1.) The Eldaarich as a whole are smarter and stronger than the average human, but can pass as one. Are the Eldaarich their own species like Elves and Dwarves, or are they merely a physically and mentally advanced human group?
2.) What languages do they speak?
3.) What classes are common and restricted among them?
One of my players in a Dark Sun Campaign wants to play an Eldaarich PC. I know enough about them in several netbooks, but I cannot find stats for them anywhere. Thus, I have a few questions:
1.) The Eldaarich as a whole are smarter and stronger than the average human, but can pass as one. Are the Eldaarich their own species like Elves and Dwarves, or are they merely a physically and mentally advanced human group?
2.) What languages do they speak?
3.) What classes are common and restricted among them?
1. I was unaware that the Eldaarich are a superior human race or superior example of humanity.
2.) Their own version of common that is probably slightly different from the 'trade tongue' due to their isolation. There are also dwarves, half-giants and muls so the dwarven tongue would be fairly common.
3.) Most classes could probably be common and restricted depending on Daskinor's mood (i think he was anti-psionics at the time mentioned in the WJ). I think rogues and assassin-types would get a lot of work. Bards and traders not so much work, unless they are involved with the House Azeth of Kurn.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicRaces.htm#elans
The elans are not a race that are in the Athas.org version of DS due to (I think) the fact that they were not in 2e - they are in the Paizo version of DS from the Dungeon/Dragon stuff, and they are in the XPH (and there for are open to being a DS race).
If I am wrong - then whoops! but I really think this is what Gwenfloor was asking about.
1. I was unaware that the Eldaarich are a superior human race or superior example of humanity.
I was not saying that they were superior examples, but possibly had better education and healthcare, thus giving them physical and mental advancements.
I was not saying that they were superior examples, but possibly had better education and healthcare, thus giving them physical and mental advancements.
If anything - it would be the exact opposit of that - they are ruled over but a demented (more then the norn) and parionoid (again - nore then is usual for these guys) sorcerer-king.
If anything - it would be the exact opposit of that - they are ruled over but a demented (more then the norn) and parionoid (again - nore then is usual for these guys) sorcerer-king.
If their education and healthcare are so poor, then how come willing Eldaarich slaves tend to outperform the non-Eldaarich in tasks both physical and mental?
I will do you a favor and point you to the Wanderer's Chronical, pg.92-95 to allow you the opportunity to actually read the material before you begin telling others that they are wrong - because I for one have read the material, have it sitting before me as I type, and know that you are misthinking something or confusing the information somehow. It is called the Prison-State of Eldaarich for a reason.
I am not attempting to flame you or anything, but I am trying to point out that you are wrong and I hope I am not voming across to hard.
If I am - I appoligize now, but I say again to check your facts before you start telling others that they are wrong.
Who did I say were wrong? I did not say anyone was wrong, I was merely asking questions about the Eldaarich and attempting to get answers. When Kalthandrix answered me, I asked him how it is possible for Eldaarich slaves to be so smart and strong if their country is strictly controlled and oppressed?
Such a frightened, submissive people, you think. They slink penniless to your gates, asking timidly for work. They embrace the role of slavery as worms take to the soil; they refuse to learn to write your characters, or to shoot your longbows, even though learning these skills would entitle them to the privileges and duties of citizens. When asked questions, they answer loudly and clearly but deferentially. They rarely initiate a conversation with a Kurnan, and speak in whispers with their spouse and children. If you stare at them without speaking, they tremble.
The Eldaarish refugees seem like a meek and cowardly people. Yet their children born in Kurn grow as tall as Kurnans, become prominent citizens, and often out-compete your children at contests of wit, will, and strength. How curious that the children of the meek will inherit your city.
I stick by what I said - I think you are misreading the information in the Wisdom of the Drylanders.
The whole section in Eldaarish shows how totally these people are oppressed - so the idea that they are better naturally is coming from left field.
