>>40645813
>Wild men are usually inferior to humans if their great physical strength is rendered harmless. This can be done by sexual seduction, but also by female virtue, by alcohol, by magic, by fighting them with professional military training and weaponry, by remote weapons or by other particularly intelligent measures. Then they can be locked up and kept in cages like animals, prisoners or lunatics. However, the expectations of unraveling the mystery of their savagery are fundamentally disappointed.

It was only at the beginning of the modern era that the wild men became guardians of mostly metal treasures (a role that had previously been ascribed to the magically powerful and technologically superior dwarves). This was the time when people had to systematically develop the last areas that were still uninhabited in the Middle Ages in order to access the mineral resources that were waiting to be discovered in the mountains, which had previously been shunned as inhospitable and wild. Here they encountered the wildness of nature, from which they were able to wrest their treasures using previously unknown measures. Typically, it is also miners who encounter the Wild Man here for the first time, not hunters as is usually the case.