Smelly Rangers

[racestark]

I'm not trying to complain about people's character descriptions and I may have remembered this backward, though experience leads me to believe that I may not have, but doesn't bathing with just water lessen the odor an animal gives off and at the same time improve their ability to smell things beyond their own body odor? I know it might seem to make sense that rangers/druids/woodfolk would smell a bit "earthy" but if what I remember about bathing and ability to detect odor is correct, wouldn't the woods people be bathing more regularly? But hey, if you want to be smelly ranger, who am I to say something? Heck, people used to bath once a year in July. (In Ohio we call them Kentuckians. )

[ancientempathy]

LOL...

I can't tell if this is a general complaint about people's characters not bathing or teasing constructive critism. Just the same, its funny.

There's a certain druidess that smells like wet dog fur and it makes Gorstag want to gag each time he takes a wiff. ;D

But I dunno...A nature person may smell like earthy materials, and still bathe regularly, afterall. Seems to me that nature people may have better-cleaning materials than normal other people. I would think an elf smells nice. I know I like earthy smells. Earthy doesn't need to imply fifthy and dirty too, afterall

[qewaye]

Aug 29, 2010 7:37:54 GMT -5 racestark said:

I'm not trying to complain about people's character descriptions and I may have remembered this backward, though experience leads me to believe that I may not have, but doesn't bathing with just water lessen the odor an animal gives off and at the same time improve their ability to smell things beyond their own body odor? I know it might seem to make sense that rangers/druids/woodfolk would smell a bit "earthy" but if what I remember about bathing and ability to detect odor is correct, wouldn't the woods people be bathing more regularly? But hey, if you want to be smelly ranger, who am I to say something? Heck, people used to bath once a year in July. (In Ohio we call them Kentuckians. )

My ranger is an elf. This is from the Fair Folk source thread:

"...Elves bathe daily in natural waterways such as lakes, rivers, and ponds....

Elves make various kinds of soap from vegetable materials that degrade naturally in the water. Thus, their penchant for thorough cleaning causes no harm to the plants or animals that live in the waterways in which they bathe."

My ranger bathes by swimming in streams, rivers and sacred springs every day, natural water has its own smell like rainwater so she smells of that, of grass(her "bed" at home is a divan made of growing grass) and just generally has an aroma of being someone who lives, rests and works outside. I roleplay her using a natural green soap made of herbs.

She used to have a wolf and would rest alongside that animal so I roleplayed her having the scent of "wet dog" but currently she has a hawk so she has no animal scent, only a smell of the natural world.

[racestark]

It was more of a query than anything. Like I said, who am I to tell people how to describe their characters? By "earthy", I meant more of the suburbanites' term for describing the smell of "hippies"; body odor and not dirt (I, too, like the smell of wet dirt).
This was actually prompted after reading Isiolith's character description in the description updater thread. Thanks for clarifying the wet dog smell as not being a lack of bathing.
What I meant to ask was wouldn't nature folk be more inclined to bathe from a survival standpoint rather than hygiene and wouldn't they be more inclined to bathe more often than townfolk since: 1. they observe animals in the wild doing it and it works for their survival (that is if I'm remembering the correlation between bathing/olfactory ability correctly) and 2. since they leave the safety of the palisades more than the average commoner they would want to return without a bear trying to eat them?
I want to stress, I'm not asking this for hygienic reasons since medieval citizens weren't aware that bathing was healthy but more from a practical survival standpoint. I myself assume that most PC's and NPC's, unless specifically stated in their description, have at least some sort of funk to their odor that people are just used to from their own funk. Sort of the same way you would assume another character has eyebrows unless stated otherwise in their character description.

[kaltorac]

Aug 29, 2010 7:37:54 GMT -5 racestark said:

I'm not trying to complain about people's character descriptions and I may have remembered this backward, though experience leads me to believe that I may not have, but doesn't bathing with just water lessen the odor an animal gives off and at the same time improve their ability to smell things beyond their own body odor? I know it might seem to make sense that rangers/druids/woodfolk would smell a bit "earthy" but if what I remember about bathing and ability to detect odor is correct, wouldn't the woods people be bathing more regularly? But hey, if you want to be smelly ranger, who am I to say something? Heck, people used to bath once a year in July. (In Ohio we call them Kentuckians. )

In Michigan they're called "Buckeyes".

[828stingstingneo]

My motivations for having Elvalith smell like a wet dog are similar to Isiolith's. Elvalith's animal companion is a wolf. Also, I'm not sure how spending a lot of time in wild shape would affect one's smell, but I envision Elvalith's preferred wild shape when relaxing off camera to be a wolf also.

As far as bathing is concerned (being a bit more sensitive to smell than the average human but likely not as good as the average animal), using soap does indeed add its own scent. Using water alone does not completely remove body odor but the odor that lingers is weaker than the soapy smell if you had used soap. However, body odor can return in less than a day, depending on how much you sweat. I imagine adventurers actively adventuring would be sweating some, and even idle people sweat on hot days.

I'm not around wild animals enough to know their bathing habits or smells, but I do know that pets and farm animals smell, including cats which are particularly in the habit of cleaning themselves.

