Tuesday, 28 August 2018

Azkashi And Shkil

Poul Anderson, World Without Stars, IX.

Azkashi
"Hill people," "free people," "people of the galaxy god" or all these things and more. (Surely that fourth option is the most likely?)

They are divided into Packs.

The Packs share out inland hunting and lakeside fishing and have a common language and way of life.

Shkil
A different culture, not Packs but Herd, not swimming but traveling in canoes.

Have preyed on the Azkashi and driven them out of land beyond Lake Silence.

Maybe farmers driving out the savages, thus potentially more useful to the stranded spacemen but also potentially hostile.

A large group of autochthones in a galley and some large canoes approaches the camp to confer, one of their number speaking the language of the Yonderfolk on the neighboring planet whom the spacemen had come to contact. 

Even a simple-seeming planet becomes complicated.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And the politics and intrigues, of course, becomes correspondingly complicated!

Sean