The World Of Twilight

Mmkay, here's beastie #1 - the Oreg...

A Short Treatise on the Habits and Uses of the Oreg
By Kyir, of Karuk College

Physical Features:
The Oreg are shorter at the shoulder than Fubarnii, but longer and bulkier animals. Their front legs are short and firm-footed, their back legs much longer and incredibly muscular. Their large and strong beaks are mostly good for browsing vegetation, and they have quite rounded bodies and stubby tails.

The Kopa exhibits a number of other features not found in the Sempa or Jenta; Kopa grow large “spikes” on each shoulder, which are extremely tough and very dangerous weapons for the beast. They also have thick and hardened brow-ridges of bone to protect them from impacts to the head, and their back is covered in almost  “armour” formed out of thick bony ridges.

Behaviour:
The Sempa are generally quite docile animals, and pretty useless to anyone; Oreg meat is almost inedibly tough, and they produce no other significantly useful by-products. The Kopa look rather different as has been noted, and behave similarly differently; Oreg Kopa are some of the most bad-tempered, stubborn, pointlessly aggressive creatures a Fubarnii could ever have the misfortune to come across. Both types are mostly herbivorous in the wild, but will eat carrion at times if they find it.

Each Kopa will generally have 2-5 Sempa, and along with their Jenta they will roam around in small family groups. When two families meet, it is common for the Kopa to “joust” with their large shoulder-spikes, using their large hind legs to launch themselves at each other, grappling almost in mid-air at times. They can do serious injury to one another or even cause death in these contests. The defeated Kopa will generally lose one of his Sempa to the victor.

The Sempa tend to back away along with their Jenta in times of trouble; Kopa rarely flee from anything, giving them a solid reputation for stubborn-ness. Capturing an Oreg is a very risky business and many a Fubarnii has died in the process at times. It is not only Fubarnii who can regret taking on an Oreg, though; they will almost always fight rather than back down even against a Devanu or Grishak, and their shoulder-spikes can do very severe damage or even on occasion kill even these large predators. That is not to say the Oreg would usually win such a fight – it would be immensely rare for one to survive tussling with a Devanu – but the cost of killing one can be surprisingly and painfully high.
 
Domestication:
Despite the seemingly useless nature of these beasts, Fubarnii across the Empire have found a reason to capture Oreg and even breed them; pit-fighting. Oreg are bred for the toughest and most muscular Kopa, and then sent into the pit to battle it out – as, of course, it is in their nature to do. Establishments can be found in many towns and cities offering the chance to see the breathtaking if cruel spectacle; as long as a businessman is prepared to go to the bother of capturing a few Oreg or finding breeders prepared to go to a new fighting-pit, digging out a pit and adding fences is easy, as is creating some viewing platforms and possibly a betting stand to make a little extra for the owner.

Breeding and capturing the Oreg is still dangerous, of course; nevertheless, breeders continue their trade as the best Kopa for breeding will fetch nearly as much as an Enuk Nobilis would (not that a Nobilis would usually be sold on the markets, of course!).

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Picture:
The Sempa and Kopa are shown with their heads (heads mostly so you can see the Kopa’s brow-ridge). Next to them and the Fubarnii scale-bar (which is prolly a little high, that’d be a pretty tall Fubarnii) there’s a doodle of an Oreg-fighting establishment; a tower with a viewing gallery inside and a flat-topped outdoor viewing platform next to it. In front is the deep, fenced pit with two badly-drawn Oreg battling it out inside (less well off spectators would stand around the pit fence, whereas better off Fubarnii would watch from higher up, possibly hiring a viewing-glass for a better view).

(http://www.wavcott.org.uk/WoT/oreg.jpg)

That's cool, just the sort of thing I was hoping to see :)

Thanks! Are the physical Kopa/Sempa differences realistic growth-wise? And would Fubarnii enjoy that sort of blood sport?

I expect some Fubarnii would like blood sports, but I'm not too sure how widespread it would be...
Strong differences between Kopa and Sempa would not be unusual. Some creatures would actually differ hugely, with some of the Jenta pretty much skipping the Sempa stage, or Sempa growing larger than their Kopa. There are plenty of options!

I was just discussing with Tom the other day whether Fubarnii would go in for that sort of vicarious pleasure through other people's pain, and my thought was that they didn't.  But that doesn't mean they wouldn't have such things but with a different attitude to them.  I don't imagine the cruelty of some of the Roman combats where the spectacle of people being pulled to pieces was a big draw, but breeding animals to fight might be interesting to them because the focus is on building a better animal, as they would a machine.  It's possible I'm just squeamish about blood sports.
Great creature idea by the way.  I think it has a similar build to the one I'm doing, so they might be related.  Though I was planning on mine being more closely related to Devanu than Fubarnii, just to widen out the taxonomic tree a little.  Smaller back feet, exposed beak, better at digesting meat.  Do you think that would fit with yours?

I imagine that there's a wide range of opinion as with humans. I mean, a modern liberal-minded Briton such as most of us are, boradly speaking, is unlikely to be a great proponent of blood sports (personally I can't stand blood sports at all in reality; hunting and fishing I'm fine with, but things like badger baiting just make me angry frankly). Ask a selection of ancient Romans and the answer would've been rather different, I'm sure.

