He ate George! [Warning, Vile]

[LostSoul]

The solution: eat the babies of poor people! I would suggest reading Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal for tips on how to run the baby-eating city.

While I do agree that babies taste good (mange les enfants!), wouldn't it make more sense to eat the old and crippled? the poor and destitute? Babies are our future. And nobody cares about orphans, homeless, or their soon-to-be-departed (and leaving us an inheritance) elderly.

 

[demiurge1138]

...wouldn't it make more sense to eat the old and crippled? the poor and destitute? And nobody cares about orphans, homeless, or their soon-to-be-departed (and leaving us an inheritance) elderly.

Well, I do agree on the orphans, but these babies that would be eaten would be the children of the destitute. The homeless tend to carry disease, and the elderly are rather tough and stringy. I guess it's all a matter of taste.

 

[Pielorinho]

If you introduce cannibalism, I think it'd be most fun if the cannibals do have lots of respect for their dinner -- if they consider it an honor to the dead to eat them. That way, they can be genuinely surprised and offended when the PCs refuse to join them for dinner .

Daniel

 

[Sanackranib]

eaters of the dead . . .

I heard on the Power of Myth series with Joseph Campbell that he believed that ritual cannabalism was an extreme view of "one must die to save the many".

That might be a possible defense; they ritualize the cannabalism by killing the Chief every year, and he feeds the whole tribe and they bury his remains in a sacred field, where fruit-giving trees grow.

But why stop there? why not remove all rival priest, paladins and other undesireables?

 

[Number47]

In my game, one of the branches of elves are cannibalistic. Not that they eat themselves, but they are not adverse to eating sentient humanoids. These feral elves consider themselves to be living spirits of the trees. They identify with plants and consider themselves to be plants. They are also carnivores and require a diet of mostly meat in order to be healthy. Because they are plants, they care little for what kind of "mammal" the meat comes from. They use the word "mammal" as a derogatory term.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Ah, Canibalism is underused in DnD. It's one great evil practice and an effecient way to prevent evil people from getting resurrected.

Which leads to argument #1:

Sometimes the most moral forces of a society will eat a great evil to purify the community affected by it. In DnD this has a very practical value, as, and I could be wrong about this, bringing back a canabalized evil is probably harder for his supporters than bringing him back if his corpse is sitting in a particular tomb. A kind of reverse version of this in myth is Cronus eating his children.

If you eat them they can't threaten you.

Argument #2:

Cannibalism is often associated with ritualistic pollution. In Greek myth it is often used as a way to defy the gods and demonstrate one's absolute power, alla Atreus and Tantalus. In other cultures the great men are required to pollute themselves before being trusted with power so that the society has a reason to get rid of them if they go mad. Welsh kings had to mate with a horse and then eat it, same principal.

Or the ritual pollution one acquires through eating a victim can serve to deter someone from killing casually.

Argument #3:

If you're going to be killing them anyways, then why not eat them? Not simply a waste issue, but also a question of doing honor to your enemies and yourself. Some cultures might see it as a way of avoiding being haunted since ghosts of cows and other things you eat don't show up to haunt you. Others might see eating something as the only real justifiable reason for killing something. So you would have to be prepared to eat a criminal in order to kill him.

I mean in the natural order things pretty much only kill other things in order to eat them. Souldn't we all obey the natural order?

Argument #4:

By being turned into meat the victim provides restitution to the killer for the pain and effort the victim cost the killer.

Argument #5:

Eating people terrifies your enemies and prevents you from having to keep captives. It is an efficient defense method. This may sound like silly logic, but it is the current theory as to why there appears to have been systematic cannibalization among certain medieval communities in the four corners region of the US.

 

[jdavis]

I like the canabalism is a sign of respect bit, It's hard to call it evil when it is their way of showing great honor to someone. It would also allow them to be offended if they were told that they would not be eaten when they died. If the PC's killed one of the tribe warriors but didn't consume his heart as a sign of respect it would be like slapping the whole village in the face.

It's not baby eating but then again it's really hard to compare to a good baby stew.

 

[Darklone]

Freeport city guide has a cannibalistic sect. check it out.

 

[LostSoul]

Re: eaters of the dead . . .

But why stop there? why not remove all rival priest, paladins and other undesirables?

(Assuming they stop with the eating of the chief)

Because the chief knows that it is his duty to be eaten by the rest of the tribe. There isn't anything wrong with it; it's just the way things are done. Rival priests and paladins might object to the practice, but the common person would think that they were outsiders, unable to accept or appreciate the gift given to them.

 

[Darkness]

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