The problem with elves take 2: A severe condemnation [merged]

[Edena_of_Neith]

Hey there, Machetaso.
Just some comments on your post. No debate points, no rebuttals at all. Just commentary.

Hi guys,

Interesting thread. I think trying to systematically think about this is a good start. FYI if you want a good consistent Elven society similar to the one in Tolkien, I reccomend Burning Wheel, thats the one which rang the truest to me. Usually in most systems Elves seem fake, just generic uber people.

I see a lot of complaints about this. Forrester was against elves because Forrester saw them as over-powered people.
But Forrester was against them also because he saw them as sneering, condescending, better-than-you people (much like the illithid attitude, but without the power to back it up.)
3E elves don't seem to be special in the RAW. Nothing exceptional ... they are ECL 0.
Certainly, the elves of old Delrune were generic. There were differences in appearance, behavior, and culturally, but there were a basic 1E/2E/3E race.

(snip)

The standard logical thing within the framework of RPG, especially D&D, is to look for Magic-as-Technology to trump the apparent paradoxes presented by extrapolating from some of the principles in the game. But if you think outside the box a bit I believe you can find much more elegant solutions to this which don’t require endless ‘Magic creep’ or ‘power creep’. Some people like campaigns like Eberron etc., perhaps others might prefer not to be forced into ultra- High Magic to make a given society make sense.

That is exactly what the Elves of Haldendreeva did, to an extreme, if I read you right.
In simple terms, they thought: New spell called Lifeproof (new technology), alters things in our favor (changes combat mechanics to favor them), let's mass cast it (build enough infrastructure to mass produce new weapon.) Stasis Clone was a bigger and better thing yet, and once the Constitution problem was addressed, it was used continuously (producing multiple episodes of the 50 Manshoons debacle, and other assorted uproars throughout a number of worlds and planes.)
Much more eloquent solutions? Exactly so. Exactly. The main effort of current Haldendreevan elves is to find that eloquent - and elvish - solution, and not a solution based on human thinking and power escalation. (They haven't succeeded yet, though.)
Most of the current peoples in my settings roll their eyes at the idea of another Super-Magic War (then kill the warmongers trying to start one.) They've had quite enough of it. Unfortunately, it took a Super-Magic War to knock this sense into them.
Some don't listen to reason anyways. Some peoples have infiltrated the City of the Gods in the Black Ice (that city of super-science that has sat, undisturbed, throughout the whole scenario.) And they think to capitalize on secrets learned. Will they? Or will they be put down? Time will tell.

Most of the mythology that RPG elves are based on comes from Germanic, Finnish, Celtic and (especially in the case of Tolkien) Norse mythology. All you have to do if you want to understand how Elves might actually live is look at the history of some of these people, and through that dispel some of the modern myths which have actually replaced our understanding. To kind of explore this I’m going to take a look at two prominent Barbarian groupings, the La Tene era Celts and the Norse from during the peak of the Viking Age (8th – 10th Century AD) … for convenience I’m just going to use the term “Celts” and “Vikings” here.

The ideas of killing other people, of greed, of jealousy, of powermongering, were already in the elves of old Delrune. Although they were culturally more pacifistic than Furyondy or Perrenland, the seeds of darkness were already there.
The elves recognize this fact keenly now. But like the Noldor, they recognized it only after the painful fact.

So let’s consider the Celts. In many ways theirs was a timeless culture much like that of most RPG elves. Their material culture (i.e. artifacts recovered by archeologists) evolved and grew in subtlety and complexity over the years, but did not change radically in short periods like that of the Romans. Most of their traditions and cultural norms seemed to stay the same. In many aspects they seemed lost in time, or timeless. The statue of the ‘Dying Gaul’ http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/d/d4/Dying_gaul.jpg from Pergamon in Anatolia (where Turkey is today) in 220 BC is virtually identical in appearance, (in hair, moustache, weapons, equipment, and adornment like torcs), to the descriptions Julius Caser gave of Celts in Gallic Wars 150 years later, and to Agricola’s descriptions of Britons 100 years after that. So in some aspects it was a static culture, and yet it was also very advanced. Which brings me to…

Prior to the Greyhawk Wars, the elves of Delrune had spent a millennia at peace.
After the Twin Cataclysms, the high elves moved into the Delrunian Highlands. Even as the flannae peoples of Perrenland were left alone by the incoming oeridians, so were the nearby elves of Delrune.
It was a long, peaceful, prosperous, and pleasant time to be in, for the elves.
Does that compare with the Celts?

