"I have come from learning, vision and verse in Wintertop".

Flora and Fauna of the Far Place

This essay is currently undergoing expansion and modification, with additional input from members of the Heortling Stead Project. Special thanks to Ian Cooper and Darren Sims for their contributions on beer and ale.

Odayla, First Hunter,
You have shown favour.
You have given us some of your beasts, some of your deer.
Thank You Odayla.
Thank You Deer Mother.
We give of our bounty at your shrine.
We know the Gifting Way.
Count your herd: two are missing.
They are the ones we caught, to feed our clan.
You gave them to us.

Song of the Life Spear (Tovtaros Hunters' Chant).
Far Point, 1624.

"Tonight we will eat tubers. The deer did not want to die."

Danwyr Can't-Be-Moved, Cholanti River, 1623.

The following essay was first put together in 1996 as background for my 'Snakepipe's Edge' campaign set in Ironspike and the upland wilderness of northern Far Point. It is based upon research into Euro-siberian ecologies and Neolithic, Celtic, Germanic and medieval English farming and hunting techniques, with obvious changes and modifications to reflect Gloranthan reality.

A Note Before Beginning

Any project such as this is necessarily incomplete, occasionally inaccurate and sometimes (given the age of some of my notebooks) contradictory. Doubly so in this case, because, unlike most of the Digest Tribe, the 'northern hemisphere' flora and fauna described herein is almost entirely alien to me. (Marsupials and eucalypts; them I can handle).

My notes are primarily based upon European ecosystems, in particular the Euro-Siberian Province as described by Wilfred T. Neill in The Geography of Life. (Until reading Neill I did not realise just how much flora and fauna was common to both Euro-Siberia and North America).

The listings started as sources for totems, and from a need to refer to a consistent background in modules and stories. In design terms, my aim for Far Point has been to produce a detailed vision of a Heortling cultural area that is similar to Sartar and Tarsh but has a number of distinct and unique features.

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Crops, Farming & Herding

'Land then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals... an ethic to supplement and guide the economic relation to land presupposes the existence of some mental image of land as a biotic mechanism. We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love or otherwise have faith in.'

Aldo Leopold.

'I smell the earth. I touch it, plough it, seed it. I eat its gifts. So I worship. This tula is my bone country. This place is where the Goddess speaks.'

Ulera Kundidotter. Piddledown Stead, Earth Season 1625.

'The coracles were swift and fairly safe despite their decrepit appearance, and I could see the advantage of such a marshland site for defence. The island was nearly three kilometres in length, in breadth not so much. The stead itself was of the traditional Orlanthi pattern, though bedecked with elaborate carvings on the outer beams. The site was surrounded with alders, reeds, green cones and bulrushes of great beauty, and giant trees of wild ash.'

Jaxarte Whyded, The Journey Through Far Point, 1624.

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Living Off The Land

How do we live? - ‘Hard work, bent over the plow and treading its furrows, then reaping the bounty of the Mother is our life. Every man plows, or wishes to, or works for those that do. Even Orlanth plows. And we hunt, fish the rivers, tend the sheep in the hills, and trade for special goods.

Our food is barley, wheat, and rye -- Ernalda's bread is our staple, eaten in porridge, breads, and ale; only the poor, like your no-good cousins at the Rotroot place, eat only root vegetables; "More cabbage, less bread," they say. We are well off, so we eat pig, chicken, cow, and the wild game of the good red deer.’

What My Father Told Me. The Genertela Book.

Rural life is far from idyllic, despite a long tradition of romanticised poetic falsehood beginning with Theocritus. In Heortling lands, farm life is constant pressure and tension, an ongoing battle against weather, scarce resources, raiders, pests, disease, and capricious magical forces; balancing the demands of the present against the needs of the future. Starvation and famine are very real possibilities, and even a good year may have food shortages and periods of hunger. Heroes of Ernalda, Barntar, Eiritha, Elmal and Harst constantly battle against the forces of want, fate and elemental indifference.

Most of upland Far Point consists of dense wet oak-lands with a fertile if somewhat clay-rich and heavy soil. You will often find yourself knee-deep in mud, which makes farming a difficult enterprise. Areas of rich loam soil exist, but are subject to heavy erosion once farming begins. There are also several small regions in the east that comprise extremely rich volcanic soil and mud.

Heavy clay soils make much forest land intractable to agriculture. However, marshes have excellent pasture on their margins. Many farmhouse-steads cluster about the ancient hill forts of the Youf, in the fertile lower marshes, or in thin forest where numerous clearings have been cut.

Iron implements are essential in cultivating wooded or boggy ground. The poorer steads keep to the upland contours of hills, while iron-users take more fertile (but difficult) areas nearer the valley bottoms. The Lodril plough with its heavy mouldboard and seed drill is associated with the Yelmalian clans. It is invaluable in working heavy clay soils, and is a catalyst for much violence. Common farm implements are often made of stone: stone spade and hoes, for example, are ubiquitous.

Earth sledges are very common in the uplands, in fact more common than wheeled carts. Amidst the hills and mud of Far Point, they can be extremely versatile.

In the deep forest there is selective clearing and burning, using slash and burn methods. These fields are abandoned to the wild when they become poor. In populous long-settled areas this has produced small parklike environments dotted with copses and small clumps of trees.

(Long-settled? Taroskarla records how Taros Ridgeleaper founded Lagerwater Stead in 1333. His sons Tovar the Hungry and Vantar Bright Shield went on to found the ancestral steads of the Tovtaros and Vantaros tribes in the 1340s.)

Because of the nature of the country, roads are almost non-existent, and in certain areas even travel by horse is often impractical. In the wilder north, most travelling is done on foot.

