National Act Like a Jack Vance Character Day Pt. II

Is Hratnu a game, or a form of duel? Perhaps it is both; perhaps neither. Among the Plaxty it is a way of life; it has always been thus and the Plaxty see no good reason to change.

Brett is dressed for a holmgang of hratnu. He will catch the quoit with his horns, and as the cry of "Quoitus Interruptus!" roars from the throats of the audience he will count coup upon his foe's plastron, that contumacious blaggard. He may get over-excited so don't drink from the river downstream from him, is all I'm saying.

Dour are the Fuglemen of Scutch, as if the sullenness of the bats they trap and train has imbued their souls with rancour.* All the wrongness of the world weighs down on their shoulders but they have no words to speak of their grief so silent they must remain, or converse among themselves in an almost inaudible high-pitched twittering. Another Kiwi has donned the garb of a Fugleman -- the shaggy breeches, the padded shagreen waistcoat -- and now he too is dour. His heart rankles with half-remembered wrongs from long ago, and with a growing suspicion that they duped him at the Furry shop and fobbed him off with mismatched scraps of garmentry. That will teach him not to leave it to the last moment to go shopping for his NALAJVC-Day costume.

* Battery -- like Falconry but more noctural -- is the favoured sport of the aristocrats of Scutch. They rely on lower castes such as the Fuglemen to catch the wild bats and prepare them to hunt from the arm.