167 réponses à ce sujet

[Dean_the_Young]

CybAnt1 wrote...

So what, again, is the importance of kossith?

It's a racial term, without any religious implications. Perhaps the perfect term to use to refer to somebody of the race, without having to know whether they do, or do not, follow the ethos/belief system of the Qun. 

Wow, that didn't take many words at all. 

You know what's another racial term that doesn't need to carry religious implications?

Qunari.

Beat you to one.

[WidePaul]

The first time I saw the word kossith was on these forums, I don't tend to read all the codex entries and I've not read any of the novels, I only know what I have personally seen and heard ingame, and that is Qunari, Qun and Tal-vashoth, and that is what I will use. If people want to jump all over me for that, then fair enough. I will always try to use correct terminology for the real world, but I'm not gonna stress about a fictional people in a game.

[Battlebloodmage]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

That makes things even simpler, and Kossith even less important.

Qunari if you're talking about people of the race.
Qunari if you're talking about people of the culture.
Tal-Vashoth if you're talking about people who have left the culture.
Hyphenated-Qunari if you're talking about people not of the race but of the culture.
Hyphenated-Tal-vashoth if you're specifying about the people not of the race who have left the culture.

And if someone doesn't know the lore of qunari society, such as that no one goes around calling ox-men kossith and that the proper term for ox-men is qunari, you kindly enlighten them and they learn something about a franchise.

:-)

David Gaider made the distinction when I asked whether the Qunari will be an ex-Quanri when he talked about the protagonist being a tal-vashoth. He stated that we will be Vashoth. I'm not sure if it means that Vashoth implied we're being born outside the Qun. 

[CybAnt1]

Qunari if you're talking about people of the race.
Qunari if you're talking about people of the culture.
Tal-Vashoth if you're talking about people who have left the culture.
Hyphenated-Qunari if you're talking about people not of the race but of the culture.
Hyphenated-Tal-vashoth if you're specifying about the people not of the race who have left the culture.

Works, unless the hyphen key on your keyboard breaks. 

[CybAnt1]

Qunari.

Good Dean. Now prove it.

"Bob is a Qunari". 

Do you know, given that sentence, and no other context, wheter Bob is
a) a member of the qunari race but not b
a practicioner of the Qunari ethos but not a
c) both

Now, if I say Bob is a Kossith, we do know something:

a) he belongs to the horny-folk race
he may or may not belong to the Qun (but given the attitudes of 'modern-day' Qunari to their past and the term, most likely not) 

Reduction of ambiguity, is a glorious thing. When a word works better without having to throw in a lot of hyphens. 

[Trolldrool]

ShawDawg94 wrote...

Kossith: The Race
Qunari: Followers of the Qun
Tal-Vashoth: Kossith who are not followers of the Qun

Does it need to be any more complex than that?

To be honest, the third option creates complexities to me because Tal-Vashoth are former Qunari that are violently opposed to the Qun. By this model, elves or dwarves that leave the Qun and are violently opposed to it wouldn't be able to call themselves Tal-Vashoth because they're shorter than other qunari and don't have horns.

Tal-Vashoth to me just translates to deserter. It's just due to the brainwashing from birth that qunari that leave the Qun have difficulties with leaving the 'my function is my name' principle, so they all call themselves Tal-Vashoth.

Modifié par Trolldrool, 04 février 2014 - 11:54 .

[Fast Jimmy]

CybAnt1 wrote...

So what, again, is the importance of kossith?

It's a racial term, without any religious implications. Perhaps the perfect term to use to refer to somebody of the race, without having to know whether they do, or do not, follow the ethos/belief system of the Qun. 

Wow, that didn't take many words at all. 

Agreed. The term Kossith is incredibly functional and it allows for no misunderstandings. People who care about how "elite" they do or do not look are inconsequential. 

[Fast Jimmy]

Trolldrool wrote...

ShawDawg94 wrote...

Kossith: The Race
Qunari: Followers of the Qun
Tal-Vashoth: Kossith who are not followers of the Qun

Does it need to be any more complex than that?

To be honest, the third option creates complexities to me because Tal-Vashoth are former Qunari that are violently opposed to the Qun. By this model, elves or dwarves that leave the Qun and are violently opposed to it wouldn't be able to call themselves Tal-Vashoth because they're shorter than other qunari and don't have horns.

Tal-Vashoth to me just translates to deserter. It's just due to the brainwashing from birth that qunari that leave the Qun have difficulties with leaving the 'my function is my name' principle, so they all call themselves Tal-Vashoth.

