Half-Castes, what's that all about then?
Certainly the way things work when different races interbreed in Harkovast is one of the strangest concepts readers need to get their heads round.
You've read the 'here is how it worsk' explanation in the comic (with my main man Quinn-Tain explaining what the deal is) but I wanted to take the opportunity to delve a bit into why I decided to have things work this way.
Originally, each race in Harkovast was going to be completely separate, with no potential to inter breed. After all, that would be as ridiculous as cats breeding with birds! (Literally in this case.)
This never really sat well with me. It made the races too separate, with no real connection between them. Also, the idea of people torn between two cultures and the prejudices they might face has a lot of interesting potential.
However, I really didn't want to start making creatures that were half one thing and half another. These sorts of creatures would look really weird, probably incredibly ugly and would give me a head ache working out how to draw them (what does a half bird/ half cat look like? And then what if the half bird /half cat marries a lizard and has kids? What you'd get would be nightmare fuel, especially for me having to draw them!)
So I pondered this for a while and finally came up with the idea for half-castes as they now work. This has the nice quality that you cant initially tell if someone is a half caste if they choose to live among the race they look like, but questions might arise due to their 'odd' behaviour.
Also every race in Harkovast gets to remain distinct and clear while still having the potential to interbreed.
I think that it is okay for something to behave in a strange, alien way that does not have an equivalent in our world, as long as the rules governing it are consistent and have their own internal logic, which I am pretty certain this concept does.
I think it opens up a lot of potential for exciting stories in the future.
Start publishing on
DD Comics!
Advertise with us
Harkovast- the forum
Half-Castes
Cthonic the thought of you comming through an underground tunnel at me with that avatar would scare me off ever trying to find your magic city!
I should point out, not all cultures are actively hostile to half-castes. The Tsung-Dao are accepting of anyone who can embrace theri very ordered, routine way of life. But even here thhey would face a lot of misunderstanding.
Other cultures run the whole range of reactions from "there is no law against being a half-caste but its still wierd and deviant" (the Nymus view of it), to them viewed with hostility and fear (the Junlock view, and if you look like an Ivos, you dont stand much chance at all) to them being literally illegal, an abomination to god/the gods and punishable by execution (The Al-Saigal view on).
You are always going to have some problems as a half caste, but you can certainly do massively worse with some cultures then you do with others.
Humans dont have giant robots.
And Harkovast alreayd has wizards (and we dont.)
And I think you are under estimating how hateful the Harkovastians can be! They will give us a good run for our money.
Also the Lel could always show up with….ah, getting ahead of myself again!
Humans dont have giant robots.
Nuh UH! We so totally do, but only awesome people are allowed to see them.
And Harkovast alreayd has wizards (and we dont.)
Not the kind of wizards in Earth lore. Teir wizards obviously cannot rend reality to suit their whims, or they would rule the world. And, as we have discussed int eh magic thread, they are limited in what they can study anyways.
And I think you are under estimating how hateful the Harkovastians can be! They will give us a good run for our money.
I was thinking the humans would kill them because they are the embodiment of furries. You know, break a hole into another reality just to vent your anger at a group of weird humans that you would get in trouble if you killed. If you eradicate an alien race, no one would know, see? More mindless and simmering hate lurks in our dragon-like hearts…
Also the Lel could always show up with….ah, getting ahead of myself again!
NO! Whatever you were going to say is not able to defeat the power of human destructive capabilities. Seriously, look at Warhammer 40K. They are the second newest to travel between stars, and yet they are in the top three most powerful groups. HUMANSSSSSSS!
Okay, war between humans and harkovastians would surely have to put the Harkovastians in the same time period that humans are in, otherwise it is not a fiar fight.
You either have modern humans fight harkovastians with guns
OR
medeival humans fight harkovastians as they are in the comic.
Otherwise you could just make it caveman humans vs harkovastians as they are now (wow, no contest! 1-0 to the furries!)
Since we have yet to see a modern vision of Harkovast, lets assume humans only get medieval gear.
Since humans dont know any real magic (sorry, tarrot cards are fun but dont work!)
the harkovastians have the advantage straight away. Darsai, for example, are simply better at fighting then a human because they have energy weapons.
