I am brainstorming writing treatments of centaur society and so forth, but I ran into a problem. Centaurs seem pretty simple, but their physiology is all kinds of insane. How are their organs arranged? How and what do they eat? How do they reproduce? How do they clean themselves? How does their anatomy alter their society compared to humans? Etc.
The mythology is not particularly helpful. Centaurs are notorious hunters and drinkers, rather than herbivores like horses. In art, centaurs come in varieties with human front legs (with or without hooves) and genitals in the front. Centaurs were originally said to be all male and reproduce with human women, but in later art female centaurs or "centauresses" appear. The origin of the centaurs is singularly weird: King Ixion impregnated the cloud nymph Nephele, who gave birth to Centaurus, who impregnated mares, who gave birth to the race of centaurs.
I have seen quite a few interesting solutions in biology-oriented discussions. Explanations of eating include centaurs being connected to reverse centaurs who live on the plane of wheat, mouths in their hooves, and mouths in a trunk on their front pelvis. Explanations of the unification of human and horse anatomy may be quite detailed or change the respective sizes of the human and horse halves, such as making centaurs half-giant/half-horse or half-human/half-pony. Explanations of reproduction typically address the difference in mobility between a human infant and a foal by making the human half comparatively older (rarely is the actual birth addressed, though the Xenaverse makes c-section mandatory due to lack of centauresses).
What questions and solutions would you suggest?
Centaurs can only reproduce in the presence of Advanced Handwavium. Handwavium is rare on many plains of existence but quite plentiful on other plains like Clasical Earth where the Centaurs are from and Republican budget meetings.
Classic centaurs are pretty strightforward.
Anything else called a centaur that is some fucked up amalgam is just someones fever dream. Ignore it. Why the hell wrere you even paying attention to that in the first place as it has about zero bearing on the usual depiction of centaurs. Its like saying "Oh I saw a picture of an Orc and it was a fish. Whats the ecology of these D&D orcs?" WTF?
Standard centaurs have their plumbing in the horse section and get it on like horses do. Duh.
As for psychology and society. Whatever you want! Nomadic tribes? Mostly loners? Have cities? etc. Info on this is scant in the classical tales.
Do they eat meat and vegetables? Or are they non-meat eaters? Classical depictions suggest that they ate the same fare as humans.
Dragon had at least two Ecology of articles and they and the wemics get entries as PCs in the 2e D&D complete book of Humanoids.
In Shadowrun they are horse-headed but otherwise the same as a classical centaur. They eat the same fare as humans but have their own society and outlooks. Mostly living in the wilderness. Some though have adapted to city or mercenary life. One example was a policewoman.
Pick something that fits your campaign.
Trying to come up with an even remotely biologically plausible physiology for centaurs is a windmill I have spent endless hours tilting at. They just don't work without magic.
I rather liked the centaurs in Narnia who ate one breakfast of eggs, toast, sausages and ale for their human half, and then a second breakfast of oats and hay for their horse half.
A recent run of DC's Wonder Woman had Hera creating centaurs by cutting the heads off of horses at which point human torsos sprouted from the horse's bleeding neck. Good run if you want really messed up Greek gods.
I lean to the "it's as simple as it looks" explanation. Centaurs are an organism in their own right who happen to look half human and half horse. They eat much like humans rather than like horses though their diet tends to include more breads and grains and less meat. They tend to be nomads and herdsmen. In warmer climes they go naked and in colder places they dress for the weather.
There are several interesting discussion threads on centaur mechanics on worldbuilding Stack Exchange (https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/36174/is-a-centaur-biologically-possible). I tend to agree with the most-upvoted answer to the linked question that centaurs wouldn't exist without magical or divine intervention or due to being a myth, allegory, dream, hallucination or something. So I usually tend to avoid all such dilemmas by not having them exist in my non-mythic/wacky game settings.
You know? If you wanted creepy, mystical centaurs, heck anythings, trolls, dragons, what have you, you could take a page from the Where The Wild Things are movie and have them be hollow shells full of sand or dust.
Just sayin'
You know? If you wanted creepy, mystical centaurs, heck anythings, trolls, dragons, what have you, you could take a page from the Where The Wild Things are movie and have them be hollow shells full of sand or dust.
Just sayin'
This thread is hilarious.
Ages ago, a tribe of riders was cursed (or blessed) by the gods to gain this shape, and become one with their horses. Their diet is still primarily human, and they consume far less food than their size and bulk would suggest. Something to note about centaurs: they are often depicted in modern day as might Clydesdale horses, but ancient horses are said to have been much smaller breeds. So you don't have these towering monsters, you have horse people who are slightly bigger than men.