I don't think Oreg fighting would be nearly as "big" as Roman beast-fights though - and it is considerably less likely to result in death than Roman equivalents, since while oreg will fight to kill non-Oreg quite happily they tend to be well adpated to surviving jousts with each other and males will rarely fail to accept the result of a duel (it wouldn't be advantageous for a Kopa to kill another Kopa and take all the Sempa, as doing so would leave him with too large a pack to protect easily and would make him a major target for other Oreg and predators). I sort of imagine most decent sized towns could be expected to have a pit, though; the excitement of the sport comes from a whole range of things, including the betting, supporting particularly famous local Oreg possibly (one might get travelling breeders who bring their Oreg to towns to take on local "champion" Kopa). I don't see the blood itself as being a huge draw for Fubarnii (though I don't think thy'd be put off by it in the same way as your or I, partly because they're tougher animals and so the equivalence of seeing blood and imminent death is less relevant maybe), but I think they'd be quite excited by other aspects.

And yea, that sounds taxonomically reasonable; Oreg aren't hunters but they're happily omnivorous, so that'd fit perfectly well.

I think I've mentioned the Fubarnii love of competition and betting, so it seems likely to me that that would be more the focus than any actual bloodshed.

Fubarnii are generally a little lower down the foodchain than humans (evolutionarily speaking), so their reaction to bloodshed would be more likely to be fear than excitement.

So thats why mike didn't put trousers on the fubarnii militia  :o

Nice one. Im finding it hard to think of any Fubarnii that would keep creatures to fight one another resulting in bad injuries. Being from a persecuted background themselves I really cant imagine it. Not to say some unscrupulous ones among them might.

An alternative could be to have a kind of "non injury" sport. They could have a "grapple" type game like Sumo maybe. First Oreg pushed out the ring is the loser. Your description of the creature would fit too.

On the flip side to it - many people that have been "harmed" early in their lives (individual or community as a whole) have been shaped by that and quiet often become that which harmed them. I know I am putting a human slant on them and their thinking but so is everyone else.

I do feel that all societies enter a sport = blood at some point. It is usually once they feel safe and secure, I am thinking that cities might have these Blood sports as they are external the raids and hardships of the smaller villages and crofts.


Just my view.



Lord of Wormwood

All human societies do. I think fubarnii are more likely to have races between them rather than combat, lol!

Mind you, they may have the equivalent of a zoo - "come and see the fearsome beasts" - safely behind bars!

As I say, Oreg-fights are sort of a "blood sport" but death and severe injury is pretty rare; normally it will look a bit more like a sumo fight with the two Oreg shoving at each other and occasionally leaping forward to try and stab something with their shoulder spikes. If an Oreg is at all seriously hurt it will back down and the other Oreg is declared to have won the fight. That's not to say blood isn't spilt, but we know that the Fubarnii are tougher than humans and we can assume Oreg are pretty tough too; I don't think that the sight of blood would make Fubarnii feel that squeamish. They might not enjoy it, but I don't think it'd put them off from their love of competition and betting as Gethuch said.

Brilliant!! That really made me chuckle!!

Just a few thoughts..

Evolutionarily it doesn't make much sense for breeding fights to get ugly. In the wild, even a small wound or disability can impede your ability to find food, so I'd imagine an animal which competes for mates by stabbing away with big spikes would be tough or well armoured enough to survive such contests relatively intact and with minimal harm to themselves beyond the odd impressive battle scar.

Dog fights and other such sports usually rely on mistreating the animals involved to make them more aggressive, and I'd assume fubarnii wouldn't be all that interested in making the competition bloodier (or indeed mistreating an animal which can kill them) so I can see it being less about making animals hurt each other for fun and more about exploiting the competative instincts of the animals for betting purposes. More like beetle fighting in asia (but with giant beetles) than dog fighting.

Which is the reason the Kopa has bony ridges down its back, indeed. Thanks for putting it rather better than I think I have done thus far, though.

I've been generally keeping out of this discussions to see where it went! There will be blood sports and other unpleasantness within Anyaral, but the only real question is how widespread it is. I'm not sure if it is a very rare thing, or if in some regions it is widespread and well developed. I'm also not sure what they think about it in the civilised heart of the Empire, whether it is generally looked down upon, or accepted and developed into an artform.

All that doesn't impact the creature too much though! :)

Just adding my own two pence here :D

The Fubarnii suffered for many years under the Devanu, who are seemingly incredibly violent!

Despite the Fubarnii being fairly constructive creatures I would imagine some of that Devanu nastiness would have rubbed off on the Fubs. And don't forget there are soldiers and such so I could well imagine there are a fair amount of Fubs that would like or at least tolerate violence in one way or another.

"Despite the Fubarnii being fairly constructive creatures I would imagine some of that Devanu nastiness would have rubbed off on the Fubs. And don't forget there are soldiers and such so I could well imagine there are a fair amount of Fubs that would like or at least tolerate violence in one way or another."

You know, as in blood sports or whatever...