THE FINAL RIDDLE is out at long last, and while it is mainly concerned with Illumination, Chaos, and the Wastes themselves, by necessity it also reveals many of my thoughts on the Wastes' famed inhabitants, the Animal Nomads.
Perhaps second only to the infamous and iconic Ducks, the Animal Nomads seem to be the thing that non-RuneQuest gamers know about Glorantha. "Wait, is that the game where people ride zebras and bison and stuff?" Why yes, it is. These are, as the name implies, nomadic peoples who ride and herd an exotic range of non-bovine and non-equine beasts. The largest tribes are the Impala, Bison, Sable, and High Llama riders, as well as a non-human species the Morokanth that herds humans (more on that later). There are smaller tribes where the mounts get even more exotic, such as rhinos, ostriches and lizards. These Animal Nomads predate RuneQuest: they are mentioned in 1975's White Bear and Red Moon and take center stage in 1977's Nomad Gods, and it is that latter board game that most shapes my ideas about them. There is a reductionist tendency to try and associate RuneQuest's cultures with terrestrial ones, which I see as a mistake. Nomad Gods makes this particularly hard to do.
You see, here on the orb we call Earth, the concept of "nomad" is primarily defined by the idea of "pasture." Most definitions define "nomad" as "a member of a people with no permanent home that travels from place to place seeking fresh pastures for its herds." The English word itself comes from the Greek nomos, or "pasture." This is accurate for the nomads we know, who tend to exist in regions where there is a scarcity of resources, such as tundra, plains, or deserts. But on the lozenge we call Glorantha, the Animal Nomads are defined by a very different geography indeed... the Wastes.
Ancient civilizations once thrived here but were buried forever under divine barbarism... The God's War left much of the world a ruin, but the Plaines of Prax were the worst struck and the slowest to recover. There the dirt you walk upon is hostile to the men who once plundered it... (a)ncient spirits and deposed gods roam over the ruin of their extinguished civilization...
Nomad Gods, p. 1
Yes, the Animal Nomads have herds that they need to pasture. But these are not the ancient Hebrews, the Plains Indians, the Mongols, the Sami, or the Bedouins. These are the roaming, scavenging gangs of Mad Max. Their home is a post-apocalyptic hellscape, a region blasted and bent by Chaos. The Eternal Battle--a gaping hole into God Time in which the gods struggle eternally against the Devil--drifts around here like a sandstorm. Parts of the Devil still slither around. Reality, in the Wastes, is broken. The Animal Nomads hunt and gather, not only food and water but ancient magics and relics of lost civilizations. I have often thought that the defining ethos of the Nomads is right there in Greg Stafford's dedication:
This game is dedicated to my brothers and sisters, of blood and spirit, who have trod upon the Experience of Ruin and striven to pass beyond frailties into the magics of the Other Side.
Nomad Gods
What Greg chose to capitalize is telling: the Experience of Ruin and the Other Side. In working on The Final Riddle the last few years, I have put together notes and started toying with the idea of a sort of Six Seasons in Sartar set in the Wastes, coming of age amongst the Animal Nomads. In trying to get into the psychology of these people then, I keep circling back to those two phrases. If I had to put it into a sentence it right now it might be "This world is a cursed ruin, to survive it, look to the spirit world." Magic--not the "sophisticated spells available to more cultured magicians" but the "crude and brutal" summoning of various spirits--is a resource as important to these peoples as fuel is in Mad Max and water on Arrakis. Probably more than any other RuneQuest campaign, I think a Nomad campaign should include scavenging ruins for precious resources (mundane and magical), the constant presence of spirits, and the endless threat of Chaos.
Not that herding and raiding is not a feature of Nomad existence, we know that it is. Two of the primary deities or Great Spirits worshipped among the Nomads are Eiritha and Waha, the former being the goddess of herd beasts and the latter being the founder of Nomad society. The story goes that originally two-legged and four-legged animals lived alongside one another more or less equitably, but when the Devil blasted the land it became clear sacrifices needed to be made. Waha--Eiritha's son--essentially brokered the new order of things. Both sides drew lots to see who would become property of the other. In most cases the animals got the raw end of the deal. They would give their milk, hides, meat, and bones to the humans, and serve as their mounts. In return the animals would receive protection from Chaos (Waha's father, the Chaos-hating Storm Bull, had died killing the Devil and was no longer around to protect them). Among the tapir-like Morokanth, however, they won the gamble, and humans became their herd beast. These herd men lacked, or perhaps lost, sentience. Waha taught the "winners" how to care for and butcher their herds and organized Nomad society around the practice. Raiding other tribes for their herds was a part of that society--it is always better to eat someone else's cattle than your own--but the Wastes are a Very Big Place. Unlike the Orlanthi, who live alongside other clans, outside of Prax the Animal Nomads frequently wander alone. When the opportunity to raid presents itself, that is one thing, but deep in the Wastes there are other concerns.
Two other Great Spirits of the Nomads indicate what those concerns are. The Storm Bull or "Desert Wind" exists for one reason and one reason only: the destruction of Chaos, and his cult is widespread among the Nomads for obvious reasons. Daka Fal, often regarded outside of the Wastes solely as Judge of the Dead, is also the patron of shamans and the one who taught the Nomads how to deal with the spirit world. With the exception of powerful gods like Storm Bull and Eiritha, the Nomads tend to have shamans rather than priests, as they live in a place where all the gods are dead, while countless ghosts and lost spirits roam the land. Daka Fal's Runes are Spirit and Man--not Death--and he is in fact one of the owners of the Spirit Rune. Among the Animal Nomads I tend to think the line between Daka Fal and Horned Man (who is also a co-owner of the Spirit Rune) is blurred, and I often have the Animal Nomads depict Daka Fal with horns. They live in a place where "dead" has a much wider meaning than just human death. In the Wastes it is almost universally applicable.
Were I running a campaign centered primarily in Prax--a comparatively small and crowded piece of real estate--I would probably focus more on herding and raiding. And to be fair, this is how most of us encounter the Nomads, in Prax. But in a Wastes campaign I would run it more like Battlestar Galactica, a long trek across empty spaces, constantly on the look out for supplies, under fire from hostile enemies. Just with more spirits and fewer Cylons.
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