Now the above quote does say that they excell WHEN these refuges come to Kurn - but that is only because, like many immergrant workers through history, they finally have a chance to better themselves and therefore throw everything they have into do it - this does not make then naturally better, just more driven.
The main physical difference between Kurns and Eldaarish is that the latter are shorter, partly because for 2000 years they've been taking their tallest babies out to become Red Guards, effectively taking them out of the breeding population. But none of that has any game effect.
The Eldaarish people are raised from childhood to believe that they are physically superior to all other people, and it's possible that even some of the refugees have come in with this belief and have taught it to their children. Prodigy, the former spy who wrote "Wisdom of Terror," was the child of Kurnan refugees:
The Eldaarish refugees seem like a meek and cowardly people. Yet their children born in Kurn grow as tall as Kurnans, become prominent citizens, and often out-compete your children at contests of wit, will, and strength. How curious that the children of the meek will inherit your city.
How you must fear us. An elf, dwarf, herder, Drylander, or even child of the bandit state that puts down roots in Kurn’s foreign quarter, and finds employment in a clave, is accepted as citizen, and her child is called a child of Kurn. The child of Eldaarish parents is called Eldaarish, even though he is a citizen and a skilled artisan in his guild, even though she has served three missions as the King’s spy and now shares his bed. No one will ever call me a child of Kurn, for terror hides in my shadow.
Prodigy is sharp, and a gifted manifester, but she's not exactly objective.
When she wrote Wisdom of Terror, she did not yet know about New Kurn. What she knew is that every year there seemed to be fewer Kurnans, and a greater number of Eldaarish refugees. Hence -- How curious that the children of the meek will inherit your city.
If you want to know what makes an Eldaarish person superior to other humans, you'd have to ask an Eldaarish person.
Me, I reckon they are as human as anyone else.Kurnans (like many earth societies) regard apprenticeship a form of slavery, so most Kurnan citizens have actually been slaves at one time or another, but apprenticeship to a clave is generally an "upwardly mobile" sort of slavery
. With slavery to a noble, you plow, you plant, you get fed, housed, sheltered, and then at the end you get paid. At best, the noble agrees to take you on for another season for a better price.In Eldaarich, the only slaves you will ever see on the streets are naked dwarves, muls and halfgiant slaves, forbidden even to wear silters. The only human slaves are either outside the city (e.g. in the mines in the huuros islands, in the craft villages, in South Guard, or Camp Zero), under the city (in what Prodigy called the "undervillages"). There are also condemned human prisoners kept in the city for "entertainment" purposes, to die in the arenas or in the slave brothels.
The Eldaarish also don't like the Kurnan claves because all that clannishness reminds them of the cults of their own cities.
So now what do the Eldaarich do when they become free? I am pretty sure that most do not want to go back to their third-world dictatorship.
For those answers, you will have to wait for the Trembling Plains and Prison State of Eldaarich to come out :P
Soon...maybe...
THE STORIES THAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ ARE TRUE. ONLY THE FACTS HAVE BEEN CHANGED, TO PROTECT SOCIETY.
-Brax Istman, senior templar of the Haleban Order, Sub-minister of History in the Entertainment Bureau.
It'll take me years to read and reread LCotTB to know it as well as you.
Mmmm...there's also another explanation: I never played, or GMed, a game of DS, so the importance of all that campaing lore is rather low for me. What can I say.
Give me smart players that don't have pimples and that don't imitate the charging dwarf and his battleaxe and I won't kill anyone :D If I want to know something, I look it up. Mostly.
Back in 1999, not that many people knew there was a living breathing bunch of folks who would performed public executions in stadiums between sports events and then beat the audience if they did not applaud. But leaving that in after 2001 would have made us look like a couple of lemmings. That, and the fact that the whole D&D system got overhauled twice, plus Will got called up to war, and I had 3 kids and went back to school, explain why this whole thing has taken so long to write We started with a couple pages in the WC that painted Daskinor as a mentally ill totalitarian, so it made sense to look at a bunch of historical ones, look for common threads, and try to find historical events that weren't simply too unbelievable for fiction.