A friend sent this to me and I wasn't quite sure where to post it, so I went with General.




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This venerable article has been posted on usenet
newsgroups several
times, but I don't know who wrote it or where it was
first posted.
If you can't think of a scenario based on this, you
might as well give
up GMing.

"The People Eaters"

From time to time in the course of human history
natural depravity plumbs
new depths--and not only during wars. The Sawney Beane
case in the early
seventeenth century concerned a family that lived in a
cave and chose
murder, cannibalism, and incest as its way of life.
For twenty-five years
this family, rejecting all accepted standards of human
behaviour and
morality, carried on a viscious guerilla war against
humanity. Even a
medieval world accustomed to torture and violence was
horrified.

Because over the years a large family was ultimately
inolved, most of whom
had been born and raised in fantastic conditions under
which they accepted
such an existence as normal, taking their standars
from the criminal
behaviour of their parents, the case raises some
interesting legal and moral
issues. Retribution when it finally came was quick and
merciless, but for
many of the forty-eight Beanes who were duly put to
death it may have been
unjust.

The case is simple enough, though scarcely credible,
and has been well
authenticated. Sawney Beane was a Scot, born within a
few miles of Edinburgh
in the reign of James VI of Scotland, who was also
James I of England. His
father worked the land, and Sawney was no doubt
brought up to follow the
same hard working but honourable career. But Sawney
soon discovered that
honest work of any kind was not his natural metier. At
a very early age he
began to exhibit what today would be regarded as
delinquent traits. He was
lazy, cunning and viscious, and resentful of authority
of any kind.

As soon as he was old enough to look after himself
he decided to leave
home and live on his wits. They were to serve him well
for many years. He
took with him a young woman of an equally
irresponsible and evil
disposition, and they went to set up "home" together
on the Scottish coast
by Galloway.

Home turned out to be a cave in a cliff by the sea,
with a strip of yellow
sand as a forecourt when the tide was out. It was a
gigantic cave,
penetrating more than a mile into the solid rock of
the rather wild
hinterland, with many tortuous windings and side
passages. A short way from
the entrance of the cave all was complete darkness.
Twice a day at high
tide several hundred yards of the cave's entrance
passage were flooded,
which formed a deterrent to intruders. In this dark
damp hole they decided
to make their home. It seemed unlikely that they would
ever be discovered.

In practice, the cave proved to be a lair rather
than a home, and from
this lair Sawney Beane launched a reign of terror
which was to last for a
quarter of a century. It was Sawney's plan to live on
the proceeds of
robbery, and it proved to be a simple enough matter to
ambush travellers on
the lonely narrow roads connecting nearby villages. In
order to ensure that
he could never be indentified and tracked down, Sawney
made a point of
murdering his victims.

His principle requirement was money with which he
could buy food at the
villaige shops and markets, but he also stole
jewellery, watches, clothing,
and any other articles of practical or potential
value. He was shrewd enough
not to attempt to sell valuables which might be
recognized; these were
simply stock-piled in the cave as unrealizeable
assets.

Although the stock-pile grew, the money gained from
robbery and murder was
not sufficeint to maintain even the Sawney Beanes
modest standard of living.
People in that wild part of Scotland were not in the
habit of carrying a
great deal of money on their persons. Sawney's
problem, as a committed
troglodyte, was how to obtain enough food when money
was in short supply and
any attempt to sell stolen valuables taken from the
murdered victims might
send him to the gallows. He chose the simple answer.
Why waste the bodies of
the people he had killed? Why not eat them?

This he and his wife proceeded to do. After an
ambush on a nearby coastal
road he dragged the body back to the cave. There, deep
in the Scottish
bedrock, in the pallid light of a tallow candle, he
and his wife
disembowelled and dismembered his victim. The limbs
and edible flesh were
dried, salted and pickled, and hung on improvised
hooks around the walls of
the cave to start a larder of human meat on which they
were to survive,
indeed thrive, for more than two decades. The bones
were stacked in another
part of the cave system.

Naturally, these abductions created intense alarm in
the area. The
succession of murders had been terrifying enough, but
the complete
disappearance of people travelling alone along the
country roads was
demoralizing. Although determined efforts were made to
find the bodies of
the victims and their killer, Sawney was never
discovered. The cave was too
deep and complex for facile exploration. Nobody
suspected that the unseen
marauder of Galloway could possibly live in a cave
which twice a day was
flooded with water. And nobody imagined for a moment
that the missing people
were, in fact, being eaten.

