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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="rmcoen" data-source="post: 9732620" data-attributes="member: 6692404">I always just pictured it (elves, dwarves, longlived races) being very slow and deliberate about their actions and their crafts:Humans will spend 4 weeks on a suit of plate armor, bang it out fast, and move on; a dwarf will spend a year making it Right, then spend another embellishing it, and another shining the whole thing and making sure the embellishments don't impede it in any way.Human will spend a lifetime (30 years) learning about "Marine Biology"; elf will spend a lifetime learning about JUST ONE WHALE (90 years, for the whale).Human smith will have a half-dozen apprentice/journeyman making "good enough" swords for the local lord's militia; dwarven smith will have maybe one apprentice who better not touch ANYTHING until he's AT LEAST the equivalent of a Mastersmith, or else he'll bring shame to the dwarf's family name for generations; elven smith is still studying the concept of metalurgy, and hasn't yet made a nail.Human society will grow a despot, stage a revolution, stagnate for a couple generations, collapse, rise from the ashes, and try a new type of government.  Which will also fail, because humans.  Dwarves know their government works, because it worked for their parents, and their parents, and THEIR parents, and it'll work for their kids, too.  Elves point the elf that chose to be "super involved in everything" (i.e. maybe a meeting every few years), and are sure she'll probably know something, if necessary, and also, please get off the grass I've been studying for 97 years, studying its reaction to minute soil changes and seasonal shifts.Humans embrace change because change.  Dwarves acknowledge change happens, because sometimes, after 3 generations, a 2% shift in alloy composition might show a 1% change in durability... and occasionally, a new mine opens.  Elves know change has happened, they have a record of it from 2,246 years ago, but it was probably a one-time thing.</blockquote>

Verification