#i think I’ve been making. people not like codex. e cause of the way i tal k about her

[lavellanlove]

Meta: city elves vs. flat-ears

City Elves

Elves living in the city would never think to identify themselves as “city elves”. 

To them, they’re just elves.

Even among humans, unless their village/town/city is frequented by Dalish, there would be no purpose for the distinction. Even then, it would be ‘elves’ versus ‘Dalish elves’, as the elves in their immediate environment would be the default in their cognitive schema. 

The only group with reason to distinguish elves from the city as “city elves” would be the Dalish themselves. 

This could either be done innocuously -- a note that an elf’s origin is not of the Dalish -- or as a more intentional effort to distance themselves from their city-dwelling counterparts.

It would be a false equivalency to compare the term ‘city elf’ to the term ‘Dalish’. The nomadic elves of Thedas self-identify as ‘Dalish’ as a demarcation of their unique culture & religious beliefs, whereas the term ‘city elf’ would only be othering to an elf who had only ever thought of all their people as one.

Flat-Ears

Flat-ear, on the other hand, is a derogatory meant to imply that the elf is more like a human than a true elf. 

But it not unique to the Dalish as a term for city elves. 

In fact, Sarethia, the hahren of the Highever Alienage, uses the term to describe those elves born in the city who choose not to live in the Alienage.

This leads me to believe that the term is not a pejorative term for city elf, but rather a relative term for betraying elven culture, however it is defined.

The schism that occurred after the fall of the Dales and the truce with the Chantry left both groups of elves struggling to maintain a sense of identity and develop a new sense of culture. Even ~720 years later, the widespread oppression and persecution of elves has left them continuing that ongoing quest. 

When a Dalish calls someone a flat-ear, it is because they view the willingness to subject themselves to second-class citizenship and mandated Andrastianism a betrayal of their shared heritage. When an elf from the city calls someone a flat-ear, it is because they view the desire to leave a tight-knit community of elves to live among humans an abandonment of elven identity and camaraderie.

(Supporting codices below the cut.)

To illustrate the use of “City Elves”, consider how the codex of the same name changes in DA:O based on origin (bolding is mine):

Human author, Non-elf!Warden codex text:

When the holy Exalted March of the Dales resulted in the dissolution of the elven kingdom, leaving a great many elves homeless once again, the Divine Renata I declared that all lands loyal to the Chantry must give the elves refuge within their own walls. Considering the atrocities committed by the elves at Red Crossing, this was a great testament to the Chantry's charity. There was one condition, however--the elves were to lay aside their pagan gods and live under the rule of the Chantry.

Some of the elves refused our goodwill. They banded together to form the wandering Dalish elves, keeping their old elven ways--and their hatred of humans--alive. To this day, Dalish elves still terrorize those of us who stray too close to their camps. Most of the elves, however, saw that it was wisest to live under the protection of humans.

And so we took the elves into our cities and tried to integrate them. We invited them into our own homes and gave them jobs as servants and farmhands. Here, in Denerim, the elves even have their own quarter, governed by an elven keeper. Most have proven to be productive members of society. Still, a small segment of the elven community remains dissatisfied. These troublemakers and malcontents roam the streets causing mayhem, rebelling against authority and making a general nuisance of themselves.

--From Ferelden: Folklore and History, by Sister Petrine, Chantry scholar

Dalish author, Mahariel!Warden codex text:

It is hard to tell our children about those of our people who have decided to live in the shemlen cities. They ask, "Why would anyone want to be treated like that?" And sometimes I do not know what to say. I do not understand it myself. They were freed, but they have returned to live in the service of their former masters. They are housed like animals in walled sections of the shemlen cities. They do the meanest of tasks and are rewarded with nothing. Why? I do not know.

We tell the children that the elvhen are strong, that we are a proud people, but they hear of these city elves who choose to toil under the humans' heavy hand. How do we teach them pride when they know there are others who would allow themselves to be trampled into the dust? So we tell them that these city elves are to be pitied, that they have given up on their people, given up their heritage. We tell them that some people are so used to being controlled that, when freed, they know not what to do with themselves. They are weak and afraid--afraid of the unfamiliar, afraid of our life of wandering. Above all, they are afraid even to hope that one day we may have a home of our own.