I disagree. Non-Kossith people who lapse in the Qun are simply Bas again. Based on the downward manner Kossith Qunari look at non-Kossith converts to the Qun, them turning back on the Qun isn't a loss to the Qun, but simply a lesser being showing they are incapable of a more refined existence. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Is it, though? I thought Kossith referred not to the race, but to the pre-Qun culture.

[Zanallen]

CybAnt1 wrote...

Good Dean. Now prove it.

"Bob is a Qunari". 

Do you know, given that sentence, and no other context, wheter Bob is
a) a member of the qunari race but not b
a practicioner of the Qunari ethos but not a
c) both

Now, if I say Bob is a Kossith, we do know something:

a) he belongs to the horny-folk race
he may or may not belong to the Qun (but given the attitudes of 'modern-day' Qunari to their past and the term, most likely not) 

Reduction of ambiguity, is a glorious thing. When a word works better without having to throw in a lot of hyphens. 

Actually, kossith does not refer to the race of the whatever you want to call them. It refers to the culture they used to belong to before the Qun. Theoretically, there are no kossith just like there are no real Gauls anymore. It is a culture that no longer exists. And technically, there may have been people of other races who belonged to that culture along with the people who became the Qunari. Perhaps the giant people with or without horns lived alongside blue skinned goat people and they were all kossith, but the metallic ox-men were driven off to form their own culture durinbg their wanderings. Suffice to say, there is no term that describes the species of the giant sometimes horned metallic skinned people that make up the majority of the Qunari culture.

[CybAnt1]

The Wiki says otherwise. I don't know why people say it refers to a culture.

It is an anthropological term - or maybe zoological - takeyerpick.

http://dragonage.wik...om/wiki/Kossith

Kossith is the name of the humanoid horned race[1] that predates the Qun.

[end]

Theoretically, it is also a cultural term, as they appear to have had a culture before the Qun, the religion was based on animism and shamanism. But I think the first sentence on the Wiki is fairly clear.

I mean, dare I say, rather obviously so. 

Modifié par CybAnt1, 05 février 2014 - 12:05 .

[Rotward]

I don't care, people need to get over it.

[Battlebloodmage]

CybAnt1 wrote...

The Wiki says otherwise. I don't know why people say it refers to a culture.

It is an anthropological term - or maybe zoological - takeyerpick.

http://dragonage.wik...om/wiki/Kossith

Kossith is the name of the humanoid horned race[1] that predates the Qun.

[end]

Theoretically, it is also a cultural term, as they appear to have had a culture before the Qun, the religion was based on animism and shamanism. But I think the first sentence on the Wiki is fairly clear.

I mean, dare I say, rather obviously so. 

Wiki? 

[Fast Jimmy]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Is it, though? I thought Kossith referred not to the race, but to the pre-Qun culture.

That may be the case, but it becomes a de facto easy way to refer to the race easily. 

[Dean_the_Young]

Battlebloodmage wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

That makes things even simpler, and Kossith even less important.

Qunari if you're talking about people of the race.
Qunari if you're talking about people of the culture.
Tal-Vashoth if you're talking about people who have left the culture.
Hyphenated-Qunari if you're talking about people not of the race but of the culture.
Hyphenated-Tal-vashoth if you're specifying about the people not of the race who have left the culture.

And if someone doesn't know the lore of qunari society, such as that no one goes around calling ox-men kossith and that the proper term for ox-men is qunari, you kindly enlighten them and they learn something about a franchise.

:-)

David Gaider made the distinction when I asked whether the Qunari will be an ex-Quanri when he talked about the protagonist being a tal-vashoth. He stated that we will be Vashoth. I'm not sure if it means that Vashoth implied we're being born outside the Qun. 

If he's using vashoth, which identifies a action-relationship (one who left), then the implication is that you had to have been inside the Qun in order to leave it.

Of course, that well could change... but the reason it would change is that the writers change their intent of how a Qunari PC is portrayed, which could happen regardless.

[Fast Jimmy]

Battlebloodmage wrote...

CybAnt1 wrote...

The Wiki says otherwise. I don't know why people say it refers to a culture.

It is an anthropological term - or maybe zoological - takeyerpick.

http://dragonage.wik...om/wiki/Kossith

Kossith is the name of the humanoid horned race[1] that predates the Qun.

[end]

Theoretically, it is also a cultural term, as they appear to have had a culture before the Qun, the religion was based on animism and shamanism. But I think the first sentence on the Wiki is fairly clear.

I mean, dare I say, rather obviously so. 

Wiki? 

The Dragon Age Wiki.

Fan supported and hardly official, but a huge resource and very well linked and documented. 

[Zanallen]

CybAnt1 wrote...

The Wiki says otherwise. I don't know why people say it refers to a culture.

