Caste Systems with Herbivores ruling Carnivores

[Avoraciopoctules]

I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that Minotaurs weren't a culture/society, more like cursed humans that were "always chaotic evil" because of Baphomet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Minotaurs were kind of like gnolls in that regard.

my bad i think your right ok let me put it differently instead of minotaurs lets use yak folk as an example of a race that are herbivores and probably have strange view regarding what its ok to eat considering they keep omnivores like humans and goblins as slaves what do you think they would allow there slaves to eat would they force them to become vegetarian that would cut food costs but without protein they would not be able to work as hard if the let them eat meat what would the feed them would they start herding cattle to feed the slaves? would they hunt or would they make the humans eat the goblins?

http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/ ... -folk.html

This idea came up in a MPSIMS thread, and I think it might be worth a spot in IMHO from a worldbuilding perspective. Sometimes you see nations in fantasy where there is a ruling class with dramatically different dietary requirements than most of the ruled. The classic example is the bloodthirsty vampire count with its posse of spawn, but here we are looking specifically at a situation where herbivores rule over carnivores / omnivores.

Here are some examples of such societies in fantasy settings:
- The Yak Folk mentioned in the quote above
- Dominions 3, where you have herbivore lizard-people ruling over a slave class of carnivore lizards, who are tougher physically but lack the organization and powerful mages that keep C'tis strong.
- Magical forests where you have elves or tree nymphs or whatever commanding the loyalty of large numbers of animals, some of whom are obligate carnivores. Maybe throw in some werewolves and orcs of the only-eat-meat-variety. The rulers don't eat much, and they might just live off magic crackers and small plates of ground-up bark, grass, and nuts.

My first thought when I consider states with this kind of setup is to compare with India or other places that have a ruling caste who have a bunch of religious taboos that keep them from eating meat.

But this is different. Eating meat specifically will make the rulers ill. How might they perceive subordinates with such biological differences?

C'tis has the ruling lizards perceive their slaves as savage and dangerous. They fear the carnivore lizards, who might see their masters as potential food. But this fear drives the somewhat-cowardly lizard people to enslave the carnivores just because they are so scary. It makes them appealing slave-soldiers.

Presumably, C'tis raises livestock to feed the carnivore lizards, but the situation is not addressed in depth. They probably put their own race in charge of those operations (can't trust them meaties not to go crazy and eat everything, yo), but I'm not sure how prestigious being a pig farm overseer would get seen as. On the one hand, you are making sure the dangerous monster-people don't get uppity and take more than their share, on the other you are catering to the needs of a slave race, and some of the stigma will rub off.

What kind of societies do you think this Herbivore/Carnivore divide might produce?

[Username17]

Upper classes in both China and India have adopted vegetarianism. Primarily as a way of showing "I'm so rich and powerful that I don't have to do real work". Same deal with growing really long finger nails, foot binding, and all that other stuff.

-Username17

[flare22]

true but the upper castes in india in china do not have to worry about the lower castes eating them.

the yak folk are nomadic slave owners this means the do not have agriculture. which suggests they either eat grass or some other abundant plant as for the
slaves they capture having the slaves hunt for themselves seems stupid because it means trusting the slaves with weapons and hunting for the slaves seems like to much work for the slave owners.

since most humanoids cant eat grass it seems like the only real option is herding herd food for the slaves

[Avoraciopoctules]

If we are talking specifically about Yak Folk, they are already established as herding actual yaks. They apparently see the yaks as their children, and value them more than their sentient slaves.

I would imagine that most serfs in yak folk lands get the bare amount of food needed to survive, just a bit worse off than rice farming peasants in the hobgoblin khanate next door. They probably get a mix of grain and dairy for most of their diet.

The yak folk might or might not let people eat their yaks after they keel over from age or disease. If you go with the quasi-tibetan characterization, they might be fine with it. After all, the life of a human is exactly as valuable as the life of a vulture, and sky-burial is a thing.

