#askhogmen

I don't see why not! I'm sure there are extinct species divines out there, but because their kind has become so rare, they have all gone into hiding.

I suspect there is at least one divine hogman hiding out among the hogmen tribes in the Shrieking Mountains. Perhaps there is a divine orc still kicking around in the ruins of ancient orc civilizations, all alone underground. And it's easy to imagine a divine gnoll fleeing into the deep wilderness, basically reverting into a feral animal because they have no one on their side.

These divines would be forced to isolate themselves, or else just hang out with other divines. Cerno would be a safe choice, since he is ostracized from society as well. Green Witch might accept them too.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Long-term, I think they would all just end up petering out again. These species went extinct for a reason; because they couldn't adapt to the changing world around them. So I imagine they would be poorly-adapted to Gaia as it is today.

Short-term, Etios Nation would make an effort to protect the gnolls and hogmen, probably by devoting a sanctuary to them on their land.

The World Athenaeum would try to develop a vaccine for the strain of rabies that wiped out the gnolls and jab as many of them as possible as quickly as possible.

I could see Mogdir Kingdom, Seelie Court, and the Unseelie Court setting up special refuges for sprights.

Evangeline Kingdom and Zareen Empire would make an effort to house orcs, maybe by building special protected districts for them until their populations were deemed stable.

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Questions/Comments?

Yep! I wanted to have my cake and eat it too lol.

The hogmen really were given a bad hand though. Like minotaurs, they couldn't speak Universa because of their beast-heads, so forming alliances was really difficult for them. They were also cursed with ravenous appetites they had to sate somehow, and they had a culture that no other peoples could relate to. They had a lot in common with gnolls that way, and both of these species ended up biting the dust because of it.

They couldn't communicate with other peoples and other peoples weren't willing to reach out and meet them half-way, so the hogmen decided "fuck it, let's pillage and plunder".

The story "The Abominable Skaadia" takes a closer look at hogmen and paints a different picture than Evangeline's propaganda did. Yes, they can certainly be brutal and hedonistic. But they're not just mindlessly aggressive for no reason: you just have to approach them the right way.

In this story, the hogmen were offered a consumable gift. The fastest way to a hogman's heart is through the stomach, but they also love drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. If you come bearing food or intoxicants, they're your ally 4 lyfe. They'll never forget that shit, and they'll have your back forever.

Problem is, none of the surrounding peoples realized that. No one attempted to make peace with the hogmen because it was assumed they were too dumb and mean to accept it.

You know what they say about assuming...it makes an ass of u and me.

Maybe one of the Great Kingdoms will discover the hogmen in the Shrieking Mountains and attempt to win them over with gifts someday. But for now, the they are hiding away from a world that only sees them as soulless cannibals.

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Questions/Comments?

Yes, I think Etios Nation would be their best bet for continued survival. The Etiosi government would make an effort to protect them and accommodate their culture.

How successful will they really be though? It's unclear, because remember that this population of hogmen is going to be completely unprepared for this new world and society around them. They just stepped out of the darkest ages into the modern era with no buffer. What they're used to is a culture of violent raids and cannibalism, but that will not be tolerated under Etiosi rule. So they would have to abandon huge chunks of their culture, and that kind of thing won't happen over night.

I think their success depends on how smoothly the Etiosi government is able to assimilate them. It would take at least a couple generations to get them up to speed, and Etios' other peoples may grumble in the meantime.

That's just my personal take though. I think anything could happen.

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Questions/Comments?

Etios welcomes all gaians, no exceptions, so they would welcome hogmen and gnolls into their borders with full citizen rights.

However, I don't think these species would last long there. Hogmen have behavioral issues similar to satyrs (except worse) and they struggled to integrate into non-hogmen societies. This eventually led to their downfall as they pissed off everyone around them and had no allies to back them up.

Etiosi dealt with satyrs by kind of shoving them into sovereign spaces (preserves), and they may try this with hogmen too. But hogmen, like humans, are aggressive expansionists. Their cities would quickly grow beyond the borders of their preserves and they would demand more land, food, water, etc. leading to a civil war. Etios would likely end up genociding them all over again.

The gnolls were susceptible to more zoonotic diseases than other species, similar to fauns. But unlike fauns, they lacked the technology/arcane knowledge to overcome it. Etios is a strictly neolithic-age civilization, so gnolls would not have access to the medical technology they'd need to survive long. One good plague would wipe them all out again.

As for orcs, they would be treated like any other commoner in Etios Nation. They would not be allowed to own land or marry, so upward mobility would be impossible for them.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Lindists don't regard the extinct species any differently than living ones. The sprights were fae, so they would be treated like fae. The hogmen and gnolls are gaian, so they would be treated like gaians. And orcs were commoners, so they would be treated as commoners.

An interesting note: it was a modern Lindist regime that led the massive genocide against the hogmen. Though to be fair, many different cultures had problems with the hogmen and joined in on this genocide, whether they were Lindist or not. But Evangeline Kingdom's modern Lindist church (House of Humanity) led the charge and threw the most funding at this project until the hogmen were virtually eradicated. If it weren't for the church's aggressive funding, hogmen may still be alive today.

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Questions/Comments?

Ah, the Americans. Such a fine people well known for their aggressive consumerism and tourism, visiting exotic locals, eating everything in sight, and generally leavening a mess wherever they went. Eventually people would get fed up with them and formed a confederacy, so the south may succeed and stop the americans destructive tourism once and for all. The attacks where brutal, mobility scooters where tipped over, innocent snack cakes where destroyed, and in the end the gluttonous Americans

Where no more. Having fled into the mountains to become cannibal hillbillies.

Whoops, the hogmens' entry was a mistake. Their strength is actually their greatest asset! I went back and fixed it, sorry about that.

Anyway, yes, the hogmens' extinction was largely (but not entirely) driven by Evangeline Kingdom's genocidal attacks on them. Evangeline initially tried to enslave them like it enslaved all the other gaians, but quickly realized that the hogmen just weren't worth it.

Hogmen, quite frankly, ate too damn much and weren't strong enough to justify how much food they were putting away. They were also highly aggressive and hard to "break". Whatever niche they could have filled for slavers, minotaurs filled it way better. So Evangeline decided to just kill all the hogmen and, in their eyes, nothing of value would be lost.

There will be more info about this in their upcoming article, so stay tuned for that. :)

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Questions/Comments?