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Old 04-15-2021, 09:38 AM   #7
Anaraxes
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: what do Lilitu eat, and what is a Daily Dose of Infants' Breath?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane View Post
One other thing interesting here... Lilitu are barren and can't give milk. If barren is a racial feature then how are Lilitu actually created if not through reproduction?
You do remember the thread started off talking about a mythological demonic spectral creature with raptor wings, a lion body, and scorpion tail from GURPS Horror? It's not obvious that they're mammals even with the lion bit, nor that they reproduce in any non-supernatural fashion. Their victims have bigger problems than whether or not they're going to be able to feed their young after they give live birth. Scholars of ancient mythology will get tangled up in five thousand years of overlapping variation and difficulties in translation.

But it's entirely possible they were just all created at the beginning and don't reproduce. Sumerian cosmogony isn't particular about like coming from like. The primeval sea Nammu (later Tiamat) gives birth to the sky and earth; the sky and earth give birth to Enlil, a god (and notice the "lil"). So not all births require partners, though maybe birthing gods do -- hard to tell from an example of one. Enlil claims all the earth while a creature named An carries off the sky, though "An" is also the name given to the sky, so it's carrying off itself (and if not, the other "An" appeared out of nowhere). If I look up the Gilgamesh story (which probably eventually gave us Lilith) then there's a "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke", and if we take the translation of "ki-sikil" as "sacred place", then "lil-la-ke" might mean "lil", spirit, "la-ke" "water", unless you ask the professor next door, in which case it means "owl" because it was building a nest in a sacred tree. It's just that kind of mythology, fragmented by time and our lack of knowledge.

They can reproduce however you like, and you probably couldn't be proven wrong, though there will be a score of derived stories that conflict with whatever you choose, along with the ones that are ambiguous or even agree.
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