Hunting and stock raising are further sources of livelihood. Stock-farming is more important than field-tilling, despite the religious precedence given to crops.

Barley, oats and rye are the grains best suited to the cold wet climate of upland Far Point. Rye is a particularly hardy cereal that thrives in poor soil conditions. Wheat needs manure and good soil.

Far Point custom is to allow one third of clan fields to lie fallow at a time. A field will be planted with a grain staple such as wheat or rye one year, peas, chickpeas, lentils, broad beans, oats, barley or stock-feed the next, and left to lie fallow the third.

The best fields are often those closest the steads, for they are readily supplied with manure and compost.

Hay is stored in the ground in silage pits, compressed tight to prevent decomposition.

Most activities are organised at the stead (several bloodlines - around 200-300 people) or clan level. For example, in the shearing season, all members of a clan will help each other in turn. Communal labours provide a time to discuss politics, tell tall stories, recite poetry and incite rebellion.

As well as clan meetings, Law Things and weapontakes, there will be a 'beast take' held several times a year where the clan meets to discuss strays and rustling.

The cycle of farm labour is difficult and constant, and periods of both feast and famine are part of the yearly cycle. The abundance of wilderness resources protects Upland Far Walkers somewhat from the threat of crop failure, but even so periods of famine do occur and are greatly feared.

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Historical Analogues

Excavations at Feddersen Wierde (5th Century) near Bremerhaven in Germany and West Stow (5th-8th Century) in Oxfordshire have provided details of livestock and crop usage in cultures not dissimilar to Far Point.

Cattle ownership was particularly significant at Feddersen Wierde. Quantity seems to have been more significant than quality: animals were small and there is no evidence of selective breeding. From animal remains, it seems that cattle formed 48.3 per cent of domestic animals, sheep (or goats) 23.7 per cent, horses 12.7 per cent, pigs 11.1 per cent and dogs 4.2 per cent. Crops grown were dominated by barley and oats (40 per cent), while beans and flax each formed 25 per cent of the total.

By comparison, West Stow animal bones are between 34.3 and 36.3 per cent for cattle, 44.4 and 50 per cent for sheep (or goat), 13.7 and 19.7 per cent for pigs. These figures imply that while sheep were more numerous, cattle were the prime source of meat. Barley, spelt wheat and rye were the important crops at West Stow; oats were also planted there.

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Food Staples and Other Crops

Certain of the following species will be gathered from the wild rather than cultivated. In addition, many species from the flora list will also be utilised for their food or herbal value.

Most of the species in this list bear little resemblance to their Terran equivalents, if only because our modern crops have been extensively engineered over several centuries. Corn, for example, came in a wide variety of colours and sizes until modern marketing decided it should be a standard-sized yellow-white.

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Food Crops

Maize is a gift of the Lunar Goddess Hon-eel. It is rumoured to require human sacrifice to grow. The other staple grains are sacred to Esra and Ernalda.

Fruit trees include wild (crab) apple and stony pear. If a wild apple is struck by lightning, it may become a storm apple tree (Sun County). Peaches (Pelorian Apples) are known, but are a luxury item that have to be imported. Attempts to transplant cuttings have been unsuccessful. (There is a myth and heroquest here).

Other fruits include plums, cherries and sloes, often eaten sweetened with honey.

Blackberries, bilberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, elderberries and other wild fruits also formed part of most people's diet.

Oil is made from flax, cameline and other oil-producing seeds and nuts.

Stock meadows of buttercups, ribwart and clover are common in the (cattle-rich!) lowlands.

Emer wheat, beans and squash, 'the three sisters', are always planted and eaten together.

Far Point carrots are small, white, and thin-rooted.

Lye is made from wood ashes, and is used as a cleaning agent.

Flax is harvested, retted and scutched before being woven into linen. Even the poorest stickpicker will cultivate a small patch of flax for spinning and weaving. Thread preparation is laborious but far from difficult, much simpler than wool, and flax can be woven on a small loom.

The flax plant grows well in the cold and rain of Far Point. It is 'pulled' before the seeds ripen. Stalks are then cleaned and 'retted'. Packed in boxes, they are soaked in running water till the fibres separate and soften. The stench of rotting flax can be detected from a considerable distance! The flax is then 'broken' either by beating it or pulling it between the jaws of a 'brake'. It is then 'scutched' or hackled to remove unwanted matter and reduce the flax to fine, smooth threads ready for spinning.

Hemp is also grown almost universally. It is similar in some ways to flax, but hardier, and is prepared in a similar manner. It yields a coarse thread, and if woven, a rough fabric. Only the very poor will wear hempen cloth. Hemp is chiefly used in making rope and packing cloth.

Recently, Lunar spies have reported Orlanthi planting fish in a ploughed field. The Bluefoot Orlanthi do have a saying 'a fish in every field' which means 'take reasonable precautions'. The truth of such reports, or their meaning, is presently unknown.

Naturally, most crops have a distinctive mythology. Food taboos of various sorts are very common.

The main Sea Season sowings consist of barley, oats and occasionally spelt. Earth Season sowings of the winter crop consist of wheat, spelt and rye.

Certain grain crops sacred to Ernalda, or planted in sacred areas, may produce several crops a year.

At harvest, 'five workers can well reap and bind two acres a day of each kind of corn'.

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Salt: The Edible Rock

Earth Salt is Ernalda's Spittle, and salt-licks are cult centres as well as important tribal resources.

Salt is farmed (and to a much lesser extent harvested) in Far Point. It is a valuable resource: used to flavour and preserve food and to cure and tan leather. Clans have gone to war over the ownership of brine springs. Many salt mines are ancient, perhaps dating to before the Dawning. These enormous caverns are occasionally used as shelters, storehouses and of course temples.

