Re: Renaming the Unhuman Wars

From: "Tauster" <chefseehund@???.de>
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2007 10:52 AM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Renaming the Unhuman Wars


> First off: I confess didn't do any research regarding the Unhuman wars
> before the posting - it was just a thought that crossed my mind and at
> that time I was at my computer with - by chance - enough time to write a
> post. I further confess that research in general is a proficiency I
> seriously have to invest more skill slots (or skill points, if you prefer
> the Player's Options rules *g*) in.

Fair enough. I'm not going to tell you off. I was just pointing out that if 
you *do* want to tinker with canon, things *will* need to be checked first.

>>>I had that weird thought yesterday: Why are the conflicts between elves
>>> and the various goblinoid races called the unHUMAN wars?
>>
>>During second edition D&D, elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings were
> called
>>demi-humans. The "unhuman" may have something to do with that. "Demi-
> human"
>>seems to have been dropped in third edition, and I think that is a good
>>thing.
>
> Dito. I hated the term 'demi-human' from the beginning on. 'Demi'
> means 'half' - thats why to me it always smelled a bit racist. I wouldn't
> have a problem with 'demihumans' if the term would have been used as an 
> in-
> game name used by humans of a gameworld (provided there's a convincing
> story behind it), but as part of the rules vocabulary it was a very poor
> choice.

Hmm. Well, don't forget that this was a game. A lot of this stuff was 
shorthand, helping to steriotype and define races so that players could 
understand them. Back in the begining you could pretty much only be a human 
or demi-human - everything else was possibly evil. Since then we have had 
other race options and the new D&D system allows you to play lots of races.

I suppose that someone could argue that "humanoid" is the politically 
correct term for "demi-human". I don't think you can tell if this is an 
in-character term or an out-of-character term. However, I like your idea of 
making this something that humans used to say. Maybe it could be seen as old 
fashioned rather than looked down on as racist. If you did something like 
that then you could use old AD&D terms (or even old English terms) to make 
human documents look old.

>>> I I didnt have misremembered, however, I propose we find other in-game
>>> names for the two wars.
>>
>>Hmm. I'm not sure if I agree this is necessary. The First World War was
>>called the Great War. I'm sure someone could argue that war isn't "great".
>>Do you ever hear people complaining about that name?
> [snip]
>
> Now that I had time to think about it and after reading all the responses,
> I agree with you: Its better to come up with a story that explains the
> name (plus a few different names the other sides used) than retconning it.
> Like you, I am absolutely no friend of system reboots and retconnings.

Plus, I don't like the idea of making it look like we are being politically 
correct about this. I've seen other people (here or elsewhere - I don't 
remember) saying that what we used to call demi-humans can all interbreed 
with humans. Maybe, that might be the origin of the name. Maybe a mistaken 
philosopher thought they were part human.

>>(Groundling) fantasy fiction is full of stories where the humans, elves,
>>dwarves and other "good" races are forced to put differences aside and
> fight
>>some sort of foe, like orcs. The elves would have been trying to get other
>>races onboard, during the war. I'm not sure what is supposed to have
>>happened with the human race, as there are so many different groups of
>>humans. But we know that they got the hadozee onboard, at this time.
>
> We know the elves took a long time before deciding to start the war*, so I
> imagine the inclusion of other races was something they thought about with
> the same care. One possible argument against allies: The elves saw their
> ships as superior. Having inferior non-elven spelljammers involved in the
> conflict would mean a higher probability of spelljamming helms falling
> into goblinoid hands and thus strenghtening them. ...just a thought...

Hmm. Look at the Sindiath Line. It consists of ships with elven captains and 
crews that are mostly made up of "demi-humans" and humans. I don't see why 
you couldn't have that sort of model used within the elven navy.

> *btw: I vaguely see a huge potential for fan-fic stories about that
> process. There might have been an incident that was the last straw that
> broke the back of the elven camel, like the raid of a groundling elven
> settlement by a spaceborn orcish fleet. Such an incident might even been
> helped by elves who wanted the war to start...

That could be fun. Again, you would need to research the period. As 
Spelljammer has such a small product line, you might even need to research 
novels from Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance or Greyhawk that were set in that 
sort of time period. You could get an idea of elf/human relationships.

>>I think that some human societies would have taken the elf side, some
> would
>>have taken the orc side and some would have tried to stay out of the
>>conflict (just like the US Government in both World Wars).
>
> I have a hard time seeing humans voluntarily taking the orcish/goblinoid
> side, but yes, it is possible.

This sort of thing gets done in Lord of the Rings, but *is* less common in 
D&D fiction. Perhaps it would be more likely that some evil humans would 
backstab the elves by trying to steal their land while they were busy 
fighting orcs.

<snip - we agreed>
>
>>> An alternative would be that "unhuman wars" is how the humans of
> wildspace
>>> call them. It would at least explain the humano-centric feel (but would
>>> still be a bit  illogical, see the falkland-argument).
>>
>>"Unhuman War" sounds like it is in the common tongue, and common is the
> name
>>of the D&D language spoken by humans.
>>
>>I don't think this name is so illogical in a fantasy universe where humans
>>call elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings "demi-humans". If these races
> are
>>worth "half a human", then it isn't a great leap for orcs, goblinoids and
>>their allies to be declared to be "non-human".
>
> Humans calling elves "half-/demi-humans"...hmmm... given the obvious
> superior lifespan, the superior elven works of art and magic, their
> superiority in space etc, I have a hard time picturing a human society
> (even groundlings) that sees elves as inferior.

That is because you are thinking of yourself as a human. If you look at D&D 
humans from the outside, you will see a race that:
* matures faster than elves (i.e. grows up quicker),
* is able to learn a wider range of skills (i.e. can treat any class as 
their favored class in 3.0/3.5 D&D),
* has a more active civilisation (i.e. builds cities, roads and other things 
much faster than elves).

