Year 50,000: The Bellaron Sacrifice Chamandra

Previous history

     Year 0: The Brun return to the frozen north 
          Year 30,000:  The cleansing ritual of Oparron

(I started off the players with How The Beast of the Sea Slew the Weak.  The title alone made them apprehensive.  The fingers began pointing in Connor's direction almost as soon as the story was concluded.)

The Oparron tribe has crossed the island chain, in boats and rafts, for millennia. In that time, their society has changed; those who are strongest survive, and those who perish weren’t strong enough. Leaders of the tribe (now called Bellaron) are chosen by combat prowess; a loser who survives, which doesn’t happen often, is exiled. A loser who fails to survive is purified: that is, boiled or burnt. Mates are often selected by contest as well, with men fighting for the right to a woman or, just as frequently, women fighting over men.

Upon reaching adulthood, men and women must undergo a rite of passage, to do something daring and possibly deadly. Thousands of years ago, such demonstrations included hunting game alone; more recently, demonstrations involved far-ranging expeditions to find new islands, or deep-diving demonstrations to bring up pearls.

Now, as the seas are rising, their islands are disappearing, but salvation is in sight: land is just visible on the horizon.

The leader of the Turning Shell tribe has organized expeditions to neighboring islands to bring back as many trees as can be found, to make rafts to get the people to the mainland. The leader, Windstrong Ravvy (M, 50) is a tough, judicious leader. Yes, the trip to the mainland is perilous, but we cannot remain. Some will die, but the strong will make it.

Not all are happy with the decision to go. Many of the younger generation follow the words of Nightsky Chamandra (M, 16) who says he is the strongest who ever lived. He has personally killed seven men in combat, he can have any mate he wants, and he is not afraid o the water. He will remain behind with all his mates and any who will stay. In fact, Chamandra claims that the Sea Spirit spoke to him and told him he was immortal. He will remain behind and the tribe will witness that no harm comes to him.

Ravvy says he cannot allow this. Those that follow Chamandra include most of the women of childbearing age, and without them, Ravvy will have a short-lived time on the mainland.

The medicine woman of the Turning Shell tribe, Copperdawn Dainar (F, 43) is not much use. Although she agrees that the waters will consume all the island and it is not safe to remain, it is also not safe to go. The berries which grow on the island are key to fertility: without the seaberries, we have no children. Have you not noticed that a woman only bears children when she eats of the seaberry? Have you not noticed that men only sire children when they have eaten the seaberry? There is a reason we use the seaberry in our rites of passage ritual, she says; we cannot abandon the islands, and yet we cannot leave. Our way of life is doomed; the world is ending; game over, man, etc.

That is nonsense, says Queenfisher Abda (F, 22). We all eat of the berries. Who here has not? In any case, the sea will support us. I will show you the way. I, who have dived deeper than any, and I who can remain below the water for hours at a time, will show you how the sea can sustain us.

Chamandra and Ravvy are squaring off to see which of their people will follow them.

What The Players Decided  

"He says he's immortal?" asked Connor.  "Let's kill him.  That will solve it.  They won't pay any attention to him once we kill him off."

What if he is immortal? I asked reasonably.

"Oh." And they went back to the drawing board.

"Hang on, that purification ritual," Joe the Leader said, glaring at Connor.  "The whole burning and boiling heads thing. If he is immortal, he'll be the last to fall. So who will purify his remains? He can't leave his people. What does he say to that?"

"I am immortal," said Chamandra. "The question shall never arise."

"So he says he's immortal," the Joe said, trying again. "That doesn't mean he can protect the people that stay behind. Doesn't he care about them?"

"If they're strong," Chamandra says, "they'll survive. If they don't, they weren't strong enough."

"Boy," said Connor the Mystic, "we really messed these people up."

"What do you mean we?" asked Dave and Joe, together.

"All right, let's test his immortality," Joe said, coming back around to Connor's first solution. "He doesn't seem to afraid to demonstrate it. If the people see that he's not immortal, they won't be as likely to take his advice and remain on the islands."

"We'll make him dive into the water and stay there for ... like, two days," Dave said.

"What about that water-breathing chick — Abda?" Joe asked.  "She can stay down for hours. What if she breathes air into his mouth?"

"We don't let her go down with him."

"What if he can breathe water too?"

"Hmmm. Okay, let's not use water. Let's say, All right, you're immortal, do as you will. Before we depart the island we must perform the purification ritual for you. For if we all leave, who would perform these rites for you? Just step over here and stand in this fire..."
 

They built a giant bonfire to purify the body of Chamandra prior to his death. If he really wasn't immortal, he'd die, no problems, and we don't have to worry about him.

Chamandra was happy to oblige, and gathered the people before the fire. "I accept my purification directly from the hands of the Four Warriors, the only ones who have the power to do so—"

("I knew he was going to do that!" said Joe.)

"I will die, but I will be reborn—"

("Aaargh, why didn't we think of that?" asked Dave.)

"—for I am immortal. You must now leave my islands. You will rue the day that you ever chose to leave."

