Elephant, opulent creature, elephant, huge as a hill even when kneeling: Elephant, robed in honour, a demon, flapping fans of war: Demon who splinters the tree branches, invading the forest farm: Elephant, who disregards ‘I have fled to my father for refuge’, Let alone ‘To my mother’: Mountainous Animal, Huge Beast, who tears a man like a garment and hangs him up on a tree: At the sight of him people stampede to a hill of safety: My chant is a salute to the elephant. Ajanaku, who treads heavily: Demon who swallows bunches of palm-fruits whole, including the spikes: Elephant, praise-named Laaye, massive blackish-grey creature: Elephant, who single-handed makes the dense forest tremble: Elephant, who stands sturdy and upright, who strolls as if reluctantly: Elephant, whom one sees and points at with all one’s fingers. The hunter’s boast at home is not repeated when he really meets the elephant, The hunter’s boast at home is not repeated before the elephant: Ajanaku, who looks backwards with difficulty like a man with a stiff neck: Elephant, who has a head pad but carries no load, Elephant, whose burden is the huge head he balances: Elephant, praise-named Laaye, ‘O death, please stop following me’, This is part and parcel of the elephant’s appellation. Learn of the elephant, the waterman elephant, Elephant, honour’s equal, elephant who constantly swings his trunk like a fly-whisk, Elephant, whose eyes are like water-jars, Elephant, the greatest of wanderers, whose molar teeth are as big as palm-oil pits in Ijesaland, Elephant, lord of the forest, praise-named Oriiribobo, Elephant, whose tusks are like shafts, One of whose tusks is a porter’s whole load, elephant, praise-named Otiko, with the mighty neck, Elephant, whom the hunter sometimes sees face to face, elephant, whom the hunter at other times sees from the rear, Elephant, who carries mortars, yet walks with a swaggering gait, Primeval leper, animal treading ponderously. -Yorùbá Ìjálá (hunter's chant), compiled by Jack Mapanje and Landeg White
D6
These loxos wear
1
hats like wide-canopied howdahs, in which they keep pets such as leopards, young humans, and songbirds.
2
coatings of clay and mud for temperature-regulation, and ear-piercings for ornamentation.
3
brightly-coloured and intricately-patterned barkcloth robes - each pattern belongs to a particular matrilineage.
4
bracelets and necklaces designed as tactile-mnemonic devices, to facilitate sorting through their immense memories.
5
grass skirts, headdresses, and trunk-sleeves constantly re-woven for each other as a social binding.
6
draping cloaks made from the hides and bones of their ancestors.
D6
These loxos' society
1
undergoes periodic senicidal upheavals, whenever its
web of unforgotten debts, favours, grudges, and alliances grows too
suffocating.
2
practice an inversion of a taboo against naming the
dead - they are not only named after their ancestors, but expected to
embody them.
3
ties professions strictly to one's clan, forming guilds which are inextricable from heredity.
4
is an absolute monarchy, with the empress's power unbound by law or custom.
5
exists at the mercy of barbarian mercenaries they
maintain for being so loathe to lose even one among their slow-growing
population.
6
is able to meet its gargantuan caloric intake through
food imports extracted from tributaries cowed by the proto-nuclear
threat of a loxo thunder-march.
D6
These loxos are most often seen outside their lands
1
as heavy shock trooper soldiers of fortune - and these are often temporarily-expelled young males.
2
as living libraries and librarians both - exerting soft power through the selective archival and presentation of knowledge.
3
as pilgrims to holy sites the rest of the world has forgotten.
4
as exiled criminals with the details of their crimes carved into their foreheads.
5
as Mozi-esque philosophers and siege engineers.
6
as priests of more lawful gods, who appreciate their longer lifespans and generally conservative personalities.
D6
These loxos' settlements
1
tend to be built around great public baths, where they
lounge for hours, even days on end to cool off and relieve weight on
their joints.
2
are always built either upon solid rock, or upon the
wedding cake ruins of many previous such settlements, borne down by the
mass of their inhabitants.
3
route footpaths so that traffic naturally compacts rammed earth constructions.
4
tend to be of flimsier construction than comparable
human settlements - both because they have less need of shelter, and
because it's cheaper and easier to raise up a tent again than a stone
building after a loxo's rampage topples it.
5
are menaced by gangs of drunken old women meandering about and sharply critiquing anything new.
6
use buried infrasonic "bells" to broadcast news.
D6
When it comes to magic, these loxos
1
cleave its practice strictly by gender - typically
destabilizing magic for men, and constructive magic for women, but in
the specifics it's not so clean-cut.
2
have a liberal attitude toward necromancy, at least as
applied to shorter-lived peoples - a loxo mage might keep the souls of
their human friends in gourds after their death to consult and carouse
with.
3
are struggling to retain their own traditions, which
serve more of a ritualistic and religious function, over the more
utilitarian human schools whose teachings are percolating in from afar.
4
maintain, under the greatest secrecy and security,
ancient spells that have been erased from the wider world by both time
and less natural forces.
5
forbid the wizardly art of catching spells in one's
brain - for their brains are too strong in their retention, and spells
trapped therein become strange and inextricable.
6
are able to scrimshaw their tusks into something like wands.
D6
From these loxos might be looted
1
a tonic that induces an artificial musth - territorial berserker rage on demand in a bottle.
2
horn-framed spectacles with fine glass lenses fit to be repurposed for other optics.
3
gold-fringed triptychs painted with astonishing detail and fidelity.
4
cow-hair fly-whisks with handles of ebony bound with
brass, backscratchers tipped with lions' claws, and other such luxurious
tools to get at hard-to-reach irritations.
5
bows of terrifying size and draw weight - fit for ballistas among any other race.
6
sets of immaculately-glazed porcelain dentures, filling in for teeth worn away by tough vegetation.
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