The Madlanders are a tribal people who have managed to survive for untold
centuries in an extremely hostile environment. The dangers of an economy
dependent on game hunting and deep-sea fishing provide a bleak backdrop.
More terrifying are the monsters that lurk in the dark forested interior
of the Mad Lands; they were once human, but have been turned into awful
parodies of their former selves by the gods. The Mad Land's gods are its
ultimate horrors: capricious, irrational animal deities whose mere presence
spells doom and distress for any who approach them.
Madlander culture has developed in order to cope as well as possible with
this never-ending supernatural pressure. Their society is deeply communal;
individuals make all their decisions according to the greater good of their
community. Though they will freely sacrifice themselves for their own kind,
Madlanders are vehemently distrustful of outsiders, especially those who
might wield shamanistic or sorcerous powers.
All of these traits -- and anything else one might want to know about Madlander
culture -- are contained in their rich canon of stories, transmitted from
generation to generation by village tale-tellers. Many of these feature
Zo Do Wabda and his wife Vidigi, figures whose characteristics and histories
vary widely from story to story. In the following example, Zo Do Wabda is
clever and his wife is foolish; in many others the opposite is true. Dark
humor and fatalism dominate Madlander tales -- many end with cruelly ironic
deaths for Zo Do Wabda and/or his wife.
A tale like this might be told at the approach of dusk. Village women will
have finished their crafts and tending of vegetable patches. They'll have
prepared a big communal meal, which will have been consumed with gusto.
Men will be home from the adventures of the hunt, or back from the unpredictable
sea. One of the village storytellers will take a seat on a boulder, indicating
that she (storytellers can be men or women) has something prepared. The
others will gather around her, sitting on the ground in anticipation. Some
will be hoping for a time-honored tale they know by heart; others will want
a new and surprising account invented by the narrator. On this particular
night the first group is pleased, as the woman opens with the famous first
words of a classic story:
Zo Do Wabda was always nervous on boats. Preferring the solid hazards of
the hunting trail to the liquid ones of fishing season, he was uneasy. The
cause of his disquiet was not the taunts of the seasoned fishers. He would
get his own back on the next hunting expedition, when he would assign the
most unpleasant tasks to the salty Gi Evav and his fellow jokers. But something
still bothered him, a feeling that his stomach had suddenly become bottomless.
Though it was warm for fishing season, Zo Do Wabda shivered on deck. He
turned away from his laughing, bantering clan mates.
Out in the dark water, he saw something float to the surface. It caught
the sun's rays and played with them. It was some kind of freakish hide clothing,
thin and filmy, but with the sheen of honed metal. Wearing the clothing
was a woman.
Zo Do Wabda shouted to the others, who pulled her into the boat. To their
surprise, the woman was breathing. Though too tall and thin to be truly
beautiful, with unpleasant blonde hair, the young thing still had a peculiar
charm. She was clearly a foreigner; probably a Va Ekappi O, from
the confusing land across the sea where vile sorcery is more common than
air and all the people are crazy.
Zo Do Wabda immediately asked Gi Evav to hand him a harpoon; she might be
a dangerous sorceress. Since she was a foreigner and not a human, he had
no qualms about putting her to immediate death. After all, her survival
in the water was unusual, and the unusual is always the source of justifiable
fear.
But the others kept him from the harpoon. Recognizing of course that there
was no moral obligation to let her live, they argued that neither was there
sufficient reason to slay her. Not all Va Ekappi O were evil, just
the vast majority of them. Until her menace to the village was reasonably
proven, they should spare her.
Zo Do Wabda grumbled, but yielded to their entreaties. Given their honest
objections, he would not take matters into his own hands. He would wait
until returning to shore, when he would consult his clan elder. Pago Zibap
was a wise woman, and would surely agree with him that the half-human should
be killed before she turned on them.
To his surprise, Pago Zibap sided with the others; the woman was to be sheltered
and cared for, assumed to be harmless until proven otherwise. Zo Do Wabda
grumbled and fumed. To his added chagrin, the woman became fast friends
with his wife Vidigi, who regaled him every evening with fresh details of
life in the chaotic lands of the Va Ekappi O.
Her name was sickeningly unpronounceable; sounded out in decent Madlander
the best that could be made of it was "Tuxo." Her stories were
outrageous: she claimed to be from an enormous village inhabited only by
women. She said none of the villagers ever had to work; food and goods simply
lay on the ground, waiting for people to pick them up. All of the villagers
followed the orders of their most beautiful woman; she could make decisions
without the consent of the others.
Zo Do Wabda's mood grew darker the more of this nonsense he heard. Though
none of it was even slightly believable, her words also failed to implicate
her in sorcery. He was sure she was a magician -- how would she have learned
to speak our language without spells? But she was clever enough not to give
herself away.
This continued for several years, with all of the villagers except for Zo
Do Wabda gradually becoming fond of Tuxo. Finally the suggestion was made
that she be adopted into the village and be treated as fully human. Vidigi
proposed her for membership in their clan. A village meeting was called
for that evening, during which the proposal would be fully discussed. Zo
Do Wabda became despondent, sure that his beloved village was headed for
disaster, knowing he would be overruled at the meeting.
Then something erupted from the sea, boiling out past the shore. It was
a 15-foot-tall woman, shooting into the midst of the village like an arrow
from a bow. Her eyes were cruel and unthinking, like those of a squid. Her
hair was like a net of seaweed; it blew around her as if caught in a cyclone.
Lobsters hung from her ear lobes; her body was covered with armor made of
live, writhing sea urchins. The village men grabbed spears, swords and bows,
but before they could act, strands of her seaweed reached out like tentacles
and began to choke each and every one of them.
Tuxo came running from a longhouse, her eyes widening with frightened recognition.
She shouted at the monstrous sea-hag; the sea-hag shouted back. Though their
words were strange, the situation was not in doubt. It was clear that they
knew each other. It was clear there was a mighty grudge. And it was clear
that the giant was prepared to kill everyone in the village to get to her.
Some of the older men had already fallen, strangled to death.
Tuxo stepped forward, in a posture of prostration. She was giving herself
up to the hag. As she stepped forward, the hag threw her head back in triumphant
laughter and drew an enormous blade of sharpened clamshells from the misty
air. She reared back with it, ready to decapitate Tuxo. But as the blade
neared her head, Tuxo opened her mouth. A barrage of bizarre fish with teeth
the size of bear's claws flew from between her opened lips; they launched
themselves at the giant and devoured her. Shattering screams of agony sprayed
the air; then both monstrous hag and mon-strous fishes dissolved into so
much saltwater and slid back into the sea.
Tuxo kneeled against a rocky outcrop, as if drained entirely by the effort
it cost her to rid the village of the murderous giant. Zo Do Wabda, shaken,
slowly approached her from behind. He placed a soothing hand on her shoulder.
Then he plunged his knife into the back of her neck and twisted it. She
gasped and leaned back towards him with a look of shock and betrayal. Then
she too melted into the surf.
The village cheered. Zo Do Wabda had been vindicated. Tuxo had been a stinking
sorceress all along, and he had cleansed the village of her foul taint.
The celebration held in his honor went long into the night. As all celebrated,
Zo Do Wabda was even able to forgive Vidigi for foolishly trusting a foreigner.
More about Zo Do Wabda, and full details on all other aspects of Madlander
culture, can be found in GURPS Fantasy II.
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