Alexx S Kay wondered aloud:
>> No. They were imported from Toril (and, probably, originally from Oerth),
>> where they were called "wemics". MoF, MMII (1st).
>
>I'm presuming you're speaking from knowledge of the ur-source gaming
>world? I'd be interested in more details. OTOH, details from that
>source are non-canonical until/unless confirmed by actual textev.
In, oh, 1981 or thereabouts, TSR introduced a line of AD&D (Advanced
Dungeons & Dragons) trading cards. One of the selling points was that the
trading cards were the first appearance of a couple of monsters--the
hybsil, a sort of deer-centaur, and the wemic, a sort of
lion-centaur. Wemics were plain-dwelling hunters, as you'd expect. In
game terms, they were a fair bit tougher than centaurs, but not as tough
as, say, trolls.
The wemic was included in the first edition AD&D Monster Manual II (1983),
and adapted to subsequent versions of the game in the 2nd edition Monstrous
Manual and the 3rd Edition Monsters of Faerun.
At the time of 1st edition AD&D, the default game setting was the world of
Greyhawk, taking place on a planet called "Oerth". It is thus presumed,
although I don't have any direct evidence, that wemics were native to
Greyhawk, along with generic AD&D critters like centaurs, bugbears, and so
on, and critters that became more specifically associated with Oerth, like
norkers.
At the time of 2nd edition AD&D, the default game setting had more or less
become the Forgotten Realms, taking place on the continent of "Faerun" on a
planet called "Toril". The first textev that I have for a specific
association of wemics with Toril is that they appeared in the Forgotten
Realms Monstrous Compendium (1991) prior to being collected in the
Monstrous Manual. It was later reiterated that they were being identified
specifically with Toril when they appeared in the 3rd edition Monsters of
Faerun.
So, that's their history in AD&D.
Much of the Taltos books can be read through an AD&D lens--Vlad is clearly
an assassin, a character class in 1st edition AD&D, for example. Dragaerans
are elves that are Tolkienesque in height, but are otherwise 1st ed. AD&D
elves, with 2,000 year lifespans (not immortal), and (in Jhereg
particularly), being multiclassed fighter/magic-users. Discussions of
revivification are exactly what I'd expect from an SF-y writer asking the
question "what if 'raise dead' spells were common?"
So when I read Morrolan and Vlad encountering cat-centaurs on the way to
Deathgate, I see an adventuring party encountering a pack of wemics. That
sequence, including getting the token for the god and then the following
encounter with the giant jhereg, reads to me like someone remembering the
gaming session where their characters journeyed to Deathgate.
It is true that there is not much textev in Taltos for this
equation. Wemics are reasonably fast, but not especially so, and
cat-centaurs are notably fast. Cat-centaurs males aren't said to be maned,
as I recall, but that's the sort of detail you might suppress if you were
throwing some camo on their origin. Similarly, calling them "cat-centaurs"
when you've invented names like dzur, tiassa, and athyra is curious, unless
you're used to calling them something else that you can't use.
So that's what I got. Not a lot from textev, really. But jumping from
"Steven Brust is a gamer" to "cat-centaurs are wemics" is pretty
straightforward, and virtually inevitable if he was a 1st edition AD&D gamer.
--
"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."--Jefferson
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