--Gisharel, keeper of the Ralaferin clan of the Dalish elves.

Alienage author, Tabris!Warden codex text:

The humans tell tales of Andraste, and to them, she was a prophet. To our people, however, she was an inspiration. Her rebellion against Tevinter gave our people a window through which to see the sun, and we reached toward it with all our strength. The rebellion was brief but successful; even after the death of the prophetess, we fought on for independence as the human Imperium began to crumble. In the end, we won freedom and the southern land known as the Dales, and we began the Long Walk to our new homeland.

There, in the Dales, our people revived the lost lore as best we could. We called the first city Halamshiral, "end of the journey," and founded a new nation, isolated as elves were meant to be, this time patrolled by an order of Emerald Knights charged with watching the borders for trouble from humans.

But you already know that something went wrong. A small elven raiding party attacked the nearby human village of Red Crossing, an act of anger that prompted the Chantry to retaliate and, with their superior numbers, conquer the Dales.

We were not enslaved as we had been before, but our worship of the ancient gods was now forbidden. We were allowed to live among the humans only as second-class citizens who worshiped their Maker, forgetting once more the scraps of lore we had maintained through the centuries.

--"The Rise and Fall of the Dales," as told by Sarethia, hahren of the Highever Alienage

Alienage author, Codex entry: Alienage culture

There have always been alienages. They have been around for as long as elves and shems have lived in the same lands. Ours isn't even the worst: They say that Val Royeaux has ten thousand elves living in a space no bigger than Denerim’s Market. Their walls are supposedly so high that daylight doesn't reach the vhenadhal until midday.

But don't be so anxious to start tearing down the walls and picking fights with the guards. They keep out more than they keep in. We don't have to live here, you know. Sometimes a family gets a good break, and they buy a house in the docks, or the outskirts of town. If they're lucky, they come back to the alienage after the looters have burned their house down. The unlucky ones just go to the paupers' field.

Here, we're among family. We look out for each other. Here, we do what we can to remember the old ways. The flat-ears who have gone out there, they're stuck. They'll never be human, and they've gone and thrown away being elven, too. So where does that leave them? Nowhere.

--Sarethia, hahren of the Highever alienage

Dwarven author, Codex entry: Common curses

So, lad—you're getting your sight straight in your first days topside, so here's some advice: you're not just trading with kin. You're selling to all kinds of folk now, with different customs and tongues. As I've learned here, the most important part of any language is the cussing. It gets you trust. It gets you coin.

Most elves you see in the city are servants, and a human looking for a fight might call one "knife-ear." If the elf returns with "shem" or "quick," blood's about to spill. Those Dalish elves use "flat-ear" to insult the ones who live with humans—like our unenlightened kin below calling us Stone-blind up here.

Even the humans who pray to some woman they burned alive—and her god they call "the Maker"—say something when they knock their shins. It's a curse to say "Andraste’s..."—well, any body part, really. "Maker's breath!" might get you in with a swaggering fool, but the lady priests won't be pleased. Chantryfolk also don't like mages. If you hear a mage called a "spellbind," hide anything flammable.

Then there are all those beautiful words that just mean "Sod it!" When that loose cobblestone flips and the ankle cracks, an elf will cry, "Fenedhis!" while a human might, "Damn it!" A Qunari will mumble, "Vashedan!" I've even heard a couple Tevinters yell, "Kaffas!"

If any of these get aimed at you, hopefully all that gets killed is a sale.

—Note from Hardal, a surface merchant dwarf, to an apprentice adjusting to life outside Orzammar

[warsofasoiaf]

I think you may have sweltered this but I didn't find it when I did a search. Do you have anything to say on some of the loyalist primarch flaws and how they balance/balanced eachother out?

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it. All of the Primarchs are flawed in their own way, except for Vulkan because he is a massive bro. Sure he went insane, but that’s not his fault that Konrad Curze tortured him and he was a functional immortal.