'Salt and bread' are the prime gifts to a guest. The 'salt-gift' is given to animals set free to roam the forest, a ritual reminder that they are domesticated.

Aldryami hate salt! Uz are indifferent, preferring sulphur. Salt is regarded as a cure for impotence, hence its euphemism, 'a crowd of women'. ("I'm going to Ironspike with a crowd of women.") To 'sprinkle salt on a witch-bird's tail' is to undo a curse.

Under recent Lunar-inspired law enacted by Ironfist, salt may only be sold to the Prince as representative of the Empire.

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Animals Of The Stead

Domesticated or Food Animals

The prosperity of any clan depends on the size and well-being of its stock.

Cattle require plenty of water. How wild and how far you let your cattle run depends on how much you trust your neighbours. Over time, crop plantings tend to supplant the low (river) meadows used for herding cattle.

High dry areas of the tula are used for grazing sheep.

Pigs run semi-wild in woodland, which also provide the occasional deer, and wild fruits in season. Hens and geese are kept by the bloodline lodge, and must be gathered in at night to protect them from foxes and other predators. (Stead alynx are also a constant threat). Rivers and lakes provide fish and wild fowl.

Feeding animals through Dark Season (magically chill, with Ice, Snow and Night Demons abroad) is the key limiting factor in animal husbandry. Upland winters are fierce, but winter survival is testing even in the relatively mild climates of southern Sartar. Upland lodges are split in two: one half for humans and the other for the wintering of cattle. On the milder Sharl Plains, byrnes are kept separate from human lodgings. (Yelmalions have a highly developed sense of purity and taboo, and fear ‘mixing’ in any shape or form).

Sheep are kept for wool, meat milk and sacrifice, cattle for prestige, wealth, milk, sacrifice, meat, manure, horn, sinews and hides. A bull’s hide is as valuable as its meat. Horn is used for fastenings, drinking vessels and many other uses. Bone is used for belt-ends, handles, needles, pins and skates.

Horses are important sacrificial animals and though their meat is consumed, it is usually done so in a ritual context. They are also kept for riding and fighting. Pigs are raised for meat, and favoured because of their quick breeding. Fowl provide eggs in Sea Season, meat, and hollow bones used for musical pipes. Kuks are bred for love and fighting. Rabbits are regularly trapped. Deer are hunted for meat, skin and antler. Boar are hunted for meat and tusk.

Cattle have great cultural value, and are the prime sign of wealth, but in Far Point as elsewhere the Orlanthi are primarily a sheep-herding people. (In European history, the more rural a society, the more important sheep are to its prosperity).

In terms of food value, 1 cow = 2 calves = 5 hogs = 10 young pigs = 7 sheep = 14 lambs = 100 laying hens.

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Cattle

Cattle calve in early Sea Season, and are usually weaned by late Earth. Gestation is ([283]*294/365 (a Stafford equation) = 228 days to produce a single calf. Estrus is 21 days.

(Cattle gestation is similar to Gloranthan human pregnancy, which is 280*294/365 = 225, which I'd shorten to 224 days or 4 seasons, giving the same day and week to both conception and birth, (barring Sacred Time complications ).

In natural breeding, one bull will service up to 25 cows. In controlled (pasture) conditions, this can be expanded to 50 cows.

Maned cattle are fierce, smelly and dangerous! They tend to be smaller on average than modern breeds, and well-adapted to thriving in relatively poor pasture under challenging conditions. Both bulls and cows are horned, which leads to difficulties in winter housing. Animals trained to the yoke for ploughing are kept separate, fed and watered by hand and are relatively tame.

Cows mature at about two and a half years, at which time they can be put in calf and subsequently provide milk. The gestation period is similar to humans, and cows can be managed to calve annually.

Orlanthi regard cattle to be at their prime at seven years of age. Most adult cattle are female.

Cattle have a limited grazing range compared to sheep, are slower to breed, more aggressive, and are afflicted by disease spirits such as milk fever and bloat. Oh but they're beautiful. Cattle, as an Upland cottar has been heard to proclaim, are better than women.

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Pigs

Pigs are easy to slaughter, and are good converters of feed to food. They are most important to the poorer farmer, as they can be turned out to forage on less tractable forest, scrub or moorland. Gestation is 92 days, and estrus 21 days. A boar can mate with 15-45 sows per year. There are an average 1.5 litters per year, with 7 pigs per litter.

Pigs are an especially important source of food in Dark Season. They are allowed to scavenge freely, existing on pannage of acorns and beech-mast, and sometimes mate with wild boars.

In Earth Season, children are often sent into the forest equipped with long sticks to dislodge acorns for the pigs.

When not running free, pigs are kept in sties apart from the stead, usually in marsh or woodland.

Parasites are a major problem in keeping pigs.

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Sheep

Sheep will count for at least 50% of a clan’s livestock, they are hardy creatures that can graze on land unsuitable for cattle and pigs. They are also highly mobile, and during transhumance can be grazed up to 300 miles from the stead (though no Heortlander would travel anything like this distance with a herd). Even pregnant ewes can move swiftly and constantly if required.

Gestation is 118 days. Sheep produce an average of 91 lambs per 100 ewes per annum, in early Sea Season, and lambs can weigh up to 40 kilos by Earth Season.

A high proportion of sheep are killed when young. Most adult sheep are wethers (castrated rams), valued for their wool.

Sheep breeds are small but athletic, both male and female usually being horned. Wool, which ranges from in colour from brown to oatmeal to occasional white, is shawn, plucked or rooed (depending on the breed) in early Fire Season.

Sheep, especially the Fat-Tail variety, are milked in Sea and Fire Season. Ewes' milk is the most common source of cheese and butter. A Fat-Tail will produce only a tenth the milk of a dairy cow.

