@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ Some whalers collect toothed whales' teeth and carve them to pass the time (it's
Whale meat gets harvested for food.
Bones are sometimes ground into fertilizer.
Sperm whales get scalped and have spermaceti extracted from the junk
(`junk' is the actual name of the part of their heads that house the liquid).
(`junk' is the actual name of the part of their heads that houses the liquid).
Spermaceti is brought to land, where it's chilled over Winter, and later squeezed into sperm oil.
Solid leftovers were bleached and sold as spermaceti wax.
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@@ -80,17 +80,18 @@ They hated wolves for stealing their food, and in some parts of the planet, a fe
No city ever disappeared because of large predators eating everyone.
Humanity has wandered the earth, fearlessly, selecting the best plots of land they could to grow all the food they wished, and fence in the meat.
By the 13th century, humans hunted aurochs to extinction.
We had tamed every forest, and ate every large beast.
Now only the cows remain -- unnatural creatures, created through early genetic manipulation.
Nobody alive will ever seen an auroch, as we hunted the last of the bovine progenitors to extinction around the 13th century.
They stood almost two metres tall, with horns almost a metre long.
Once we had tamed every forest, we ate the last of them.
Now only our cows remain -- unnatural creatures, created through early genetic manipulation.
Nobody planned this genocide -- we simply hunt too well to let large animals live.
Aurochs might have survived if they had the protection of basilisks and giant arachnids.
These might seem like unlikely farmers, but they only eat the slowest of their prey, keeping their numbers `under control'.
And we might say the same for humans, despite the little land they manage to protect.
And they do the same for humans.
Disease, starvation and war don't trouble the people in \gls{fenestra} much, but families can swell and shrink in much the same way.
Any couple may have half a dozen children, but the population never grows beyond the land which people manage to capture.
Disease, starvation and war don't trouble the people in \gls{fenestra} much, but families can swell and shrink in much the same way they did in old Europe.
Women may have half a dozen children, but the population never grows beyond the land which people manage to capture.
Just as Europeans once considered the black death, and other plagues, a standard way to die, any market place in \gls{fenestra} will have updates on what ate whom recently.
This leaves that world very similar to ours on-balance, but very strange in all the details.