The Sawney way of life settled down into a pattern.
His wife began to
produce children, who were brought up in the cave. The
family were by no
means confined to the cave. Now that the food problem
had been
satisfactorily solved, the money stolen from victims
could be used to buy
other essentials. From time to time they were able to
venture cautiously and
discreetly into nearby towns and villages on shopping
expeditions. At no
time did they arouse suspicion. In themselves they
were unremarkable people,
as in the case with most murderers, and they were
never challenged or
identified.

On the desolate foreshore in front of the cave the
children of the Beane
family no doubt saw the light of day, and played and
excercised and built up
their strength while father or mother kept a look-out
for
intruders--perhaps as potential fodder for the larder.

The killings and cannibalism became habit. It was
survival, it was normal,
it was a job. Under these incredible conditions Sawney
and his wife produced
a family of fourteen children, and as they grew up the
children in turn, by
incest, produced a second generation of eight
grandsons and fourteen
grandaughters. In such a manner must the earliest
cavemen have existed and
reproduced their kind, though even they did not eat
each other.

It is astonishing that with so many children and,
eventually, adolescents
milling around in and close to the cave somebody did
not observe this
strange phenomenon and investigate. The chances are
that they did, from time
to time--that they investigated too closely and were
murdered and eaten. The
Sawney children were no doubt brought up to regard
other humans as food.

The young Sawneys received no education, except in
the arts of primitive
speech, murder and cannibal cuisine. They developed as
a self-contained
expanding colony of beasts of prey, with their
communal appetite growing
ever bigger and more insatiable. As the children
became adults they were
encouraged to join in the kidnappings and killings.
The Sawney gang swelled
its ranks to a formidable size. Murder and abduction
became refined by years
of skill and experience to a science, if not an art.

Despite the alarming increase in the number of
Sawney mouths which had to
be fed, the family were seldom short of human flesh in
the larder.
Sometimes, having too much food in store, they were
obliged to discard
portions of it as putrefaction set in despite the
salting and pickling.
Thus it happened that from time to time at remote
distances from the cave,
in open country or washed up on the beach, curiously
preserved but decaying
human remains would be discovered. Since these grisly
objects consisted of
severed limbs and lumps of dried flesh, they were
never identified, nor was
it possible to estimate when death had taken place,
but it soon became
obvious to authority that they were connected with the
long list of missing
people. And authority, at first disbelieving, began to
realize with
gathering the nature of what was happening. Murder and
dismemberment were
one thing, but the salting and pickling of human flesh
impled something far
more sinister.

The efforts made to trace the missing persons and
hunt down their killers
resulted in some unfortunate arrests and executions of
innocent people whose
only crime was that they had been the last to see the
victim before his,
or her, disappearance. The Sawney family, securing in
their cave, remained
unsuspected and undiscovered.

Years went by. The family grew older and bigger and
more hungry. The
programme of abduction and murder was organized on a
more ambitious scale.
It was simly a matter of supply and demand--the
logistics of a troglodyte
operation. Sometimes as many as six men and women
would be ambushed and
killed at at time by a dozen or more Sawney's. Their
bodies were always
dragged back to the cave to be prepared by the women
for the larder.

It seems strange that nobody ever escaped to provide
the slightest clue to
identify the domicile of his attackers, but the
Sawney's conducted their
ambushes like military operations, with "guards"
concealed by the road at
either side of the main centre of attack to cut down
any quarry that had the
temerity to run for it. This "three-pronged" operation
proved effective;
there were no survivors. And although mass-searches
were carried out to
locate the perpetrators of these massacres, nobody
ever thought of searching
the deep cave. It was passed by on many occasions.

Such a situation could not continue indefinitely,
however. Inevitably
there had to be a mistake--just one clumsy mistake
that would deliver the
Sawney Beane family to the wrath and vengance of
outraged society. The
mistake, when it happened, was simple enough--the
surprising thing was that
it had not happened earlier. For the first time in 25
years the Sawney's,
through bad judgement and bad timing, allowed
themselves to be outnumbered,
though even that was not the end of the matter.
Retribution when it finally
came was in the grand manner, with the King himself
talking part in the end
game--the pursuit and annihilation of the Sawney Beane
tribe.

It happened this way. One night a pack of the Sawney
Beanes attacked a man
and his wife who were returning on horse-back from a
nearby fair. They
seized the woman first, and while they were still
struggling to dismount the
man had her stripped and disembowelled, ready to be
dragged off to the cave.
The husband, driven beserk by the swift atrocity and
realizing that he was
hopelessly outnumbered by utterly ruthless fiends,
fought desperately to
escape. In the vicious engagement some of the Sawney's
were trampled
underfoot.