Sheep can subsist on sparse forage. A small group of shepherds (supported by guard alynx) can care for between 1,000 and 4,000 sheep in lowlands and between 1,000-1,500 in hilly country. (Though few Heortling flocks would ever approach this size). The prime difficulties are with (some particularly nasty) worms and footroot.

Sacred to the Rain God Heler, most sheep species found in Heortling lands are surprisingly resilient, able to handle extremes of rain, water and storm that would destroy terran flocks. Hence even rain-soaked Lagerwater, situated near the eternal cloudburst of Skyfall Lake, can maintain considerable flocks of sheep on its upland shielings.

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Transhumance is practiced for both sheep and cattle. Both pigs and cattle feed themselves for part of the year in woodland. Cattle will also often be summered in marshlands. Young beasts are raised in hay meadows after the summer harvest. Grazing cattle in forest will quickly destroy young copses.

Semi-wild horses fend for themselves in woodland and are rounded up once a year. The most prized Elmali sacred horses are carefully tended at the stead itself.

Shadowcats (alynxes) are 'stead-brothers'. Despite their domesticity however, they usually run semi-wild. And despite the strong totemic relationship to the Orlanthi, they are sometimes skinned - though only after careful ritual preparation. An alynx's liver painfully swells under a full red moon, causing pain and anger. It can see spirits and penetrate the darkness with its glowing eyes. There exists an ancient animosity between shadow cats and trollkin.

Dogs are rare, sometimes taboo, and expensive to keep. Where bred, they are used in war, as spectacular gifting animals between chiefs, and occasionally in herding. Though culturally disliked by most Heortlings, there are several important exceptions to this generalisation, including the Lismelder tribe of Sartar.

Herd dogs have spiked collars for protection against wolves. Their tongues have extraordinary healing powers.

Most steads keep both a dovecote (dung!) and an apiary. Larger steads in the mountains may keep a fish pond or 'stew' stocked with pike and carp.

Ducks (called teal to avoid confusion), plover, grouse, herons and geese are regularly trapped and hunted.

Iblis, cranes or herons are sometimes kept as pets. Pelicans are trained to fish, and have collars to prevent them swallowing the catch.

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Delight in Battle: Kukbirds

Kukbirds are essentially gallus gallus (domestic chickens) as they were on earth around two thousand years ago. They are small birds with black breasts, red-brown back and tail, bluish legs, distinctive fleshy crest, and an unerring cackle and scream. They lay perhaps 30 eggs a year, mainly in Sea, never in Storm or Dark. The eggs are seldom eaten. In fact, neither is the flesh - they are small, and it's better to hunt game, or to kill a duck, goose or quail. Kukbirds are valued primarily as alarm clocks, for kukfighting, for the male tail feathers and for use in sacrifice and divination. A Kuk's cry is protection against chaos and evil. A Male kukbird (called a Kuk) is a symbol of lust and virility. Its testicles are eaten as an aphrodisiac, and Kuks are a common courting gift.

Kukfighting is a Far Point obsession. Kukfights are very popular events, and usually held in conjunction with clan meetings or celebrations. Many the weapontake has been cut short to get on with a Kukfight. (This does nothing to help the reputation of Far Point men for being childish and emotional.)

A Lawspeaker may be called a Kuk. A crowing hen is a bad omen. A malformed egg is called a Kuk's egg, and is highly magical.

In kukfighting, the natural spurs are removed, and uniform metal spurs bound on. Fighting kuks are pets, their (male) owner's greatest love. They are named, massaged and exercised (chased around the stead yards). Kuks are often fed on bread supped in wine.

Solars and Lunars are regular fowl-eaters, and are rumoured to have birds that lay daily!

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Foot And Drink Among The Bluefoot Orlanthi

'Their food is simple, wild fruits, fresh game and curdled milk.'

Jaxarte Whyded.

On the Upland frontier, hunting, fishing and gathering are as important as farming as a source of daily food. However, these resources should not be over-emphasised for well-established steads: it could easily be half a day’s journey to the nearest hunting area.

There is little trade in foodstuffs; most steads are isolated and self-contained.

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Staple Foods

Small game, fish and grain porridge (frumenty or pottage) are the staple foods. Meat is a prestige food, (beef especially so) and is usually eaten in relatively small quantities to add flavour. A significant percentage of butchery occurs in a sacrificial context. Tubers, gourds, apples, plums, cherries, berries and nuts are plentiful. Cabbage and turnips are the staple potherbs; other staple vegetables include peas, beans, leeks, onions, garlic and chebny, a wild mountain lettuce.

Most meals are some form of stew, soup or pottage cooked in a cauldron over the central hearth of the bloodline lodge, and presided over by a delegate of the senior lodge female. Bread is baked in a clay oven or on a griddle. Flour must either be ground by hand (using a quern), or milled at the stead water mill. (While many steads have windmill-like wind towers, these are usually wards and daimon shrines).

The most common food is a variation on 'pottage'; a soup or stew made from barley, linseed, knotweed and other plants, grains and vegetables, thickened till it is almost solid. Meat or fish might be added, or sheep's milk and honey to sweeten it.

'Frumenty' is grain porridge. Grind some wheat, fan it out and wash it clean. Then boil until tender and brown.

'Green porray' is a mash of green vegetables flavoured with herbs. 'Peas pottage' is made exclusively from mashed peas and salt.

'White porray' is a pottage made from leeks, and is a common winter food.

Mutton stew is a common favourite, flavoured with wine, vinegar, or ale and mustard.

'Collop' is bacon or pork strips with an egg batter.

Puddings are made of (pig's) blood, stirred to stop it congealing and seasoned with flour and herbs.