MYTH #1: BARBARIANS WERE BACKWARD AND DIRTY

The Celts were very inventive and creative, and sophisticated in the hard sciences; they were far ahead of the Romans in metallurgy and many key military technologies. The Celts introduced mail ( ‘chainmail’ in the RPG world) to the Romans, and the Romans also copied their helmets (Coolus type) swords (Gladius Hispaniensis, Spatha and Falcata) from the Celts, as well as the critical weapon-related technology of pattern welding. The Romans claimed that their equipment was superior to that of the Celts but modern tests have shown that it was by far the other way around. The Celts also introduced soap, barrels, pants, wheeled carts, various horse tack, and made some of the most sophisticated and beautiful gold and silver jewelry the world has ever seen. Former Monty Python writer and amateur Historian Terry Jones recently pointed out that they apparently also made a very sophisticated wheat harvesting machine like a combine, which they themselves were apparently not particularly impressed by and the Romans obviously didn’t talk about much. They also left Calendars which were several orders of magnitude more accurate than contemporary Roman equivalents. I could go on and on.

Sadly, to the victors go the writing of history, and the Romans were victorious in England and Wales. They annihilated the Celtic culture there.
The Solistarim were not interested in the Delrunian culture. Like the Romans, they simply wished to annihilate it and the elves and take the land.

As for being Dirty, the Celts bathed regularly, brushed their teeth, combed their hair, apparently cleaned wax out of their ears with little spoons, and lets not forget, THEY INTRODUCED SOAP TO THE ROMANS (the Romans quickly saw the value for washing laundry but didn’t take to the idea for bathing with it for a long time, preferring to scrape sweat and dirt off their body with a little curved stick). Similarly, the Vikings also bathed regularly, if not as often as we might today, both in steam saunas and in cold water as they do to this day. There is for example a document from a Bishop in England in the 10th century complaining that the Danes were tempting the local women to sin by their habit of bathing every week. Even in Christian Europe bathing was practiced regularly until the early Renaissance. Public bath-houses for both sexes existed in nearly every major city in Europe until the 13th -14th centuries. They remained very popular despite being condemned by Church officials. A shortage of firewood to heat the water also apparently contributed to their decline. Pagans lacking all terror of the human body apparently liked to be naked and enjoyed bathing, the Celts seemed to be obsessed by it. From some of the new research coming out, they even had cities, running water all that stuff the Romans were supposed to have, one good example of all of the above being the famous Celtic town of Numantia, in Spain.

Fascinating stuff. History is a far more complex subject than a lot of people think.

In addition to being clean, the Vikings were similarly also technologically advanced. Like the Celts, they were very sophisticated in metallurgy. We know from records in period that Viking swords were sought out by their contemporaries from the much more ‘civilized’ centers of the Khazari and Byzantine Empires, and in Persia and Arabia. Their real technological marvel though was their ships. The extremely sophisticated clinker-built warships of the Norse were by far the fastest ocean going warships of their day, and also had a shallower draft than any contemporary vessel of comparable size; as a result they were able to travel far up rivers (such as when Norse and Danish Vikings got in a fight with each other and local Saxons and pulled down London Bridge, whence the famous nursery rhyme. Believe it. Or not.) They also built stout sailing vessels which, as we know so well, roamed farther than nearly any other ships at sea.

LOL. Again, fascinating stuff. Thanks for putting this up.
The elves of Delrune were not so clever. One must wonder why. What was it about the vikings that made them so very clever and inventive? What did they have, that the elves (and real world peoples they opposed) not have?

The key difference between these Barbarians and say, the Romans, was a matter of cultural priorities and social organization, not a high tech society wiping out a low tech society, which is another myth.

And yet the Romans beat the celts in war. How did they do that? What did the romans have that the celts did not, to win? (or was it sheer luck?)
Why didn't the celts of Scotland and Ireland strike back and retake England and Wales?

MYTH #2: BARBARIANS WERE SICKLY AND DISEASED DUE TO THEIR BACKWARD LIVES IN THE WILDERNESS

(snip)

The O.P. pointed out how tough it was to survive in the forest. Apparently, not really so much. I guess it depends which forest, in what part of the world, and which people. Much of Germany, and (especially) Scandinavia is forested even today, back in the Iron and Medieval Ages respectively, Ireland, Germania, Belgium, and Scandinavia were heavily forested, there was very little cleared land. And yet, far from starving and struggling to survive, the Barbarians who lived in these areas seemed to thrive, more than thrive.

I read these lands were heavily forested also. How did the peoples there cope without vast croplands?
They did flourish. They flourished enough in Germany that the Romans could not conquer them. That's saying something.
How did they pull it off?

