Pig

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Research

Creature Name: Pig

Observations by: Deider of Pelar

Creature Type: Animal ((???))

Creature Subtype: Suidae

CTS trainable: Yes (compatible with CTS).

Introduction

Though historical records are scarce and not detailed, it is thought that boars were one of the first animals to be domesticated. According to their oral history, after commanded by Mikon to scatter and spread across Negaria, some Romini tribes eventually returned to where he had been imprisoned and founded the city of Mikona. During this migration, some of the tribes who passed through the forests of T'Nanshi captured boars there and brought them along. It is from this stock of captured boars that the first pigs were supposedly domesticated. Over the millennia selective breeding has differentiated pigs from their boar ancestors; pigs have shorter legs and heads, curlier tails, and thinner, softer coats of hair. Pigs also lack the ridge of hair running along the back of boars (from which the term “razorback” arose).

Feeding Habits

Like the boars from which they are descended, pigs are omnivores who will eat almost anything. This makes them useful in farms as living garbage disposals, eating whatever refuse other animals will not and turning it into something useful (pork and leather).

Disposition and Social Habits

Pigs are intelligent, social animals, and on farms they will form into groups similar to boars' sounders. A typical pig sounder will consist of eight to ten sows, their young, and one or two hogs. Pigs also build nests or wallows, as boars do.

Habitat

Pigs are most commonly found on farms in M'Chek. Their popularity as a farm animal wanes as one travels north – only a few pig farms exist in Ferrell and The Kurathene Empire. The dwarves and gnomes of Galdos and Deglos rarely keep pigs because of their resemblance to orcs. Pigs farms are nonexistent in Brekon or Dubunat for the same reason.

Fylgia

Most compatible: Dire Boar

• Pigs were domesticated millennia ago from wild boars.

Other notes

Though pigs were originally domesticated for food, records show that the ancient Mikonans noticed that many pig organs were similar in size and shape to humans, and so they used both pig corpses and live pigs to practice healing arts, testing medicines and poultices on them before using them on people. This practice died out when M’Chek’s population explosion made pigs more valuable as food sources and humans more available as test subjects.

It is a common misconception among the uneducated that orcs domesticated pigs due to their similar-looking snouts, or that boars and thus pigs are somehow descended or derived from orcs. The Deglosian word for orc, muc, is an abbreviation of the Galdosian Dwergan term, mucbuggeroch, which literally means “pig-fucker.”