From: Sandy Petersen (SPetersen@ensemble-studios.com)
Date: Wed 20 Aug 1997 - 19:11:34 EEST
* Me: I don't think that there are many duck hunters at all.
Sergio Mascarenhas
>Many or few, do they worship some hunter god? If yes, which?
What does it matter? A duck hunter might ritualistically
set aside the heart of his catch and thank the Unknown Hunter for his
prey, or he might just worship Orlanth. You don't _have_ to worship a
hunter god to be a hunter. I see no reason that ducks would object to
either Odayla _or_ Zong, however.
Sergio
RW ducks are carnivors that eat mainly fish. Why would
gloranthan ducks
depart from that pattern?
Sorry, Sergio. This is not so. Real World ducks are
primarily vegetarians who feed on algae, grasses, pondweed, and an
occasional tidbit of insect, frog, etc. Anyone who has kept ducks (as I
have) is well aware of the fact that they are NOT carnivores. When you
go to feed ducks at the pond, what do you take with you? Tidbits of
meat? NO! You feed them bread.
That said, some ducks are more carnivorous (or more
vegetarian) than others. The type of duck known as the merganser are
definitely piscivores (fish-eaters). However, mergansers have narrow,
saw-toothed beaks, and are easily distinguishable from the ordinary
flat-billed ducks. Sartarite ducks are invariably portrayed with wide
flat beaks, hence are not mergansers.
Another duck variation is between diving ducks &
dabbling ducks. Both of these are mainly herbivorous, though - the
difference is whether they eat floating plant matter, or dive to the
pond bottom for their food.
Wait! What vegetables do they eat? IMO they have almost no
agriculture, they are fishers, hunters and recollectors.
They eat laverbread, what else? Ask any Welshman. IMO
they have plenty of agriculture - every duck home has its pond. Also,
they raise rice (of course).
Sandy, IMO ducks drinking milk makes no sense (specialy if you
agree with
me they are basicaly birds, not mammals).
Tough. I think they keep cows, goats, and sheep, all of
which are milkable. They're probably bigger on the sheep, though,
because of the water connection.
> their natural inclinations and body form make them rather
crappy hunters.
You don't need a special 'body form' to set a trap for a rat, a
lysard or a small bird (men don't have the best 'body form' to hunt
lions either).
First off, I don't think anyone whose hunting
inclinations are restricted to setting traps for muskrats and lizards is
going to bother to worship a hunting god.
Men have a fine body form to hunt lions. We're evolved
as visual plains pack-hunters, and are the only animal in the world even
capable of hunting lions. Humans are actually pretty well-designed as
hunters, when you consider that we are evolved to use stone-age
technology. Stone-age men can hunt mammoths, bison, crocodiles, and
whales. We're devastating.
In what way are ducks inferior in body form? Well,
1) they're shorter. For a sight-hunter, height is important.
2) They're slower. Humans aren't the fastest animals around, but
we're not the slowest, either. We're around average, actually.
3) They can't climb very well.
4) They're weak and small.
5) They are less able to cooperate with one another. Humans are
excellent at cooperation, ducks less so.
None of these are killers, but the whole ensures that
ducks aren't as good as humans at this task. Given this, why wouldn't a
duck just stick to what he's good at and pay a human to do the hunting
for him?
One of the central important facets of duck
existence, in my opinion, is that they fluidly adapt the local human
culture to their needs. The ducks of Sartar are good Orlanthi. The keets
of the East Isles are good East Islanders. The ducks of Heortland are
good Heortlanders. The ducks of the New Fens are city folk. Some of them
are even Malkioni. Of all species in Glorantha, ducks are the best at
slipping into the local society and fitting in perfectly. This is one
reason they're such a mystery - they actually abandon whatever past and
whatever gods they used to have in favor of the local ones. NOTE: if the
Lunars actually manage to take over Sartarite culture, I predict that
within three generations the ducks will all be good Lunars, avid for the
goddess, even as now they are the most hostile of all the Sartarite
tribes.
From: joelsona@cpdmfg.cig.mot.com (Andrew Joelson)
Birds that turned to Darkness became bats. Light worshippers
with bird familiars/allies that turned to Vivamort created the vampire
bats.
Sounds good to me. It also maintains the
Insectivore/Darkness link that I've secretly maintained for years. I.e.,
my belief that trolls are insectivores, not primates. I realize that
bats aren't insectivores, but chiroptera, but they are close relatives
to insectivores (so are primates). More advanced mammals, such as the
carnivora, ungulates, and rodentia, are in a separate category.
------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 20:52:22 EEST