Centaurs do not breed, but do take others into their tribes to join it through ancient rites to the gods who cursed them. It is said that spending too much time with the centaurs can spread the curse. The transformation is said to be unpleasant, and comes with the new moon. Centaurs are extremely long lived, usually dwelling on the earth for a few centuries. The oldest greybeards and crones of the centaurs are said to be incredible sages, and are sought out for advice at times, if one can survive the centaurs and take care not to suffer the curse.
They are savage, wild beings who have little use for the civilization of mankind, and will defend their territory. On the open plain, they are fearsome opponents, capable of moving at great speeds, hunting with long spears and bows. They operate as a tribe, hunting game on the wild plains, or defending the hills they live in. Some keep great herds of cattle and sheep, but it seems to be a rare sight to see them in the company of other horses. Centaurs are not adverse to capturing humans who travel through their plains and taking them back to camp to be cooked - meat is meat, and most centaurs do not see themselves as "human" at all.
There. That's a centaur culture and mechanism for living dreamed up over my morning cup of coffee. My advice, and the point of that little blurb, is to say: don't get caught up in the details. Make something for your world, and run with it. A centaur is, at it's root, a very nonsensical creature in a lot of ways, and trying to apply too much logic or science to it is ultimately futile. If you want a serious setting, leave them out of it.
John Farley wrote a sf trilogy called the Gaea trilogy. Titan, wizard, demon. A race of centaurs were featured prominelty in it. (They had been artificially created by an alien intelligence to be an intermediary species to deal with humanity.)
Coffee Zombie's version has me thinking it could be hilarious to have centaurs turn out to be a horrible disease, like lycanthropy, or zombie-itis. Victims would horribly transform into centaurs, possibly involving also an infected horse body that merges with theirs, and perhaps a fugue state where the human body decapitates the horse body and devours the horse head and neck, and their own legs, using the horse spine and human legs, fused with special bile glue, to create the bone structure that attaches the two bodies, and is then grown over. Consuming all that flesh also provides the energy to allow the transfomation to complete, and the otherwise-unsustainable centaur form to go on a binge of frolicking and mayhem until dying off due to physiological issues and brain effects like rabies... although a necromancer could re-animate the body...
Quote from: Schwartzwald;987564John Farley wrote a sf trilogy called the Gaea trilogy. Titan, wizard, demon. A race of centaurs were featured prominelty in it. (They had been artificially created by an alien intelligence to be an intermediary species to deal with humanity.)
Were the aliens horses then? Otherwise, why centaurs?
Varley.
The reason why is that the alien intelligence was insane and watched a lot of movies (it's set in a huge space habitat). Which doesn't exactly explain centaurs, sine they aren't real common in movies, but in the last novel she recreated Attack of the 50' Woman, only with Marilyn Monroe instead of Allison Hayes (which is a downgrade, personally)
I did some research, and it seems that Greek mythology (allegedly) included centaurs who animal halves were donkeys (http://www.theoi.com/Thaumasios/Onokentauroi.html), oxen (https://theodora.com/encyclopedia/b2/bucentaur.html), seahorses (http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Ikhthyokentauroi.html), and pegasi (https://rogueclassicism.com/2012/05/17/way-cool-winged-centaur-at-sothebys/). Given the diversity of legendary horses in mythology and gaming, DMs could justify adding centaurs based on unicorns, nightmares, sleipnir, or combinations thereof!
I learned other interesting trivia. It turns out that the etymologically correct term for winged horses in Greek mythology (http://www.theoi.com/Ther/HipposPegasos.html) is
hippoi pteretoi (literally "winged horses") or pegasi (Pegasus had descendants who were named after him). The word "pterippus" floating around the internet is a neologism coined by Rich's Pegopedia (https://web.archive.org/web/20161027133701/http://users.cwnet.com:80/xephyr/rich/fantasy/Pegopedia.html) in the 1990s.
Piers Anthony invented a neologism for a winged unicorn (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alicorn#Etymology_2), derived from the name of the unicorn's horn or "alicorn." Although, medieval bestiaries would probably have called it
Pêgasos Monokeras (pl.
Pegasoi Monokerata) in Greek or
Pegasus Unicornis (pl.
Pegasi Unicornes) in Roman Latin. That is, ancient writers would have labeled it a "one-horned winged horse" rather than making up a new name.
I find it really funny how modern writers go to such trouble to invent a shorter name by dropping syllables, while being completely ignorant of the etymology of the words they mangle.
Centaur might have literally meant "bull handler" (in either the sense of herding or fighting).
Alicorn would mean "horned lion" if you tried to derive a meaning from its etymology, which is itself a mangling of the Latin
leo ("lion"),
unus ("one"), and
cornu ("horn"). The various neologisms just produce nonsense: e.g. pegacorn = "spring horn", unipeg = "one spring", unisus = "[conjugation of] one", pterocorn = "wing horn", alicentaur = "lion hand bull", alicorntaur = "lion horn bull", etc.
