Porscriptor the Cannibal

[Bohemond]

How did Porscriptor get his by-name? Normally in Heortling culture, cannibalism is only acceptable when its done by Maran Gor and Babeester Gor and similar Dark Earth figures. So what's his story?

[metcalph]

Nobody knows.  

He may have:

• Simply eaten the flesh of his enemies in the way that other Orlanthi took heads.
• Been an Ogre.  
• Had an unfortunate journey and been reduced to eating the corpses of his dead companions to survive.

[Joerg]

Basically, we don't know. Of the five husbands of Vingkot's daughters, we have fair info on Beren and can derive a bit for Ulanin, the two riders, but the other three are enigmatic.

They all create alliances with people from outside of the Vingkotling domain, and with the exception of the Orgovaltes (and the destroyed Lastralgortelli), they all occupy the northern border of the Vingkotling realm. (The Orgovaltes guard the east against whatever may come from that direction, like Chaos or Beast Riders.)

Porscriptor must have had some mythic "excuse" for consuming a fellow human just like Maran Gor, I guess, and it certainly will have been magical.

One culture which had leaders like this were the chariot emperors of the Jenarong dynasty, with Emperor Eats Women (Dagguneri). Six Ages has both rider and charioteer tribes in Saird way earlier, probably around the time of Beren's marriage to Redaylde, so this could be an origin for someone that might be called a cannibal.

Cannibalism and head hunting needn't have been chaotic from the beginning (although certainly disturbing anyway), and given what the Vadrudi did to the ancestresses of the Merfolk, the Orlanthi verdict on rape too only changed with that botched trial of Thed demanding justice. "Innocence" also covered a lot less savory activities until people awakened to the fact that what they used to do was wrong, and after that such activities were taboo or restricted to special ritual roles.

There is at least one other case where a formerly acceptable occurrance or habit was turned from good to bad - the birth of multiple (healthy) troll children. Prior to the first remedy ot the Curse of Kin, twin births were thought of as especially blessed, like Gash and Gore, but with the quest that turned single births of trollkin into trollkin litters, twin births became suspicious, and twin uzko births now are called "superior trollkin".

[David Scott]

10 hours ago, Bohemond said:

How did Porscriptor get his by-name?

Epithets such as this one are given by others and may not reflect the truth, just sounding cool. "One night me and Porscriptor drank so much, he threatened to eat me. I said just you try, so he bit me, he's a right cannibal that one..." Did Richard the Lionheart have a lion's heart..."

[Bohemond]

3 hours ago, David Scott said:

Epithets such as this one are given by others and may not reflect the truth, just sounding cool. "One night me and Porscriptor drank so much, he threatened to eat me. I said just you try, so he bit me, he's a right cannibal that one..." Did Richard the Lionheart have a lion's heart..."

Hmmm. Given that we're dealing with mythic time, I think by-names have much more truth-value than post-Time ones. To borrow from the old joke, "but you fuck just one sheep..." and you've fixed your mythic identity for all time. 

[jeffjerwin]

Is it just me or does the name "Porscriptor" sound un-Theyalan?

He sounds foreign. Thus the by-name might indeed reference an unacceptable custom he had to abandon?

Maybe they ate their dead out of reverence, like trolls (and certain human cultures in our world).

[Yelm's Light]

3 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

Maybe they ate their dead out of reverence, like trolls (and certain human cultures in our world).

Those are almost exclusively ancestors.  The ones that eat vanquished enemies are substantially rarer and shadier.

[jeffjerwin]

36 minutes ago, Yelm's Light said:

Those are almost exclusively ancestors.  The ones that eat vanquished enemies are substantially rarer and shadier.

Like trolls. (pun intended)