... so the difference is attributed to nutrition. The Celts also had much better teeth, and fewer signs of parasitic infestation.

I wonder on the why of this. If the northern peoples were meat eaters, where did they get that much meat? And why did they have less infestation of parasites?

(snip)

The Fianna in Ireland were youths who lived in the forests almost exclusively from hunting, admittedly a tough lifestyle, but they seemed to pull it off. Old permanent campfire sites where they used to cook game can still be found in Ireland.

Were they a numerous people?

Tacitus described how German tribes, who were swarming in population, barely farmed at all, preferring to live by the sword and ‘earn their bread and mead through wounds’

What I've read agrees with you. How did they pull it off? A swarming population, and no vast farmlands? Yet they did do it.

How did the Celts and Vikings thrive? From contemporary accounts it seems like they had plenty of game (the boar, and to a lesser extent the deer or stag feature hugely prominent in the artifacts of both cultures), they did a lot of herding of sheep and (especially) cattle (tough archaic breeds well capable of living in forests and steep hills) and they did a lot of fishing. Both cultures seemed to revere the Salmon, which the Celts thought was a symbol of wisdom. Contemporary observers described huge yields of fish in Denmark, for example.

Yet slain boar, deer, and other animals decay quickly. How much was salvaged by medieval preservation?
Of course, in the game magic can preserve meat, so if the celts and vikings were set in the game, they might do far better yet. (Perhaps so much better, that they would overwhelm the grain cultures, and we'd have a world of forest societies only?)

Plagues didn’t seem to re-appear after some flareups in the Classical era until European Christians began to crowd together in rapidly growing cities (and on their increasingly long voyages aboard ships) which lacked adequate provisions for sanitation. That and the whole nakedness is Sin / lack of bathing business, and an increasingly poor diet probably all contributed to the virulence of the Black Death when it first hit in 1348.

No kidding? ...
I know the Black Death began when bodies were thrown over the walls of a besieged town on the Black Sea. So it started as a weapon of war, in effect.
Plague had little place in the events I described in my backstory. Active killing was all too adequate for the task of depopulating whole areas. Cities, in particular, made choice military targets for powerful beings and monsters allied with one group or another.

Magic can also play a role here, but Magic of a subtler kind.

DILEMMA: BARBARIANS WERE LED BY RUTHLESS BARBARIAN TYRANTS, BUT ELVES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CHAOTIC, EASY WITH THEIR WOMEN AND LOVE FREEDOM

Freedom. Celts, and Vikings were both apparently heavy into it. Both were more democratically inclined than either the Romans or the Greeks. We know for a fact that true Monarchies didn’t emerge in Scandinavia until the end of the Viking age (after many very bitter struggles) There was still a remnant of Celtic democracy left thousands of years later in the Tanistry system of the Irish, Welsh and Scottish monarchies. The Vikings (Norse settlers fleeing the rise of the first king of Norway) established the oldest continuous Republic on earth in Iceland, based on the All-Thing, a kind of combination Parliament and Supreme court which was central to all Scandinavian tribes during the pagan era.

Women had great freedom in both Iron Age Celtic society and Dark Ages Norse society. One of the more realistic and historically accurate of the Icelandic Sagas (Njál's saga) hinges around the divorce of a man by his wife, on the basis that he could not please her sexually. This exact same rule exists in Irish Brehon law, a Celtic remnant still extant in the Christian era. Under Brehon law, a woman could divorce her husband for failure to provide adequately, for getting fat, for snoring, for engaging in homosexual activity, or for being unable to sexually satisfy her. Divorce means she gets half, or in some cases all of the common property (much of which was usually from brides dowry). It wasn’t until the 7th Century in Ireland and Scotland that Christian bishops established the ‘Law of the Innocents’, outlawing women from fighting in battle, or being made to fight.

Both Celtic and (especially) Norse women’s graves have been found with weapons, as well as blacksmith’s tools, merchants scales, and numerous other artifacts normally associated with males. Not just decorative weapons either, notched up, repeatedly honed fighting swords made for the hand of the woman they were buried with, who in many cases bore signs of healed wounds on their skeletons. A bunch of recently excavated female Scythian graves in the Ukraine actually had arrow-heads lodged in their ribs and spine. (Scythians are believed by some to be related to the Celts)

