StyxD-
Firstly let me clear up a misconception about the order of my thought process.
The males passing on their traits was put in for the reasons I have stated above.
The whole breasts reason was actually in the opposite order to what you think.
I gave them all breasts for artistic reasons and then worried that this made no sense, but then hada discussion with a friend of mine who assumed it was related to the the half caste thing. I liked his reasoning and it helped me justify why all females would have breasts. The artistic look of them was actually what came first.
With regard to the rest of your points-
You could quite easily grow up unaware you were a half caste, but you would still feel out of place.
While you might not be saying "oh I wish I had a document to follow and a three cornered hat to wear", you would find your natural inclinations and attitudes at odds with those of other people and the things that your fellows got excited about would seem uninteresting to you.
Now how badly you felt this way is going to vary, but the races ARE different from each other in the way they feel about things and some of that is innate to their natures.
Their cultures can change and evolve, but some aspects of their cultures are based on their natures.
Golta naturally gravitate towards a life of hard work and spartan living, as well as having a more grim disposition. So odds are that if you are secretly half Golta, you are going to tend towards these behaviours.
Now it is quite possible for a half caste to decide they really like or feel loyal to the culture they grew up in, but a lot of it wont come as naturally to them as to their fellows and a lot of the things they would be naturally inclined to do will seem strange nad innappropriate.
I will use the example of a tsung-dao who is secretly half darsai, just to illustrate my point-
This person would generally seem much more rash and impulsive than his fellows, and might well find their life style frustrating and repetitive. Other people would probably notice this and might assume he was a trouble maker or badly behaved and wonder why he struggled to maintain the disciplined life style that came easily to them. Now he could over come this, but he is coming from an inherrantly different starting point.
I can imagine half castes becoming some of the most commited advocates of a particular culture, as a form of over compensation (sort of like how converts to religions are often the most militant members.)
Basically, the cultures are not set in stone, but they reflect the general natural inclinations of the races that make them up.
Not every stereotype is objectively true because of this, but they are more inclined towards a particular way of life.
As I have stated, a person in Harkovast can adapt to another culture and learn to use another magic that is not native to them. This does have the interesting implication that if a person converts completely (and they were female) they would have then have children that shared their new magical element rather than their old one.
Additional- I posted this, but then after thinking for a few hours, it occured to me that you are actually right about something. I had over looked the beaks + live birth issue (some how that one just slipped under the radar, I thought about lizards, rhinos etc but some how managed to miss the birds!)
I've chewed it over with Mrs Vast and it been decided that Nymus babies when live born have soft beaks and so can be birthed normally. When they hatch from an egg, their bill hardens while in the egg to break out. Without being in the egg it doesn't do this till after they are born.
There we go.
Another crisis averted.
(I've rewritten this bit several times, as I've considered and reconsidered it.)
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Harkovast- the forum
Half-Castes
By having thought about it, you are right. The birth method should be determined by the fathers biology.WHAAAT??? So, like, when a male has sex with a member of some other race, he not only has chance to conceive a child of his race, completely suppressing the mother's genes, but also somehow MODIFY HER INTERNAL ORGANS so that the child will be born properly. I'd say that makes male genitalia pretty overpowered.
So now it is.
Unless females of all races naturally have an eggshell<–>placenta conversion organ. Which is equally overpowered.
Just think what would happen if some mad life wizard managed to harness that power and use it to conquer all of Harkovast by transmuting everyone's brains into livers!
Ok, I don't mean to be pushy by any means, but please change it back before it gets set in canon. That takes the whole half-caste business from doubtful to ludicrous.
I have some idea of how to solve the "giving live birth to birds" problem. The beak is too big and the child's head will invariably get stuck during birth. Unless they can give the mother a cesarean, the child will die, probably rupturing its mother's uterus and making her die from internal bleeding.
You could balance it out with some of the mammal children in eggs dying because they're to weak to even signal that they need to get out of the egg.
Yeah, that sounds cruel and messy, but who said half-castes should have it all clean? They're unnatural by definition, kinda. And it would probably add to the whole drama of half-castes and war rape.
But that's just my way of thinking. It's pretty different from yours as I see.
Also, that got me thinking, what is the mother's physical impact on her half-caste child? It's from another race, but still, there should be some. Otherwise, a father would get an identical child no matter what the female looks like… except if she's from his race, when as I understand, the child would normally inherit from both parents.