He then stepped into the fire and burned to death.

The Players looked at each other.  "Oh, great," said Joe.

Results  

The effects of this event are too complex to enter into here, but suffice to say that the tribes of Brun who would now populate the mainland would have a strong element of sacrifice in their mythology.  They would all tell the tale of Chamandra, who was sacrificed to make the rising waters fall.  At the time I prepared this event, I thought it might be amusing to introduce a character that was actually immortal, considering how the Players would continue to return to the world and see the changing face of culture and technology.  Wouldn't it be fun to see one familiar face?  I did not, however, expect the Players to immediately resent this supposed immortal and order him burned to death.  You might say that the Players hadn't handled this particular Event very well.  I say that they gave me a gift, such that any GM would love to receive.

How the Beast of the Sea Slew the Weak

When the world was young and the seas were cold and the skies rained, the Island People did long ago live in the Land of the Setting Sun.  Their leader, a mighty leader called Axe-Hand Oparron, led the people to a place where there was nothing but water on all sides, and here he told them to rest and prepare for the hunt.

As the people rested and prepared, Four Warriors came forth from the Land of the Setting Sun, and they called out a warning.  But the people did not listen, and behold!  Two giant beasts of shell and horn emerged from the sea, and did slay five of the people.

Huntress Javaz said, “We must slay these beasts in kind,” and she led her mighty warriors to the battle, and they did kill the beasts of the sea.

And the mighty leader Axe-Hand Oparron said, “You have done well, you have slain the beasts.  Now we hunt.”

But the people were starving and two of the weakest of them ate the flesh of the beasts, and those people turned red in the face and died at once.

And the people said, “These are not beasts that we can eat!  Axe-Hand Oparron, what shall we hunt?  For there is no food.”

Huntress Javaz said, “Only the strongest among us can eat the flesh of these beasts.  Dare you to see if you are strong, or if you are weak?”

And Axe-Hand Oparron consulted Warrior Zoad and Mystic Olan, and they said, “From this day forth, on the day when a boy becomes a man, and on the day a girl becomes a woman, each shall taste of the sea berry, and each shall partake of the flesh of the sea beasts, and we shall know if they are strong.”

And thus it was so.

And Huntress Javaz said, “And if ever question arises who is to hunt, the hunt shall be led by the strong, and not by the weak.”

And Mystic Olan said, “And if ever question arises who is to be our medicine man, we shall choose the one with the strongest spells, and not the weakest.”

And Axe-Hand Obarron, who was wisest of all, said, “And if ever question arises which is the strongest, remember the Four Warriors, who saw the beasts of the sea when others saw it not.”

The First Pilgrimage

Back in the beginning of Time, the gods fashioned the Earth.  They shaped it round, like a fruit, and they scattered it around with stars, and they hung over it a sun and a moon.  At the north of the world, where on a fruit might be a stem, and on the south where might be found a blossom, the gods placed ice.  And they shaped the Earth into mountains and rivers and lakes and islands, and they placed the People upon it.

Now the People all came from one place in the beginning, for all tales start there.  And over the years the People did move in all different directions, separating, rejoining, marrying, and making war.  And so it came to pass that the People did live in every corner of the Earth.

Some of the people in those days were crossing the ocean, and the oceans were rising, though know man today knows why.  And there was one among them who was named Chamandra.  And Chamandra was young and foolish in those days, and he believed that he could stop the rise of the oceans and save his people, and he taunted the gods with his foolishness and he dared them to cast him into the flames of sacrifice.  And Chamandra boasted that although he might die, he would be reborn, and thus it was so, for Chamandra was the first Immortal.

Now Chamandra was reborn at the will of the gods, but he did not return to his people on the ocean.  He was reborn first in a faraway land where men and horse were one beast.  He lived there, and died, and was again reborn.  And each time he was reborn, he became less a fool, and he began to understand the grand creation of the gods, and he began to repent his previous ways.

So Chamandra began the First Pilgrimage, and he walked and walked and walked, until he died and was born again.  And when he came of age, he again walked and walked, until he reached the place where the land fell away into ocean, and from there he sailed, until he died and was reborn.  And when he came of age again, he sailed and sailed until he reached the place where the Four Gods had cast him into the flames of sacrifice.  And when he saw that island, which he knew of old, he knew that he had been a fool, for he had not been sacrificed, and yet the oceans had fallen.

And Chamandra regretted his boast, and he renounced it, and he decided his Pilgrimage must be over.

It was then that the women of the sea whispered to Chamandra, “Your Pilgrimage is not at an end.  Have you not learned?  Are you not wiser?  Do you not recall that you swore to protect your people?”

Then Chamandra knew that the real purpose of his Pilgrimage had been to remind him of his duty to his people, and thus he set off to follow in the footsteps of Windstrong Ravvy and Copperdawn Dainar, who last he saw, a hundred years ago, had talked of sailing for the mainland.

