The Reluctant Swordsman, but different?
Sep. 22nd, 2014 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madbakerI woke up slightly late and bleary, because I was trapped in dream-land. What I remember of the dream interrupted by the alarm spooled like the last chapter of an early Dave Duncan trilogy.
I don't know where this backstory fell in the dream - most of it was sort of there, because obviously I'd read the previous two books. I was the protagonist, sort-of-modern-person-transported-to-primitive-culture. I'd tried to introduce modernity, but it didn't take and I had the superiority beaten out of me. Only when I accepted the culture in Act III of the first book was I able to progress and try to change some things. (And undoubtedly Learned Some Lessons.)
At the end of book three I was a high warlord, and the group of people who beat me down in book one and then were conquered by me were local warlords. So they'd prospered too. I wasn't the highest-ranked, but I was maybe the equivalent of the warlord of the capital city of the... it wasn't an empire or a kingdom. I don't know, maybe I was a liege warlord to the highest warlord.
I was dying. Part of the religious ritual was that the last thing you did before dying was chase down a buffalo (not exactly a buffalo, but close enough) and kill it. You wore the buffalo skin as you died, and you became a buffalo in your next life. When you were killed in turn, you went on to the next phase about which nothing was known. Buffalohood was a transition, but also a reward - you got to roam around the plains-equivalent for the buffalo's life and this was a valued thing. If you didn't manage to catch and skin the buffalo you had to repeat as a person, considered the first stage of the journey.
However, due to increased density and quasi-urbanization, buffaloes were rarer and couldn't keep up with the population. They were kept in pens for the powerful to "catch" and skin. While I was of a status to do this, I didn't want to - and my death was coming unexpectedly anyway.
I had a vivid dying dream of hunting a dream buffalo. I didn't have to skin it - it became a coat for me. I put it on and half-woke. The higher-status warlord was there and didn't believe I was dying, because I wasn't going down to the buffalo pens. I slipped back into my death dream.
There I had the book three revelation: the religious aspect was real. Putting on the buffalo skin on the deathbed did turn you into a buffalo in the next life. In penning buffaloes, we had turned a reward into a punishment. I became a dream buffalo and spread this message among the city: everyone who so chose could become a dream buffalo on death. You would roam among the dreamscape of your family for a bit and then transition on. Because of the decreased demand for flesh buffaloes they could be released to roam and the physical side of the ritual could still be a valid path, and be restored to being a reward.
Message distributed, I faded into the next stage... whatever that was. The book ended. The alarm went off.
Sometimes I wonder about my brain.
I don't know where this backstory fell in the dream - most of it was sort of there, because obviously I'd read the previous two books. I was the protagonist, sort-of-modern-person-transported-to-primitive-culture. I'd tried to introduce modernity, but it didn't take and I had the superiority beaten out of me. Only when I accepted the culture in Act III of the first book was I able to progress and try to change some things. (And undoubtedly Learned Some Lessons.)
At the end of book three I was a high warlord, and the group of people who beat me down in book one and then were conquered by me were local warlords. So they'd prospered too. I wasn't the highest-ranked, but I was maybe the equivalent of the warlord of the capital city of the... it wasn't an empire or a kingdom. I don't know, maybe I was a liege warlord to the highest warlord.
I was dying. Part of the religious ritual was that the last thing you did before dying was chase down a buffalo (not exactly a buffalo, but close enough) and kill it. You wore the buffalo skin as you died, and you became a buffalo in your next life. When you were killed in turn, you went on to the next phase about which nothing was known. Buffalohood was a transition, but also a reward - you got to roam around the plains-equivalent for the buffalo's life and this was a valued thing. If you didn't manage to catch and skin the buffalo you had to repeat as a person, considered the first stage of the journey.
However, due to increased density and quasi-urbanization, buffaloes were rarer and couldn't keep up with the population. They were kept in pens for the powerful to "catch" and skin. While I was of a status to do this, I didn't want to - and my death was coming unexpectedly anyway.
I had a vivid dying dream of hunting a dream buffalo. I didn't have to skin it - it became a coat for me. I put it on and half-woke. The higher-status warlord was there and didn't believe I was dying, because I wasn't going down to the buffalo pens. I slipped back into my death dream.
There I had the book three revelation: the religious aspect was real. Putting on the buffalo skin on the deathbed did turn you into a buffalo in the next life. In penning buffaloes, we had turned a reward into a punishment. I became a dream buffalo and spread this message among the city: everyone who so chose could become a dream buffalo on death. You would roam among the dreamscape of your family for a bit and then transition on. Because of the decreased demand for flesh buffaloes they could be released to roam and the physical side of the ritual could still be a valid path, and be restored to being a reward.
Message distributed, I faded into the next stage... whatever that was. The book ended. The alarm went off.
Sometimes I wonder about my brain.
