Link: PTJ board on Webmaze (registration required)
Panther Claw Jungle is a major departure from Panther/Taluna Lairs of the past. It is not modeled after any one example from the books, but rather a combination of different things from different books.
There has not been a viable Panther Lair in at least five years. The old PantherClaw and the old Wildwoods were the last real bands, and neither was viable in its last years. We simply could not keep enough members to have critical mass for interactive roleplay.
This was for three reasons. Most Gorean women come here to interact with strong Gorean men. While there are many women who prefer or enjoy submissive men – it’s not really Gorean. Women who prefer that have much better pickings somewhere else. But, increasingly, as strong men stopped hunting Panthers, the only men Panthers were roleplaying with were subbies. This was the thing that made me close the Old Lair. I just could not stand to roleplay one more word with a willing subbie-male.
As the professional dominatrix said (on Fresh Air): "In the beginning, it did feel pretty powerful to act out those roles, but after a little while it wasn't my fantasy in most cases. In a lot of ways, felt more humiliating to me than it did to them." Dominating men was not my fantasy, and it was theirs to be dominated; so who was really serving whose pleasure?
Another strong reason is travel. When there is nothing going on in most homes, those people can travel. Every couple months, they can take a break from their regular roleplay and go to the Fair. The third reason is interaction with other Homes. Most Homes have allies that their members can visit. These Homes may have friendly raids, or joint roleplay. But Panthers have long been denied all of these things. So it had become impossible for Panther Lairs to compete for members with other kinds of Homes.
I could go off on a broad digression here, and make a case that this was deliberate. That traditional Gorean Homes would rather have us playing slaves and FW in their Homes than running loose in the Forest, so these more numerous Homes used The Tyranny of the Majority to continually evolve rules that discriminated against Panthers, and made playing a Panther increasingly less fun. As an example, PG had long had a rule against Panthers going to the Sardar Fair, because “it would be too far and too risky for Panthers to get there.” Regardless of the fact that on the official PG map of Gor, the Sardar is closer to the Forest than anywhere else. Nobody cares how far and dangerous it is for a Tahari woman to get there, but no Panthers can go there. Now they have changed the Rule to say that disguises are prohibited, so Panthers/Talunas can’t go there.
The point is, that I knew I had to come up with a room design that equalized these disadvantages, which had so hobbled Panther Lairs in the past. I had to work out a scheme that allowed FM in the Home, allowed Panthers to travel, and gave us a chance to roleplay with other Homes.
There is some foundation in the books for this, with Rim and Grenna. He’s a FM and she’s a Panther, and they’re a couple, at the end of Hunters. What I realized is that, rather than having FM and Panthers living in adjoining huts, or sharing them – it might be more Gorean to have the FM and Panthers living separately, but sharing the same area of jungle. If they have non-aggression and mutual-defense pacts, they can be allies and friends, without the tension of living together. There is foundation for this kind of alliance, with Rask and Verna. We set it up to have two groups of FM, Pirates and Mercenaries, so the Talunas could be on the Balance of Power. Except for the Talunas in the middle, keeping the peace, the Pirates and Mercs might go to war and wipe each other out.
To solve the travel problem, we had to be able to pull off disguises. The quote from Beasts, tells us Panthers are willing to go in disguise as FW or slaves, and probably get away with it. So we practiced going in disguise during our voyage, and learned enough to pull off impersonating different Castes.
For interacting with other Homes, I thought, how about if we open up roleplay with Homes that have never roleplayed with Panthers, because they are too far from the Forest? That’s where the idea came from to be Talunas.
The Talunas of PClaw are Panthers because we have been Panthers for years, and we didn’t change anything except where we live. We’re Talunas, because now, we live in the Jungle. We’re FW, because we are not collared, and we can all pass for FW, some of us with Castes in which we are knowledgeable and proficient.
Because the Talunas are alliance-builders, and because they want to pass as FW with certain traders, they want to encourage development of the beach/jungle area where they live. So anybody can live in our jungle, whether they want to join one of the sub-homes or not, as long as they work it out in roleplay, or stay out of the way.
We’re going to build as we go. What are we gonna build, I don’t know. That will be up to the people who roleplay here and what we do in roleplay.
It’s not going to be like anything from any specific book, but it is gonna be like all the books. It’s what could have happened with Rim and Grenna after Hunters. We don’t know, we can’t know. JN left it to us to make up what we think would have happened.