Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Banestorm] Yrth before the storm speculations

Ogo · 01-06-2010, 02:20 PM

Ok, this is a little bit insane, but I've been thinking about this issue. Bear with me, warning, long post:

I'd take a more realistic, less mythic approach. I'd begin by trying to imagine how the three "original" Yrth races moved from TL0 to TL3.

On earth, the line from the first cities (~3000 BCE) to mature TL3 (~1000 CE) is about four thousand years. On Yrth, because of the difference of the races living there, and the presence of magic, this length could be doubled or tripled easily. Enough, at any rate, that the early days of each population are shrouded in myth, even among the elves, who presumably could have members with living memory stretching back that far. It's possible the elf-dwarf-orc troika was Banestormed in themselves at some point in prehistory [does Banestorm suggest this? I forget!]

Prehistoric Culture

1. Elves, being immortal, have a highly individualist politics. Initially, and for centuries, there were no nations or factions or really ideology of any kind. Every elf is important and sacred. Paradoxically, they are instinctively communitarian; when you live alongside your distant descendants and your distant ancestors, forever, all life is as a myth. Mortality only comes through accident, or treachery, or a bad run-in with the other races, or possibly a virulent disease, so each death is special, tragic and mythic in itself. Each life celebrated forever, each death mourned forever.

The elves perfected, among themselves, magic of all kinds, long before their numbers grew large enough to necessitate cities or other technologies that required a different relationship to the environment. No craftsmanship beyond personal objects, no agriculture beyond personal tending to individual plants and animals.

(It is possible that the elves' advanced magic wouldn't prohibit, but allow or encourage some kind of urban, quasi-high-tech civilization. Who knows!)

2. The orcs' penchant for violence and aggression makes them very familiar with death. Orc life is one of constant movement: high risk, high reward, high fatality, high fertility. An orcish population is very much a "desiring machine," constantly dissatisfied, constantly acquisitive, its own internal violence barely enough to keep their numbers from spilling out in all directions. Orcs had a nomadic-herder existence with constant war for the best grazing grounds (often destroyed for a season in the process). Their only "politics" is pure submission, concepts of ownership or loyalty are fluid: everybody falls to someone eventually. A grand orcish war-leader might found a nation and a "royal" line only to see it completely exctinct and forgotten within a decade. How many orcish Alexanders could there have been, in thousands of years?

3. Prehistoric dwarves--literal "cavemen"-- achieved civilization by going deeper into the cave. Imagine huge muscle-powered feats of mass engineering on the scale of the Sumer or Egypt, only in reverse, underground, and you're getting the idea. Their preference for rocky and forbidding terrain kept them out of touch, for the most part, with elves and orcs. Dwarven life is something of a world unto itself, but their border areas in the foothills often overlapped (or "underlapped") with elven or orcish lands.

Interracial Relations

The uneasy three-way balance of populations yielded more than one kind of truce or alliance over the centuries. Of course, the constant violent expansiveness of the orcs had to be kept in check, usually by dwarven or elven communities acting alone but sometimes in concert. Elven-Dwarven cooperation against Orcs was the most common kind of contact. But the orcs weren't always the odd one out.

The dwarves were the only race with a sense of real progress, of making something in your life that your descendants would take up and improve upon. Dwarven lands were the only ones that really changed. A small settlement in one century could be a thriving mine-city in the next. Orc life is unstable, elven life goes on forever as it always has. The orcs coveted the fruits of dwarven expertise and labor, and the elves often feared, disapproved and resented the mass changes to the natural landscape that the dwarves created. Too much dwarven development too fast could meet stiff resistance -- usually by elves neglecting to prevent (or even subtly encouraging) orcish destruction. Elves and orcs could find themselves in harmony (if not outright cooperation) against dwarven settlements.

On the other hand, the dwarves and orcs share a common mortality. Long-lived dwarves and short-lived orcs are different in degree of course, but completely different in kind from the elves, who are always unfamiliar with death. In rare moments of calm, dwarves and orcs could have co-operative positive-sum trade relationships -- individuals swallowing their natural impulses to benefit their own community in an unknown future. This kind of thing is next to impossible for an elf to understand. Why cut any deals? What future is there to plan for? You will see it yourself, in the same perfection as the present.

The Spread of Learning and Historical Change

This was the general equilibrium that lasted for millenia, finally interrupted by the Banestorm unleashed by the Dark Elves. But the "fault" of the Banestorm, if you trace it to first causes, goes paradoxically to the dwarves.

Dwarves were the only source of technological improvement on ancient Yrth. Engineering and crafts moved steadily from TL0 to 3. Innovations would quickly spread from dwarven community to community via competitive or cooperative means. Their cities became more layered and dense, their methods of underground agriculture more productive, their understanding of the abstract principles underlying metal- and stoneworkmore and more "modern."