Or would it? Maybe in Harkovast the physical appearance is completely determined by the male parent?
There's one other thing
Golta naturally gravitate towards a life of hard work and spartan livingSo it actually is "screw luxuries…" in that half-Golta's case. Call me a sybarite, but I don't get how it works. I understand that Golta see themselves as being in danger from the evil foreign Tolpish and are pressured into sacrificing their personal comfort for the good of the country, maybe they're better suited to that lifestyle. But spartan living as a value in itself? Someone who never heard of Golta Nation shouldn't even think they need to do that.
Haha, I actually put that and then talked to Julie and reconsidered a better solution and changed it, apparently just as you were writing your response.
So ya know, see what you think about half caste nymus explanation version 3.
A half caste child will look a bit like both parents, like any other child, but will be the race of its dad (who it will thus resemble most….by a fairly large margin.)
With regard to teh other point, I don't entirely see your problem. Each race has sone natural tendencies of how they act because they are different from each other.
Why is this unreasonable?
A Darsai raised amongst Nymus is still not a Nymus and a lot of his gut reactions would not be the same as those of his fellows.
This seems fairly reasonable to me.
Hmm… Chen Chen is rather outgoing for a Tsung-Dao…
Hmm…
I'm sorry Hark, but by making some level of cultural behaviour genetic you have strayed into the nature/nurture debate. People who believe that how a person ends up acting depends entirely on environment is going to have some trouble swallowing this about the comic.
Personally I feel that there is some kind of balance between genetics and environment, but I'm not sure what the balance is.
Just think of this. Let us say that one of these races is genetically greedy. Now, let us say that a demogogue of some kind comes along and declares that all of race X need to be killed because they are greedy. There would actually be some basis for that then? Or what if a race was genetically lazy? It could sound like a kind of Eugenics… a word that scares the living daylights out of some people. Certainly in humans there is no "poor" or "lazy" or "greedy" gene as some Eugenicists claimed…
But either way, it doesn't actually matter! This is a fantasy comic with rules that govern it different from our own. You could have full blown Eugenics if you wished for it!
Hmm, I didn't really intend that to be some sort sociological statement.
I was just aiming for "different fantasy races are different from each other."
I hadn't really considered if this was all that controversial.
I dont think anyone would deny that nature plays a part in peoples developement to some extent. Men are different from women for example- not every man is more aggressive than every woman, there are general trends that are pretty undeniable.
The same holds true for Harkovast people. As we can probably tell from the comic, people within one race are not all the same as each other, but they have some natural instincts about how to behave which are not always the same as each other.
Studies with twins have shown genetics are a big indicator of peoples lives, so I think claiming it has no affect on people seems a bit untenable at the momment.
Also, even if you dont believe humans work that way for whatever reason…the races in Harkovast are not human and the half caste system is expressly stated to not have a real world earth equivilant in how it works.
I'm sort of surprised that this has suddenly become so controversial, as I wrote it ages ago!
I bet I would not have got this much hassle if I had written that dwarves have intrinsically different personalities from elves.
Haha, I actually put that and then talked to Julie and reconsidered a better solution and changed it, apparently just as you were writing your response.That forum software so needs the "Preview" button! My ranting is for naught now.
The new solution is quite fine, I think (if you're really rather not gonna kill the mother and child).
With regard to teh other point, I don't entirely see your problem.I'm referring specifically to the fact that Golta-in-X half-caste seemingly would strive to have a harder lifestyle than they normally have without the knowledge of why the Golta live like that in their homeland, but because it's seemingly their racial trait. Unlike Canuovea, I believe everyone has the lazy gene.
I'm sort of surprised that this has suddenly become so controversial, as I wrote it ages ago!And I've read this ages ago. You may be under the impression that I am a new reader and only recently came to the forums and got pissed at that half-caste thing (and breasts, yeah), but I only recently have had enough time to register and then formulate that rant. I never liked the way you made the half-castes work but it's your world, so…
I bet I would not have got this much hassle if I had written that dwarves have intrinsically different personalities from elves.