Lion El’Jonson was arrogant even for a Primarch, and his inability to understand people left him vulnerable to intrigue and isolation. Jonson’s arrogance meant that he felt he wasn’t really accountable to others, hence why he could break his promise to Guilliman not to engage in an orbital bombardment. This same idea is the reason why so many find him suspicious and doubt his loyalty, even when he states that loyalty is its own reward and he doesn’t need to be recognized for the deed. However, this loyalty does ground him, as we see when he fights Curze.

Jaghatai Khan also had much of this isolation, and this made it hard to work with the Scars in a coalition environment. His own pride in himself meant that he never bothered to take the effort to work with others, insisting instead that others would have to make the first move. As such, no one knew what was going on inside his head. What tempered him was his love of Chogoris and his people and his marked dislike of dishonesty. While the Big E was fairly guilty of lying to his kids multiple times, Chaos was much worse. His commitment to freedom was both a flaw and a boon. It made it hard for him and his legion to fit in to the greater Imperium or in the eventual transition to peacetime, but he wasn’t going to stand for Mortarion’s plan to corral all psykers as we see in his epic takedown of the Plague Lord on Prospero.

Leman Russ’s flaws are pretty self-evident. Brash and abrasive, he started fights with his fellow Primarchs all the time. His unquestioning sense of loyalty meant that the Emperor used him for the unsavory jobs, and as he later notes, it won him few friends and left him susceptible to Horus’s manipulation that cost the Emperor the Thousand Sons. Now, Russ’s mistrust of psykers definitely played into this, and that’s on him, but he’s tempered himself now, both in transforming the Space Wolves and in focusing more upon recklessness with psykers, not with the actual psychic powers themselves, ridding himself of his bigotry somewhat.

Rogal Dorn is my main man, but even he is quite flawed. His biggest flaw is the whole “torture himself to enlightenment with the pain glove,” and that was reflected in the Iron Cage incident, where his desire for redemption to him meant suffering through immense pain, but ended up pointlessly crippling the Imperial Fists. This is completely reckless, as a general, he had a duty to his subordinates, and while sure, Perturabo needed to be brought to justice, I can’t really justify that Iron Cage incident as anything other than an attempt to purge himself of his perceived failure. Also, his honesty is great for defense but makes for terrible diplomacy, and as a general, diplomacy is a key part of his portfolio. What grounded him was his recognition of his own failings, and his ironclad desire to help the Imperium.

Sanguinius’s problem was DON’T YOU TALK SHIT ABOUT MY FABULOUS FUCKING HAWK BOY! his martyr complex, as we see at Signus Prime, where he attempted to sacrifice himself to Chaos to cure his Blood Angels of the Red Thirst, which as we see with Magnus and the Flesh-Change, a Chaotic bargain never gives you a permanent solution. While demanding much of yourself is noble, sacrifice sometimes is a waste; you have to make sure that your loss is offset by what you seek to gain. While Sanguinius was aware of visions of his own death, he never faltered. That is in itself a virtue, to not fear death, but he should strive His compassion was both a virtue and a flaw, as few people would try to redeem Konrad Curze and Horus himself. Unfortunately, that compassion and his drive to die for the glory of the Imperium got him killed, instead of waiting for Dorn or his father.

Ferrus Manus was brutal and too focused on purging himself of weakness. This meant that Ferrus was often brutal on his conquests and when Fulgrim attempted to convert him to the side of Chaos, Ferrus was so driven to prove that he wasn’t so weak as to be corrupted that he took unnecessary risks. His logic was baffling: since if Fulgrim believed he could tempt him, his brothers and the Emperor would suspect him, forgetting that Fulgrim was…I dunno, his best friend and so that friendship might have been a factor, or that in refusing, Ferrus proved his loyalty to Mankind. This ideology was so destructive that he sought out Fulgrim to ‘atone’ despite being surrounded, and it led to his death.