Tsung-Dao are much bigger and stronger then humans, nymus are more agile and can swoop etc.
In a stand up fight, they've got the edge.
Now you might say "Oh but humans are one race, so we could divide and conquer" only problem is, we aren't one race, and we are the most easily divided creatures in existance! Human nations hardly ever put asside their differences for a common goal, even in obvious examples like WW2 a lot dragged their feet (not just america, britain and france let germany get away with far too much at the start.)
So no advantage there.
Harkovastians are as smart as humans, so another advantage gone.
But thats just if we fight the free races, what about when the armies of the West start invading? The Harkovastians get over run by their mindless aggression and weight of numbers, what chance do we have? They dont even look like furries so no extra agression to help us out!
And one more thing….when you say wizards are limited…..
WHAAAAT?
Quinn-Tain controls the power of dark and light, creation and destruction, the beginning and the end! He has the old magic with which the world was made, magic so terrible that used wrongly it could….well I wont get into that, but its very strong stuff!
Human wizards (if we let em have wizards), who is there who is any good? Penn and Teller? Merlin (arthurs pet wizard)? Dont say Gandalf, he was not human, he was istrati as I recall, sent by the Valar. Certainly not a human.
Harkovastians seem really really good at war to me, so unless we get to have modern gear and they dont (in which case, you could swap weapons adn reverse the result, making it a bit meaningless), we dont stand much chance. I think we could make a tough fight of it, but in the end we would be screwed.
I've just noticed this doesn't have a damn thing to do with Half-Castes, so lets get back on topic.
Though I do like a good imaginary fight, I will have to start a new thread….
Okay, war between humans and harkovastians would surely have to put the Harkovastians in the same time period that humans are in, otherwise it is not a fair fight.
You either have modern humans fight harkovastians with guns
OR
medeival humans fight harkovastians as they are in the comic.
Humans had Merlin and various hedge wizards in Europe, in Asia their priests were also casters, and in America. Well. Why would they fight anyways, eh? SO it would be in favor of the ones who could cause cities to collapse in earthquakes and fleets to sink from firey rain.
Otherwise you could just make it caveman humans vs harkovastians as they are now (wow, no contest! 1-0 to the furries!)
Humans would win, but I see what you TRIED to say. Humans always win in the end. They would send their plagued old people out and have them infect all the others, then loot the better weapons and be more than even again. See?
Since we have yet to see a modern vision of Harkovast, lets assume humans only get medieval gear.
Since humans don't know any real magic (LIES AND SLANDER!!!:) ) (sorry, tarot cards are fun but don't work!) (They don't count anyways.)
the harkovastians have the advantage straight away. Darsai, for example, are simply better at fighting then a human because they have energy weapons.
Tsung-Dao are much bigger and stronger then humans, nymus are more agile and can swoop etc.
In a stand up fight, they've got the edge.
Now you might say "Oh but humans are one race, so we could divide and conquer" only problem is, we aren't one race, and we are the most easily divided creatures in existence! Human nations hardly ever put aside their differences for a common goal, even in obvious examples like WW2 a lot dragged their feet (not just america, britain and france let germany get away with far too much at the start.)
So no advantage there.
Harkovastians are as smart as humans, so another advantage gone.
If they were really so smart, they'd be human. ;) But the physical diffrences between humans is far less evident than between the inhabitants of Harkovast. And I'm saying that an army, pre-unified, is coming, not just a bunch of random people.
But that's just if we fight the free races, what about when the armies of the West start invading? The Harkovastians get over run by their mindless aggression and weight of numbers, what chance do we have? They don't even look like furries so no extra aggression to help us out!
Bullets can kill ANYTHING, and they don't look human so that's close enough. Even the dark. But with no bullets, you'd stop them at sea before letting them land, which is something that I should think has been tried but not with a united front. (For the Alliance, crush the Horde!). Build a huge fleet, like the Athenians did to destroy the Persian fleet at a certain famous battle. And use trickery, deceit, and all sorts of non sporting below the belt tactics. We're very good at that.
And one more thing….when you say wizards are limited…..
WHAAAAT?
Quinn-Tain controls the power of dark and light, creation and destruction, the beginning and the end! He has the old magic with which the world was made, magic so terrible that used wrongly it could….well I wont get into that, but its very strong stuff!
