IMO every farmed animal is viable, at least not commonly. That would make even cows and sheep common in Athas as well as fowl, and these are not the animals I would like to see in Athas. IMO lack of mundane animals are an important part of alienness of a setting. For example, how cool and fun would bazaars of Tatooine be if there were chickens and sheep on the stalls?
Dogs also have their niche filled by more than one animals, so they only encountered very rarely, as a very strange beast some claim to have heard of in ancient tales. I love the look on the players’ faces when I say that they encounter an extremely weird creature they have never heard of, and after I descrive it they understand it is a dog or a horse. It is also a fine test of metagaming, and if players fail, I can turn things around with a few mutations
I will defend the potential existence of chickens because of their small size and relative ease of cultivating. Don’t like feathers? Put scales on them instead and change the name.
Cows are high maintenance. They require a lot of grazing land and water that Athas has only in very short supply.
There’s plenty of other fun (and usually large) eggs in game that chickens aren’t really needed. It also forces the players to eat something interesting if you get rid of their existence.
@Rajaat99 These are great food and animal summaries!
I was trying to create a list of common (and not so common) domestic animals and supplies as part of a player reference for a future game. But these do a lot of the heavy lifting already.
Do you mind if I copy bits of these documents wholesale?
Most of these are cut/paste canon through 2E, just compiled in one spot. I use it similarly as reference for my players. I’ve been combining things in game recently which I find fun as a currently non-practicing chef. In Urik, I had the army return and had a celebration of sorts revolving around the community kiln, where ostrich-sized crodlu eggs were roasted until the whites set, the tops sawed off and then topped with a mix of different pickled veg with bramble weed skewers of meat that are then used to eat the dish as the warriors sang praise to Hamanu. There was also broy being passed in emptied eggshells. Hopefully the image stuck with my players.
Do with them as you please. Like everything on my blog I create, it is meant to be used. If you think of more stuff that should go on them, please share. The equipment list is a work in progress
How much meat are Athasians actually consuming? Considering how many gallons of water are required to create a pound of meat, I always imagined most of their protein coming from (small) insects.
That’s a great document. After reading it I went out and added another column to my calendar to show which apex predators would actually be active each month and not estivating. Which made me also rethink lairs for these creatures.
Beyond that I like the idea of creatures either at the bottom of the food chain or all up and down the food chain with some symbiotic relationship with chloroplast containing organisms – imagine every morning on the tablelands squirming masses of dark green worms erupting from the soil to greet the sun.
