theme for a fantasy campaign

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I considered calling the humans "gandharvas" or "centaurs" (Dumeizil seemingly thinks those are cognate words), but that would have invited even worse misunderstanding.

I suggest that you pinch a suitable obscure tribal demonym from Herodotus' account of the Scythians and Thracians.

Aren't horses a serviceable meat animal, and also a serviceable milk animal or blood animal?

Passable, but they're sickly and delicate and have a lousy food conversion ratio. Also, they run too fast and are buggers to herd if you don't have a riding animal — such as a horse. Cattle and sheep are healthier, tougher, and fatten with less and poorer feed. If we couldn't ride horses we'd stampede the bastards off cliffs to free up pasture for something better.

But since we can ride them they are awesome for herding better herd animals, and hunting un-herdable herbivores. They even have a narrow niche as a herd animal because you can move them farther and quicker than any other when grazing and water are patchy.

It might be that the mounted hunter lifestyle of the Plains Indians was a product not so much of horses being unsuited as food sources as of there being wild game in vast quantities.

I'm sorry, I was unclear. I meant to say that a mounted-hunter way of life might persist rather than developing into herding — not because horses are unsuitable to eat, but because bison and deer are unsuitable to herd.

That is:

• if humans have neither a ridable nor a herdable animal they remain cursorial hunters;
• if they have a herdable animal but not a ridable one, they become graziers, sedentary or migratory depending on whether their pastures are perennial or seasonal;
• if they have a ridable animal but not a herdable one they become mounted hunters, because horses are more awesome to ride than to eat;
• if they have both they become super-awesome mounted nomads, woo-hoo!

Men will likely not think well of other races that consider the horse a tasty meat animal.

They will also likely sneer as pigs, because they drove so poorly.


We have what now?

• Humans eat game such as antelope, zebra, gnu, and bison, mutton and chevre, beef, blood, milk, cheese, and yoghurt. Some have picked up wheat, barley, millet, sorghum, pork and maybe geese or ducks from the halflings.
• Halflings eat wheat, barley, rice, millet, taro, tapioca, sago, maize(?), waterlilly-root, water-chestnut, bamboo shoots, fish, crayfish, freshwater shellfish, pork, waterfowl, eggs, and maybe beef or buffalo, besides strange things called "vegetables".
• Ogretrolls eat seal, whale, reindeer, elk, aurochs, mammoth, pork, beef, yak, chevre, milk, ham, cheese, smoked beef, chicken, and under strenuous protest oats.
• Elves eat venison and pork, acorns, beechnuts, macadamias, hazels, walnuts, filberts, chestnuts, brazils, small and medium game including squirrels, fowl, and monkeys, besides probably tree fruit such as apples/pears and peaches/plums, oranges, loquats, mangoes, mangosteens, durian etc. etc. Tropical elvish diets are rich in soft fruit and small game, temperate elvish diets rich in nuts and medium game.
• Dwarves eat potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, mutton and chevre, probably pork, and anything that they can get in trade.
• Selkies eat fish, shellfish, and crustaceans, eggs, sea-birds, the larger types of whales?
• Ghuls eat carrion, lizards, the seeds and fruit of desert plants when they can get them, dates(?)

I still don't see who makes the wine and olive oil. Probably the elves, since it looks as though establishing long-lived plantation crops is their schtick.