



To this fellow, life was a matter of cycles. Day leads into night, night leads into day. Fields are tilled, sown, harvested and tilled again. People are born, grow up, have children and die. Wars come, peace reigns for a time, war comes again. To guide the people through the cycles of life and to come ahead, the gods guide the people through their chosen ones who live in the house of the gods. All the farmers give tribute to them and spend two days every moon turn keeping the canals clear as they demand and in turn there is rations during famine, tools are made and provided and the crops are watered and the Harvest Goddess' bounty can be reaped. They also demand that every fit man must keep some arms and know how to use them. His family's preferred weapon is the Bow to rain arrows down on their foes from a distance. In times of war stockpiles of arrows become available. Even so occasionally the enemy gets up close and personnel, which is why he carries a four spiked mace.





Most wars between the city states are not too bad, some herds of Snergs are stolen, some houses are looted and then the hosts meet, clash until one is victorious and the captured survivors are either ransomed or taken as slaves (who'd toil in the fields, workshop or temple for less food for a term of years before being released). Bandits are worse, the outcasts of society which prey on honest folk, though fortunately they are few in number. Tribes of unwashed barbarians were pretty much barbarians on a grand scale. Occasionally hosts would be mustered to hunt them down to kill and enslave them when they caused too much trouble. Spearmen and axemen would do most of the butchery, but the archers would have to snoot them out.