White bread is rare; brown rye bread is most common. Mixed grain breads are called 'maislin'. Beans, peas and even (in times of famine) acorns are used to make bread. Weed seeds often get mixed with the grain, and some of these can be quite poisonous.

'Rockwrong' or 'Lunar biscuit' is baked and dried until it is rock-hard. It is rumoured to keep for up to fifty years.

Cheese is consumed in great amounts. It is hard, strongly flavoured, and often full of hair and maggots.

In the warmer months, pike of up to 20 kg are caught regularly. Roaches average 2 kg, dace 1 kg, perch 3 kg and chub 4 kg. The entire clan takes to the mountain streams when the salmon run begins in Sea Season.

'Stockfish' is salted air-dried fish. Stockfish will keep for years, but it needs to be beaten with a hammer, soaked for hours and then boiled before it can be eaten. It is only seen at the end of winter when food is becoming scarce.

Meat is most common in Fire and Earth Season, when herd culling takes place and game is most plentiful. Killing also takes place during Dark Season, depending on the depletion of winter fodder. Many kills also take place before the Orlanthi High Holy Day and Sacred Time, times of Celebration in seasons of scarcity and hunger. A clan carefully lays aside precious resources to celebrate these events.

Meat is generally preserved by drying, salting or smoking. Deliberate fattening for the table is very rare. In Dark Season, pickled pork, bacon and other salted meats are often the only meat available.

Salads are made of parsley, chebny (wild lettuce), sage, garlic, spring onions, leeks, bouage, mint, fennel, cresses, rue, purslane and rosemary.

Vegetable oils are produced from linseed and false flax.

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Drink

Water is sometimes too dirty and dangerous to drink; buttermilk, milk, cider, beer or wine are the staple drinks.

Minlister is the brewer of the Storm Tribe, and his cult holds the secrets of brewing such delights as mead, strong beer and liqueurs.

Beer or Ale is usually brewed with barley and spiced with a mixture of herbs known as grout. Wheat, oats and even rye beers known, and 'heather ale' is a delight associated with summer crofting in the upland meadows.

Heortling ale is sweet, with a very solid texture. It provides a significant proportion of most clansfolk's carbohydrate intake, with most adults drinking between two to four pints a day. It has a low alcohol content, especially from later washings of the mash ('First water' is strongest, 'small ale' is weakest). To strain the sediments, clansfolk wear a drinking sieve-spoon around their neck at meals and feasts: these can be highly ornate and are a common gift. Because of the lack of refrigeration, it is drunk very fresh.

(The brew is not technically beer, but rather ale, as it is top-fermented and not lagered.)

Ale does not keep well, and making ale is a weekly household activity usually undertaken by the women. Most common ales last only about a week, and are at their best a few days after manufacture, while still fermenting. After a week, most ale is fit only for pigs. Serving week old ale is a calculated insult to a guest.

True Beer uses hops, and so can be kept for longer periods of time. Hops are still unknown to most Heortling clans, but knowledge is slowly spreading from the Empire and from Sun County, and they are cultivated and used by some master Minlister brewers. Beer is an important source of winter sustenance, but requires an expert brewer, and so usually brewed only at a chief's stead.

Cider is fermented apple or similar fruit juice. The pulp or pomace is wrapped in straw and pressed to produce "must", which is fermented in barrels. Fermentation relies on wild yeast present in the apple and takes about three months unless ritually speeded along, so most cider made in Earth Season is ready in Storm Season, and its drinking a highlight of Sacred Time celebrations. Cider lasts well and is another source of winter carbohydrates.

Powerful berry wines and mead are produced at some steads, as is pear and apple cider. Some wine is imported from the south.

Mead is made from honey, water, and yeast, and is usually brewed by initiates of Minlister. It is a drink for the feasting hall. Requiring special brewing knowledge, it is regarded as the drink of kings and poetic inspiration,especially when spiced (with 'metheglin').

Most Steads will not produce mead; it is rather the drink for the king or chief’s hall. Mead is strongly alcoholic (about 10-18%) and in the United States is classified as a wine rather than a beer. Whereas ale, beer, and cider are food, mead is a drink.

'Crimpy' and 'scrumpy' are sweet honeyed meads. They are often flavoured with some form of herb such as meadowsweet (O.E. meduwyrt - ‘mead plant’).

'Almond milk' is a Pelorian drink that is gaining in popularity; a mixture of wine, ground almonds and honey.

'Cammy' is fermented mare's milk served with lumps of butter. It is strongly associated with Elmali ceremonial.

'Hippocras' is mulled spiced wine.

Several clans forbid the consumption or importation of foreign wines, believing that they sap stamina and endurance. It is not a northern custom to water wine.

Poorer families will rely largely on milk and water.

Never whistle while drinking cider; you may summon up a frivolous wind.

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Favoured and Unusual Foods

Favourite foods include beef (which is usually reserved for ceremonial consumption or as a sign of special honour), roast game and venison, game birds, giant snails, wine with honey, honeybread, rivershell, roll mops, giant insects, river oysters, (imported) peaches, eggs, truffles, mushrooms, fungi, black bread, ginger and cinnamon bread, lizardfish served with roe, sticklepick, skewered locusts, cheese and curd, apple fritters, and corncake.

Spit roast joints of beef are a special treat. Mutton and pork are more common, but not highly thought of. ('Mutton is thrall-food!', records one Anglo-Saxon document.)

(There is considerably less saturated fat in these free range meats than in modern cuts. The animals are lean and rangey, so the proportion of protein to fat is three to one.)

Certain meat joints are reserved as the ‘thane’s portion’ to be consumed by leaders and warriors. Bone marrow is very popular and prestigious, as it contains the spiritual essence of an animal.

Poultry is also a luxury food, often reserved for the old or those recuperating from wounds or disease.