As for elves and dwarves, you just say so because you dislike them ;). And frankly, I've never seen a story where a dwarf raised among elves wants to go underground and mine, mine, mine. The reverse doesn't count - obviously an elf raised among dwarves would like to get up on surface, but that's only because they're too tall for the tunnels the dwarves dig.
I must admit (shocking revelation time), I haven't considered exactly how the plight of every half caste combination plays out.
The example of the Golta being hard working is probably a pretty dumb one, but I was just throwing things out as examples of what might be.
There is a half caste Golta character later on in the story (20 Harko points to the first person who can tell me their name) and they are not super hard working but have a grim, serious golta demeanor, which sets them apart from members of the race they physically resemble (I wont say which race that is…I dont wnat to make the question I just posed overly easy!)
Remember also that things on the forum are often rough, ready and and impulsive. If they sound dumb, they most likley are and anything I say on here may be subject to change before it arrives in the comic. For that reason, some things I say may be dumb, for which I apologise in advance.
If you look at the original image of the Gunsmith you will see how extreme these changes can be!
StyxD- I knew you had been a reader for a while, I pay attention. Now go check your PQ box!
Wow, people are taking the idea of half castes to extremes :P
The way I've always seen it is, the races are all tied to 2 magical elements (Well there are some exceptions but they dont matter in this case).
This means that they all have some kind of common bond, that the 14 elements are split between the races equally. With the races being able to interbreed, this would imply that the races are all biologically and magically compatible and are 'evolved' from the same base life form - kind of how neanderthals and humans could interbreed but were different species.
The fact that the child always retains the mothers 'magic' and the fathers 'race' is obviously artistic, but it should work if you think of it as dominant genes, the male always has 100% dominant genes regarding race and the female regarding magic.
Yes this isnt natural, but I was always under the impression that the races in harkovast were created - hence the rigid magical dividation between the races. That would mean that the races were created with the intention of being able to intebreed, and the dominant gene thing was also designed to work this way.
Also, after thinking about it Hark. Maybe the races should all just have mammalian births? The egg thing is kinda neat, I guess it doesnt really make sense with them having jubblies. Theres a lot of races that lay eggs in Harkovast (the world not the person) and some races coming out of eggs is just wierd? It might just be simpler (and explains titties everywhere) to have them all give birth normally - Aslo lizards lay eggs and there was a pregnant Tsung-Dao in the comic…
Also, what if there were frog people they would make frogspawn - that doesnt seem to make sense with any other race?
Well, you don't hear about a lot of elves and dwarves interbreeding. Who knows what the genetics would look like then! But even in that case, genetics would not necessarily determine culture… I could see an elf being raised as a dwarf just fine!
The half-caste system is a little bit different than that… Things are outright stated that culture is genetic to a degree (a relatively small one though). Tolkien may have actually done something similar, but not quite outright… anyway, I agree the point is a somewhat moot one in a fantasy story.
But we could perhaps still expect a kind of controversy about it.
You hear a lot about half elves and stuff in fantasy games though - thats basically the same 2 races bonking and making a half caste. Realistically half-castes should just be an amalgamation of the two races which is pretty boring when the races are similar, and bizarre and freaky when they look radically different.
To be fair the half caste system doesnt make the culture of a race genetic, it just makes the core feelings and desires of the individual genetic, which is pretty fair.
Obviously the cultures of each race are geared towards satisfying those needs and desires - A golta born in a different culture would just find it hard to fit in a Nymus society, and would find the Golta society more preferable, they arent born with a desire for the charter or anything.
This means that the races will change their cultures over time (like ones in the real world) but they will always have an underlying slant to their preferred way of life, which seems pretty natural to me.
Yeah! What Red_Ned said!
I am sticking by the eggs though.
Nymus are incapable of breast feeding not because they lay eggs but because their babies have beaks and you cant breast feed with a beak!
I'm giving some more thought to the "half caste" experience and how it would play out.
The half caste raised amongst the people he physically resembles would (even if unaware he was a half caste) have a sense of being physically 'wrong'. They would have a sense of being in the wrong skin and something being wrong with them, even if they could not identify why they had this feeling.
I think I have over simplified the sense in which races behave differently. A half golta is not going to make his own three cornered hats and want to invent a charter when he has not been exposed to these things, but his behaviour is going to be a it different to what comes naturally to his fellows.