I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make, is that from *that* sort of 
point of view, humans get more done in a few years than elves get done in 
several human lifespans.

> The same applies to
> dwarves: there are too many things they are vastly better in than humans
> (including the very important aspect of their lifespan!) to see them
> as "inferior".

Dwarven clans tend to live in their underground cities and avoid 
exploration. Entire dwarven races have been wiped out, because they keep to 
themselves. D&D humans are much more socially active and may well, believe 
that their social skills help them work more effectively as a race than 
isolationist dwarves.

> Sure, humans too are better in some things than elves or
> dwarves, but even from a humanocentric perspective its hard to argue that
> humans are generally better than elves or dwarves.

I don't think any race is better than the other races. But each race should 
have people who *do* believe that they are better. Talk to real people in 
your own country and I'm sure you will find a lot of people who believe they 
live in "the best country in the world". Objectively, that is a nonsensicle 
argument if you haven't travelled to every country in the world, but lots of 
real people say it. Why should D&D people be any different?

> On the other side, I can imagine human superiority applied to gnomes and
> halflings, as their strenghts are not as obvious than the ones of elves &
> dwarves.

"Size matters not. "

:-P

> And on just one more 'other side', I can see humans coming up with
> the "demihuman"-term because of a war between them and elves and/or
> dwarves. The (perceived) atrocities of their elven/dwarven enemy might
> have led to a mindset that they are 'worth only half a human'.

Don't forget that we are discussing 80 different "known space" planets that 
would each have dozens if not hundreds of different human societies on them. 
Your logic might apply to a few individual human societies, but can not 
apply to all of them.

> However, I have a hard time seeing this (surely locally used term) making
> the leap in wildspace and spreading wide enough to be known throughout the
> spheres.

Look at the gnomes of wildspace and you will see a single race from Krynn, 
that got into space first and spread across the spheres. Why could the same 
not happen for many other races? Why could the human religions of wildspace 
not defind the cultures that grabbed land first.

>>> I think the elves might call it something along the lines of 'the great
>>> cleaning' or 'Corellon's battle' (referring to the mythic battle between
>>> Corellon and Gruumsh).
>>
>>It would be good for this war to be given an elvish name, in order to help
>>make the elves of wildspace more three dimensional. However, they should
> be
>>alternate names - *not* replacements. The SJ universe needs to have
> updates
>>that are very careful tweaks. I'm not in favour of rebooting the campaign
>>setting.
>>(In other words, I think it is essential that we retain the name "Unhuman
>>War", but am in favor of anything that expands the SJ universe.)
>>
>>If you are going to make an elvish name, I will expect you to do it with
>>elvish words. I don't know anything about elven battle poetry, but I would
>>guess that elves like that might have a poetic name for The Unhuman War.
>
> Fully agreed. I didn't have the time to find a proper elvish-sounding
> name, but both propositions were meant to be used in elvish.
>
> ...and agreed as well to your 'careful tweaks'!

You might need to come back to this later, when you have found some sources 
of elven words. I have seen lists of words in the past, but didn't bookmark 
them.

>>We have canon material (from Arcane Age RPG products) that shows that the
>>elves used their ships to harrass and surpress the Netherese spelljamming
>>ships. This tells us that the "Unhumans" are not the only race that the
>>elves have been against - they have also seen humans as a threat in the
>>past. I'm not sure what the Shou Lung/Elf relationship is supposed to be
>>like, but they seem to be the only large organised group of humans that
> have
>>an influence in wildspace.
>>There has to be a reason why the elven navy thinks Netherese Humans are
>>"bad" and Shou Lung Humans are "good". There has to be a reason why the
>>elven navy thinks that unhumans are so bad, that they need to be denied
>>access to wildspace.
>
> I always imagined the relationship between Elf & Shou Lung being on the
> verge between peace and hostility, as a ready-to-use element for DMs. Its
> a situation where a good plot (diplomatic or otherwise) can let the PC
> play a vital role in realmspace-wide developement. Of course, we would
> need an in-game explanation for the different elvish perception of
> Netherese and Shou Lung. The Netherese snootiness might have had something
> to do with it...

Shou Lung pholosophers believe in "live worlds" and that might make the 
elves view them as being more in touch with nature than other "nature 
destroying" cultures.

>>Exactly how much research have you done on the Unhuman War? LotV seems to
>>suggest that the elves took several hundred years to make the decision to
>>start a war. There has to be a lot of clues hidden in SJ products, to tell
>>you what events led up to the war. I think we need to review individual
>>references to be able to have a meaningful discussion about this.
>
> As I sad above: no research. It was just an idea that came to my mind and
> found it's way in this board before I could check with the books. Mea
> culpa. ;o)

I'd be interested to see what you *could* turn up with some research. I have 
surprised myself with research in the past.

>>There is only one thing I would like to say. We have political correctness
>>in real life, but it has no place in a fantasy game. If you want to make
> two
>>alternate names, then I think that each side should have a name that makes
>>*their* side look universally good and the *other* side look universally
>>bad. And if those names are as inaccurate as the common version, that is
>>fine by me. I just need an explanation that I can buy.
>
> Agreed, wholeheartedly.
>
> I just realized that "unhuman" has an equivalent in the elfish tongue:
> Afaik, the term for non-elves, "N'Tel Quess" (spelling???) means "not of
> the people", where 'people' stands for 'elves'. Perhaps that sparks some
> ideas about the origin of the term "unhuman"?

Maybe "unhuman" was a literal translation that went wrong.

:-)

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://spelljammer.wikia.com/
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/