Several Tarshite Solar foods have limited acceptance. 'Giant' snails (about 15 cm long) are fattened on milk. Dabray Doormice are force-fed on nuts in specially made clay pots with holes.

Sticklepick or blackburn is a chunky fish sauce made from the gills, blood and intestines of fish, whole small fish, salt, herbs and vinegar. It is left to liquefy for two or three months. Sticklepick is one of Far Point's most renowned exports.

Honey is the most valued of all foods, and with sugarbeet the only sweetener available. A good hive (a treasure!) can produce up to 40 kilos of honey per year. A lodge of 18 would require about 1.2 kilos of honey per day.

Strawberries and bilberries are a Fire Season treat.

'Parfort' consists of nuts and dried fruit pressed into a round flat cake. It is popular amongst travellers.

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Etiquette

Food is usually served on a 'trencher'; either a wooden plate or a round flat piece of bread that serves as one. On formal occasions, one should not eat one's trencher.

Spoons, like most domestic utensils, are carved at the steads from beech wood.

To up-end one's trencher is a bad omen. To deliberately do this to a fellow is a deadly insult that immediately initiates a bareblade fight.

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Mahome’s Gift: Butter

Butter is made in pats, and used as sheep dressing and cart grease as well as food. It can be preserved in salt, then packed into firkins or bowls for distribution. In such cases it will be washed clean before eating. Butter may also be flavoured with herbs such as garlic. A 'butter arm' is a strong woman. To 'colour your butter' (with marigold) is the Far Point expression for 'gilding the lily'.

Pelorians call Orlanthi 'butter-eaters' - they prefer vegetable oils. (Most Pelorians are in fact lactose intolerant, and cannot stomach more than a cup of raw milk. As a result they are very sensitive to the 'butter-smell' of dairy food consumers such as the Orlanthi, a stench that habitual consumers can not sense. (This same stench permeates the bodies of Europeans and other westerners: we can't smell it, but people from societies that don't use dairy products certainly can! 'Westerners stink!' is not necessarily a political statement.)

Butter is strongly symbolic of male sexuality, and butter churning of sex. Ghee is consumed as an aphrodisiac - at clan weddings men will often consume a kilo or more. Sacred images of the gods are sometimes carved in butter as part of a sacrifice.

Rennet is also made at the stead, in blocks that weigh up to 3 kg.

The Churning Song is a minor magic feat much sought by steadwives. Final churning is a delicate process always done by hand.

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The Fauna of the Far Place

Animals

Elementals And Magical Creatures

* According to the Uplanders, the mythical geography of Far Point is such that forces of fire are eternally weak. A spiritual soggyness pervades.

Animals have their own tribes, and approximately 1% of each species have a high degree of consciousness, free will and volition. They have their own immortal leaders, heroes and shamans, who may dwell both on the Other Side and on the Lozenge. These animals may appear as spirit guides and totems in dreams and visions. They have their own gods, rituals, holy places, heroquests and long term goals.

The topic of animals as symbols and omens is enormous, and largely unexplored. Why are they associated with certain events? What is their link to the world soul or web of Glorantha, the source of their folk and cultic associations?

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Birds

'As for birds... you will find geese, teal, coots, didappers, water crows and herons - more than anyone can number, especially in the Long Dark or at moulting time. I have seen a hundred taken at once, sometimes with bird-lime, sometimes in nets or snares.'

Jaxarte Whyded. The Journey Through Far Point, 1624.

(Note: Far-Pointers use the term 'haggar' instead of 'hawk' or 'eagle', and 'teal' to distinguish non-intelligent ducks from the durulz.)

Birds

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Insects

Note: Insect size increases dramatically as one goes north toward Dagori Inkarth.

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The Flora of the Far Place

'These woods stretch unbroken over a vast region... dense woods, and so still... in many places all the ground is hidden for miles under a thick cushion of moss.... A holy and eternal gloom pervades the pillared aisles.'

SilverFoot the Poet (now missing in Dagori Inkarth).

(As well as Euro-Siberian flora, extensive use has been made in this section of Rodin Greenbeak's Guide to Gloranthan Flora, available in pre-www days at the Berkley Soda FTP server. Greenbeak's work is highly recommended to anyone making use of this list. (Who was the author? - can anyone help with this?)

Darkblooms are common in Far Point: they are blue/black plants that bloom in winter, feeding on cold and dark in the same way that normal plants feed on sunlight. Humans have little use for them: they have few known herbal or medicinal properties. However, they are much used by the Uz.

Some of the following species will be known to you as domesticated garden plants. However, they represent wild ancestors, and may bear little resemblance to the carefully bred domesticated varieties we know today.

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Common Plants and Fungi

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Common Trees And Large Scrubs

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Far Place and Sartar Environments

These environmental types are primarily based upon the Euro-Siberian Province circa 5,000 BP.

HIGH MOUNTAINSIDE

Above the tree line, the upper mountain soils are frozen much of the year, and the conditions are desert-like. In sheltered regions, moss and lichen prevail, while the following plants will flower briefly - campions, saxifranges, sedge and dwarf willows. Some deer and birds will occasionally be found, as will Wind Children and Griffins.

BOREAL FOREST (literally, 'Forest of the North Wind')

Trees here are tall but shallow rooted. You will find small mammals aplenty - mole shrew, rats and squirrels. Larger animals include lynx, wolverine, marten, rubble runner, weasel and stoat. Woodpeckers and owls are plentiful, while wood grouse or hazel grouse nest among tree roots. Crossbills feed by winkling out pine seeds. Raptors include haggar, buzzard, goshawk and owl.

Elementals and Land Spirits are potent forces in these forests.

Deer take refuge in the high forest in the colder seasons, as wolves rarely penetrate here, preferring more open areas.

