Banor

Sovereign of Horn and Hunt.

Banor is the Sovereign of hunter and prey, embodying the cycle of life. It is no great sin to him that in order for one creature to eat, another might have to die. It is a sin, however, to waste the life you claim in order to live.

Banor guides his followers’ spears to the hearts of their prey — and then binds them, hard, to his law: be not a plague. Take what you will use, use the whole of it, and leave enough to feed your grandchildren. His followers are expert trackers, and know the tongues of beasts. They can call upon prey as well as predators to help them in time of need.

To hunt is to worship. The prey is owed a clean death after an honest chase. Banor is owed his share of the kill. The wilds are owed a balanced cycle, and a reverence for their abundance.

Traditions that teach him: the Archaist — and, under another name, the Orcblooded Shaman. The orc tribes of the old mountains call him Baalkan and praise the same god by other rites.

His worship day is Wir, deep in the week, when the hunter is furthest from the hearth. He shares Wir with Shargon, who claims sovereignty of the untamable and unfaithful forces of nature.

Strictures

Archaist

• A follower of Banor must openly wear a token of horn, tooth, or bone, taken from a beast he hunted and killed himself, and etched with Banor’s symbol (a pair of antlers). It is replaced whenever he makes a worthier kill.
• A follower of Banor must make offerings of food and drink at dusk each day. Offering food and drink requires one hour (6 turns). The offering costs 1cp and weighs 1/6 st (it can consist of fresh meat from that day’s hunt).
• A follower of Banor must honor what he takes: he uses the whole of a kill and lets nothing he has taken go to waste.
• A follower of Banor must never hunt a beast to extinction; there must always be enough to breed. He may never hunt or eat animals of the same kind as his own totem beast.

The law of the hunt

Use the whole of the kill. Banor does not forbid his followers from a sporting hunt, but he frowns upon a wasted kill. What is slain is to be used — in prayer, in feast, or in preparation for the winter.