Dwarf women

It's Terry 'I am the god of fantasy fiction' Pratchett.

 

Yes, exactly. Wow! Never thought anyone would know or care. The picture has something to do with that, too.
It's amazing how much is advertised about Romans, Egyptians, Celts, Vikings etc., but so little is known about Dacians.
Some guys had an idea back in 2004 of making an rpg based on this culture.
Too bad the project was abandoned. It's quite interesting, you can read about it here:

http://www.geticagame.com/index.php?sec ... sc&lang=en

It has some nice concept art, based on archeological findings, too.

 

It has always interested me that one of the things we think about during the Victorian era is the fact that women were supposed to stay at home and take care of the kids and not try to do man jobs, like being a monarch or something.

 

The more interesting question would be what would you get when a Dwarf woman gets a baby from a human, or a Gnome? I think that the mostly likely outcome (When they breed with Humans.) would be that you would get Half-Dwarves, who will get the same problems like the Half-Elves. How they would look like when they breed with Gnomes I do not know.

Off topic: Some many years ago, someone made a RPG that is about
the culture of the Frisians, but it gone as well. Now I am still working on one that includes them. (I only do not know what for Alignment they would have.)

 

That's a typical Monarchy, though. The ruling class is so far above everyone else that they become exempt from common law. Hell, that's not even just in a monarchy.

 

I don't know why alignment is important for you, but maybe this will give you a clue:
'The Frisians were able to form a treaty with the Romans at the River Rhine in 28 AD, thus avoiding conquest. But sixteen years later, when taxes became repressive, they hanged the tax collector and defeated the Romans under Tiberius at the Battle of Baduhennawood.'
In my opinion, a peaceful people, that does not go a'conquering others and defends the territory that was in their possession for a long time is not bad.

I would only make the romans bad, as a whole.

Now, back to the topic:

I suppose the dwarf women have some characteristics that we, of the median race (although a poorly chosen term), would not attribute to a woman at all. Maybe dwarves know that, and maybe dwarf women are really among them at all times, just posing as men.

The 10 year gestation - stupidly impossible. A long life doesn't mean a slowing of all physical processes, it means a damn good immune system, a DNA with few transcription and replication errors, and a less effective oxygen degradation of cells and thus of tissues.

Fantasy does imply a certain amount of good-sense: modified versions of known real world creatures, similar landscape, similar hierarchy of communication channels used etc. Any extreme modification transforms it into sci-fi.

 

By extension the longer pregnancy could be a result of a longer life. Not needing to reproduce so often (i.e, not dying as often), might have evolved into the 10-year thing as to prevent over population in those dank little mountain halls. It's the same thing China should be doing

Keep in mind this is still fantasy though, it doesn't actually have to be applicable to science or otherwise.

 

Alessandro, there's plenty of examples in the real world that support the idea of dwarves having an extra-long gestation period.

Elephants, for example, have pregnancies that last somewhere between 24 and 30 months. Some breeds of insects lay eggs that can lie dormant for more than 100 YEARS before they hatch! Even humans sometimes have gestation periods of a year sometimes.

When you think about it, dwarves having long gestation periods suddenly doesn't seem so weird. Just because us humans grow uber-fast in the womb doesn't mean that the beardy-boys would.

Okay, my two cents, done now.

 

Ah, I forgot all about this thing, but this could mean that Dwarven Females has a bit of Y-chromosomen (Having beards) in them.

 

I wouldn't choose insects as an example of prolonged gestation, if I were you. Gestation itself is a term that applies to viviparous creatures. There are viviparous insects (scorpions, and some velvet worms), it's true. Due to natural selection it would be very costly in terms of energetics and very dangerous both for the mother and the offspring (over a longer period of development just one mistake can turn into a serious defect), for a long gestation to exist. Thus, natural selection favors speed in this case.

And elephant fetuses do have a slower development but this is due to their size. As a general rule, the larger the animal the longer the gestation period.

I suppose that dwarves, with their strange social behaviours (of which some were mentioned in above posts) would have unintentionally prolonged the gestation period of their females, mainly by keeping them very safe, very comfortable and in a stress-free environment. But I still find a 10 year-pregnancy more sci-fi then fantasy, as the dwarves wouldn't have become a real power with just a handful of people.