HIGH FOREST MARSH

Birds predominate here - swans, sandpipers, teals (ducks), wagtails and yellowhammers. The most common raptor is the hen harrier. The most sought-after fish are carp, pike, perch and salmonoids.

MIXED AND BROAD LEAF FOREST

This environment primarily consists of broad-leafed deciduous trees with marshes, plus clearings with deciduous ground cover. Animal life includes alynx, hare, rodent, snake, lizard, vole, hedgehog, weasel, red fox, rubble runner, polecat and badger. Larger predators include bear, horned boar, (small) tusker, wolf and lynx. Deer, ibex and chamoix spend the warmer seasons on mountain pastures, and winter in the forest valleys. Birds include treecreepers, nightingales, blackbirds, jays, bullfinches, tits, goshawks, buzzards and sparrowhawks.

(In Neolithic Europe the siberian tiger sat at the top of this food chain. A suitable Gloranthan equivalent would be sabretooth, griffin or wyrm).

INLAND WATERS

This is an environment of willow and poplar, peat moss and marsh marigold, bulrush, reed, waterlily and duckweed. Giant semi-intelligent turtles are the dominant species. Smaller life abounds, a multitude of birds and insects and fish. Common species include snail, frog, tree frog, salamander lizard, grass snake, otter, egret, and kingfisher (halcyon). Wild Horses, cattle and boar also inhabit the wetlands. Broo may often be found in the more remote marshes.

ELDER FORESTS

In the north of Far Point exist incursions of spore, giant mushroom and Aldryami forests similar to those found in neighbouring Dagori Inkarth and Shadows Dance. See TrollPack for details.

GINIJJI

In the west of Far Point lies the nightmare realm of Ginijji, known to outsiders as Snakepipe Hollow. This place is Chaos-cursed, and by its nature defies orderly description. Anything is possible (and probable) there. See Snakepipe Hollow for details.

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General Notes, Comments and Continuing Questions

'Every Sacred Time, Odayla the Great Hunter marks each animal destined to be killed by his hunters in the following year. Any true hunter can see this mark; it is a gift of heart-sight. Odayla marks enough; enough and no more. If we are greedy in the kill, then others will starve.'

Wisdom of the Tovtaros Tribe, 1624.

'When I hunt Odayla's deer, they stand still,
the spears, the arrows fly of their own accord.
So it seems when the God is with me.
Even when they are running away from me
I feel as though they are standing still.
How easy it is when I hunt Odayla's Deer.'

Song of the Life Spear.

As stated above, these notes are presented as a beginning, and I will happily accept suggestions and additions. I notice that in earlier discusions there was some opposition to including non-european species amongst Sartarite wildlife. Given the ecology of Prax, I have no objections to including non-european species if they will add to the fun (though I have tried to be accurate in the listings above). Have you noticed how American and European small game pop in and out of Sartarite stories, depending on the home of the author?

Most animals will have personal names by which they are commonly known, such as Yinkin the Alynx. Many are kin, and have a special relationship with a clan as totems or protector animals. In the Taroskarla, among the greatest of the hero ancestors are the Animal Twins, who forged the Elemental Covenant that binds all the Tribes of Far Point - human, animal, plant and elemental - into a single community. As guardians of the Covenant, they are still alive, changing each Sacred Time into a different animal form. They breed each year and produce a single, magical animal offspring, the Herald of the Covenant. Because of this, the human and animal bloodlines are intermingled, and to the northern hunters animals are kin in the most literal way. Lifekind is a single family.

Of course, animals can only be fully integrated into a campaign if they have their own mythology and associated characteristics, taboos and totem stories. Often it's local colour and belief that makes an animal memorable.

Generally, I think we have a long way to go in developing the nature of the 'normal' flora and fauna of Glorantha. Magical and non-magical, embodied and spirit are all part of one ecosystem, and regarded by the tribes as such.

However 'straight' the transplanting of plant and animal analogues seem to be, I always feel that we are dealing with very different forms of life, with unique Gloranthan characteristics. Magic (and Chaos) are virtually omnipresent, and bring strong selective pressures to bear on species. Often we don't take Glorantha's unique seasons seriously, preferring 'stretch and squeeze' adaptations from earthly calendars. There are many other unique factors as well.

Nothing is a simple earth-analogue. Plants (and to a lesser extent animals) have strong elemental associations, with effects on blooming, seeding etc. Darkblooms thrive on cold and shadow. Stormblooms extrude thick 'armoured' shoots before the general thaw. Fireblooms may generate flame when their flowers are crushed. Some powerful magical plants (with roots on the Other Side) bloom only in sacred Time.

What are effects of five seasons on breeding and growth? Depending on the area, Storm Season will be either an extension of winter famine (the usual case for Sartar, according to King Of Sartar), or a particularly rough spring. Both of these alternatives have profound implications for animal and plant life. What are the effects of magic on life cycles? Migration, if it occurs will be typically very different from earth. Both continents experience summer and winter at the same time. For my Far Point campaign, I've decided that micro-migration is very important, with birds and animals moving to different biomes within a relatively small area. And what about gestation periods and breeding patterns? What of gigantism, parked as I am against Dagori Inkarth? Or magical and non-magical cross breeding, as practiced on my tulas by the Youf not so very long ago?

The Mystery unfolds only slowly.

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Appendices

Wilderness Resources

Here's a list I've found very useful, which should be applicable to many 'forested' Odaylan, hsunchen or barbarian campaigns. It's derived from excavations and a twelve month recreation of a Mesolithic settlement at Star Carr in Yorkshire, and details basic environmental resources.

(While most of the plants mentioned are still common in England, it's been a long time since wild ox, beaver, elk or boar roamed Derbyshire or the Yorkshire hills, which the ancestral homes of my family and my affines.