But he, too, would have been taken and murdered had
not a group of other
riders, some twenty or more, also returning from the
fair, arrived
unexpected on the scene. For the first time the Sawney
Beanes found
themselves at a disadvantage, and discovered that
courage was not their most
prominent virtue. After a brief violent skirmish they
abandoned the fight
and scurried like rats back to their cave, leaving the
mutilated body of the
woman behind, and a score of witnesses. The incident
was to be the Sawney's
first and last serious error of tactics and policy.

The man, the only one on record known to have
escaped from a Sawney
ambush, was taken to the Chief Magistrate of Glasgow
to describe his
harrowing experience. This evidence was the break
through for which the
magistrate had been waiting for a long time. The long
catalogue of missing
people and pickled human remains seemed to be reaching
its final page and
denouement; a gang of men and youths were involved,
and had been involved for
years, and they had to be tracked down. They obviously
lived locally, in the
Galloway area, and past discoveries suggested that
they were cannibals. THe
disembowelled woman proved the point, if proof were
needed.

The matter was so serious that the Chief Magistrate
communicated directly
with King James VI and the King apparently took an
equally serious view, for
when he went in person to Galloway with a small army
of four hundred armed
men and a host of tracker dogs, the Sawney Beanes were
in trouble.

The King, with his officers and retinue, and the
assistance of local
volunteers, set out systematically on one of the
biggest manhunts in
history. They explored the entire Galloway countryside
and coast--and
discovered nothing. When patrolling the shore they
would have walked past
the partly waterlogged cave itself had not the dogs,
scenting the faint
odour of death and decay, started baying and howling
and trying to splash
their way into the dark interior.

This seemed to be it. The pursuers took no chances.
They knew they were
dealing with vicious, ruthless men who had been in the
murder business for a
long time. With flaming torches to provide a
flickering light, and swords at
the ready, they advanced cautiously but methodically
along the narrow
twisting passenges of the cave. In due course they
reached the charnel house
at the end of the the mile-deep cave that was the home
and operational base
of the Sawney Beane cannibals.

A dreadful sight greeted their eyes. Along the damp
walls of the cave
human limbs and cuts of bodies, male and female, were
hung in rows like
carcasses of meat in a butcher's cold room. Elsewhere
they found bundles of
clothing and piles of valuables, including watches,
rings and jewellery. In
an adjoining cavern there was a heap of bones
collected over some twenty
five years.

The entire Sawney Beane family, all forty-eight of
them, were in
residence; they were lying low, knowing that an army
four hundred strong was
on their tail. There was a fight, but for the Sawney's
there was literally
no escape. The exit from the cave was blocked with
armed men who meant
business. They were trapped and duly arrested. With
the King himself still
in attendance they were marched to Edinburgh--but not
for trial. Cannibals
such as the Sawneys did not merit the civlized
amenities of judge and jury.
The prisoners numbered twenty seven men and twenty one
women of which all
but two, the original parents, had been convceived and
brought up as
cave-dwellers, raised from childhood on human flesh,
and taught that robbery
and murder were the normal way of life. For this
wretched incestuous horde
of Scottish cannibals there was to be no mercy, and no
pretence of justice
if every any one of them merited justice.

The Sawney Beanes of both sexes were condemned to
death in an arbitrary
fashion because their crimes over a generation of
years were adjudged to be
so infamous and offensive as to preclude the normal
process of law, evidence
and jurisdiction. They were outcasts of society and
had no rights, even the
youngest and most innocent of them.

All were executed the following day, in accordance
with the conventions
and procedures of the age. The men were dismembered,
just as they had
dismembered their victims. Their arms and legs were
cut off while they were
still alive and conscious, and they were left to bleed
to death, watched by
their women. And then the women were burned like
witches in great fires.

At not time did any one of them express remorse or
repentance. But, on the
other hand, it must be remembered that the children
and grandchildren of
Sawney Beane and his wife had been brought up to
accept the cave dwelling
cannibalistic life as normal. They had known no other
life, and in a very
real sense they had been well and truly
"brain-washed", in modern
terminology. They were isolated from society, and
their moral and ethical
standards were those of Sawney Beane himself. He was
the father figure and
mentor in a small tightly integrated community. They
were trained to regard
murder and cannibalism as right and normal, and they
saw no wrong in it.

It poses the question as to how much of morality is
the product of the
environment and training, and ho wmuch is (or should
be) due to some
instinctive but indefinable inner voice of, perhaps,
conscience. Did the
young members of the Beane clan know that what they
were doing was wrong?

Whether they knew or not, they paid the supreme
penalty just the same.

I'll say that I can hardly blame the Scots for wanting them to die, and die painfully.

The sad thing is, there are probably a dozen families like this right now in China.

Interesting....

umm..what he said..

Very interesting even. Thanks for sharing

hmm..