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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 398146" data-attributes="member: 6533">History Fast and Loose, and the ExecutiveFirst I will defend my beloved Dwarves.Actually, I think that Dwarves are the most aesthetic of the core races.  They are the only race that gets bonuses to the actuall production of artwork, in stone and metal, and they are often the only race that has created a specifically aesthetic type of magic, runes.  For textual evidence I would point to the fact that Gimli is the only character who ever rapses rhapsodic over anything beautiful.  Out of all the civilizations in LOTR the only one to describe itself as advancing in anything are the dwarves who say that they're mastery of the art of stone carving is superior to that of thier ancestors.After the fall of Mordor the Dwarves are described as moving around the world to occupy and improve the most beautiful cavern complexes.In terms of political power, I never had the impression that the Dwarfs had an absolutist monarchy.  I always thought that their clan system imposed a high degree of deliberation on thier system.  The king cannot act without the clan fathers who must, in turn, consult their clans.  In fact, the presence of a king, the dwarfen monarchy is the most likely to be elected in the Fantasy genre at large, speaks to the political sophistication of dwarves.True communism and democracy are conceptual systems that decry the need for an executive power, but historical experiments have repeatedly affirmed, not I do not say proved, the need for executive authority to rest in the hands of one individual, no matter how limited that authority may be.  So the presence of a Dwarish king speaks to a sense of realpolitik in the dwarfish mentality.I think the greed is actually helpful to dwarfish social strucuture.  If it is communal greed for wealth and glory, than they are going to be very good at distibuting wealth among themselves and recognizing achievement for its own sake.  They are also going to be big picture oriented.  If it is individual greed than they are going to be a society of small scale entrpeneurs who would be very resistant to hierarchy of any sort.  I don't like it as much as the other or the possibility that dwarfish greed is merely a stereotype on the part of other races, but I do recognize that high levels of individual greed tempered by a respect for law have definite social benefits.Of course the major disadvantage is foolishly digging up Balrogs, but that is setting specific and it only happened once.  Mistakes happen to everyone.I agree that dwarfs don't seem to want to build empires out of others nations, but they are always depicted as interested in trade and they promote stability in the nations that surround them.  This is apparent in both LOTR and the fine example of the nation of Throal in Earthdawn.Even if there wasn't an argument for dwarf aesthetics I would argue that they tend toward culture in the same way Americans , lots of work and shallow interest in high cultural affairs, and that can't be said to be an ineffective strategy for wurld dawmination.I think Dwarfs can give Orcs a run for their money in the field.  Thier weapons and armor are nearly always of better quality, they possess the same night vision advantages, they're tougher, they're better organized, and they tend to have the advantage in engineering.  And I think a nation of fighters probably has the advantage in mass combat over a nation of barbarians.Mind you, I support Orcs as major powers except for the disadvantage of their short generations and reduced access to arcane magical power. I do have a few comments on the historical questions that have popped up so far:First of all, we shouldn't criticize Byzantium until some other nation on Earth has managed to maintain the same constitution for around 1,000 years.Aztecs got wasted by their own horrible regime aided by religious doubt.  Smallpox didn't really wipe the people out until about a generation after they had converted to Christianity, ironically.Incas had just suffered through a horrible civil war which had wiped out a lot of their more experienced commanders and put ALL of the power into one heir who the Spanish promptly kidnapped and then killed.  Triggering political collapse.  I don't think the Spanish recieved as much aid from nations conquered under the Inca as they had from nations conquered under the Aztecs.  It certainly didn't help the cause of Incan resistance that the nations they had conquered saw themselves as trading one elite ruling culture for another.  And then plague.The Spanish of that period were crazy tough as nails adventurers with mad skillz.  Everyone who had to face guys that good at destruction should be given an even break by later historians.China actually did very well against Barbarian invaders.  The Mongols were the only barbarian power to conquer China, the rest just made life very very difficult if you lived along the Norther Border.China's vulnerability to Western powers had to do with so many factors that I don't see it as a proper proof against tradition oriented societies.  The China of the 18th and 19th centuries was very different from the China of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries and radically different from the China that had existed in the pre-Mongol period.  I'm not saying that there aren't good arguments to be made against such societies, just tha this is a poor example.In my opinion, much of Western success in the post medieval period is due to the fact that we did not have our civilization as disrupted by Mongol Conquest as the rest of Eurasia did.</blockquote>

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