As far as making your odor blend while out in the wild, I know some hunters buy and use fox urine to cover their human scents. This suggests that even strong odors, as long as they are normal for your environment, can be used to hide and blend in. While this technique might work well against prey, I'm not sure how well it would work against predators which may be just as interested in eating the fox. I also don't know if hunters generally bathe without soap before applying the fox urine, but I suspect that most bathe with soap when they return home.

[soulfien]

Glenduil, apparently, is not the average druid.

Glenduil enjoys a warm bath inside of a warm room and sleeps on a warm bed. He can indeed, and does quite often, sleep outdoors, but he will always make it a point to find a nice bath after a couple of nights on the ground.

He enjoys his soaps, he has excellent hygiene, and just loves being clean and presentable. He doesn't enjoy taking his armour off, attending formal functions, or being too far removed from his outdoors environment.

He's simply a very clean and well groomed druid

[qewaye]

If you were living the life of a ranger - as well as bathing every day, you'd have to be very clean during your everyday hunting and cooking and wash your hands, tools and equipment too or run the risk of bacteria, disease and illness from raw wild meat. If Isi sees someone hurt or bleeding in a dirty atmosphere(other elves will attest to this) she will immediately insist on healing that person or tell them "see to that, you don't want anything getting into it". I think it's something that's stuck in my mind as I was bitten by a wild animal once and have had injuries and tetanus shots by the dozen. I'm a nature person in reality.

The fox urine thing is something I can believe, but I think a clean elf would rather just be smart enough to stay downwind of prey rather than cover herself in something potentially unhealthy.

Urine and smells are a good trick to cover up odour, but not every animal uses just smell to detect the prescence of other animals. A friend of mine who is a wildlife artist made a film for the BBC a couple of years ago about the eyesight of hawks. A certain type of hawk hunts not only by seeing movement but tracking the scent and urine trails of voles, the hawk sees the world mostly as being blue, but the urine trails are bright yellow to him and he can see them tracking over fields and grasslands. So he knows where to look for prey, he then hovers and waits to see movement.

In order to completely fool an animal you'd have to fool all their senses, not just smell.

[828stingstingneo]

That's true, but the reason I find this thread particularly interesting is that smell is something you completely have to roleplay whereas sight and sound are represented in game, both via screen and speakers and via the hide/move silently skills.

As far as the urine being unhealthy, I'm not sure where he heard this but someone told me that urine is sterile. Wasn't there also mention somewhere, even possibly a thread here, that pirates on ships would use it for cleaning? (I still get upset when diapering accidents occur, though. I change my clothes and wash immediately, or at least as soon as I can safely put the baby down.)

[iangallowglas]

Typically, bow hunters will wash themselves and their clothes with a special unscented soap to make sure they remove most of the scent from themselves. They also wear camouflage clothes and will often put female deer urine on their clothes to help mask their scent and attract bucks.

As far as I now, urine is sterile. My father told stories of fighting in the Philippines in WW2 and it was used to wash wounds when nothing else was available. I also just saw a guy and his wife drink it (Yuck!) on a survival show on TV just last week. They were in the Australian outback and had no water...... (except for all the water the TV crew carried, but ratings are important so you do what you have to do).

[Micteu]

Aug 29, 2010 7:56:34 GMT -5 @qewaye said:

She used to have a wolf and would rest alongside that animal so I roleplayed her having the scent of "wet dog" but currently she has a hawk so she has no animal scent, only a smell of the natural world.

The bird doesn't poop on her? My neighbor lady has some kind of brightly-colored squawker that doesn't seem to care where it craps when it's on her wrist, shoulder, or head.

[darinder]

Aug 30, 2010 8:49:51 GMT -5 iangallowglas said:

As far as I now, urine is sterile. My father told stories of fighting in the Philippines in WW2 and it was used to wash wounds when nothing else was available. I also just saw a guy and his wife drink it (Yuck!) on a survival show on TV just last week. They were in the Australian outback and had no water...... (except for all the water the TV crew carried, but ratings are important so you do what you have to do).

That urine is sterile is a common misconception. While it's true what comes out of a person's bladder is "clean" (or should be, unless you have underlying health issues), it very quickly picks up contaminants (both chemical and biological) on its way out of your body.

Drinking urine is a very bad idea (except maybe in the direst of circumstances). There are reasons why it's expelled from a person's body after all (take it from somebody who knows waaaaaaay too much about renal complaints).

A general principle is: The healthier you are, the cleaner your urine will be.

[And, boy, hasn't this topic drifted?]

[qewaye]

Hawks are very clean birds, they will jet poop away from themselves and their perch. I've seen this in sparrowhawks and other birds of prey, one sparrowhawk that visited my garden loved a certain branch in a tree so much she would not poop on it, she would jet poop over the fence up against my neighbour's bathroom window!(and yes, one day the window was open..)

The urine thing - consuming/using urine (as long as it's from a healthy creature) is fairly safe(though don't quote me on that) but...if the animal or person has a bacterial infection or a disease of the urethra then yes, it's unhealthy.

[edit]Darinder got there before me!

[Preter]

Interesting how this thread went from odorous woodsmen to defecation and urine