions, tigers, cheetahs, housecats, etc.)", but none of them will ever deviate from the basic cat-archetype that was present on the ark. It's nonsense, of course, and quackery of the highest order

But I like it, as that is how I think, in terms of Archetypes.

Something is a cat because it resembles the pure Cat Archetype. A dog isn't a cat, because a dog resembles the Dog Archetype, not the cat one.

I vaguely remember a study about some kind of insect that preferred to mate with females with parts of their body slightly larger than normal, so scientists made models of females with the body part blown up out of all proportion, in a way that no female would have in nature, and the males pretty much all preferred to mate with the over-endowed model. To me, that means that the Archetype for that creature has the over-endowed version and the normal creatures tried to meet that archetype and failed.

I'm not a zoologist, can you tell?

[Sir_Godspeed]

In a universe like Glorantha, which incorporates pseudo-Platonic runic ideals, I think it's a fairly reasonably model.

[Darius West]

On 2/26/2017 at 9:20 PM, Iskallor said:

Not a conundrum in my game so far.  Minotaurs are the son of Urox/Stormbull. They take the male head of the local clan beast. In Sartar this will be Bulls. 

This leaves the door open for Llama headed "minotaurs".  Given that "mino" refers to King Minos, and "taur" means bull, I guess we would have to rename it "minollama", or "llamacephalus", or "llamanthropus"?  There would be some very "broo-looking S.O.B.s" coming out of the mix, ostrich headed men would be pretty funny.  Of course the funniest would be the morokanth bodied minotaurs with the herd man heads imo.  

[David Scott]

On 2/26/2017 at 5:08 AM, Darius West said:

The next problem is that... where are all the Prax beast headed sons of Storm Bull?

They are the Founders of four of the clans

The sables Founders are not of Storm bull but the Twinstars

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

ostrich headed men would be pretty funny

The Ostriches and Bolos have a different origin, they are children of Ernalda not Eiritha and not related to Storm Bull at all.

Cattle are the children of Eiritha and Storm Bull, who aren't part of the Covenant, except with the Pol-joni. The Pol-joni founder is different too as it's the Pure Horse Founder.

 

[Noita]

What he said ^

[Julian Lord]

On 1/16/2019 at 2:01 PM, Sir_Godspeed said:

Are you thinking of Aristoteles' usage of "kinds" in the Categories?

Yes, though to be honest, these notions were heavily developed in the Middle Ages, and did eventually lead to modern taxonomy (which in itself dictates nothing on how the organisation of genus and species must be achieved, but merely provides the structures allowing the characterisation thereof into such categories).

There's some interesting stuff on the subject in Aquinas.

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, Julian Lord said:

Yes, though to be honest, these notions were heavily developed in the Middle Ages, and did eventually lead to modern taxonomy

For early modern taxonomy, my personal reference is Georg Agricola's last book on mining which is a dissertation of the creatures of the Below. Less systematic than Anaxial's Roster.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Joerg

[Oracle]

15 minutes ago, Joerg said:

... Georg Agricola's last book on mining ...

Really? Farmer Farmer's last book? (Georg (greek) = Farmer, Agricola (latin) = Farmer)

Sorry, couldn't resist ...

[ChalkLine]

For some reason I've always had a mental image of bison as water buffalo, probably because we have them here in Australia and not bison

[g33k]

3 hours ago, ChalkLine said:

For some reason I've always had a mental image of bison as water buffalo, probably because we have them here in Australia and not bison

Yeah, regional wildlife variations mess up lots of folks' "visualization" vs what the authors/devs intended.

TheNorth American "moose" is what the North European "Elkhound" is named for, and the North American "Elk" species would all be "deer" on t'other side of the Atlantic.

Robins.

Buzzards.

Badgers.

Panthers (most folk seem to already know this one).