Year 30,000: The Cleansing Ritual Of Oparron (Brun)

Previous history

     Year 0: The Brun return to the frozen north

In the intervening millennia, the Brun — always a tribe of colder climates — migrated north and spread out across the coastal plains.  Competition for game became greater as their numbers increased, pushing some of the Brun out onto a cold, marshy, wind-lashed peninsula (orange arrow).  The seas were lower in those days, so a mid-oceanic tectonic ridge took on the appearance of an archipelago, and low-elevation tidal flats made interconnected land masses out of what would, in twenty thousand years' time, be islands.

The Brun, now called the Oparron, are accustomed to following herds of game, but food has become scarce on the peninsula.  Stronger tribes are forcing them out of the good hunting grounds.  Lately, especially during Round 2, they have turned to fishing to support their tribe, and what little fish that is caught is shared by all.  Rationing, such as it might be called in the Paleolithic, was rigidly enforced.  The safety of the tribe, their ability to resist encroachment by other tribes, depended on strength in numbers.

One rainy evening during , three of the Oparron discovered a way to capture several scuttling crabs on the sandy beach.  They roasted the crab secretly, away from the rest of the tribe, and ate them.  Almost immediately thereafter, those tribesmen died horribly:  they were gasping for breath, their faces red and blotchy, and they were gabbling on about their impending doom.

The leader of the tribe is Zoad the Axe (M).  He wonders if the crabs are simply poisonous.  It wouldn't be the first time the tribes had discovered inedible foods.  His medicine man, Olar the Mystic (M), declares that it's something in the crabs which is poisonous, possibly because they come from the salt sea.  If he were to cleanse the crab meat with his Purify Water spell, perhaps it would be safe.

The explanation doesn't sit well with the overzealous enforcer, Javez the Huntress (F).  She says they got what was coming to them.  It was their punishment by the gods for failing to share the meat that they caught.  Let that be a lesson to all!

Zoad the Axe has summoned the Great Spirits for answers.

What The Players Decided

As soon as I had described the symptoms of the tribesmen's death, Joe the Leader (who is a nurse) muttered sarcastically, "Great, now we have to invent Benedryl."  He had spotted quickly, as I had suspected he would, the symptoms of an acute allergic reaction to shellfish.

Originally I had intended for this to be a way of establishing dietary law.  It would not surprise me to learn that the rules of kosher and halal each stem from a rational, logical warning against certain types of foods and methods of preparation, the Bronze Age equivalent to "wash the cutting board before you start."  I had also mused that the Players might take action here to purge the tribe of those members with an allergy, which might later preclude the birth of someone important.  Those were just vague plans, and I hadn't formulated anything specific.  Fortunately, they handed me a gift on a silver platter, as Players sometimes do:  they gave me a direction that was much more interesting than the one I'd thought of.

"First of all, that shaman guy, that's not going to work," said Joe the Leader.  "Purify Water?  That's not going to make the crabs hypoallergenic.  Connor, can you teach them a Neutralize Poison spell or something?"

"Uh... I don't have it," Connor said.

"What spells do you have?  No Tell Time, no Neutralize Poison..."

It was true.  I had decided that a Neutralize Poison spell hadn't been invented by this stage in the Paleolithic.  Connor hadn't taken it because he wasn't allowed.

"If we agree with the Huntress," said Dave the Artisan sagely, "she's going to go on a power trip.  She'll love that, being able to crack down on everybody.  We don't want that to happen."

"Can we lead them off of this peninsula?" asked Joe the Leader.

They're not really strong enough to battle the other tribes, I said.  That's why they're here.

"We could help them.  But they'd probably still lose a few, and they've already lost three."  Joe considered it.  "But they have to eat something.  How many more would they lose if we just had them all eat some crab?"

I shrugged.  Try it and see.

Eventually they came around to this idea, but as I remember it, they took some time getting there.  In the meantime, Connor the Mystic busied himself inventing a new ritual for the Oparron.  The bodies of the dead who had been poisoned by the crab, he said, should be cleansed.  Burn bodies, and boil the skulls—

"Connor, what are you doing?" asked Dave the Artisan.

"I'm teaching them a new ritual," Connor said.  "It's for purification."

Sensing that Connor was becoming sidetracked with inventing new and complicated religions involving skulls and death, Joe and Dave quickly moved to their conclusion.  The Players were to arrange a feast of crab, fresh from the sea.  All of the members of the tribe would eat.  It would be a rite of manhood.

"A rite of manhood?" sneered Javaz the Huntress.

"A rite of passage," Joe amended himself.  "Everyone must eat crab."

"Everybody must smear berries on your face," said Connor.

Berries, I said, and scribbled a note in pencil.  Interesting.

"No, no, I didn't say that!" Connor protested.

"Too late," said Joe and Dave with resignation.

"Everyone must eat crab," Joe said again, "and if you are strong, you will prove your worth."

Result

They had their feast.  Two more of the Oparron died, but they had proved that seafood was indeed (usually) safe to eat.  The Oparron would, in the next millennia, move out onto the North Ocean island chain.