Dispersion of new methods and ideas was slow among the elves, due to their immortality and natural-conservative character. An elf might perfect a new craft or art, but would not see the need to "set up shop" making anything for anyone beyond him or herself or the immediate community. Likewise, there was little pressure to teach a one's hard-won mastery to another, as the master's skills would live on indefinitely with him. Younger elves might be prevented from making their own discoveries if too-heavily educated. "School" is a somewhat alien concept to the elves; education happens informally, one-on-one. You can figure out for yourself just as well at age 100 or 1000 what you could at 10.

Dispersion of ideas among orcs was relatively fast and even, but originating ideas virtually non-existent. Orcs are cognitively limited, not very imaginative or ingenious. But they understand effectiveness well enough, and their harsh Darwinian internal politics heavily favors those with an advantage: "steal a fish and you eat today, steal a fishing pole and you can steal all the fish you want." Over the centuries, orc societies moved, inexorably, from TL 0 to 2/3, through techniques, skills, and objects gleaned from dwarven cultures here and there.

The mortal dwarves had no sense of what they had unleashed, but the elves, with longer memories, certainly did. What had been roving packs armed with stone tools "only yesterday" were now coming with shields and iron axes and other weapons. The orcs' lethality had increased. The amount of land they could effectively control and despoil had grown. The number of elves that might fall in an orcish incursion was increasing, and the amount of elven effort it took to repel them was increasing as well.

This gave rise to the first division in elven culture: between those who thought something had to be done, and those who thought that life would or should continue as it is. The "returner" or "defender" position, which favored much more purposeful efforts from elves to eliminate orcs as a safety measure, and to return the world to its earlier "natural" state, eventually lost the argument. "Mainstream" or "status quo" elves considered the acceleration of the orcish threat to be part of a larger natural pattern. Either it would be unwise to "correct" it, or the effort would be too dangerous, or simply that each elf had the responsibility to deal with the threats in his own area, rather than engaging in grand plans against outsiders as a whole.

Some Defenders even advocated sharp aggression against the dwarves directly, an idea that was far over the line even for elves that took the orcish threat seriously.

The historical irony is that the Defenders/Dark Elves were basically right: orcs armed with the benefits of other peoples' ideas are more dangerous. Some Defender groups made some spectacular assaults on orc populations, but they of course failed in their grand goal of a world without them. Returner ideas never went away, but grew more apocalyptic and paranoid and virulent as the number of true believers dwindled. These became the Dark Elves, who worked on any number of grand designs to harness Death in order to preserve Life, and thus begins the [canonical] story of the Banestorm.

[please note I haven't checked this against Banestorm for inconsistencies with the canonical text!]