[gp1628]

I think the "boss" race would be based on intelligence. And intelligence is not random event. There are zoological reasons why omnivores became intelligent before herbivores or carnivores. But I guess with enough time herbies or carnies could become intelligent enough.

But if you look at us... even though there isnt a lot of good REASON for it, we do tend to generally treat herbivores as food/work animals and carnivores as guardian/companions. So in general Id consider that to be kindof expected. Beyond that it would be creative and unusual.

[hyzmarca]

I think the "boss" race would be based on intelligence. And intelligence is not random event. There are zoological reasons why omnivores became intelligent before herbivores or carnivores. But I guess with enough time herbies or carnies could become intelligent enough.

But if you look at us... even though there isnt a lot of good REASON for it, we do tend to generally treat herbivores as food/work animals and carnivores as guardian/companions. So in general Id consider that to be kindof expected. Beyond that it would be creative and unusual.

The boss race is ultimately based on firepower and scope of intellectual context, which isn't the same as intelligence.

A big wooden whale landing on your shore and a bunch of gibbering pale skinned guys with metal sticks that make loud noise and kill at a distance pouring is outside of your context, but that doesn't mean that you're less intelligent, merely that you couldn't have possibly anticipated something like that happening, or the consequences of it.

There is, however, a very good reason for carnivores (dogs, specifically) being treated like companions and guardians. Wolves are pack animals with highly developed social instincts. It was easy enough to breed them so that they would naturally think of humans as their pack leaders.

Carnivores also tend to be less territorial and aggressive than big herd herbivores. Carnivores kill for food or because they feel threatened, but won't get into unnecessary fights for the most part. Big territorial herbivores, on the other hand, will murder you for standing in the wrong place. Hippos and Cape Buffalo was the worst killers in Africa, even though people tend to sensationalize the rare man-eating lion.

[gp1628]

That would be winning. I thought this was about ruling. A long term caste arrangement requires more than firepower IMHO

[Winnah]

You should examine tool use.

Sophisticated tool use among animals tends to be a trait reserved for scavenging animals.

The only major exception among herbivores, that I am aware of, is the elephant. Most of it's tool use tend to revolve around digging up water or saturating waterholes with absorbant tree bark in order to slow evaporation.

Binocular vision is a pretty good reason for herbivores to keep carnivores around. Stereopsis is pretty much fucking required for any kind of major development in craft or engineering.

[Josh_Kablack]

The easiest explanation that comes to me is that you have a nominally omnivorous race that for reasons of religion, health and/or scarcity has gone strictly vegetarian, but their crops are threatened by vermin, so they adopt and start to uplift one (or more) of the species that can most successfully prey upon said vermin to allow their crops to flourish.

Say a bunch of explorers / pilgrims / refugees from the other side of the endless ocean / the crystal spheres of space / a ruined plane who brought along a bunch of seeds for their traditional crops. While they can eat animals, the fauna here is a somehow toxic and/or carries a strong risk of diseases / parasites they were never exposed to before, thus they have no natural immunity or resistance and things like madcow prions and trichinosis tapeworms are acutely life-threatening to them . Thus eating local critters is really risky and whatever cultural or religious forces call for strict vegetarianism become culturally ascendant. At the same time, a strict vegetarian diet does not allow for herding societies, so either these folks have to stay as gatherers or dig in and develop settled agriculture. And settled agriculture produces more edible plant matter than wild greenery, and more edible plant matter leads to a boom in the population of whatever fantasy critters you want to slot into the locust / rat / cassava mealybug niche, which in turn decimate the crop yields. But instead of turning to DDT or trying to build a better mousetrap, these farmers realize that evolution is a linked feedback loop and adopt a biocontrol solution. However, this being fantasy and not reality, they achieve this by using magic / genetic engineering / alchemy / fantasy eugenics programs to raise the intelligence level of whatever fantasy critter you want to slot into the spider / cat / parasitoid wasp slot.

