The Sin wrote...
I am surprised that this has not been brought up a lot in the forums or in the game.
The Qunari society is very systematic, rigid, orderly, role-restrictive and disciplined. This all makes for a cohesive, united society, each with one particular role. Which is on one hand, great.
However, this also exposes the Qun to some major weaknesses. The way their society is structured means they are like a body. One part does one thing in order for the body to function as a whole.
I'm game for this. I'll also bring back this body metaphor.
What happens if say one part of the Qun is destroyed / wrecked / sabotaged ? The Qun is made up of the millitary, the priesthood and the craftsmen. What happens if the millitary is completely defeated ? Will there be anyone from the priesthood or craftsmen sect of the Qun be willing to take up arms / capable to take up arms ?
Sure- and why not? Like a body, there's more than one way to fight than making a fist.
As catastrophic military defeat generally spells the doom for any organized government or civilization, a failure from that point would be a natural consequence of any victim, not a unique weakness of the Qunari society.
I'll also point out that while the Qunari prize their specialties, they aren't incapable of multi-tasking. The priesthood has a means of lethality. The Arishok deigned to recruit and assimilate Kirkwall destittues, a task normally for the priesthood.
We know that Qunari are uniquely vulnerable to magic and that it was mages that brought the fight to the standstill and the Kirkwall mages played a big part when Qunari invaded there. & Tevinter, it is magic that is keeping Qunari at bay. Realistically, all that is needed to cripple the Qunari millitary is more magic. In DA:I, the Veil is torn so there's that. & mages are now sort of dependent.
Qunari aren't uniquely vulnerable as much as it was uniquely ineffective in their own magics. Based on more nuanced readings of the histories, mages were neither the deciding factor for avoiding defeat not dominating victors on the offense.
So that's the first weakness. Cripple one of the triumvirate and the other two are gone because if you cripple a part of the body, the body ceases to function effectively. & Qunari are all about effectiveness.
How is that a weakness of Qunari society as opposed to any organized body? If you destroy the military, any organized resistance becomes ineffective.
The second is that Qunari being orderly, disciplined and strong adherents to a specific tenet, teachings of Koslun means that they, for the most part, think similarly and fight similarly.
Sort of like the Protheans. One doctrine, one strategy. Now we don't have Reapers in Thedas but imagine what would happen if the other nations in Thedas, particularly Tevinter or the Dwarves, manage to either figure out and combat their battle strategies or manage to be on par with them technologically ? Just saying, it won't be pretty.
You confuse discipline for ideological purity, and ideology for military doctrine. Besides that the Reapers didn't beat the Protheans because of tactical inflexibility, but a whole other host of strategic reasons.
The simple answer is 'the Qunari adapt', because that's what bodies do to different sorts of challenges. When you run and there's a wall, you stop running and climb. If there's a river, you ford or swim. When there's a dangerous beast, you make tools and weapons. When there's a castle, you make tools to tear the walls down.
By the Qunari's own ideological parallels, they have a great deal of ideological justification for flexibility and organizaational/societal evolution. Bodies aren't static and unchanging, so why should they be?
Thirdly, because their are strong adherents to a single tenet, they do not assimilate or evolve their culture. What I mean is they do not change. The only way the Qunari have even had a semblance of change is by warfare and indoctrination (get new adherents to their doctrine).
On what grounds can you support any of these claims?
They still have the same attitude towards magic despite its potential to defend & protect (enchantments, alchemy, healing magic, etc).
Which attitude? That magic is dangerous? Magic in Thedas is, on an objective level, dangerous. Why would that attitude have to change?
It's not that the qunari completely abandon the idea that magic is helpful- DA2 demonstrates that. Either the Qunari have always acknowledged the potential boon of mages (hence why Hawk can meet one), or at some point after encountering Thedas they learned to (disproving any claims of an inability to adapt). That they don't embrace the Circle system or mage liberationist ideology doesn't mean they are incapable of assimilation of other ideas. To test that, we'd have to introduce culture they might want to adapt- like cookies.
No, seriously- whether or not Qunari start baking cookies is far more relevant to ideological and cultural flexibility than whether they make a deliberate decision about how much they wish to rely on and risk with magic.
They are extremely unwilling to share their secrets with other societies.
Er... because their secrets often hold great competitive advantage for them. Why would they want to share their secrets with other societies, and make their own goals more difficult?
Now i am doing my studies in anthropology and so far I have not come across any single society that has lasted without assimilation and changing. Ever. Either they get conquered or they lose the arms and tech race.
So the Qunari society is fine and dandy but it only seems to work if their opponents are not as advanced as they are, not as united as they are and not having figured out this yet. Given time, technologies converge to a point. Given time and cause, peole can be united and be intelligent enough to figure this out.
I am just wondering, with all these , that I could in Inquisition...especially as a Qunari Inquisitor who is a Vashoth, to have an intelligent debate with other Qunari about this. That for all their claims, they have their weaknesses just like other societies and they should be more open to assimilation, be more open to magic and have a backup plan in place should one part of their society be wrecked.
Thoughts?
I find your premise that the Qunari are unchanging and incapable of assimilation as unsupported, and strongly suspect it is wrong. You are posing ideological restrictions on Qunari culture that the Qunari themselves have not claimed.
If your Inquisitor tried to have an intelligent debate with other Qunari about this, they could very simply point out that the Inquisitor is ignorant about the sort of claims he or she is making.
Then they might laugh, or the Qunari equivalent (because don't we all know they are stoic to a culturally uniform 't', end sarcasm), and note to themselves that such ignorance is inherent with being a Vashoth because if you
weren't ignorant of the Qun on some fundamental level you would be a Qunari and not a vashoth.
Which might be an ideological fallacy, but no different than the one you have composed.
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