Roboute Guilliman is convinced of his own rightness that he can’t see where he makes mistakes. He almost tore the Imperium in half after the fall of the Emperor with the Codex Astartes, and he was so convinced that Terra had fallen that rather than investigate, he created Imperium Secundus. His self-righteousness can lead to sunk cost fallacy or not changing his plans if his initial ideas are not working (looking at you Unnumbered Sons), as well as people who don’t conform to his ideas being shunned out of the states he builds. His rigidity can cause problems both in diplomacy and in war. What tempers him is that he truly does care for the states he crafts and he wants to do right by them. 

Corvus Corax’s flaws, like others, are isolation, but also in an inability to communicate. This meant that when Corvus was put up against a wall against the charismatic Horus, he couldn’t stand his ground, and thus a lot of Raven Guard suffered as a result. Corax also wasn’t on his guard with regard to the Alpha Legion, and thus his plan to save his legion was sabotaged, and this brought him into a deep depression. His isolation left him to suffer alone until he went into the Eye of Terror, and deprive the Imperium of a significant asset. His infiltration tactics were incredibly useful, and his drive against tyranny could have arrested the Imperium’s slow decline, but alas, he was unable to pull himself from the brink by himself. What tempered him though, was his commitment to freedom and individual dignity.

As you can see, all of these Primarch had their flaws, but their grounding kept them from slipping. Corvus never embraced his anti-tyranny zeal to become Konrad Curze, The Lion never succumbed to resentment over being snubbed the way Perturabo did, and Ferrus’s drive for perfection didn’t lead to excessive vanity like Fulgrim. They definitely made mistakes both by themselves and to each other, but ultimately, they stood up for Mankind rather than falling into the traps of pride and ego that Chaos laid for them. Even Magnus, whose fall was so tragic and had the best of intentions for his father and the Imperium, had succumbed to rash pride in believing that he could control Chaos and that his superior intellect rendered him immune to the problems of the Warp and the allure of the Ruinious Powers.

The Emperor Protects, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Drakar, Grey Knights, Witcher 2

Science Fiction (Wired): Conventional wisdom holds that science fiction was written almost exclusively by men until the advent of feminism in the 1960s and ’70s. But when Lisa Yaszek, who teaches science fiction studies at Georgia Tech, went digging through old magazines, she discovered a very different story.

        Tolkien (Daily Mail): In a 1937 letter to an Oxford colleague, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien confessed that he didn’t much care for The Hobbit, one of his already popular works that was about to go into its second printing.

He wrote: ‘I don’t much approve of The Hobbit myself, prefering my own mythology (which is just touched on) with its consistent nomenclature … and organized history, to this rabble of Eddaic-named dwarves out of Voluspa, newfangled hobbits and gollums (invented in an idle hour) and Anglo-Saxon runes.’

  Authors (Davy Crockett’s Almanac): If you really want to know Robert E. Howard, you’re out of luck. But the closest you’ll ever get (barring the invention of a time machine) is this lengthy memoir by his almost-girlfriend Novalyne Price.

The two became friends when she took a teaching job at the high school in Cross Plains, Texas in August 1934, and spent a lot of time together until July of the next year, when he found out she was dating his friend Truett Vinson. But their friendship continued, albeit less frequently, until he shot himself in June 1936.

  Authors (Adventures Fantastic): John D. MacDonald was born on this date, July 24, in 1916.  I’ve written about him before (see here, here, and here).

Although he’s probably best remembered today as the author of the Travis McGee series of men’s adventure thrillers, MacDonald learned his chops in the pulps, albeit during the tail end of the pulp era.

  Games (Follow Me and Die): As an RPG content producer, I’ve spent a lot of money on fancy tools, some that require more money when versions are updated, etc. Check out episode 77 of my podcast where I discuss this topic*.

Several years ago, I was very big into Linux and free and open source software. I’m still a proponent of free and open source software, I just had issues in the past finding Linux based solutions for some of my workflows.

  Publishing (Original Edition Fantasy): Call for Articles!

I’m putting together a one-shot homage to classic 80’s Dragon magazine. It will be called Drakar and have the look, feel, and layout of that era. Including articles, ads, even humor!

