From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@sartar.toppoint.de)
Date: Thu 02 Jun 1994 - 17:36:40 EEST
David Dunham in X-RQ-ID: 4303
> Jonas said
>>The orlanthi have for many generations considered it >>prudent not to anger them by riding horses, partly because they are still a >>military force to be reckoned with, but mostly because of an ingrained >>respect for these ancient allies. Fortunately, Galanini have adopted enough >>of the Solar rigidity to follow the exact letter of the law (and to not >>consider changing it), leaving the option of hitching horses to ploughs, >>wagons or chariots open.
I have seen a source that reports chariots in use by the Galanini in the late Second Age.
I don't think the Orlanthi use horses to plow, that's what Oxen are for.
One way the Orlanthi could have their horses and be left in peace by the Galanini could be that the Galanini horses are the fiery mustangs of the Felster basin, while the Orlanthi use the shaggy hill pony (similar to the Iceland pony, which prevailed in all of Europe until the eleventh century when a horse plague introduced I think from the crusades exterminated all specimens except on isolated Iceland).
This is a trick as the Zebra people and the Issaries merchants of Prax used.
> As a consequence (and because Ralian ponies are small and don't make the
> best war horses), most Orlanthi in the East Wilds use chariots. A few ride
> horses, and dare the enmity of the Galanini. Ekel Field-Destroyer, thane of
> the Belovaking clan, is one such; he's established a temple to Elmal
> Horse-Thane to back this up. [This came about when his daughter rolled the
> Pendragon family trait "Good with Horses, Riding +10," a neat case of dice
> serendipity. (Family traits are inherited from the father, and tend to
> express his personal interests.)]
> Joerg said
>>The ability to change into one's >>phylum seems to have been wide-spread in Godtime. ... Ironhoof >>seems to have reawakened this creating the Grazer tribe
> Don't believe every myth that was invented during the Ritual of Rebirth
> which Ironhoof held for the refugee horse-riders.
I believe that a few volunteer centaurs actually had to undergo this rite to cheat the dragonewt decree that no humans were allowed into Dragon Pass. The vast majority of the Grazers would be survivors of the Golden Horse people who didn't become trapped at Alavan Argay.
RuneQuest Companion, p.27, Jonstown Compendium 1483. Expanded by Mr. Nick Brooke...
>>GRoY introduced "new" hill barbarian peoples, like the Ram people >>with their deity my God Learner secretary recognized as Heler
> Are you saying the Ram people are hsunchen, or that the Dara Happans
> thought they were? Also, how do you associate "their great god, the huge
> iron Ram whose horns could break anything," with Heler?
Heler is one of the most aggressive of the war gods of the Orlanthi. So was the Ram People in the Dara Happan Storm Age stories. Heler is associated with sheep (among others because of the cloud forms). If we think through this further, he is likely to have worn a helmet with a rams horns.
Raindrops may be soft, but they are proverbial for their ability to break anything.
And the story how the iron Ram was used to stop the approaching ice inside the Dara Happan brick dome, and how the waters (even inside) went to sleep, and the description of Orlanth's travel to slay Aroka are just too neat coincidences to be ignored by any God Learner (aka comparative mythology minar) to be ignored.
Mythology often uses the pars-pro-toto naming of objects and people. I just accuse the Dara Happans to have done so in this case.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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