It is an anthropological term - or maybe zoological - takeyerpick.

http://dragonage.wik...om/wiki/Kossith

Kossith is the name of the humanoid horned race[1] that predates the Qun.

[end]

Theoretically, it is also a cultural term, as they appear to have had a culture before the Qun, the religion was based on animism and shamanism. But I think the first sentence on the Wiki is fairly clear.

I mean, dare I say, rather obviously so. 

Mary Kirby: "Kossith" is an antiquated term, not a technical one. It was used to describe the culture that predated the Qun. It may not have even been the name of a race at all. It's the equivalent of calling white people, "Occidental." A few members of the Qunari priesthood are going to recognize the word, but no one else in Thedas would know what the heck this term means.
Modern Qunari do not have a term for their race for the same reason that nobody in Thedas has a name for their planet. As far as they are concerned, the world consists of people and things-that-aren't-people. All other distinctions are unimportant. 
Other Thedosians do not draw distinctions between Those Tall Guys Who Sometimes Have Horns Who Follow the Qun and The Other Tall Guys who Sometimes Have Horns Who Don't. They are all, "Qunari" to the humans, elves, and dwarves."

[CybAnt1]

Theoretically, there are no kossith just like there are no real Gauls anymore.

Yet I can go to France and find you French people singing songs that mention the Gauls, as well as buildings that bear their name, and the symbol of France is the Gallic (Gaulish) rooster.

Obviously, though I will agree the word is not in the most common usage, but look, here it is 2000 years or so later, and it's still around. 

I also guarantee you that most Frenchmen will know what you mean if you use the word "Gauls".  They might look at you funny if you call them "Gaul," but probably not as angrily as if you call them "Frog". 

It is a culture that no longer exists.

The Qun seems to have destroyed that culture, much as Islam seems to have wiped out the pre-Islamic culture of Arabia. Well, actually not, as you will still find many pre-Islamic customs among Arab people. 

Suffice to say, there is no term that describes the species of the giant sometimes horned metallic skinned people that make up the majority of the Qunari culture.

Maybe not a word that's used in-game by anybody other than a few Thedan scholars and antiquarians who we will never meet, but guess what, there's a word that works just fine on the forums. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Mary Kirby: "Kossith" is an antiquated term, not a technical one. It was used to describe the culture that predated the Qun. It may not have even been the name of a race at all. It's the equivalent of calling white people, "Occidental."

This is what I was thinking.

[TurretSyndrome]

"I wish I was a Qunari"
"Do all Qunari have a sweet tooth?"
"I wonder why so many Qunari despise magic."

There's your summer homework kids, try to find out who or what I'm referring to.

Edit: Oh also the recent thread made about Kossith settlements(where it was easily understood that the OP was tallking about the overall race in general)

If he had made the thread with the title "How many Qunari settlements are there in Thedas?". 

Modifié par TurretSyndrome, 05 février 2014 - 12:22 .

[CybAnt1]

Modern Qunari do not have a term for their race for the same reason that nobody in Thedas has a name for their planet. As far as they are concerned, the world consists of people and things-that-aren't-people. All other distinctions are unimportant. 

That's cool, but as I keep pointing out, while my inquisitor will live on Thedas, *I* live on a place I like to call Earth, and I do not need to do what Thedans do. Not only do I not live on Thedas, I am NOT of the Qun (thank the Maker), and do not have to be unconcerned with what THEY are unconcerned with. I'm concerned, so I'm going to use a word that suits my uses. 

BTW, I have heard the proper term is Theodosian, but that's too long, and do not give a sh*t. 

[Battlebloodmage]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Battlebloodmage wrote...

CybAnt1 wrote...

The Wiki says otherwise. I don't know why people say it refers to a culture.

It is an anthropological term - or maybe zoological - takeyerpick.

http://dragonage.wik...om/wiki/Kossith

Kossith is the name of the humanoid horned race[1] that predates the Qun.

[end]

Theoretically, it is also a cultural term, as they appear to have had a culture before the Qun, the religion was based on animism and shamanism. But I think the first sentence on the Wiki is fairly clear.

I mean, dare I say, rather obviously so. 

Wiki? 

The Dragon Age Wiki.

Fan supported and hardly official, but a huge resource and very well linked and documented. 

They're using the quote from the World of Thedas as the source, so it's dependable, but it's just a pet peeve of mine when people quoting wiki pages. David Gaider and Mary said it's not technically correct, so maybe there are varied opinion on the word among the writers. 

[CybAnt1]

Well, guess what, if their opinions can vary, so can ours.

Imagine that.

[Battlebloodmage]

CybAnt1 wrote...

Well, guess what, if their opinions can vary, so can ours.

Imagine that.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious. I didn't see it that way before.