FOOD

Trees
- willow
- mountain ash
- open vegetation
Water Birds
- duck
- lapwing
- buzzard
- red-throated diver
- great grebe
- margenser
- white stork
- crane
Insectivores
- hedgehog
Rodents
- beaver
- hare
Herbivores
- wild pig
- red deer
- wild ox
- roe deer
- elk

FIRE

Trees
- birch
- willow
Fungus
Minerals
- iron pyrites
- flint
Mosses
- eurynchium
- camptotecium

CLOTHING

Furs
- pine marten
- red fox
- wolf
- badger
- beaver
- hare
- wild ox
- wild pig
- elk
- red deer
- roe deer

TOOLS AND WEAPONS

Trees
- silver birch
Bones and Antlers
- wild ox
- elk
- red deer
Minerals
- flint
- chert
- calcified crystalvitrie tuff
- chloretic sandy siltstone
- grey wacke
- quartz

ADORNMENTS

Minerals
- lias shale
- haematite
- amber
Feathers
- teal
- lapwing
- buzzard
- little grebe
- red-throated diver
- great grebe
- morganser
- white stork
- crane
Antlers
- red deer

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Far Place Imports & Exports

Outside of Alda Chur, which is one of the most important trading cities in Dragon Pass, regional trade is not well developed in Far Point. The most important items include the following.

Main Exports

Main Imports

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Main References

Apart from the standard encyclopedias and flora/fauna references, each of the following were particularly helpful.

Anonymous, Njal's Saga. (trans. M. Magnusson & H. Palsson). Penguin Classics. London 1983.

T. Butcher, Country Life (Past-Into-Present Series). Batsford Ltd. London. 1970.

J. Carcopino, Daily Life In Ancient Rome. Trans. E. O. Laviner. Penguin. London. (1941) 1972.

G. Caselli, History of Everyday Things: The First Civilisations. MacDonald & Co. London, 1983.

J. Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals. CUP. 1987.

I. Dawson, Food & Feasts in the Middle Ages. Zoe Books. Winchester. 1994.

B. Vesay FitzGerald, Portrait of the New Forest. Robert Hale. London. 1966.

Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland. (trans. J. OMeara). Penguin Classics. Ringwood. 1982.

Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales / The Description of Wales. (trans. L. Thorpe). Penguin Classics. Ringwood. 1980.

J. Goode & C. Wilson, Fruit and Vegetables of the World. Lothian. Melbourne. 1987.

M. J. Green (Ed), The Celtic World. Routledge. London. 1995.

W. O. Hassall, How They Lived. Basil Blackwell. Oxford. 1965.

P. Knudtson & D. Suzuki, Wisdom of the Elders. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992.

R. Lacey & D. Danziger, The Year 1000. Abacus. London. 1999.

G. Masefield, M. Wallis et al, The Oxford Book of Food Plants. OUP. London. 1969.

W. T. Neill, The Geography of Life. Columbia University Press, NY, 1969.

I. O. Peate, Tradition and Folk Life: A Welsh View. Faber & Faber. London. 1972.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History A Selection (trans by J. Healy). Penguin Classics. Ringwood. 1991.

N. J. G. Pounds, An Economic History of Medieval Europe. Longman. London. 1974.

M. M. Postan (Ed), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: Volume 1 The Agrarian Life of the Middle Ages. CUP. Cambridge. 1966.

Sturluson, Snorri, Egil's Saga. (trans. H. Palsson and P. Edwards). Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth. 1976.

Time-Life History of the World: The Domestic World. Time-Life Books. 1991.

Theocritus, The Idylls (trans. R. Wells). Penguin Classics. London. 1999.

R. Thomas, The Brecon Beacons National Park. The Countryside Commission / Webb & Bower. London. 1987.

M. Todd, Everyday Life of the Barbarians - Goths, Franks and Vandals. Betsford, London, 1972.

Various, Hrafnkel's Saga and Other Stories (trans. by H. Palsson). Penguin Classics. London. 1985.

M. Visser, Much Depends On Dinner. Grove Press. NY. 1986.

M. Welch, English Heritage Book of Anglo-Saxon England. B. T. Batsford Ltd/English Heritage. London, 1992.

Pity the poor young scribe, who endures harsh masters, bad tallow, raw onions and cold baths
while a better world is glimpsed through the scriptorium wind eye!
Afal Aldusson.

http://mythologic.info/questlines/florafauna.html
Questlines is created and maintained by John Hughes.

Flora and Fauna of the Far Place

A Note Before Beginning

Crops, Farming & Herding

Living Off The Land

Historical Analogues

Food Staples and Other Crops

Food Crops

Animals Of The Stead

Domesticated or Food Animals

Cattle

Pigs

Sheep

Foot And Drink Among The Bluefoot Orlanthi

Staple Foods

Drink

Favoured and Unusual Foods

Etiquette

The Fauna of the Far Place

Animals

Cultural Animals

Major Wilderness Fauna

Fish And Aquatic Animals

Elementals And Magical Creatures

Birds

Birds

Insects

The Flora of the Far Place

Common Plants and Fungi

Common Trees And Large Scrubs

Far Place and Sartar Environments

HIGH MOUNTAINSIDE

BOREAL FOREST (literally, 'Forest of the North Wind')

HIGH FOREST MARSH

MIXED AND BROAD LEAF FOREST

INLAND WATERS

ELDER FORESTS

GINIJJI

General Notes, Comments and Continuing Questions

Appendices

Wilderness Resources

FOOD

FIRE

CLOTHING

TOOLS AND WEAPONS

ADORNMENTS

Far Place Imports & Exports

Main Exports

Main Imports

Main References