#ok that was a lot of words
you-putrid-assmaggot-clownfucker:
You know what’s more fun than worldbuilding that makes some fantasy races EEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL!!!!?
Worldbuilding that gives the different races cultural differences that help explain why there’s a lot of conflict between them:Goblin culture doesn’t have a concept of “Property”. A stick on the ground and a tool in a locked shed are equally up for grabs if a thing needs doing. They casually take and leave things all over their communities, eat from communal pots, and genuinely Do Not Understand why the Core Races are so Angry and prone to Violence all the time.
Consequently Goblins who live near Core communities develop a reputation as “Thieves” despite not even having a *word* for that. (The closest word they have is more like “Greedy” and it means a person that hides things so nobody else can use them, and it’s a surefire fight-starter to call a Goblin that)
Common Orc Spiritual beliefs hold that a Soul can only grow stronger by overcoming Challenges in life, and see intruding on another person’s Challenge unasked for as not just Rude, but Deeply Harmful. You’re Stealing their chance to Grow. Asking for help is deeply personal and doing so can be both a way to grow closer with them or a too-personal intrusion, depending on your existing relationship with them. An exception is Children, as far as most Orcs are concerned, all Children are fundamentally the responsibility of the Whole Community, regardless of whose child they are, or even if said child is an Orc at *all*.
This means that Orcs who live near Core neighbors often seem Rude and Standoffish if not outright hostile, because they neither ask for nor offer aid even in times of trouble, and respond to unasked for aid themselves with Anger. There are even rumors that they Steal Children, because if an Orc finds a child lost in the woods they’re pretty much immediately going to start feeding it, and if they can’t find where to bring it back to, or it doesn’t seem to be well cared for, they’re just gonna keep it.
this is so good. someone do dragons & dwarves
Dragons are often portrayed as being greedy and hostile towards humanoid creature. Many dragon myths have them Eating people, hoarding gold, and kidnapping princesses. However dragons aren’t as bad as many people think.
1. Hoarding Gold.
Dragons are, in the simplest terms, lizard crows. They take gold because it’s so shiny, and (similarly to goblins) they’re sense of ownership and personal property is a bit skewed. Dragons understand that if there is a cave with a dragon sitting on a pile of gold the gold is that dragons gold and that they shouldn’t take it because it belongs to that dragon. But humans store their gold in banks or vaults. Dragons see this huge pile of gold and think “oh no one is sitting on this gold, guess it’s free to take” and then they go ahead and take it. They don’t think to consider that these humans are attacking it because of gold, it just thinks that these humans are really mean. (All of this stealing of gold business can be fixed by just having a few people sit on your piles of gold so dragons can realize that the gold is already has an owner.)
2. Eating people/hostility
Dragons are literally giant flying lizards. They are literal animals. They are carnivores and scavengers. They will eat your corpse, even if they didn’t kill you themselves. Also, the reason they attack so many people is because they do have a territorial nature (again, giant fuckinglizards) and most of the people they attack are people who come into their caves and steal their gold!
3. Kidnapping princesses
Most princesses wear all this beautiful jewelry and gems and, like I said before, dragons are lizard crows. The appearance of shiny stuff in sunlight is to a dragon like a lazer pointer is to a cat. They will steal it, probably not realizing it’s alive until later. However it should be noted that dragons take great pride in their hoard, so they will definitely take care of the princess!
And lastly it should be said that not all dragons do these things! All the old and wise dragons have realized how humanoids work and so they do better with staying out of they way. It’s all the young and dumb dragons who’re unwittingly stealing your gold. Just take your time to politely explain to your local dragon how banks work and you should be good!
Hope that explains dragons and well enough @smallest-feeblest-boggart ! (Sorry that I don’t have anything for dwarves)
I love the concept of someone being payed to sit on a pile of gold in a bank so a dragon doesn’t steal it.
this is magnificent, please continue the saga
Dwarves are greedy, dwarves care only about money and wealth, dwarves are brusque and blunt and irritable. All these things are true from a human perspective, however that is not the way to measure a dwarf. Dwarves are miners, diggers, wont to live in small warren communities, in close quarters and with limited space which could lead to…friction. As a result dwarven culture has become deeply codified in terms of interpersonal relations and concepts of what is owed and recompense, and they do it with gold, the emotional currency.
See, a dwarf mine is inherently insular compared to a typical human community, and here’s no place for a grudge or a simmering feud because dwarven society is as standard in a state of borderline cabin fever. Anyone in lockdown right now with a full house will understand quite how much forced contact with the people you love, 24/7, can blow up into nearly full scale war over the dishes or who’s breathing too loudly. So their society has evolved methods of dealing with that in the form of a strictly codified and extravagantly detailed system of fines, penalties and compensation to deal with interpersonal issues. A dwarf that engages in a behaviour that irritates others around them can buy forgiveness or sort of pay for the right to continue, arguments are settled through contract and payment as much as they are by reason and discussion.
This has become deeply ingrained into the dwarven cultural psyche and has many benefits for keeping the peace and preventing people from working out their differences by means of a pickaxe, leading to the delightful dwarven saying “it’s better to open your wallet than someone else’s skull”. This may seem odd to humans but it’s a lot more reliable than intangible compromises that leave both parties feeling like they’ve lost somehow. Behavioural compromise is all well and good but in a dwarf mine it would quickly devolve into unbearable levels of personal restriction for others and eventually end in the inauspicious meeting of skull and pickaxe. There must be some consideration for others but this system allows for a sort of, well, an allowance of irritating behaviours.
Gold is not a particularly practical metal hence being chosen as the preferred social currency, meaning individuals can accrue and part with gold without upsetting the distribution of resources like iron which are of practical value to the community. While the value of a mass of gold may vary from mine to mine, the value of emotional labour in a mine is known to a tee. A human might say of someone’s irritating friend/relative/coworker “you couldn’t pay me to deal with that bullshit” but a dwarf absolutely can be paid, and what’s more, knows the exact amount of gold that constituted a fair price for the trouble. Having been paid the exchange is considered fair and irritation and resentment are mitigated.
To a dwarf, accruing gold is a vital necessity in order to be a caring member of the community. They know they’re going to wind up stepping on people’s beards and having a large stock of gold is the way to apologise and compromise. Similarly, a dwarf with more gold than others can be viewed as someone who spends more time being paid for their inconvenience than they spend paying others, and acts as a signal of social likeability. To run out of gold would be to mean you’re so fucking unbearable it doesn’t bear thinking about.
And this is where it becomes tricky with the humans. The dwarven attempts to settle emotional disagreements with humans through payment come across as disingenuous and shallow. Meanwhile dwarves are brusque, blunt and irritable with humans much of the time because navigating our nonsense systems of weird intangible compromises is Too Headache for most dwarves. Even those that understand often cannot fully shake the ingrained feeling that they’re being emotionally short changed by the lack of proper payment (this is why dwarves that have grown up in human settlements often seem to lack their mine dwelling brethren’s avarice, and seem far more easy going).
So yes, a human that behaved like that would be greedy and loving gold like that would be to only care about money and wealth. But for a dwarf? That’s just called being a dwarf, and caring about money and wealth isn’t in conflict with caring about others, it’s how you care about others.