The Romans and Greeks should have looked to themselves. The Romans were a plantation slave society, from what I've read. A small middle class and upper class looked up to an Emperor with near total carte blanche.
Then Rome fell, and feudal societies rose in Western Europe. We know how undemocratic feudal society was. Charlemagne rose, and wasn't his society feudal in nature?
In the fantasy Flanaess, in the 'civilized' areas, feudal society was prevalent. Not to mention it was decadent, especially in Aerdi. Anything resembling democracy was limited to small nations and powers. Everyone believed that in tyranny was power, terror was strength, organization and strictness the key to strength. The clergy of Hextor encouraged such thinking through many lands.
Women? In most places they were slaves or serfs, like their men. In those few places they were not, life was still hard as most nations focused all their energy on food production and weapon production.
In Delrune, life was *very* easy for women, due to cultural norms. But women were forbidden to fight, to adventure, or to hold office. It was a chauvanistic culture. This proved a bitter pill indeed to swallow, since when the Solistari struck they struck at civilians equally, and the elven women lacked any means of defending themselves or their children.
Elves descended from Haldendreeva are all warriors by default. It is magically so. The magic does not differentiate between elven men or women, and neither do they. The current government of Haldendreeva is democratic. Their social system is outside any human norm, with creativity and creative productivity being dominant, altruistic interdependence the norm, and community being absolutely vital. Everyone is effectively in the upper class.
Art, architecture, engineering, smithying, creation of all sorts, and magical studies dominate the economic engine.
These elves seem to spend all their time solemnly engaged in productivity, in pursuing their craft, in advancing their studies. But it is thought they somehow use chronomancy on a limited basis to grant themselves time for merriment and festivals, as well as time with their families and alone with their mates.
A free society? No. Very unfree. But unfree by choice. Dedication to society, by choice. The worst job of all is to be in the government. The Lord (or Lady) of Haldendreeva is beset with responsibility 24 hours a day.

DILEMMA: ELVES ARE SAID TO HAVE BETTER KIT THAN HUMANS, YET THEY LIVE IN THE WILD LIKE SAVAGES

(snip)

Now whether you think pattern welded steel just makes a nice looking blade or that it actually had some superior metallurgical properties, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine Elves making weapons like this. When you add in the fact that the Celts made such exquisite armor and helmets, you have a good basis for your elite Elven artifacts. And they were rare compared to your Roman / Christian civilization centers because the Celts lacked mass production, they just didn’t believe in it really. The Romans did it through slave labor and later the Medieval Christians mass produced weapons through the use of water-wheel and win-mill powered automated bellows, trip-hammers, and grinding wheels (all of which would be good technology for Dwarves or Gnomes IMHO)

The elves of old Delrune produced only fair quality, iron weapons, and few of those. Perhaps I could accuse these elves of being complacent, even decadent, spending their time in love and pleasure, festivals and merriment, and not busy in production, especially not in production of items of war. They build some notable cities, and magical roads to link them (roads that whisked you along at high speed, when you walked them.) But they were poor weaponsmiths.
It would not have mattered had they been very fine weaponsmiths (like those in Veluna.) The dark wizards and clerics, dragons, beholders, fire elementals, dark dwarves, and lizard kings (among others) of the Solistarim simply flattened the elves. The eastern half of Delrune survived because it wasn't in the way, and the Solistarim were eager to hit Veluna. They cleared the way, and struck south, leaving half of Delrune gone.
Modern descendants of Haldendreeva are sometimes very fine weaponsmiths and armor makers. Some of the elves are just very dedicated to these pursuits, and have sought help from elven nations in other worlds to build the finest items they can. All dedicated to the art can work steel, most can work mithril, and a few can work adamantite.

DILEMMA: ELVES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SKILLED WARRIORS, YET LESS WARLIKE THAN HUMANS: Is it really such a dilemma? If you look at it one way, this is the Celts in a nutshell. Raiding, duels of honor, cattle rustling and the like are a way of life; yet populations still boomed because the kind of depopulating wars the Romans (and later, the Medieval Christians) engaged in were very rare. Many battles were decided in fights between champions. It was similar with the Vikings. Duels or judicial combat were pretty common, so was raiding. Whole populations being put the sword and enslaved was fairly rare, yet everyone obviously knew how to fight, or fight a highly organized war if they had to (and when it came to foreigners, they could be pretty cruel)

The elves of old Delrune were lousy warriors. If Iuz had made any concentrated effort, he would have taken Archendrea and whelmed Delrune. He wasn't interested. Unfortunately, the Solistarim *were.*
The Elves of Haldendreeva, as noted, were all too good as warriors ... warriors well beyond the point of insanity.
All current elves descended from Haldendreeva are warrior minded, and seem to be very apt to the sword and war. They cannot, however, make war on their own kind. And they, using great restraint, refrain from making war on anyone right now.