01-06-2010, 02:20 PM	#11
Ogo Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: the midwest	Re: [Banestorm] Yrth before the storm speculations Ok, this is a little bit insane, but I've been thinking about this issue. Bear with me, warning, long post: I'd take a more realistic, less mythic approach. I'd begin by trying to imagine how the three "original" Yrth races moved from TL0 to TL3. On earth, the line from the first cities (~3000 BCE) to mature TL3 (~1000 CE) is about four thousand years. On Yrth, because of the difference of the races living there, and the presence of magic, this length could be doubled or tripled easily. Enough, at any rate, that the early days of each population are shrouded in myth, even among the elves, who presumably could have members with living memory stretching back that far. It's possible the elf-dwarf-orc troika was Banestormed in themselves at some point in prehistory [does Banestorm suggest this? I forget!] Prehistoric Culture 1. Elves, being immortal, have a highly individualist politics. Initially, and for centuries, there were no nations or factions or really ideology of any kind. Every elf is important and sacred. Paradoxically, they are instinctively communitarian; when you live alongside your distant descendants and your distant ancestors, forever, all life is as a myth. Mortality only comes through accident, or treachery, or a bad run-in with the other races, or possibly a virulent disease, so each death is special, tragic and mythic in itself. Each life celebrated forever, each death mourned forever. The elves perfected, among themselves, magic of all kinds, long before their numbers grew large enough to necessitate cities or other technologies that required a different relationship to the environment. No craftsmanship beyond personal objects, no agriculture beyond personal tending to individual plants and animals. (It is possible that the elves' advanced magic wouldn't prohibit, but allow or encourage some kind of urban, quasi-high-tech civilization. Who knows!) 2. The orcs' penchant for violence and aggression makes them very familiar with death. Orc life is one of constant movement: high risk, high reward, high fatality, high fertility. An orcish population is very much a "desiring machine," constantly dissatisfied, constantly acquisitive, its own internal violence barely enough to keep their numbers from spilling out in all directions. Orcs had a nomadic-herder existence with constant war for the best grazing grounds (often destroyed for a season in the process). Their only "politics" is pure submission, concepts of ownership or loyalty are fluid: everybody falls to someone eventually. A grand orcish war-leader might found a nation and a "royal" line only to see it completely exctinct and forgotten within a decade. How many orcish Alexanders could there have been, in thousands of years? 3. Prehistoric dwarves--literal "cavemen"-- achieved civilization by going deeper into the cave. Imagine huge muscle-powered feats of mass engineering on the scale of the Sumer or Egypt, only in reverse, underground, and you're getting the idea. Their preference for rocky and forbidding terrain kept them out of touch, for the most part, with elves and orcs. Dwarven life is something of a world unto itself, but their border areas in the foothills often overlapped (or "underlapped") with elven or orcish lands. Interracial Relations The uneasy three-way balance of populations yielded more than one kind of truce or alliance over the centuries. Of course, the constant violent expansiveness of the orcs had to be kept in check, usually by dwarven or elven communities acting alone but sometimes in concert. Elven-Dwarven cooperation against Orcs was the most common kind of contact. But the orcs weren't always the odd one out. The dwarves were the only race with a sense of real progress, of making something in your life that your descendants would take up and improve upon. Dwarven lands were the only ones that really changed. A small settlement in one century could be a thriving mine-city in the next. Orc life is unstable, elven life goes on forever as it always has. The orcs coveted the fruits of dwarven expertise and labor, and the elves often feared, disapproved and resented the mass changes to the natural landscape that the dwarves created. Too much dwarven development too fast could meet stiff resistance -- usually by elves neglecting to prevent (or even subtly encouraging) orcish destruction. Elves and orcs could find themselves in harmony (if not outright cooperation) against dwarven settlements. On the other hand, the dwarves and orcs share a common mortality. Long-lived dwarves and short-lived orcs are different in degree of course, but completely different in kind from the elves, who are always unfamiliar with death. In rare moments of calm, dwarves and orcs could have co-operative positive-sum trade relationships -- individuals swallowing their natural impulses to benefit their own community in an unknown future. This kind of thing is next to impossible for an elf to understand. Why cut any deals? What future is there to plan for? You will see it yourself, in the same perfection as the present. The Spread of Learning and Historical Change This was the general equilibrium that lasted for millenia, finally interrupted by the Banestorm unleashed by the Dark Elves. But the "fault" of the Banestorm, if you trace it to first causes, goes paradoxically to the dwarves. Dwarves were the only source of technological improvement on ancient Yrth. Engineering and crafts moved steadily from TL0 to 3. Innovations would quickly spread from dwarven community to community via competitive or cooperative means. Their cities became more layered and dense, their methods of underground agriculture more productive, their understanding of the abstract principles underlying metal- and stoneworkmore and more "modern." Dispersion of new methods and ideas was slow among the elves, due to their immortality and natural-conservative character. An elf might perfect a new craft or art, but would not see the need to "set up shop" making anything for anyone beyond him or herself or the immediate community. Likewise, there was little pressure to teach a one's hard-won mastery to another, as the master's skills would live on indefinitely with him. Younger elves might be prevented from making their own discoveries if too-heavily educated. "School" is a somewhat alien concept to the elves; education happens informally, one-on-one. You can figure out for yourself just as well at age 100 or 1000 what you could at 10. Dispersion of ideas among orcs was relatively fast and even, but originating ideas virtually non-existent. Orcs are cognitively limited, not very imaginative or ingenious. But they understand effectiveness well enough, and their harsh Darwinian internal politics heavily favors those with an advantage: "steal a fish and you eat today, steal a fishing pole and you can steal all the fish you want." Over the centuries, orc societies moved, inexorably, from TL 0 to 2/3, through techniques, skills, and objects gleaned from dwarven cultures here and there. The mortal dwarves had no sense of what they had unleashed, but the elves, with longer memories, certainly did. What had been roving packs armed with stone tools "only yesterday" were now coming with shields and iron axes and other weapons. The orcs' lethality had increased. The amount of land they could effectively control and despoil had grown. The number of elves that might fall in an orcish incursion was increasing, and the amount of elven effort it took to repel them was increasing as well. This gave rise to the first division in elven culture: between those who thought something had to be done, and those who thought that life would or should continue as it is. The "returner" or "defender" position, which favored much more purposeful efforts from elves to eliminate orcs as a safety measure, and to return the world to its earlier "natural" state, eventually lost the argument. "Mainstream" or "status quo" elves considered the acceleration of the orcish threat to be part of a larger natural pattern. Either it would be unwise to "correct" it, or the effort would be too dangerous, or simply that each elf had the responsibility to deal with the threats in his own area, rather than engaging in grand plans against outsiders as a whole. Some Defenders even advocated sharp aggression against the dwarves directly, an idea that was far over the line even for elves that took the orcish threat seriously. The historical irony is that the Defenders/Dark Elves were basically right: orcs armed with the benefits of other peoples' ideas are more dangerous. Some Defender groups made some spectacular assaults on orc populations, but they of course failed in their grand goal of a world without them. Returner ideas never went away, but grew more apocalyptic and paranoid and virulent as the number of true believers dwindled. These became the Dark Elves, who worked on any number of grand designs to harness Death in order to preserve Life, and thus begins the [canonical] story of the Banestorm. [please note I haven't checked this against Banestorm for inconsistencies with the canonical text!]