Human wizards (if we let em have wizards), who is there who is any good? Penn and Teller? Merlin (Arthur's pet wizard)? Dont say Gandalf, he was not human, he was istrati as I recall, sent by the Valar. Certainly not a human.
Limited in the ways they can manifest their power. Merlin had all the power of hell/druidism/whatever at his disposal, so Arthur was just a laugh for a couple of decades, then he moved on. Oh, yeah, 'Nimue' got him. Sure. Anyways, he only used his power when he was bored and wanted to freak Arthur out. Gandalf does not count, he was a demigod really, but there are others. (I am going to include warlocks, witches, sorcerers, and enchanters just to make this easier for me)(And they are going to be from history, not recent fantasy, that would be WAY to easy)
You have: Alcina, Messer Ansaldo, Faustus, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, Baba Yaga, blah blah blah. Not saying that they are real, but their accredited powers are immense.
Harkovastians seem really really good at war to me, so unless we get to have modern gear and they dont (in which case, you could swap weapons adn reverse the result, making it a bit meaningless), we dont stand much chance. I think we could make a tough fight of it, but in the end we would be screwed.
Maybe a standard American, but compared to the old Romans, Greeks, Irish, Gauls, Goths, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Turks, Russians, Huns, Mongols, some other historically vicious and successful (for a time) conquering race. I think the phalanx, for example, would throw them for a loop.
I've just noticed this doesn't have a damn thing to do with Half-Castes, so lets get back on topic.
Though I do like a good imaginary fight, I will have to start a new thread…
And I just noticed you wrote this. Ooops!
I'm the moderator, so I can break my own rules….
observe….
See, you aren't setting fair terms for how this fight works.
You seem to want to give humans modern guns, wizards from our folk law, and a perfectly unified human race that has never existed in our history.
Yeah, okay, if you can pick the fight like that, sure, humans would win.
By the same logic, if tiger wood was tied up, not allowed any clubs and boba fett put him in carbonite, then I could deffinitley beat him in a golf tournament every single time. Wooo! I just proved I am the best golfer! No, I didn't.
In the same way, you aren't proving anything by taking Medieval harkovast and making them fight modern humans.
But even if I accept your screwy system, The Speaker alone could bring down the human race in a few monthes anyway (maximum!), so then even if we go by your odds, all you would end up doing is giving the Nameless guns and nuclear weapons.
Also, if humans get figures from myth and legend, dont the Harkovastians get the same? I think Nylanna, Thane and Zha-Tsung teaming up would be enough to make the human race sit in a corner and start crying for its collective mummy.
I cant argue too hard for what Quinn-Tain can do as I dont want to give stuff away (or indeed, what the forces of the West can do) but knowing what I know, I wouldn't want to fight all of Harkovast even with modern gear, robots and merlin.
A phalanx would throw them in a loop? Tell that to the Nymus or the Ivos…
*is amused by provate joke only he gets*
I'm the moderator, so I can break my own rules….(I meant to imply equal technology weaponry, but a united army force coming trough. A legion, or something. Doesn't matter too much what it's nation was, but the Romans would be a good one for this, I think.
observe….
See, you aren't setting fair terms for how this fight works.
You seem to want to give humans modern guns, wizards from our folk law, and a perfectly unified human race that has never existed in our history.As I said, a united army, not a united race. The army would BE one race, see?
Yeah, okay, if you can pick the fight like that, sure, humans would win.
By the same logic, if tiger wood was tied up, not allowed any clubs and boba fett put him in carbonite, then I could deffinitley beat him in a golf tournament every single time. Wooo! I just proved I am the best golfer! No, I didn't.But if you defeat the best golfer in combat, you BECOME the best golfer, right?
In the same way, you aren't proving anything by taking Medieval harkovast and making them fight modern humans.Not if you set it to blow up the ENTIRE PLAAAANEEET! :O
But even if I accept your screwy system, The Speaker alone could bring down the human race in a few monthes anyway (maximum!), so then even if we go by your odds, all you would end up doing is giving the Nameless guns and nuclear weapons.
I don't know of his powers, but I have a feeling that it would be hard to apply to a vast (arr!) army all at once, spread out over miles. Perhaps, I don't know. Anyways.