But if you take away the hard drinking and the population pressure, you eliminate 90% of the violence, bad chaos and mayhem from either Norse or Celtic society. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine Elves being like Celts or Vikings, except they drink like the French or the Spanish do rather than say, like the Irish or the Swedes. If you put in the very low birth rate and longevity of the Elves, instead of being a problem, it becomes a solution to making this society stable, by helping address overpopulation.

Old Delrune had a lot of wine, but little internal violence or crime. That was the elvish culture, that it was like that. Just a stable, quiet society. They shone in some ways, and were lackluster in many other ways.
Current Haldendreevan elves are not violent ... usually. They never attack without provocation. Unfortunately, they decide what provocation is, and sometimes the taint of Haldendreeva overcomes their judgement and restraint. Again, they do not make violence on their own.
They are forced to avoid other kinds of elves, because those elves can assault them and they can't fight back! But with any other race, one is careful with these elves, even the ones least tainted. They may look and act gentle, caring, and benevolent, but you never know.

And if you start with the individual prowess and fanatical courage of the Celts, and add the organizational skills and resourcefulness of the Norse war machine, you have a pretty potent adversary for anyone to deal with. There is a reason why Scandinavia was not ever really invaded through the Viking age (with the exception of some incursions into Denmark by the Carolingian Holy Roman Emperor) and there is a reason why it took the Romans 300 years from their own city being sacked before the could conquer Gaul. The Vikings themselves remained an extreme menace until they were converted to Christianity and their tribal federations were turned into centralized Monarchies. Then they finally settled down to become peasants like everyone else.

There were no peasants in old Delrune. More of a city society, with social orders based on professions. They had modest courage, but were sedate and unaccustomed to hardship in the medieval sense. Magic made it possible for them to gain what they needed easily, and they imported food from friendly neighbors.
Current Haldendreevan elves are extremely courageous, and universally ferocious in battle. There are ... no ... peasants in their society. They could be considered a single tribe, actually, regardless of where they are or what they are doing (even if they are on other worlds or planes.)

DILEMMA: ELVES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE EXPERTS WITH SWORDS AND BOWS – BUT WHY SHOULD THEY BE ANY BETTER THAN HUMANS?

(snip)

The elves of old Delrune were good with neither, until after the Solistari War and they turned to warmongering as a way of life. That, also, ended ... with the Coming of Vecna.
Haldendreevan elves may or may not be good with the sword and bow. But all are innately apt to weapons, including these, and learn quickly if taught. And most choose to be taught. They are better than the old humans were, in general. But the humans nowadays tend to be experts themselves. The wars caught everyone up in them, not just the elves.

Just some commentary. Nothing - again - meant as debate.
I loved your post. Thought it insightful. Educational and an eye-opener in places. Thanks for putting this up.

 

[fusangite]

Great work Machesato. Welcome to the boards.

 

[fusangite]

I myself concentrated on Delrune and how that nation reacted.

What I was suggesting was that not everybody in Delrune would act the same way. Depending on one's social position there, one might choose different survival strategies. For instance, elvish widows might try to marry into nearby human aristocracies. Elvish warriors might creat mercenary legion that work for the highest bidder. And the nobles and notables of Delrune might offer to become a vassal state to a more powerful state, perhaps sweetening the deal with some territory, widows, gold or luxury goods. Itinerant crafter/tinker guilds could emerge, working seasonally outside Delrun and returning during planting and harvest.

Anyway, just some random thoughts. Feel free to utilize or discard as you like.

 

[fusangite]

The standard logical thing within the framework of RPG, especially D&D, is to look for Magic-as-Technology to trump the apparent paradoxes presented by extrapolating from some of the principles in the game.

Fair enough. I think that's a good general criticism of D&D reasoning. However, the direction the thread ultimately took was more along the lines of Ronald Wright's idea of culture-as-technology.

Most of the mythology that RPG elves are based on comes from Germanic, Finnish, Celtic and (especially in the case of Tolkien) Norse mythology. All you have to do if you want to understand how Elves might actually live is look at the history of some of these people, and through that dispel some of the modern myths which have actually replaced our understanding.

Except that elf myths were often romantic myths about displaced or conquered peoples. So elf society is more about how people imagined the people they replaced having lived. The culture of the myths' creators is refracted through their own mythology about the societies they understood themselves as having conquered (which may or may not have been closely tied to the societies they actually displaced).

So let’s consider the Celts. In many ways theirs was a timeless culture much like that of most RPG elves. Their material culture (i.e. artifacts recovered by archeologists) evolved and grew in subtlety and complexity over the years, but did not change radically in short periods like that of the Romans.

