NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fearsomepirate" data-source="post: 7978940" data-attributes="member: 7021420">Historically, there's virtually no such thing as just "joining other societies." The way rival societies "join" is for one to subjugate the other (not always via outright warfare), and the winners to treat you more like the Persians treated the Ionian Greeks than, say, the Manchu treated the Dzungar. Because while sometimes, the conquerors judge you capable of being incorporated into the empire...sometimes, they decide it's not worth the trouble.If you didn't get incorporated into the Cloud Person Empire, it's for the same reason the Picts never joined the Romans: they were never conquered. That doesn't at all follow. If some technologically inferior tribe of people is never really conquered, they often don't adopt the ways of their rivals. To go back to the Picts, they never started acting like Romans. Ever. There's no reason to believe human societies are on any kind of convergent path. Written language, agriculture, a centralized state...these ideas largely spread via one group of people kicking the absolute naughty word out of another.You often find these ingredients:1. Technologically inferior people whose2. Social organization prevents them from urbanizing and developing intensive farming but3. Inhabit land that more technologically sophisticated societies don't really want and4. Additionally have an aggressive warrior culture so taht5. Conquering them means shedding a lot of blood with little payoff so they6. Don't get conquered, and 7. Often plunder the outskirts of civilization8. Which the central Cloud People don't care about all that much anywayMaybe that's your setting's orcs.</blockquote>

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