Baboons

A Little Baboon Lore

All baboons trace their ancestry to Grandfather Baboon.

The baboons’ greatest hero is the mighty Gorilla, who founded his Empire of the Apes in the long-ago Golden Age and ruled it from Gorilla City; the Trickster, Monkey, brought down that empire by playing tricks on everybody and turned Gorilla City into Monkey Ruins.

The first baboon shaman was Mandrill, who painted his face as a magical mask and used totems to deal with the denizens of Baboon Spirit Land.

Baboons display their bottoms as a token of submission: this posture is known as “mooning,” and indeed a baboon’s rosy buttocks inspired the Seven Mothers’ to create the Red Moon Rune (according to baboons, and they should know). They know humans were tricked by Monkey into both knowing shame and wearing clothes, twin ravages from which the baboons remain proudly free and untroubled.

Source: What Father Gabran No-breeches Told Me, Tales of the Reaching Moon #15 (1996).