This is only true if you see the Celts who urbanized and Romanized as ceasing to be Celts. But I would argue that the Empire of the Gauls episode weighs against the idea. People like Gregory of Tours were Gauls and Romans.

Rural parts of cultures change slower than the urban parts. So the moment you conflate a cultural identity with ruralness, you create the illusion of a static culture.

The Celts were very inventive and creative, and sophisticated in the hard sciences; they were far ahead of the Romans in metallurgy and many key military technologies.

Agreed. People often see technology as a proxy for scientific knowledge rather than the sign of a relative labour shortage.

The key difference between these Barbarians and say, the Romans, was a matter of cultural priorities and social organization, not a high tech society wiping out a low tech society, which is another myth.

Spot on! All the stuff of yours I just omitted from the quote I agree with too.

MYTH #2: BARBARIANS WERE SICKLY AND DISEASED DUE TO THEIR BACKWARD LIVES IN THE WILDERNESS

This did come up later in the thread. I tried to pull mmadsen into a discussion about disease but it didn't go anywhere.

Suffice to say, the ancient and medieval worlds had a pretty consistent demographic rule: the less urbanized your society, the better its birth rate. Cities were killer places that would have shrunk if not for constant immigration.

The O.P. pointed out how tough it was to survive in the forest. Apparently, not really so much. I guess it depends which forest, in what part of the world, and which people.

Agreed. Check out my posts about California and the Northwest Coast.

Tacitus described how German tribes, who were swarming in population, barely farmed at all, preferring to live by the sword and ‘earn their bread and mead through wounds’

Tacitus, a helpful informant, cannot be taken at face value. Much of the rhetorical purpose of his text about Germans was more a criticism of the loss of the citizen-soldier ethic in Roman society.

But I agree with you about the importance of wild game in sustaining the societies. Let's also not forget fish!

Freedom. Celts, and Vikings were both apparently heavy into it. Both were more democratically inclined than either the Romans or the Greeks. We know for a fact that true Monarchies didn’t emerge in Scandinavia until the end of the Viking age (after many very bitter struggles) There was still a remnant of Celtic democracy left thousands of years later in the Tanistry system of the Irish, Welsh and Scottish monarchies.

Agreed. The Barbarians had more participatory structures. But participatory <> democracy. Celtic and Viking societies were oligarchic rather than monarchic. But the bottom rung majority in these societies were just as shut out as that rung was in the imperial despotisms. (Except, arguably, for the citizenries of Rome and Byzantium who were slightly more dealt-in).

The Vikings (Norse settlers fleeing the rise of the first king of Norway) established the oldest continuous Republic on earth in Iceland, based on the All-Thing, a kind of combination Parliament and Supreme court which was central to all Scandinavian tribes during the pagan era.

And was the first to allow female suffrage!

Women had great freedom in both Iron Age Celtic society and Dark Ages Norse society. One of the more realistic and historically accurate of the Icelandic Sagas (Njál's saga) hinges around the divorce of a man by his wife, on the basis that he could not please her sexually. This exact same rule exists in Irish Brehon law, a Celtic remnant still extant in the Christian era. Under Brehon law, a woman could divorce her husband for failure to provide adequately, for getting fat, for snoring, for engaging in homosexual activity, or for being unable to sexually satisfy her.

16th century Spanish law was pretty similar. But nobody's ever tried to argue that the society that gave us the Inquisition was a big proponent of female equality.

Anyway, I agreed with your post overall but couldn't resist a little nitpicking.

 

[Rothe]

Machetaso, spot on stuff. Count me as one who loves the historical detail.

...
(snip)

What was it about the vikings that made them so very clever and inventive? What did they have, that the elves (and real world peoples they opposed) not have?

Different peoples were inventive in different ways. The Romans were masters of innovation in construction and organization. The steepe dwellers of Asia innovators in the horse and bow.

And yet the Romans beat the celts in war. How did they do that? What did the romans have that the celts did not, to win? (or was it sheer luck?)

They had organization, and were good at dividing and conquering their foes. From time-to-time they had generals that were tactical and strategic genuises. They also had overall an effective combination of technology, even if they adopted it from others. They also had a standing army that did not need to worry about getting back to the farm.

Yet slain boar, deer, and other animals decay quickly. How much was salvaged by medieval preservation?

Salt. Vinegar. Smoke/Drying. Controlled fementation, pickling, can do wonders. There is a nifty little book called "Salt" that describes somewhat the vast use of salt to preserve food. There is also another nifty little book called "Cod" that shows the importance of dried fish as a food source. I often think a more historically accurate D&D adventure should have the PCs finding a stash of salt as treasure.

