Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 2216507" data-attributes="member: 13966">Wha?  The ancestors of the Asani-Moroks and such were few in number, stranded on semi-tropical islands with abundant fruits and wild game.  The other Asani sailed further west when the Curse fell upon the islands, and started killing and deforming folks, also causing minor volcanic eruptions on the islands.  Some stranded Asani survived when the worst of the Curse's destruction had passed, and eventually became the Asani-Moroks, Asani-Gorn, and Asani-Toron.  The Asani who sailed further west came to Aleasana and had to try settling there, since the islands' Curse could have killed them if they hadn't sailed on at the first signs of wanton volcanism.Aleasana is not Europe.  Aleasana, as per the early-page contributions, is very mountainous with slightly harsh weather, particularly in winter (causing more crop failures than normal), and has less than normal amounts of arable land (one contribution specified that settlements in Aleasana have 30% fewer people than normal, and that there are no metropolis-sized cities, because of Aleasana's terrain and poor agricultural capacity).  The grasslands of the Bodai may be more fertile, and the Faegrim too, but those aren't part of Aleasana proper (Aleasana is the large mountainous region that humans settled).  And think about it: the Aleasani had to sail a long voyage, using up most of their foodstuffs, then arrived in a land slightly inhospitable and already covered in natives, whom the Aleasani had to fight for each patch of arable land, all the while running on meager foodstuffs, until they actually conquered some land to support themselves with.  Maybe they had a harsh winter to suffer through during or right after the conquest.You assume that the Asani had tons of druids when they arrived?  When it was already contributed that Asani took up a Shay goddess as their nature goddess some time after settling Aleasana?  It doesn't seem likely to me that the Asani had ANY, or at least no more than a handful of, druids before settling Aleasana and interacting with Shay.  Just as arcane magic supposedly wasn't discovered or developed until after interactions with Shay, Fae, and Dvergar, according to Aleasani legend in the contributions.  Also keep in mind that most characters in a typical setting will be around 1st-4th level; spells like Create Food And Water will be scarce amongst them, and would only feed a few people at most, being low-level casters.  Heroes' Feast is a high-level spell, there'd only be a tiny number of Aleasani capable of casting it at the time of the invasion, and again, it would only feed a relatively small number of people compared to the large hosts of the Asani.  Keep in mind also, that the Asani who fled to Aleasana were refugees from a disaster or war or something, it's not too likely that any significant number of their greatest priests, leaders, or whatnot made it to Aleasana; most probably died fighting on the homeland, or were destroyed in natural disasters there, and those who didn't must surely have had their hands full dealing with Aleasana's natives during the invasion.Yes, Aleasana's mountains are defensible, but as I mentioned it would take more men to defend a valuable cropland against other Aleasani during the early years than the number of men that the cropland could feed.  I think you underestimate how determined people will be in their quest for food when they've just finished a war and find themselves out of rations, while some jackass styling himself a lord has tried to fortify a pass to the only nearby grove of fruit trees/field of corn/field of taters/whatever....  All those soldiers will storm the pass and they WILL overcome the defenders; even the mighty, disciplined Spartans only held a pass for a few days against the innumerable Persians, though they could've held out another day or two (perhaps more) if not for the Persians finding a harder but lightly-defended route around to the rear of that Spartan formation.  The Spartans almost certainly couldn't have wiped out the vast Persian army, but being the most elite troops of their era, they could have held the pass long enough to make the Persian King potentially consider withdrawing his army and moving against an easier target, so as not to wind up with half or a third of his army wiped out by the Spartans holding the pass.  The Spartans were losing men, though killing maybe 10 or more Persians for each one of them that fell, and there were only 300 Spartans (IIRC) to hold the pass, against thousands and thousands of Persians marching into the meatgrinder to wear down on Sparta.  I highly doubt that the troops surviving the war and trying to fortify passes against their kin would be nearly so adept and disciplined as the Spartans in defending their homeland.I doubt any Asani remained giants on the mainland of Aleasana, though it is possible that a few survived; however, without several of them living and breeding together, their numbers would quickly dwindle after a few generations.  Those who did survive to Aleasana's present day would be deformed from long inbreeding, like some of the Northerners in their isolation, those who couldn't mingle with other tribes.  The Asani-Moroks and their ilk are certainly similar in this regard; the Curse left perhaps a few hundred Asani alive on the islands, maybe a few score, and combined with long inbreeding they have become twisted and degenerate giants.  Though they had enough food there to support their small number of giants, they were twisted by the circumstances nonetheless.Rhialto had an 'oopsie' in his describing the Tuatha, I'll admit, but he might fix that.The Aleasani were known as Asani before they came to Aleasana and changed their name; though early on we just called humans Aleasani, it was later decided that they named themselves Aleasani after their exodus.</blockquote>

Verification