You end up with an agrarian vegetarian elder race who feel that they have done a huge favor to a predatory carnivorous younger race, who are still usually better off serving the wishes of the elder race than fleeing or uprising. That is to say, a catperson has an easier time feeding herself hunting rats on one of the elder race's farms than she wood hunting rats in the wild or trying to farm herself. This leads to the setting conflict where various catpeople are starting to keep secret rat herds for their own well-being, but the elder race sees this as practice as not merely a dangerous increase in vermin populations but a betrayal of the vermin-reduction role that the catpeople are supposed to serve.


Hope that stream of consciousness ramble makes sense.

[OgreBattle]

Well, Adolf Hitler was really interested in spreading vegetarianism through Europe and loved talking about it in private. You can draw some setting ideas from his words

There is an interesting document, dating from the time of
Caesar, which indicates that the soldiers of that time lived on a
vegetarian diet. According to the same source, it was only in
times of shortage that soldiers had recourse to meat...

...It's probable that, in the old days, human beings lived longer
than they do now. The turning-point came when man replaced the raw elements in his diet by foods that he sterilizes when he eats them

...I'm going to become a religious figure! Soon I'll be the great chief of the Tartars. Already Arabs and Moroccans are mingling my name with their prayers. Among the Tartars I shall become Khan. The only thing of which I shall be incapable is to share the sheikhs' mutton with them. I'm a vegetarian, and they must spare me from their meat. If they don't wait too long, I'll fall back on their harems!

...It is also an interesting fact that among the Negroes the children of those tribes which are primarily vegetarian develop more harmoniously than those of the tribes in which it is customary for the mother to feed her infant up to the age of four or five.

...Among the animals, those who are carnivores put up performances much inferior to those of the herbivores. A lion's in no shape to run for a quarter of an hour—the elephant can run for eight hours! The monkeys, our ancestors of prehistoric times, are strictly vegetarian. Japanese wrestlers, who are among the strongest men in the world, feed exclusively on vegetables. The same's true of the Turkish porter, who can move a piano by himself.

When you offer a child the choice of a piece of meat, an apple or a cake, it's never the meat that he chooses. There's an ancestral instinct there. In the same way, the child would never begin to drink or smoke if it weren't to imitate others. The consumption of meat is reduced the moment the market presents a greater choice of vegetables, and in proportion as each man can afford the luxury of the first fruits.

I suppose man became carnivorous because, during the Ice Age, circumstances compelled him. They also prompted him to have his food cooked, a habit which, as one knows to-day, has harmful consequences. Our peasants never eat any food that hasn't been cooked and re-cooked, and thus deprived of all its virtues. The southern peoples are not acquainted either with a meat diet or with cooking. I lived marvelously in Italy. I don't know any country that enlivens one more. Roman food, how delicious it is!

....In many ways, my sheepdog Blondi is a vegetarian. There are lots of herbs which she eats with obvious pleasure, and it is interesting to see how she turns to them if her stomach is out of order. It is astonishing to see how wise animals are, and how well they know what is good for them.

When I later gave up eating meat, I immediately began to perspire much less, and within a fortnight to perspire hardly at all. My thirst, too, decreased considerably, and an occasional sip of water was all I required. Vegetarian diet, therefore, has some obvious advantages. I shall be interested to see whether my dog eventually becomes a complete and confirmed vegetarian.

An extended chapter of our talk was devoted by the Führer to the vegetarian question. He believes more than ever that meat-eating is harmful to humanity. Of course he knows that during the war we cannot completely upset our food system. After the war, however, he intends to tackle this problem also. Maybe he is right. Certainly the arguments that he adduces in favor of his standpoint are very compelling

So the vegetarianism can have a proselytizing aspect to it, that carnivores are inferior beings and omnivores need to be taught to see the light.


And y'know, magic exists. I could see magically engineered vegetables which supplement a meat free diet.

[hyzmarca]

That would be winning. I thought this was about ruling. A long term caste arrangement requires more than firepower IMHO

Just so long as the intelligence differential isn't sufficient to overcome the strength differential, the dumb but strong race is at an advantage.
And all the intelligence in the world isn't useful if you never have an opportunity to exercise it.