The Romans and Greeks should have looked to themselves. The Romans were a plantation slave society, from what I've read. A small middle class and upper class looked up to an Emperor with near total carte blanche.

They did start off as a Republic founded on the citzen-soldier. But yet we condem Brutus, et tu?

 

[mmadsen]

This is contingent on your environment and culture; it is not absolute. 15th century California and the Northwest Coast sustained higher population densities without agriculture than did New England and the Great Lakes regions with agriculture.

I meant to ask you about this earlier, fusangite. Can you point me to any interesting sources on that?

 

[mmadsen]

Since you "tried to pull [me] into a discussion about disease," fusangite, I thought I'd address this:

Not to nitpick but Tenochtitlan, as the largest city in the hemisphere (with a population of about 200,000) had amongst the highest death rates from smallpox. Densely-populated areas of the Mexico Valley and Andes had the worst epidemic disease at contact of almost anywhere.

That was my point when I said:

It depends on the time frame you're looking at. In the short term, population centers are much more vulnerable to epidemics -- particularly if they bring together multiple species that can spread diseases back and forth, e.g. pigs and humans.

In the long term, urban populations develop immunities to the various diseases that have passed through, while distant hunter-gatherer populations do not.

Thus, when the Europeans started arriving in the New World, locals died in droves. (Although there's some argument that local diseases may have reappeared at that time...)​

The large, concentrated population of a city puts many, many people in danger from any disease that breaks out -- but urban societies that mix many, many people with many, many animals end up breeding people with a resistance to disease.

That's one of the key points of Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. Eurasians developed resistance to many diseases that spread across the populations of Europe, North Africa, and Asia -- but only because they faced so many diseases along the way.

Ultimately, the societies that have the best disease resistance tend to be migratory pastoralists, not city dwellers. In migratory pastoralist societies, contagion exposure is not as bottlenecked through a small number of trading specialists but is more evenly distributed through society.

EDIT: Recent science seems to indicate that it is this ranging and trading, not the zoonotic explanation that accounts for this.

Interesting.

 

[Machetaso]

Hey there, Machetaso.
Just some comments on your post. No debate points, no rebuttals at all. Just commentary.

Very welcome, I'm sorry I can't comment too much on the Elven (?) kingdoms you are talking about because I'm not familiar with the story at all. Sounds pretty detailed though. Are those from your campaign or from WOTC stuff or some D20 company?

Fascinating stuff. History is a far more complex subject than a lot of people think..

Thanks Edena, you just made my day

Machetaso

 

[Machetaso]

Machetaso, spot on stuff. Count me as one who loves the historical detail.

Thanks, nice to have an ally here

Different peoples were inventive in different ways. The Romans were masters of innovation in construction and organization. The steepe dwellers of Asia innovators in the horse and bow.

Agreed, the Romans were brilliant adapting whatever they found to their own purpsoes, and they didn't steal everything either, concrete is a pretty big invention They were also absolute masters as seige warfare. Hiding on a hill? The Romans build their own hill to reach you. Hiding in an impenetrable forest? The Romans cut it down. Hiding across an impassable river ? The Roman army builds the first ever bridge across it and goes over without even really breaking stride... Hiding on the other side of the Mediterranian protected by your huge, unbeatable naval fleet? The Romans capture one of your ships, make 500 copies of it, improve the design with ingenious siege weapons, and pretty soon your city is plowed under with salt...

They had organization, and were good at dividing and conquering their foes. From time-to-time they had generals that were tactical and strategic genuises. They also had overall an effective combination of technology, even if they adopted it from others. They also had a standing army that did not need to worry about getting back to the farm.

Agreed, all the way 'round. Also, two biggies you left out: 1) Armor, the Celts may have invented it, but the Romans put it on every single one of their heavy infantry. Armor is much more valuable in real life than it is in D&D (or just about any RPG) This 'staying power' Caesar talked about so much in his Gallic Wars was largely due to the fact that hardly any of the Celts had armor and the Romans did. 2) Tribal societies didn't fight war on the same terms. When the Celts sacked Rome, they took a big ransom and left. That is what happened just about every single time the Celts beat them in Spain or Britain or Gaul too. Same for the Germanic tribes later for the most part. The Romans lost over and over and over in Spain against Virathus. But they only have to win once. If the Romans win, they might make you into a client state, but if they are irritated at you or think you are a threat, they also routinely depopulate your entire country, kill all the warriors and take away everyone else as slaves, resettle the lands with veterans from the Legions. game over.

