Families, Households And Choths

"The Problem of Pain."

Peter Berg informs the first person narrator that the carnivorous Ythrians, most of whom have advanced from hunting to ranching, are:

"'...fiercely territorial. They live in small groups - single families or extended households - which attack, with intent to kill, any uninvited outsider who doesn't obey an order to leave.'" (p. 38)

Like the t'Kelans in "Territory," Ythrians are territorial, inclined to violence and disinclined to live in or identify with large groups and this is all because they are carnivorous. It is built into their biology and does not result from a "Fall" from any primordial state of innocence. I point this out because Berg, who is Christian, is trying to understand the Ythrians' relationship to God. And Nicholas van Rijn, who makes deductions about the t'Kelans, is also a Christian.

Meanwhile, we have got as far as "small groups" in our understanding of Ythrian social arrangements. Next, Berg says that the Planha-speaking "choths" (p. 39) are not barbarians. This is the first appearance in any of the stories of that Planha word and it is not yet explained. The full picture emerges gradually.

"Arinnian of Stormgate, whose human name is Christopher Holm,...has rendered several Ythrian works into Anglic..." (p. 266)

Hloch writes "Ythrian works," not "Planha works," so maybe Arinnian knows more than one Ythrian language?

In his general introduction to the Earth Book, Hloch:

introduces himself as "Hloch of Stormgate Choth..." (p. 13);

states that "...our choth receives more humans into membership than most." (ibid.);

also states that his mother's The Sky Book of Stormgate "...traced and described the whole history of our choth."; (pp. 13-14) (Its ancestors were on Ythri but its founders on Avalon.)

claims that his Earth Book tells "...how Avalon came to settlement and thus our choth to being." (ibid.)

Whatever a choth is, this one, Stormgate, was not brought from Ythri but founded on Avalon.