Most of this stuff got killed off because at that point "Studio" decided to 'have a go" at Araby, which ended up with the Araby list "as you know it". Originally the ODT worked along two lines: the wealthy "city-states" of the coastal regions and the poor, but fierce "desert tribes". Below you will find some "fluff" and two "samples" of the lists worked on at that time........... have a good read..
Once more Hakeem struck the egg, and finally it broke. With both hands
and all his strength he lifted the infant roc out of the broken shells
and held it above his head. Whelmed by the toxins that raged in his
body he stared at the panicked bird in his hands, as it struggled and
cried in a pitch that wasn't audible to the human ear.
Hakeem knew that the mother would arrive within minutes now. Gently he
put down the hatchling and covered it in the feathers of the nest, to
keep it warm. Then he stepped back, took a roc-hook in each hand, and
watched the sky.
-*-
Hakeem's tribe stood silently below the mesa and watched. For three
days they had followed his endurance of the Rite of the Rider, from
the Giving of Liquids, the ensuing spasms, and the gruelling climb up
to the Roc's nest. It had been three generations since the Darbh-Han
had a rider, Hakeem's mother's mother's father.
-*-
Then came the roc, and its cry was terrible. It fell from the sky only
to spread its wings moments before the nest. Hakeem steeled himself as
he saw the talons open, and his body did not break when the bird
jerked him away from the nest's edge and high in the air. The young
Arab knew that after one or two strokes the roc would pull him up to
its beaks and kill him.
Hakeem struck his right roc-hook into the bird's talon, behind the
pectoral muscle of the thumb. The grip loosed immediately, as he had
learned it should. Quickly he crawled up the confused bird's legs and
body, using three, maybe four stabs with his hooks. Before the roc's
beak could reach him he was behind its neck. The frustrated bird began
to turn and plummeted from the sky as it tried to shake off the young
man.
Hakeem waited and then, with a move he had trained for years, threw
his two hooks at the sides of the birds head, into the soft flesh
behind its beak. The roc's head jerked back as Hakeem pulled the rope
fastened to the hooks.
As the bird's wings opened, for a moment blocking the sun from tribe
below, hundred voices cheered. The Darbh-han had a Rider.
----------------
Hakeem's hooks.
The only personal belongings of Hakeem of the Darbh-han are his two
roc-hooks.
His left hand holds Hakeem's Claw, a hook he found himself as a
five-year old. The young boy had been riding alone in the desert when
he found the carcass of a roc and rider. One of the hooks was still
impaled in the giant bird. Hakeem had never seen a roc before but
brought back the richly ornamented hook to his tribe, ignorant of its
purpose. The return of the young child with the hook was seen as a
portent of his calling by many, giving new hope to the
Darbh-han. Until today nobody knows the earlier history of Hakeem's
Claw, nor its real name.
Hakeem's right hand holds the Hook of is great-grandfather, the Rune
Hook of Nar. Chakeem was one of the great roc-riders of his
generation, when the Darbh-han were still a powerful and respected
tribe. The story of Chakeem's friendship with the Dwarven runesmith
Nar is told elsewhere, but at their parting the old Dwarf presented
the rider with a hook that contained the "height of my craft for the
man to whom I owe my life", as is inscribed on the hook's side. Several
of the unintelligible runes near the hook's curved part glow when the
Rune Hook of Nar is used, a constant source of uneasiness for
Hakeem. However, the art of the hook's making is beyond question.
- original text by Happyent, from the archives of the Oriental Design Team