But back to the fictious lives of centaurs, I found an hilarious post (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=180838) on the gaming den (yes, I am loosely aware of its reputation) wondering about centaur hygiene:
QuoteThe D&D idea of centaurs as funny looking four legged tribal peoples is... weird. Let's look at it. You've got human length arms, and a horse sized ass. There are two very basic facts about this set up:
- you ain't wiping your own ass (or anything else on that end of your body), and
- therefore, you smell like, well, a horse.
This means centaurs either have a society which is very comfortable about everyone else's body, as it's just a fact of life that your buddy is helping you in the bathroom, or they smell and are treated as filthy, unwanted beasts by anyone around who might trade with them (except other filthy, smelly people, like maybe orcs). There is one other possibility, one in which centaur society's main focus is time and labour saving devices that amount to large bidets.
So basically you have one of three centaur societies:
- A people who groom each other socially daily, if not more often. Washroom attendant has a very different job amongst these people, and an adventuring centaur is likely going to expect his companions to groom each other, or, if he knows what other cultures are like, possibly hire call girls or personal attendants to take the task for him.
- A brutish and ostracized people who ally with goblins, gnolls, and orcs, as their lack of hygiene isn't out of place amongst these other peoples
- Intelligent, but oddly focused individuals whom inexplicably, to their human companions, spend hundreds of gold on elaborate bathroom appliances, or it would be explicable, but no one quite wants to ask the centaur what's with all the large hoses and sticks and the time he spends in the bath each day.
If we take a look at real world history, all cultures generally had a concept of bathing and using soap (made of animal fat). The Europeans for centuries bathed in groups and only lapsed in their hygiene after they mistakenly believed that being clean spread the plague (this was well after medieval times, btw). So centaurs having outdoor showers and a masseuse market makes perfect sense and is a great way to add verisimilitude and uniqueness.
Being a fantasy race, the biology of centaurs are of very little interest to me. On the other hand, their culture/psychology is very interesting to me. I made them an optional PC race in my old "FtA!GN! (http://www.lulu.com/shop/the-rpg-pundit/ftagn/paperback/product-3571650.html)" sourcebook, and there I had them be all full of weird religious/social taboos related to the "two-footed races".
Quote from: RPGPundit;988775Being a fantasy race, the biology of centaurs are of very little interest to me
You're a fantasy race? I'm going to guess gnome.
Quote from: Dumarest;988811You're a fantasy race? I'm going to guess gnome.
And now we start the "Guess which fantasy race RPGPundit is" ...
Clearly not a centaur.
I did include centaurs as a race of mutant horses in my Metamorphosis Alpha campaign. They had a human torso and arms where the neck is on a horse, with a horse's head. The human parts were covered in hair like the rest of the creature.
They had little use for most material culture, aside from weapons and armour to defend themselves. They were nomadic grazers, with a social structure akin to herds of wild horses.
Pundit's love of pipe tobacco clearly marks him as a Hobbit.
Quote from: DavetheLost;989008Pundit's love of pipe tobacco clearly marks him as a Hobbit.
Short tempered, self centered, and venomous? Pundy, do you have scales, wings, and a hoard? (j/k)
As far as the origin and biology of centaurs goes, it depends on the campaign.
In my Cthulvian campaign, all the chimerae are Children of Yhdra/Shub-Niggurath. Generally, a human who sips on Shubby Milk trades points of INT and Comeliness for Charisma and sexual prowess. For ex, somebody who wanted to be a binge drinker, a fast runner, and "hung like a horse" sprouted four legs. Only eating and drinking for pleasure, not need, was a standard side benefit.
Hadn't thought about the poop question. In Varley's books, they dropped horse biscuits. The problem was they weren't potty trained. They'd just lift their tail and let it drop, only realizing afterwards what a faux pas they had done. I figure with an equine gut, they would drop horse biscuits rather than human dung. Hmnnn...about minotaurs and cow pies...
Or another fantasy race: successful RPG writer. He said elsewhere he makes money from his games.
Quote from: Dumarest;989018Or another fantasy race: successful RPG writer. He said elsewhere he makes money from his games.
Oh come on! Unless you are talking about virtual money in
Farmville, you're being sillier than Biscuit!
Quote from: Dumarest;989018Or another fantasy race: successful RPG writer. He said elsewhere he makes money from his games.
It's not as hard as it looks, if you have discipline, decent writing skills and some creative talent. I'm far from the only one making money. And I'd reckon there are certainly others (either through putting more effort in or by making more fashionable products) who are making more money than I am.