Dwarven women

Look what did I found in the arcanum manual ("A Brief History of Arcanum")

Do you believe this stuff ?!

 

Personal opinion -

10 year gestation: Nope!

2 to 1 male to female ratio: Possible.

Females locked away: Possible but unlikely. See Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Book or movie).

High maternal health risk: Definately.

Females as prized possessions: Definately.

High bride price: Oh yeah!

 

1) It's in the manual. Why not believe it? It's a fantasy world, everything is possible, especially something that is wrote by the authors.
2) Frigo, by the number of your posts I assume you've played Arcanum for some time already. Don't tell me you haven't read the manual before?

 

Why would anyone read the manual? Manuals are stupid...

 

That gets me to wonder how long it takes for an elf to deliver a child. If a dwarf ages five times as slowly as a human, and takes 10 years to have a child...

 

Actually, I find the Arcanum manual quite interresting. It's contains not only useful hints at the time of one's first experiences with Arcanum, but also has some in-world curious articles, such as short informations of all races, it makes it more climatic and real. Also the information what you get for having 20 in any characteristic or being a apprentice/expert/master in a skill is just priceless.
As for the banana bread, never tried it. Game manuals would be rather a bizarre place when searching for a good recipe.

 

If you like banana bread, give it a try. It's quite good.

 

It's delicious! I just can't guarantee that you'll be able to get the ingredients from their intended locality.

 

Maybe there's only one female per dwarven clan and she's like a termite queen. That would expain why the entire clan is male; to reduce tension of a new female rising to become queen. Plus both termites and dwarfs live in tunnels in the earth. Also if you take the word dwarf, switch the letters around, take some letters out and replace them with others... its spells termite.

The last one might be a stretch.

 

I'm afraid I have a little lack of caladon cinnamon, also I don't think any of the bananas from my fridge are the Cattan sweet ones. Oh well...
I found also something which appeared a little funny to me. The recipe requires walnuts, and in polish language (and the polish manual and recipe) walnuts are called "orzechy włoskie" which means "italian nuts". Well, I'm really curious how the people of Arcanum are albo to import nuts from Italy, perhaps some kind of spell creating dimension gates.

Yeah, and I imagine the dwarven queen beeing big, fat, hairy and extremely ugly. But the dwarves, while being disgusted by her, desire her in the same time, which makes them really embarresed about it. And they would burn with shame when anyone would know about their secrete, that's why they are so aggresive when anyone askes about dwarven women. Quite a theory..

 

http://www.play.net/images/gs3/races/new/dwarves.gif
http://kitten.cardio.ru/images/dwarves.jpg

 

You... YOU... YOU INDECENT IMMORAL PERVERT!!! HOW LOW HAVE YOU SUNK THAT YOU BRING SUCH SHAME TO OUR RACE!!! I AM GOING TO KILL YOU NOW FOR THIS ULTIMATE EMBARRASSMENT!!!

 

No they're not! Haven't you read Terry Pratchett?

 

Some female dwarves choose to shave their beards, to keep with the fashions of the other median races. At least, that's what D&D tells me.


Did anyone else notice that in the second picture, even with the beards, the artist tried to make the women attractive?

 

At least the ones I posted up there were more realistic than this:
http://camelot.allakhazam.com/Mobs/pics/b02/m-Iarn-Dwarf.jpg

 

Man, if I were you, I wouldn't travel to any dwarven clan after than, ever.
Mmm, in the second one the women even trim their beards in a fancy way, so *anty*sexy.

 

I've heard over and over again that fantasy literature owes a lot to Tolkien for his work. I have to wonder what the genre was like before him - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for instance. Tolkein had a problem though and that was dealing with female characters - there were none in the Hobbit and there were no female dwarfs mentioned in Lord of the Rings.

In the Appendices however, he suggests that fewer female dwarfs are born than males, and that the number of dwarfs is further limited because not all females find a mate they want who also wants them, and so live alone. If I recall correctly, he suggests that dwarf women wear fake beards to be able to travel without molestation.

In Arcanum, I found that Madam Lil's girls have responses in case you were a female Dwarf, Half-Ogre, or Gnome. "I like women with beards" says one I believe. I suppose you could think of it as a burka. It's sold to Muslim women as a means of modesty (as is the head scarf) when really it's a form of domination to make women neither seen nor heard and a symbol of sharia(sp?) law. But let's consider the modesty argument: If a dwarf woman has a beard perhaps she would be more easily accepted as an individual than as a potential mate. Then the flaunting of the female form by the other races would be seen as offensive to the dwarfs.