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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Afrodyte" data-source="post: 1322584" data-attributes="member: 8713">I took a quick look at Urbis, and I am intrigued by what you have so far.  The different elements are familiar yet different enough to inspire me to look more closely than I would in standard medieval fantasy.  I especially liked Turaveen and how you linked those elves back to the "old elvish tradition" of kidnapping human babies.  While you don't directly state it, the different races do seem to serve a purpose besides merely existing because that's the formula.  Dwarves, elves, gnomes, etc. do serve vital functions in the cities, and (expectedly), most people do not realize the importance of what they do.  If I had one criticism, it would be the fact that race and culture seem to be one and the same.  Do all Dwarves live in ghettos ruled by a "Hidden King," or is this just something in a well-known city where dwarves are marginalized and often targets of bigotry?  Is the elven disdain for humans (and the consequent treating them as insignificant at best and vermin at worst) a factor in every elvish culture, or just one?  I think adding wildly divergent attitudes and customs and cultures within each group would accentuate the metropolitan feel of Urbis.  These divisions need not be focal points, but I think that if they existed, it would add verisimilitude (uh-oh, that word again) to the urban feel.  And you don't even need a whole lot for each group.  In Sovereign Stone, for example, dwarves primarily had a nomadic horse culture (think Mongols or Rohirrim, except they're dwarves), but there was a group of dwarves who, because of physical handicap or social ostracization, do not follow this lifestyle and settle in one place, horseless.  Since I'm still mad about elves, I'll use that as an example for Urbis.  What if you had a small group (say, no more than one tenth to one quarter of the elvish population) who did not believe in being so calloused towards humans?  What if they thought that just because something is fleeting does not mean it is less meaningful or less valuable.  Consider the sunrise, or a blossom, or colorful autumn leaves.  Perhaps they, either through experience or through theory, believe in reincarnation (at least for humans).  Rather than dying and leaving the world behind, maybe for humans death is a form of renewal.  If elves are like evergreens, always showing their full glory and never diminishing through the seasons, humans are like vines that have a short burst of growth and must be pruned, only to return again come spring. Although, seeing gnomes and dwarves as different ethnicities within the same race would be really nifty.</blockquote>

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