{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2481",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2481,
    "subject": "5HC: Annese primitives",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-11-30T11:15:17+00:00",
    "last": "2000-11-30T11:15:17+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0143@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-11-30T11:15:17+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC: Annese primitives",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I know we've all been through this before, but here's a new catalogue drawn\nmainly from \"A Story.\"\n\nEach group has a biome or environment that they stay in, and other biomes\nthat they make incursions into.\n\n\"Trees\" are found at desert oaises.  They can talk in real time; they can\nsend dreams.  They are lords of their little patch of green.  They are like\nTolkein's Ents, in a way, but I don't know if they can move (anecdotal\nevidence at Frenchman's Landing makes them sound like dryads).  I get the\nsense that Hill People socially sanctioned procreative activities are\nusually conducted at an oasis: thus the oasis is their mating ground.\n\n\"Priest\" is found in a cave.  Like a Tree, he is lord of his area, but also\na dispenser of wisdom for boys-becoming-men.  Gives very powerful dreams in\nexchange for offerings of food.\n\n\"Hill People,\" aka \"Free People\" are in the hills in Winter, in the\nmountains in Summer.  They are tribal, organized into small groups.\nPre-agricultural hunter/gatherers in a harsh landscape.  Their skin color\nis described as \"dust\" and \"brown\"; their hair is dark, fine, and straight;\ntheir eyes are green.  They definitely will not eat Marshmen, but maybe\nthey will eat Shadow Children (the Shadow Children seem to chide Sandwalker\nfor his boast that he will eat them; then again, maybe Flying Feet ate most\nof the one he killed?).  The oasis is their mating ground, the cave is\ntheir college, the cliff is where they run any of their members who talk\ntheocratic stuff.  They leave night offerings for Shadow Children.  They\nare thus something like fairies, more like oreads (hilly nature).\n\n\"Marshmen\" aka \"Wetlanders\" are in the meadowmeres.  Their skin color seems\nlighter than that of the Hill People.  As boys become men they are seared\nwith fire on the sides of their heads (so their hair grows in a \"Mohawk\"\ncrest) and scarred on shoulders and thighs.  They are slavers, taking Hill\nPeople for sacrifice (with ritualized cannibalism) and priesthood.  They\nare trappers rather than hunters: they lure Shadow Children (for\n\"everyday-style\" feasting).  They have a larger scale of organization than\nany of the other groups, having many people (a hundred?); they have a\nstar-oriented theocracy, with contempt for the mundane world around them.\nThey are proto-scientists, experimenting with disection of human corpses;\nthey are arboreal architects, building their woodhenge-style observatory;\nthey are the most \"technologically\" (such as it is) developed of the\ngroups.  They are trolls, more or less. (In a \"colonial\" reading they might\nbe seen as Europeans.)\n\n\"Shadow Children\" aka \"mock men.\"  They seem dark and weak.  They are\norganized into small bands of odd (or is it prime?) numbers (1, 3, 5, 7,\netc.).  (It isn't clear what happens when they have an even number, due to\nloss: but I suspect that the names \"Hunter\" and \"Hatcher\" are always\nassigned to such oddmen out--that is, they aren't names in the \"5 member\"\nset of names.) They move through all the biomes, it seems.  Nocturnal.\nTelepathic and doped to the gills.  They go into the rocks when day comes\nin the desert.  They will eat Marshmen quite happily, and they will likely\neat Hill People.  They project the planet cloaking spell/song.  They are\nghouls, pretty much; but they avoid the ghoul-bear (or maybe that makes\nperfect sense!).\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}