Also, if humans get figures from myth and legend, dont the Harkovastians get the same? I think Nylanna, Thane and Zha-Tsung teaming up would be enough to make the human race sit in a corner and start crying for its collective mummy.But I was't using gods, see? Just powerful humans wizards. And if you want to use someone like Beowulf, Sigmund, or Hercules, that would be a fun fight. Including the various wizards, of course.
I cant argue too hard for what Quinn-Tain can do as I dont want to give stuff away (or indeed, what the forces of the West can do) but knowing what I know, I wouldn't want to fight all of Harkovast even with modern gear, robots and merlin.Nuke it all. That wouldn't be fighting it, see? They would be too dead to fight back! :O But really, I wonder. Modern gear, maybe. How about SUPER modern gear, so modern that it is from the future?! Like. Um. a weapon that turns air into needles. NEEDLES! This has been fun.
A phalanx would throw them in a loop? Tell that to the Nymus or the Ivos…
*is amused by provate joke only he gets*
Yeah. I guess they have Roman military knowledge? How about… Chinese rockets? They would break a phalanx, and had pretty long distance, so could be done again and again until it succeeded. Or the horde of Genghis Khan against the Nameless? No magic, that would be cheatery, just crazy fighters a'fightin'.
I guess that's it? This completely derailed the thread. Maybe this can have it's own thread?
I like the concept and the way you've dealt with it: obviously different from human society in that mixed race persons are usually identifiable by sight, whereas here you've made it into a different game, with it's own set of interesting consequences to explore.
I look forward to seeing how this develops. My only question is the term you use - I think it may have fallen out of general use to be replaced by mixed race and I've seen Americans use the term 'bi-racial' - it may be one of those things that people could take exception to, I'm not sure, but you should be ok with cats and birds!
My wife also made the observation that half-caste sounds like a prety unpleasent term, but this is intentional.
Harkovast is not an especially PC sort of place, being fairly medieval.
For this reason, I deliberately wanted to give them a term that sounded like it was bit offensive.
If they said "hes bi-racial" or "mixed race" or "hes a person of dual cultures" or something like that, it would make them sound much too modern and politically correct in their out look.
Half-caste sounds like a negative term, because a lot of the time that is how it is intended by the person speaking.
Look at those Junlocks cheering as they hang some poor woman, can you imagine them using anything other then a negative term?
Shifting focus slightly…in a lot of ways, due to the fact you can keep it hidden by acting in a false way, half-castes in Harkovast have a lot in common with the way homosexuals get treated in our world, more so then with the way people are treated with regard to race.
Obviously there are homosexuals in Harkovast (who get their own level of discrimination depending on which culture they live in) but as an analogy I think in someways half-castes are closer to the experiences of gays and lesbians.
Knowing that you put so much thought into these matters gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, although not in a gay or lesbian way. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course - I'm just not particularly hip to the gay medieval scene, so I look forward to reading more. Pure genius as usual.
A half-caste Nymus priest would be considered a miraculous event.
Since you cant be born looking the right way to be a preist (ie having the mark of the god you are meant to serve) if you dad is not a Nymus (as I said, unless there is a miracle!) and if you spirit is not Nymus, you would not be spiritually a priest.
No doubt there might by Nymus legends of such a mythical figure, but for the most part, the nature of the Nymus priesthood would make a half caste priest impossible.
A half caste who had a Darsai dad and Nymus mum would look like a Darsai but think like a Nymus.
He would not have wings since he would look physically just like a Darsai.
If he had a nymus dad and Darsai mum, he would look like a Nymus but think like a Darsai. So tecchnically he could be considered a winged Darsai, but he would still look lke a regular Nymus.
The half caste system renders something like a person who physically resembles a Darsai but has Nymus wings impossible.
This is interesting because it somehow suggests that culture (which is what determines the type of magic, right?) is somehow a kind of magic-genetic thing. Interesting. So average people cannot undergo a whole culture change and so change their magic? Shogun seems too have done so, after all he isn't juggling energy swords… but he might be half caste anyway…
Another question. Why did you decide to have a half-caste inherit the father's "species" but the mother's magic? Wouldn't it be easier on the mother if the child was the same species of the mother? Kinda cuts down on birth complications, yes? Anyway, just a thought or two.
