From Voyageurs National Park on FB: Called “Catamaran” by locals, Bert Upton is among the strangest of historical characters on area waters. He lived in a hut built over a dug-out at Squirrel Narrows. Found frozen to death in the 1930s by Kettle Falls pioneer Oliver Knox; Upton was perched lifeless in the snow just a half-mile from his home. Shunning civilization, Upton defined the word hermit. First spotted rowing his crude log raft on Namakan, no one knows how he got there. Upton’s accent implied an English heritage but any personal inquiries brought a stony silence. Some suspected him a man fleeing the law; others saw a bizarre outcast; everyone knew he was peculiar. Just five feet tall and wildly unkempt, Catamaran wore hacked-off pants and walked barefoot with a stick. Winter demanded shoes but no socks, a cast-off Mackinaw, and a trailing cap made from the leg of old underwear. He was oddly religious, and suspicious of being poisoned. Surviving on snared rabbits and fish, he ofte...
Love it. Reminds me of Melanesian pig breeding rituals . . . maybe the orcs themselves are property.
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Are they too dumb to file down or cut the tusks before they push into the brain?
ReplyDeleteThey are, aren't they?
File their tusks? And lose respect?
ReplyDeleteIt could be an expression of fatalism; when it's your time, it's your time. Besides, what are the odds an orc's body will hold out long enough for the tusk to kill? That's a sign you've been a terribly successful orc, and you've been spared the indignities of dying of infirmity.
ReplyDeleteI want to imagine adolescent orcs getting tusk-braces to encourage their tusks to grow in particular directions.
ReplyDeleteOr, there was a shaman with the horrific spell "Gnarl Living Bone" whose damage exceeded this poor bastard's hit points.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, that skull now has a super handy handle!
ReplyDeleteI have a treasure item of a map carved on the skull of a deep hog in this crawl setting.
ReplyDeletehttps://fictivefantasies.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/murder-diggers-5-131.pdf
"Oh, what I wouldn't give for some toenail clippers..."
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