Paghsat is the 'evil genius of the prairies' in The Enchanted Buffalo, a story by L. Frank Baum.
He isn't described in detail.
But I like the idea of a devil-bison as a patron of the Horned Society. For those who like the Flan to have some American Indian elements, this might fit. It could match up with the idea that the Horned Society has deep historical roots or at least has adopted the imagery and some concepts from an ancient Flan cult.
For some stench kow goodness - check out Dungeon Magazine # 32, "Ghost Dance". The adventure takes place in Greyhawk and centers around a Horned Society plot to substitute a Rover of the Barrens totem with a stench kow skull.
This adventure had a lot of Amerindian themes with the Rovers being a plains wandering people who have to seek refuge in the forests for the winter.
Use of bison skulls as totems common among the tribes and the HS uses this to try to turn some of them against their own people.
I just don't see an american indian culture fitting into a european-middle-eastern - eastern european style fantasy setting when there are plenty of primitive nomadic cultures from these regions to steal from. I think a devil-pig is fine but I prefer to take inspiration from american indian cultures to populate the places further south and east of Olman lands rather than drop them in the Flanaess in my campaign.
It works well enough for me considering that the Flaenaess was a sort of 'New World' colonized by the 'Old World' Oeridians, Suloise, and Bakluni after the Twin Cataclysms.
I don't think of the Bakluni as Middle Eastern in quite the way some sources develop them. That is, they are not pseudo-Arabs or Syrians in my view. They seem more Turkish and Mongolian, which of course overlaps with the Near East through migrations, cultural influences both ways, and dynasties and empires: Seljuks, Ottomans, etc.
My take on it is that the Arab and Quasi-Islamic elements in Bakluni culture actually come from the influence of genies.
Insert usual disclaimer about how this is a fantasy world and the cultures don't match up closely to Earth cultures.
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RE The Rovers
I went back and forth on this before I decided a cultural mix makes the most sense and seems the most fun. My Rovers will combine Plains Indian elements with Cossack culture.
Their ruler is an 'ataman' after all.
I just don't see an american indian culture fitting into a european-middle-eastern - eastern european style fantasy setting when there are plenty of primitive nomadic cultures from these regions to steal from. I think a devil-pig is fine but I prefer to take inspiration from american indian cultures to populate the places further south and east of Olman lands rather than drop them in the Flanaess in my campaign.
I've touched on this before, but I always saw the Flan as analogs to the First Nations. There were simply too many parallels even in Gary Gygax's original writings, so it seemed perfectly obvious to me. Carl Sargent and the LGG writers only further developed these parallels, even if they did it unintentionally.
For me, the Flanaess is based on North America, not Europe. The Oeridians are analogues to Western Europeans (English, French, German, etc.) while the Suel are analogues to Northern Europeans. The analogies between Oerth and Earth are not perfect, of course, particularly since Greyhawk North America is right next to Greyhawk Middle East (the Baklunish West), but they are clear.
I've found the settlement of the Flanaess by the Suel and Oeridians to not only be an interesting way to further "gray" the setting with the history of that settlement (and I do this with other elements of the setting such as the allied forces betraying and backstabbing each other in the Hateful Wars) and adding some nifty details to flesh out the setting. Bannock and pemmican were popular traveling foods among both First Nations and European settlers, so why wouldn't their Flan, Oeridian and Sueloise counterparts use them too?
I like the basic pattern I've read in the published material: the Oeridians were more-or-less just in their dealings with the Flan and demihumans of the Flanaess, while the Suloise were in many cases cruel and rapacious. This difference is one reason the Oerids proved the more successful colonizers. They made attractive allies and were tolerable as overlords.
One major difference between the history of the Flanaess and the history of the Americas is the absence in the Flanaess of an equivalent to the real-world pandemics that destroyed most of the indigenous human population of the New World.
Another difference is that the Oerids and Suloise mostly entered the Flanaess as refugees, nomadic tribes, warbands, etc and not as organized colonists and state-funded explorers with civilized homelands behind them.
The Oerids were semi-nomadic barbarians, it seems, and the Suloise Imperium had been blown to smithereens.
I don't think the historical pattern looks similar, but I do like the idea of using some fantasy-Amerind elements with the Flan.
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