In order to fill this up I’m looking for articles from the OSR. It can be an original article, an excerpt from your homebrewed RPG or campaign. This issue is going to be generally Norse Mythology themed, but just like those old magazines it will be a hodge-podge of cool stuff, so anything you enter that is RPG related will work. No bias towards any particular system.

        Miniatures (Tower of Zenopus): I really really like the Grey Knights lore in 40K I remember them being an interesting unit in Rogue trader and then in Epic where they were a single unit you might take if fighting Chaos but not an army on their own. Then came 5th edition when they received a separate Codex and suddenly they were a whole separate force with some really nice miniatures all their own. It’s a great look, a great theme, and a great concept for an elite strike force in the game.

  Authors (DMR Books): I consider REH to be one of the greatest fantasists of all time and I am not alone.  I have admired and been inspired by both his prose and his poetry but I also appreciate where his writings have led me.   If I had never read Howard, I might never have read the horror of Clark Ashton Smith, the histories of Harold Lamb or the adventures shrouded in the mysteries of the East penned by Talbot Mundy.  If you take a look at the books listed in Robert E. Howard’s personal library, you will find thirteen works by Talbot Mundy, so I think I can say that he was an influence on REH.

        RPG (Black Gate): Funny how some of us predicted video games would virtually wipe out RPGs and board games, and yet here we are. We have entered a golden age of tabletop gaming. So many new games, with great graphics, great playing pieces, and game mechanics that expand on systems that have been tried, tested, and improved on for decades.

I’m certainly not the first to make this observation, but much of this game renaissance must be thanks to funding platforms like Kickstarter. No longer limited to what a few big corporations deemed were mass-marketable enough to release to retail outlets, we could now team up with a few hundred or a few thousand other people who wanted what we did and JUST PAY TO MAKE IT HAPPEN OURSELVES.

  Fiction (Gravetapping): In the late 1960s and early 1970s Michael Crichton published eight thrillers under the pseudonym John Lange.  The Lange novels are something very different than the science fiction Michael Crichton became famous for writing. They are thrillers more in the vein of Desmond Bagley, Jack Higgins, and Gavin Lyall, and I like them much more than Crichton’s big bestsellers.

  Celluloid (Future War Stories): Since the first hunting stories where told around a fire, humans have been captivated by tales of combat and heroism. That just who we are at our core and those primitive stories have been upgraded due to the progress of technology and scientific understanding to forge the genre of science fiction. Today, tales of space warriors battling among the stars with laser swords and ray-guns are commonplace within the realm of popular entertainment. When most think of science fiction combat scenes from sci-fi on TV, in anime, video games, or in popular films; they imagine those large-scale space battles with starships trading colorful bolts of killer light.

  Games (Player None): The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings (2011), based on the works of Andrzej Sapkowski, developed and published by CD Projekt RED

Geralt of Rivia wakes up shackled in a dungeon. He is there to be interrogated by one Vernon Roache, the head of the special forces of Temaria. The reason for this visit in the darkest of dungeons is told in flashbacks during the tutorial of the game: Geralt is under suspicions of killing the king of Temaria, Foltest. He is innocent to the crime, as the killer is a skilled assassin Letho, a bear of a man, who is working with Scoia’tael guerillas who are more than happy to aid a human causing havoc among his own people.

  Celluloid (Running Iron Report): The Lighthorsemen is a movie about the Australian Light Horse regiments and their famous charge on Beersheba in Palestine in World War I. The taking of Beersheeba turned the Ottoman Turks out of their defensive line in Palestine and marked a turning point in the campaign in the Middle East.

For the purposes of this essay; the charge is almost an anticlimactic moment.

I wish that a different way could be found to teach history in our schools. History teaching incorporating the Australian Light Horse would be a lot more exciting than memorizing meaningless acts and dates. The “Australian Light Horse” — now there is phrase to stir the blood of any young man.

    Sensor Sweep: Drakar, Grey Knights, Witcher 2 published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames