Firstly, Lalato and Sarellion: The Asani were still human before their exodus, they were just taller, on the order of 10 to 15 feet tall at most, so roughly ogrish in height; some time after coming to Aleasana they shrank, somehow; those left behind on the islands were twisted by the Curse and became actual ogres, changing type from Humanoid to Giant as their bodies and minds degenerated into something less than human, though gaining greater strength and toughness in the process. Asani magic-users of any sort probably became twisted into Asani-Moroks, fisherfolk and seafarers into Asani-Toron, and others into Asani-Gorn.
Secondly, my last response to Sarellion in the vein of my points from the previous two posts:
Sarellion said:
Does Aleasana still support thousands of people or are these cities all villages with a few hundred people. If a large valley can support several thousand people they can support a smaller number of larger people, too. I think we still are talking about people ogre size, not dragon size.
The natives of Aleasana (chiefly Dvergar and Shay) probably subsisted mostly on native plants, hunting, and herding, before the Asani/Aleasani came and started altering the land into crop fields for their imported crops. Thus the invaders had little concentrated/harvestable foods to steal and use in the early part of their conquest. My guess anyway. Dvergar came up from the depths underground and likely subsisted on fungal crops (quite different and easier than growing surface crops) and hunting/herding animals. Shay probably subsisted on foraging, hunting, and a bit of herding, rather than having the Aleasani gall to clear land and transplant one type of vegetable across an area in place of the local, natural vegetation. Shay came from the west after all, and likely the Faegrim. More likely to have been content to subsist on what nature provided, before Aleasani conquered the land and mixed their cultural views to some extent with the locals/natives. This is the premise behind my earlier supposition, but it's still just conjecture.
Well you started suggesting that the Asani could have used magic to shrink them as a possibility. I just wanted to point out that there were other options they would rather use if they had access to magic. My options were probably more low level than shrinking the whole population. I also know that Asani didn´t have arcane magic, so I used divine examples.
It´s possible that the Asani had some druids. They didn´t have a nature goddess then but they could have worshipped nature itself, nature spirits or something like this. Druids are not necessarily priests of nature deities. That´s what clerics with appropriate domains are for.
The Asani did not apparently recognize any proper nature deity before their interaction with Shay, which followed the exodus. Since they already had a longstanding pantheonic faith of significance, they did not likely have many animist/force-of-nature believers before the exodus. No mention of ancient Asani spirit-worship has shown up in the contributions, so the possibility is thus far only minor. The providence of cults and individual families maybe, at most. But with their deific, pantheonic faith, any nature worship of even mild significance would almost certainly have been subsumed into some new nature-deity cult long before the exodus. Some false nature-deity they would have made up or guessed at.
But there's been no mention or evidence of such in the contributions, thus no reason (thus far) to believe they had such a nature deity cult. Thus, no likelyhood of any significant druidic faith amongst the pre-exodus Asani, because any nature worship would have been subsumed into a deific belief if it cropped up during the original civilization on the Asani homeland. As noted though, it's possible some tiny minority of rare individuals, separate or joined in some tiny cult, may have perpetuated some roughshod Asani druidic faith, and thus a rare few druids may have traveled with the Asani exodus, though almost certainly regarded with suspicion by the godly Asani of the Old Faith of Dar and such. Only after coming to Aleasana and interacting with such folk as the Shay, Bodai, Juni, and whatnot would the Asani/Aleasani come to some understanding of animist beliefs and perhaps come to accept such. At least according to what I can extrapolate from what's been in the contributions thus far.
Besides, so far it seems likely from the contributions that the weapons used in the War of Deadly Voices were high-tech devices of lost technology brought from the homeland, and the presence of such technology (and what it infers about the old culture of the Asani) makes the likelihood of any significant druidic inclinations all the more unlikely.
About the high level guys. Well I assume that there are always some high level guys around in a setting, even if there are only a dozen of them.
I didn´t say that they had to feed the whole host. I meant that some banded together and were able to feed this smaller host. The faith of Dar praises cold logic. Why shouldn´t a bunch of clerics band together with the old corrupt leadership and the other high level guys, grab some of the remaining food, some slaves and an elite guard and get themselves a nice place to stay. They could justify this by saying that this is the logic conclusion. The elite must survive to rebuild after the crisis.
Whild the Old Faith of Dar was dominant, there was still some of the Faith of Kithea, the Faith of Silena, the Faith of Callach, the Faith of Braigh, the Faith of Delar, and so on, amidst the Asani/Aleasani. Even Tarsinus must have had some followers amongst them, however few, otherwise the Aleasani would never have recouped the Faith of Tarsinus in recent Aleasani history. Surely some of those groups' high priests in the refugees would have offered united opposition to any Darists trying to preserve a small elite of the population at the expense of everyone else (though the Callachites and Kitheans would probably side with the Darists on that, the rest would be opposed). And surely the Darist, Callachite, Delaran, Kithean, and Tarsinite paladins would oppose such cruel elitism, no matter what the rest of their Faith might think. So there's no particular reason to believe that some group of elitists would have had a certainty of personal preservation when there are others in power that would just as certainly oppose them in that.
I'm not saying your point is invalid or implausible, but it is less of a likelyhood or certainty than you make it out to be. Sure some Asani may have managed to hole up in secure places across Aleasana and retain their size and power, then hiding themselves during the chaos of war and surviving to the present to some extent. Being amongst the few high-level folk in Aleasana, however, they would most certainly have degenerated over time and inbreeding (they'd be even fewer in number than the Asani-Morok's ancestors or the isolated Northerner tribes) and become hill giants or something. Maybe trolls if they mucked around with experimental magic too much. Maybe mind flayers. Maybe something else. Or they could have mixed with the rest of the Aleasani population after the war, however unlikely with them being of the mindset you presented. Such powerful elitists would be unlikely to breed with, let alone marry, the Aleasani who happened to survive after being left to starve. Or the Aleasani would be unlikely to accept the bigots into the cities that the starving folk conquered without the elitists' help or food. Even if forced to, they would simply murder the elitist's families after the original powerful elitists died of old age. Thus the lines of the old bloods would be eliminated by those they had spurned. At least this is the most likely course. Once again, I'm not saying your point is invalid, merely much less certain than you make it out to be. So give it more serious thought before pushing the idea on us when it really isn't such a logical conclusion, and more of a small, wild possibility that could have happened by some queer stroke of luck for the Asani elitists of old.
Your example of the battle of the Thermopylae doesn´t fit. There were 7300 men against at least 120000. That´s 300 Spartans and 7000 greeks. They lost because they were unable to defend a second pass and got surrounded (either got betrayed or the general made a mistake). They got defeated because the persian general had a huge, well equipped, well provisioned army.
No, it does fit, and I did mention the fact that the Spartans lost early because, IIRC, a traitor revealed the other path to the Persians, who went through that other path and killed the tiny force of defenders there, went around behind the Spartans, and took them from the rear, causing confusion that gave their front forces an advantage and killing the Spartan commander, and lead to a quicker defeat of the Spartans. The Spartans still never could've fought off all those Persians and mercenaries, they just could've held them off longer and made the price of victory much worse for the Persians. Spartans were dying on the front line, just not nearly so rapidly as the Persians were being slaughtered by the elite Spartan soldiers with their javelins and swords. I may have gotten the exact numbers a bit wrong (I posted the anecdote from memory, not from looking at a book or whatnot), but I had the proportions generally right. Since you mentioned it I do remember that it was more like a million Persians/mercenaries against a few thousand Spartans/Greeks.
I just mentioned the analogy in fewer words previously. No matter how elite the soldiers, a small force will eventually be defeated by a force that is vastly larger, even if the larger force is less skilled. Being outnumbered more than 10 to 1, defeat is almost a certainty; only in a rare few instances through history have a hugely-outnumbered force won out, and even when that happened it was generally through slaying commanders and making the bigger force surrender. Yes Alexander the Great and others had defeated vastly larger forces on a some occasions, but it was rarely a lasting victory (in many cases more of a Pyrrhic victory). I'm not going to argue this stupid point with you any further though, because it's pointless; D&D makes combat rather unrealistic usually and makes standard military strategic lore unreliable, because of things like high-level wizards/clerics/fighters who can slaughter an infinite number of weak foes each day under the right circumstances, unless the defender has some mages or whatnot of their own.......and so on and so forth, there's no point to arguing it in a D&D context.
A few hundred Asani should be enough to preserve the genepool. Some cow races have a much poorer breeding stock on the male side.
ETC
I had just said "perhaps a few hundred", I never put forth any sort of "likely" or "definiate" numbers. It's pointless to argue anyway. All in all, so far in the main thread, it doesn't look like it matters how, why, or when the Aleasani shrank. And even if it did matter, it doesn't have to be attributed to natural causes. Maybe the Aleasani prayed for fertility from their gods so their children might be many and thus overcome the locals during the invasion, and the gods obliged by blessing them with twins, triplets, and such, but smaller and weaker than normal. Maybe the Dvergar, Shay, or others used some great ritual or curse to shrink the Aleasani just before the Aleasani could conquer them fully, removing one of the main advantages the Aleasani had against the natives (their size and strength). Perhaps the Aleasani destroyed some Shay or Dvergar sacred cities/sites/whatever, and were cursed with smaller children by the Shay/Dvergar deities or priests or whatnot. So far it really doesn't matter, unless someone comes up with a contribution in the main thread that
makes it matter. Any records of how and why the Aleasani shrank could have been lost during the War of Deadly Voices, including anyone who knew the reasons by memory. Perhaps Aleasani or others purposely covered up the origin/reason for the change, for whatever reason (perhaps it was shameful or a disgrace or part of some plan, or whatever). As I said, it really doesn't matter to the main thread anyway thus far.
Sarellion, it accomplishes nothing to contest each and every minor point or detail in my ideas, you would do better to actually suggest alternatives, better ideas, or ways to make the already-mentioned ideas actually work in the context of the setting. You haven't made my ideas seem any less logical/likely/possible or whatever than I myself had presented them as possibilities. I'm only brainstorming here, the meta-thread is for discussing ideas regarding the main thread. Present your own ideas to help the discussion, or give some serious thought to my ideas for a change and posit some relevant fact to render my earlier ideas moot/impossible, or at least stop pestering me about my brainstorming as if I'm trying to be some jackass pushing these things on everyone as absolutes or something, because I'm merely brainstorming here. Please stop turning my posts into debates, because I hate debate and nothing useful comes out of debate. Discussions produce results, debates just irritate people needlessly. I've wasted enough time debating to make my suggestions more clearly supported against naysaying and straw men and red herrings.
