PURDITORY: Harridans [Harsoc]
Michael Barlow
Author: Andrew Raphael [rap...@research.canon.oz.au]
Note: This is one of 3 articles dealing with the Harridans. The others
are titled Harbio and Harque; and all should be considered together.
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Temperament
Females are reputedly smarter than males, with intuitive grasp of
problems. Males are lazy and jealous, but this is cultural conditioning. A
male raised by humans has a human temperament.
Creation Myth
The moon goddess was wounded by a falling star, and bled into the sea.
Her blood formed the female harridans, who created male harridans to bring
beauty into the world.
Religion
All female harridans worship the moon goddess, though there are many cults
with widely differing rites. Males do not worship the goddess, except as
material for the rites (i.e. sacrifices).
Society
Females organise themselves into clans, a group of maybe 50 relatives.
Harming a harridan is like harming her clan, and is avenged by the clan.
All inheritance and descent is traced through the females. Females make all
the decisions, the most senior capable female being nominally in charge.
Males aren't even second class citizens, they're property. Although they
are universally big and strong, they don't do any work. They sit around
bitching at one another, preening and being admired by females. Their
influence is restricted to sexual politics. Harridan males who get into
human society make excellent politicans, always climbing for more influence.
The males raise the children, the hormones released by the infant making
male behaviour even more extreme.
Since the females are clever and have better things to do, and the males
wouldn't work in a blind fit, there have to be slaves to do the hard work.
Slaves were created by the harridans to do their work.
Campaign Use
In a magical campaign, all female harridans are magic users, and they are
elementally aligned and coloured to match. Some clans are earth aligned,
others air, and so on. They find it difficult to cast magic which is not of
their alignment. Male infants who exhibit magical ability are slain, and
the females dislike any male (of any species) who is a magician. Note that
males aren't elementally aligned. The slaves who do all the yakka could be
another species, small and easily bullied. Failing that, enslaved humans
will do.
In a high tech campaign, harridans are just wierd aliens. The slaves
could be robots!
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Michael Barlow m...@csadfa.cs.adfa.oz.au