If they dont know he is a half caste, many would probably just assume he is a bit of a misfit, or socially awkward, with some odd behaviours.
Now a well adjusted half caste would come to terms with this and resolve these issues, and its perfectly possible for a half caste to enjoy aspects of their fathers culture and find admirable things in it and learn from it while still being in their mothers culture. (A character called Red Sword who appears later on personifies this well adjusted half caste.)
As for that conspicuous half-Golta you keep referring to, I've always thought that you coloring her black and white was a joke, otherwise I wouldn't ask the question if the half-castes inherit appearance from their mothers.
StyxD- I knew you had been a reader for a while, I pay attention. Now go check your PQ box!Ironic, it's because of what you wrote in your PQs I got the notion that you think I only recently found these forums and this thread.
it should work if you think of it as dominant genes, the male always has 100% dominant genes regarding race and the female regarding magic.Except both parents pass only half of their genes to the child. You wouldn't get a complete physical specification with just that (don't know about magic). But I'm nitpicking.
Since I'm still writing in this thread and I had to look something up in the comic, let me ask this unrelated question - on the half-castes' page there's this woman hung by Junlocks, who is obviously wearing their jewelery and those awful pants. If they killed her for being a half-caste, why would they accept her beforehand?
Hark, with reference to that Half-caste Golta… Daala, Witchfinder General would be my guess… If Daala was her name… can't quite remember. Dayla actually. That's it Dayla… and this is an edit. Just thought it fair to keep the old bits… No… wait… Dalya. DALYA. Darn I even checked it. I'm tired…
Oh, and if they could interbreed, then they aren't actually different species. At least according to one interpretation. In fact, humans and neanderthals may have been on their way to becoming different species, but they weren't quite yet.
Besides, species is one of those man made categories that nature loves to ignore.
"Core feelings" or "natural inclination" is still questionable in terms of genetics, but this is fantasy anyway. And we are told that magic is linked to culture… in order to have a mother's magic, the half-caste would need the mother's culture too! So, it seems like culture is genetic.
20 points Canuovea, well done!
StykD you can have 5 points, cause I think you knew but didn't name her.
Are the races the same or different species? Thats boardering on a philisophical question as much as biological! Either way, I will let you draw your own conclusions.
The Half Caste woman depicted would (I am filling out her backstory) have lived among her own family who pressumably accepted her and would have protected her.
She would have been subect ot abuse and dirty looks from other Junlocks, but out right lynching her was not possible.
Remember, Junlcosk are pretty tribal, so if you have a reasonably sized family to defend you, then you are fairly safe.
Though evidentally she was either caught on her own or themob became so fired up that they over ran her relations and killed her anyway.
It is pretty sad when you think about it!
The chick being hung's dad was an Ivos, in case anyone was wondering.
the fact that the mother determines magic, and some of personality, but that culture itself is not genetic, opens up new problems for half-caste people. A person who goes to live with their mothers people may find more in common with the people their, but if they grew up with their father's people then the culture will be entirely alien to them. A possible disatrous example would be a junlock/golta half caste, golta being the mother. If they leave the junlocks, a society that values freedom, and go to the golta, and somehow get past the xenophobia, they'll be stuck in a spartan nightmare, with nowhere near the freedom they've grown up with. they may have been more disciplined then other junlocks growing up, but the golta society of spatan living is a reaction to xenophobia, and distrust of foreigner stemming from cultural memory of the tolpish. this xenophobia is not gentic, nor is any of the rest of the golta society.
in conclusion to this poor golta/junlock's story– they might not be able to relate to the golta any better then the junlocks, because the golta's culture is so fanatical, and stems more from nurture then nature, that anyone not raised golta would be unable to fit in.
just my two cents on the matter.
Tiberius, yeah you raise a good point.
A half caste character may well find themselves neither entirely one thing nor the other.
Of course, I should point out that not every half caste struggles with this. There are some who are completely comfortable with both sides of their heritage and are entirely well adjusted.
I don't know if I mentioned him already, but there is a famous swords man with an ano-chee father and tsung-dao mother called Red Sword who is a character later on. He is liked by people from both cultures and doesn't feel any conflict from his mixed heritage. (As evident by the fact he lives as a ronin swordsman but goes by an Ano-Chee name.)
So it can work out! The lot of a half caste doesn't have to be a depressing one.
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