Either way your are finished though, if they make you a Client state, they appoint puppet 'kings', send all your able bodied men to go fight thousands of miles away in some backwater like Britain, get everybody strung out on wine, confiscate the weapons and put 90% of the people to work on the big Latifundia (farms) as Serfs or slaves, and the rest form the new ruling class.

Wine, by the way, is another major reason why the Romans conquered the Barbarians. The Celts had problems with it not very different from the Native Americans in the 19th century... Of course though, in the long run, it was the Romans who were conquered. Or were they....

Salt. Vinegar. Smoke/Drying. Controlled fementation, pickling, can do wonders. There is a nifty little book called "Salt" that describes somewhat the vast use of salt to preserve food. There is also another nifty little book called "Cod" that shows the importance of dried fish as a food source. I often think a more historically accurate D&D adventure should have the PCs finding a stash of salt as treasure.

Again, you beat me to it. Salt was indeed quite literally a treasure in many parts of the ancient world, for a long time, especially for the Celts and the Norse. They talk about it all the time in the Sagas.

They also of course smoked a lot of meat and fish. Another big one is honey. They preserved Alexander the Great's head in it when they had to bring it back from India. If you think about it, remember when jam and jelly used to be called 'preserves'? Mixing fruit with honey (or later, sugar) was part of how they literally preserved some of the summer fruit harvest for eating later, often much later, all the way up to the 19th century and the early 20th.

Also consider the climate. This isn't Miami we are talking about here. Basically they harvest fruit and meat and fish in the summer, then they dry it, and when winter comes, it stays fresh-frozen in the cellar somewhere through the winter. Then when summer comes again they can hunt, harvest, fish etc..

But there is even more to it than that, I don't think we have figured out all their secrets yet. The Vikings were really into fruit, so much so that they apparently had it imported from pretty far away, straberries for example from the Mediterranian. They must have had other tricks for preserving fruit on trade missions that far.

EDIT: I just remembered another good one, i once saw a History channel show about how these re-enactors were trying to figure out how the Celts stored wheat sealed in these underground holes, kind of mini-cellars. Given the local climate, the wheat should have rotted. So they tried it. What happend was that some of the wheat germinated, sucked up all the oxygen in the hole, then bascially you had anerobic conditions, and nothing rotted. I think if I remember like 3/4 of the underground wheat caches lasted three months without rotting (wheras they would only last like a week above ground) The key turned out to be to use this type of clay so the 'cellars' ended up air tight.

They did start off as a Republic founded on the citzen-soldier. But yet we condem Brutus, et tu?

Not me, I'm rooting for Brutus all the way

Machetaso

 

[fusangite]

I meant to ask you about this earlier, fusangite. Can you point me to any interesting sources on that?

The professor I worked with on the issue was Dr. Paige Raibmon. It has been several years since I worked with her so I'm not remembering the sources on this stuff that do comparitive work. The most recent stuff I read on Northwest Coast populations is actually literature about the continent-wide smallpox epidemic of the 1750s reaching the area; so that might be a good place to start.

The large, concentrated population of a city puts many, many people in danger from any disease that breaks out -- but urban societies that mix many, many people with many, many animals end up breeding people with a resistance to disease.

That's one of the key points of Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. Eurasians developed resistance to many diseases that spread across the populations of Europe, North Africa, and Asia -- but only because they faced so many diseases along the way.

Indeed, it's Diamond's zoonotic assertions that medical doctors, historians and geneticists have been challenging for the past 10 years.

Diamond's theory that any long term packing of people with domestic animals at close quarters will ultimately produce new diseases is problematic in two ways:
(a) this does not seem to be how the original zoonotic processes giving rise to TB, smallpox, etc. seems to have arisen; the transfer of these diseases from animals to humans appears to have preceded domestication
(b) population density positively correlates to spread rates but that's about as far as it goes

As I mention further on, resistance is highest in populations with high rates of trade and movement per capita. The Mexico Valley, despite having stayed denser for longer than anywhere else on earth did not develop any such resistances, in part, because the rates of movement and trade per capita were extremely low and, mostly, because the exceptionally low genetic diversity of Native Americans and the emergence of TB, influenza and smallpox in Eurasia were more a "luck of the draw" thing than evidence of some big generalizeable pattern about trade axes, urbanization or most of Diamond's other theories.

The problem is that Diamond wants to find an explanation for the conquest of the Americas that is systemic rather than coincidental and so he therefore enumerates all the ways that Eurasian and American societies were different from one another and, in most cases, mistakenly infers that these differences were important structural determinants.