If you really want Alignment to play a big role then assign it to peoples based on their actions towards other peoples and their customs in the country. Remember Apocalipto, the movie? Peoples (people as a country; peoples= countries, if you like) that have a tendency for violence, war, sacrifices, oppression, slavery (remember the Goa'uld or the Wraiths, or the Ori from Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis?) are of evil alignment to me. In contrast, those that cherish knowledge, wealth through trade, spiritual enlightenment, harmony with nature, peaceful technical advancement (remember the Ancients or the Asgard, or the Nox from Stargate SG1?) are of good alignment.
But humans as a race have always had hidden intentions and are constantly trying to figure out what's good and bad or right and wrong.

In the end who is the most qualified person to say what good and bad really are?

 

That means that they are Chaotic Good. Yes, they did indeed hanged him, and defeated the Romans under Tiberius at the Battle of Baduhennawood, because of the overtaxing their income of hides. The cool thing is that the same Frisians, who learned to fight better by the Romans, defeated them.

I asked about their alignment, because non-Frisians see them different, then natives from Fryslan like me. In addition, every country in a RPG, has their own alignment. Therefore, that means, some of the countries are in war, because of the difference. My RPG is happening on Earth*, and in a Demon Invasion, in the year 2010.

*There are creatures, like Elves, Dwarves, etc. because of the Supernatural Mutations.

BTW: Am I right, that every country in a RPG, has their own alignment?

Thanks for giving and copying my post. I really appreciate that.

 

The Wraith did have the occasional, if not 'good' soul, than at least the one who was willing to make compromises to ensure the greater good of their race. Ah, Todd, you were the best wraith.

And don't forget the Tok'ra (sp), who were Goa'uld with, you know, morals and stuff.

 

I do believe they were not Goa'uld, every episode they were featured in they reminded us of that. So I have to ask, at the end of the final season of Atlantis, what happens to Todd? He s just sitting in that room...

 

in my pants.

 

Wow, I didn't even remember Fish inspired my huge'n'ugly dwarf queen theory, nor the fact that I had one. Amusing.

At present I support my theory that dwarves are hermaphrodites, which means that they reproduce pretty much like this.

Just imagine how would this place look if every single member would rather quadruple post than use the edit button. It would no longer be just a single scroll down the page, oh no. That would mean that:

• a) We would have four time the scrolling without any additional content,
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As you can see, the edit button is an important guardian of this place's quality. Also keep in mind that we don't have any time limits here, it's not like you can't answer all the posts you want in one reply.

Nothing, those races aren't related enough to give offspring. If they were, we would have half-dwarves and gnorves all over Arcanum, just like all the other cross-breed.

 

I'm fairly certain he's still there. Hence, there's an ultra-powerful Wraith on earth now. That's bad.

 

That's why they killed the series and never bought Atlantis up in Universe I suppose. Even though it's sitting right there in the fucking ocean.

 

I'm still royally pissed about the ending to Atlantis. It came out of nowhere and fucked everything else up. And damn it, Woolsey was just starting to come into his own.

Universe is pretty fucking awesome, though.

 

Haven't seen enough of universe to really gauge a proper reaction to it, so far it has been very battlestar galatica and I don't watch that because I don't really the constant flashbacks. After I posted that previous comment I learned they are making an Atlantis movie to explain further on what happens now that the Wraith are not the dominant force of the Pegasus galaxy. I too was pretty disappointed with how Atlantis came to a very abrupt ending, the fourth season wasn't anything too spectacular but I really thought they were bringing their A game back in season five. Then in the last episode its like "Hey the Wraith suddenly became powerful again, oh no too powerful, we need to gather more power like we ave for the last five seasons, oh here is some we must fly, oh no we need to get there faster, I know we'll invent a drive that we had been 'working' on for ages that works now."

lets hope the Atlantis movie gets a good reception so they continue to make more.

 

To be honest I was over atlantis by the second last season, it all seemed rather repetitious and dragged on far too much.

Loved Battlestar though, in particular the 2nd season. Universe is probably my favourite Stargate spinoff yet, it's refreshing to see something apart from the usual "go to worlds, do shit, go home" format even if it is just "go to world that you have no intel on, do shit, save lives, get back to ship". Number 8 was a little boring though. And I'm not sure how the hell they're going to drag that arc out for another enitre episode.