{"id":7859,"date":"2009-11-29T18:50:29","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T01:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/?p=7859"},"modified":"2009-11-30T06:50:12","modified_gmt":"2009-11-30T13:50:12","slug":"of-buffalos-and-women-warriors-crs-new-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/of-buffalos-and-women-warriors-crs-new-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Buffalos and Women-Warriors: CRS’ brand new blog"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gbo\"

Gbo (or close enough)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Charles R. Saunders has posted a very helpful blog entry<\/a> for the bovinically-challenged on his website<\/a>. Saunder’s utterly bad-ass Sword-and-Sorcery \"dossouye-cold\"heroine, Dossouye<\/a>, is partnered in her exploits by an equally deadly “side-kick” named Gbo. Gbo is not to be trifled with, nor is he an Asian water buffalo. Mr. Saunders sets the record straight.<\/p>\n

I first read about Dossouye and Gbo\u00a0in Amazons!<\/em> around 1980 (the story in question was “Agbewe’s Sword”). At the time, I was struck by how unique\u00a0CRS’ pairing of warrior and bull was\u00a0in fantasy fiction. Unique, but not unlikely. Having grown up around cattle all my life, it seemed far more probable that a (woman-) warrior would bestride such a steed than, say, a dragon.\u00a0Bovines, even domesticated ones,\u00a0are\u00a0formidable beasts. Generally speaking, for any herd animal to survive, it must possess one of two traits: speed or lethality. Bovines aren’t renowned for their speed. There is a perfectly logical reason why the very capable predators of sub-Saharan Africa have never wiped out the Cape\u00a0buffalo. Cape buffalos are bad news.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"rqcompanion\"<\/p>\n

Reading CRS’ blog got me thinking about other\u00a0war-like bovine steeds. I remembered the cover to an old RuneQuest supplement<\/a> that featured an “Amerindian” barbarian of Prax astride a war-bison.\u00a0Too cool.<\/p>\n

Of course, while not bovids of any kind, Saunders’ gunkwu <\/em>and chipimbere<\/em><\/a>, which feature in the latter installments of the Imaro series, fulfill a similar function.\u00a0Mr. Saunders recently stated on his forum that\u00a0the inspiration for the gunkwu<\/em> came from the\u00a0Arsinoitherium. James Gurney (later of Dinotopia<\/em> fame) depicted Imaro on a charging chipimbere<\/em>\u00a0for the cover of the DAW edition of The Trail of Bohu<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Arsinoitherium\"

Arsinoitherium<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve long\u00a0enjoyed speculating about Howard’s Hyborian Age. I read Conan the Buccaneer<\/em> (which featured De Camp and Carter’s envisioning of\u00a0Hyborian Age Amazons)\u00a0a little while after I encountered Dossouye and Gbo. Rereading REH’s essay, “The Hyborian Age,” at some point later, I got to ruminating about what Howard’s Amazons might really<\/em> be like.\u00a0With\u00a0Saunders’ creations\u00a0in mind, it got me to wondering whether such women-warriors might not ride rhinocereses. Just as Howard\u00a0tied in\u00a0his akaana<\/a><\/em> to the harpies of\u00a0classical myth, might not the legendary linking of virgins to unicorns have an older,\u00a0bloodier origin in\u00a0an age undreamed of? Just a thought.<\/p>\n

*Art by Mahattan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Charles R. Saunders has posted a very helpful blog entry for the bovinically-challenged on his website. Saunder’s utterly bad-ass Sword-and-Sorcery heroine, Dossouye, is partnered in her exploits by an equally deadly “side-kick” named Gbo. Gbo is not to be trifled with, nor is he an Asian water buffalo. Mr. Saunders sets the record straight. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,47,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motifs-in-rehs-work","category-pre-cataclysmichyborian","category-saunders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7859"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7884,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7859\/revisions\/7884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}