You can have a situation where the slave are all super-geniuses, but they're also illiterate because the masters don't let them learn how to read and the masters, though vastly less intelligent, have high-quality university educations.

[flare22]

were forgetting that in addition to omnivores carnivore and herbivores DND has plenty of intelligent creature that have even weirder dietary requirements for instance intelligent plant still presumably use photosynthesis and many creature do not eat at all such as elementals and do not mind flayers eat the minds of there victims or is that there brains? either way they subsist on sentient creature psychic energy otherwise they would be able to eat any part of the body

id see mind flayers as farming mind slave from the most intelligent creatures they could fine to make the most of their food and plant creature might find herbivores as threatening as herbivores find carnivores.

[Ted the Flayer]

Well, Adolf Hitler was really interested in spreading vegetarianism through Europe and loved talking about it in private. You can draw some setting ideas from his words

Actually, he ate so much meat that he had bowel issues. When the doctor told him, he told the doctor to fuck right off.

It's possible he talked about vegetarianism, but he wasn't a vegetarian himself. Hell, I'm impressed that he habitually ate enough german sausage that he shit himself.

[OgreBattle]

Actually, he ate so much meat that he had bowel issues. When the doctor told him, he told the doctor to fuck right off.

All the quotes I have above are from "Hitler's Table Talk" a record of his private conversations. What's your source for his sausage stuffing? I know that there's health gurus out there who really hate to acknowledge that he was a great proponent of vegetarianism, because it's associating Hitler with your pushy better living campaigns.

"Hitler suffered from at least two health problems when he first met Morell, including gastro-intestinal pain with accompanying flatulence, which has also been attributed to his vegetarian diet" is what http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Ado ... id/1903534 says

and regardless, the vegetarian diet was promoted through his rule:

Do you know that your Führer is a vegetarian, and that he does not eat meat because of his general attitude toward life and his love for the world of animals? Do you know that your Führer is an exemplary friend of animals, and even as a chancellor, he is not separated from the animals he has kept for years?...The Führer is an ardent opponent of any torture of animals, in particular vivisection, and has declared to terminate those conditions...thus fulfilling his role as the savior of animals, from continuous and nameless torments and pain.

—Neugeist/Die Weisse Fahne (German magazine of the New Thought movement)

I've heard that his favorite dish was squab though (pidgeon breast), and even when he became vegetarian he'd occasionally have this dish served.

[zugschef]

point is that the cooking of meat was the driving factor in the evolution from homo erectus to homo sapiens. if you want to have "realism" in your campaign, humans should in general eat meat if they can have it. which would make for a nice setting... elf controlled society in which humans, safe for some rebels, are disallowed to eat meat and after generations humans began to degenerate, making them much easier to control.

[flare22]

wait realy because if were going by genetics and evolution are closest genetic relitive gets most of its protien by eating bugs and termites and modern humans eat way more meat then there body realy needs not that I don't like meat but its obvius humans are not eating the same diets they would be if we were still hunting and gethering

[kzt]

So we have herbivores who favor black uniforms and have a tendency to click their heels ruling a caste of dangerous carnivores?

[zugschef]

wait realy because if were going by genetics and evolution are closest genetic relitive gets most of its protien by eating bugs and termites and modern humans eat way more meat then there body realy needs not that I don't like meat but its obvius humans are not eating the same diets they would be if we were still hunting and gethering

the point that humans in western society eat more meat (which is cheaper than bread by now) than they need or even should, does not invalidate the fact that the cooking of meat was a driving factor in human evolution.

[flare22]

true but it does not mean that people would devolve if bared access to meat i mean the ruling cast of India have been vegetarians for over a thousand years and they produced some of the worlds finest philosophers in short we were using tools and weapons before we figured out how to could cook meat witch means although cooking meat affected our digestive evolution it did not effect our intellectual evolution.