You CAN learn the magic of another if you really embrace that culture.
But you would have to totally become part of that way of life and give up on the way you used to think and do things.
Magic is cultural rather than genetic, but races are genetically predisposed towards their own culture. Some will reject their culture or find they prefer another (different strokes for different folks) but most will be happiest living the way their races has chosen.
The reason I went with the fathers looks is that it has more story potential.
Firstly, a father can run off before a kid is born, a mother cant, so a kid is most likely to be raise amongst his mothers race. The fact he/she doesn't look like everyone else makes for a clear drama in his/her desire for acceptance.
Also (and this is a bit grim, but there is no nice way to say it) there is he possibility of women getting raped in wars and having babies that look like another culture. That then leads to difficult feelings regarding this child, who through no fault of their own looks like their peoples hated enemies and his mothers abuser.
A half caste could grow up hating the people he resembles for the cruelty they have inflicted on the race he feels he is actually a member of.
If the baby looked like the mother, these sort of things would be a lot easier to cover up. While the child might end up socially unable to relate to his or her peers and have a lot of internal angst, the obvious physical difference works better for story telling and dramatic purposes.
The childs mode of birth is based on the mother.
So a darsai father and nymus mother, the mother would lay an egg that would hatch into a darsai baby (who might need help getting out of the egg, admittedly), who would be spiritually a Nymus.
Good questions, by the way.
Admit it already (in fact, you did in another thread), Harkovast. They inherit their father's physical form so you could rationalize non-mammal females having breasts.
That aside, I think the concept of "genetically inherited culture" is just plain wrong. How is that supposed to work, anyway? Let's say, for example, that there's a Golta-in-Nymus who's taken at birth (BTW, you seem to have addressed the problem of a mammal needing help to get out of an egg, but not of having to give live birth to a baby with a hard beak!) and raised with his father's culture with no knowledge of Golta existing. How is he supposed to know that he's supposed to be a Golta? Is he going to think "Screw philosophy (assuming that Nymus do it, seeing as they're supposed to be ancient Greece) and luxuries (assuming the half-caste's father is rich, for the sake of argument), I'd rather be working my ass off all days for the sake of… um… some document maybe?". Are his first words to the people around him going to be be "dill-ty tol-pisshh"? It's one thing to be a misfit and another to feel fit just in one set culture you may not even know about at a young age.
Second, it's funny how this makes every conceivable national and/or (it's one and the same there) racial stereotype objectively true. Darsai are as Thane-worshiping, ale-drinking and energy-weapon-swinging as they are cat-looking.
Finally, it seems to imply that the cultures of Harkovast will never change or evolve, unless by some divine mandate. Hell, they won't even mix or borrow elements from each other! That's what really makes the races disconnected from one another, not the inability to screw each other and have offspring off that.
It's shame though that the cultures are not subject to crossing, seeing as they are genetically encoded. As fun it would be to see flying cats, it would be also awesome if, for example, crossing a Nymus with a Darsai would spark a heresy of Thane leading a pantheon of gods.
Advertise with us
DDComics is community owned.
The following patrons help keep the lights on. You can support DDComics on Patreon.
- Banes
- JustNoPoint
- RMccool
- Abt_Nihil
- Gunwallace
- cresc
- PaulEberhardt
- Emma_Clare
- FunctionCreep
- SinJinsoku
- Smkinoshita
- jerrie
- Chickfighter
- Andreas_Helixfinger
- Tantz_Aerine
- Genejoke
- Davey Do
- Gullas
- Roma
- NanoCritters
- Teh Andeh
- Peipei
- Digital_Genesis
- Hushicho
- Palouka
- Cheeko
- Paneltastic
- L.C.Stein
- Zombienomicon
- Dpat57
- Bravo1102
- TheJagged
- LoliGen
- OrcGirl
- Fallopiancrusader
- Arborcides
- ChipperChartreuse
- Mogtrost
- InkyMoondrop
- jgib99
- Call me tom
- OrGiveMeDeath_Ind
- Mks_monsters
- GregJ
- HawkandFloAdventures
- Soushiyo