Homework!

[sythyry]

Several of you gave me things to think about. Two of you -- kris_schnee and foomf -- even gave me homework. I shall do this homework, albeit somewhat flippantly. I am not being flippant because the questions are bad or irrelevant -- the questions are quite good, and the answers matter. I am being flippant because I am tired and I do not wish to write very much today.

(By the way, why do fantasy races always seem to be Capitalized? We don't write about "Humans".) The names of prime species are given the markers of respect in the language and orthography in question. The names of non-prime species are not. Actually we are being relatively nice -- some orthographic systems don't capitalize the names of individual non-primes: "Vae" would be "vae" in such systems.

What's the purpose of a city? To provide a place where many primes or (and?) monsters may live comfortably, fashionably, safely, and happily in close proximity.

How is that different from the purpose of a government? Well, flippantly, a government is not a place. Less flippantly, I think governments have other purposes (some of them worthwhile).

Does government and governance require a city? I can't see why it does.

Can there be a form of governance that works for all sentients living in an area? If the area is small enough, yes. For an area that contains two or more sentients, I suspect not.

Why did Primes form cities in the first place? I'll have to ask a relative about that. My vague impression is no more than, "It seemed the thing to do at the time." Mutual defense and all was crucial. It still is.

Why did non-primes form their cities? I have no idea. I don't even know if there's anyone around to ask.

Why did Primes exclude non-primes from their cities? Mostly because non-primes exist to trouble us, and we don't want to be troubled that way at home. This reason still obtains.

What benefits accrue to forming a mixed-prime-and-non-prime city? Vae is a lot happier. Some foolish concept of justice that I seem to want to observe will be satisfied.

What detriments would be inevitable? Trouble. Lots and lots of trouble, of the forms suitable to the non-prime inhabitants.

What detriments would be easily managed? Um ... if we let taptet in, we could outlaw potion-making, I suppose.

Who decides on the form of governance? The founders of the city.

What do the Gods of the World Tree think about all this? I can't see why that could possibly matter. It's not as if they'll be nice to us even if they like it.

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

non-primes exist to trouble us

Did any of the gods ever say *why* that is? Is there perhaps an actual purpose to troubling you?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I think it's for their entertainment? They like watching their creations fight or something.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Have they said that, though, or does everyone just assume that?

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

(Argh I keep using BBCode.)

Some nonprimes most certainly were put on the world to trouble primes. The cyarr and ulgrane, both long-time enemies(especially the cyarr), both date back to Blyn's Truce, an action which left the gods - and Accanax especially - very displeased with the primes after the near-extinction of the Khtsoyis.

However, not everything that isn't prime was created to trouble primes. Mircannis, according to our material, tends to make beneficial creatures (honeybees, animals with warm pelts, and other such nice things - even if you don't want to irritate the bees, they are generally benign, and useful even beyond their essential function of pollinating crops) as well as healing herbs. Mherobump are a good example of a benign, sentient nonprime. Scawn and cyarr, each in their own way, seem to have been deliberately placed to be foes to the primes. Bonstables are an outright danger, in a devious way. In between, you have such species at the taptet and the wherriwheffle - the one can be a problem if treated badly, and the other have tendencies that make them nuisances but usually aren't any worse. Both have some positive interactions with primes.

Part of the issue is a tendency - and this is not unique to World Tree prime species - to pigeonhole things. Some members of this species are unsafe, so treat the whole species as an inherent danger. Some nonprime species are dangerous, so forbid all of them. Our own legal system may not have species to discriminate against, but the way of most legal systems is still to paint things in broad, clear strokes rather than worry about the fiddly details - which is grossly unfair to the edge cases. Sometimes it can be considered an acceptable sacrifice in the name of (relatively) efficient, expedient law. Sometimes it's a travesty.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

They've said a wide variety of things. They lie a lot, you know.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Even Mircannis?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Uh-huh kinda. I mean she's a god so it's not like their motives are exactly normal by Prime standards or necessarily explicable but I think she figures it'd be boooooring without fighting. Even in the Elfimel heaven she let them fight and it WAS boring why do you think she left it?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Mircannis clearly is pleased when her creations enjoy themselves, as we saw in her Heaven. But she does seem to enjoy them fighting -- or, for whatever reason, she permits and encourage them to fight -- as observed in the dagger room in Mircannis' Heaven. Presumably the two are not incompatible.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

The thing that gets me there is exactly that they [i]do[/i] enjoy themselves (barring the specific ones who don't want things to be quite so static - even they were miserable at first on leaving Heaven, no?), whereas most primes don't seem to enjoy being slaughtered by remorshka, as far as I'm aware.

Now, I will grant that not everything Mircannis does is [i]nice.[/i] But even the plagues that afflict primes are gentle, and relatively easy to cure(compared to the high-complexity spells for getting rid of the diseases that Accanax and Gnarn made for nonprimes). And bees have their stingers. Still, she seems, at least, to be the most likely of the World Tree gods to not enjoy [i]suffering.[/i]

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Raspberry says: We enjoy fighting remorshka, though. As long as we win. Or at least, as long as we live to try again later. And Mircannis made that pretty easy, especially against stupid monsters like remorshka.

Ulgrane, now -- they're a pain.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Adventurers, however, are very much the minority among primes. I don't think the Herethroy villagers that get torn up by the marauding remorshka would agree with that enjoyment.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

The gods haven't even said why they created the world, alas, much less why they create individual aspects of it. It is the task of many, many theologians to try to come up with plausible guesses and insights about those reasons.