Re: OT: Corpses, etc. (was: Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)))

Quoting Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@...>:

> I think it must be true that as we explore our
> cultures deeper, they become less nice. It just
> means they're taking a more real dimension.
That's only true for concultures that start out nice!

Taireza has certainly grown a bit less idyllic over the years (real-world
time, of course), but is on the whole still probably a nicer place than any
modern-day country*. But most of my concultures have, I think, largely stuck
to the same level of niceness over their real-world time development. Zeneva
originally was envisaged as a region torn by centuries of war, every city
fortified and every planet scared by orbital bombardment, but it eventually
ended up as a province of Taireza, with the warfare toned down and pushed into
the fictional past and hid by a century of reconstruction.

* Assuming you've got similar ideas of what is nice that I have - I guess some
Americans would have difficulties to adapt to a society which does not
practice capital punishment, but considers automatically justified a policeman
who kills an armed civilian.

A special case is, perhaps, my Elven conculture, the speakers of Meghean. I
started developing them with the fixed intention of not letting them acquire
the kind of perfection Elves in litterature, RPGs, etc, all to often displays.
(I do not necessarily object to utopias (utopiae?), but when you can usually
assume that any Elven culture not characterized as "Dark" is going to be alot
more idyllic than human societies it gets a bit boring.) The recent thread on
_achatearan_ will have given the interested a taste of what kind of culture it
is. I should perhaps add that the Elves of the Camant** do also largely lack
the traditonal Elven superiority over humans in wisdom and skill - while their
scholars may be more learned than their human colleagues (having trice the
lifespan helps!), they're not possessed any inherent superior intelligence,
their magicians aren't any more powerful than those of other races, and when
it comes to political organization, the ramshackle confederation of camant
clearly represents a lower level of sophistication than the (not-too-stable)
human kingdom of Lareth, the biggest political power in the region. Their
greatest strength is economic - for reasons of well-established contact
networks and relatively advanced banking practices, they've set themselves up
as the most important merchants in a large region. This is also the reason
that Lareth has never come around to actually subjugating the Camant - it
would hurt the kings' own economic interests to much to be worth it.

** Should I better use the English article, or the Meghean one? Ie, "Elves of
the Camant", or "Elves of Chamant"?

                                                        Andreas

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