Give the elves a bit of land somewhere, have their nobility rule it but beholden to the throne of Orlais.
In all things.
It's a premise I've been wondering on for a while.
It gives the elves a bit of freedom and Orlais disposable shock troops in wartime.
I always figured that this would be a possibility, wether it be with Celene and Briala, Gaspard/Briala, or Gaspard or Celene alone whose friends with an Elven Inquisitor.
Finished reading the past six or so pages and most of my likes went to Addai. The concept of encouraging modern, first world standards of tolerance and civil rights onto a Thedasian society seems like wishful thinking.
I also saw the interest of a minority group in preserving their culture equated to segregation, which seems rather off to me.
So you're prepared for it to come to war? How should it be fought? Is there a realistic chance for victory anytime soon?
Oh, you want a plan. Okay, we'll need to vote on it, but here are a few ideas:
Shianni got off to a good start when she was named Bann of the Denerim Alienage. She needs to be at every Landsmeet and she needs a household guard, to which she is entitled. These guards will train and be well-armed. They won't start any trouble but neither will they allow any harm to come to the Bann or the Alienage. They will keep the city guard out of the Alienage, reminding them that the Bann has authority within, not them.
Then we open up the Alienage. We establish a Mission to help anyone who needs aid. Food, medicine, a place to sleep, a job, etc. Every elf is encouraged to contribute, but we open it to anyone, elf, human, dwarf, or misc.. Only the most desperate would come to us, but that's fine, that's exactly where we'll find friends. The Mission does not require that you worship any gods, but we invite the Chantry to send a priest to provide comfort to those who want it, as well as the dwarves and the Dalish. This serves a number of purposes: it shows good will, it preempts any claim that we are 'corrupting the faithful', and it provides protection, as any attack on the Mission would also be an attack on a member of the Chantry. Within a year, it becomes established in people's minds that the Alienage is a place for those in need to find friends.
We're still training guards to protect all of this, and they in turn start training civilians to protect themselves in the event of an invasion. We also start training Irregulars. Their job is to spy, ambush, and retaliate against anyone who fights elves or elf-friends. Nothing overt, and nothing that can be traced back to us: shoot them in their baths and run out before anyone sees them. Drop Antivan fire through the windows and get out. That kind of thing. Never fight them on their terms, because that fight cannot be won. Just make it so that fighting us is more grief than it is worth.
We then start training 'Missionaries' to go out to other Alienages and show them how to organise as we have. They won't have a Bann, but they can name their own spokespersons to represent them. Keeping out the city guard is not an option for them, but their militia can guard the guards to ensure that they behave. When clashes inevitably happen and some of our people die, we take note of names, and those guardsmen and their leaders find themselves murdered in their beds by our own Irregulars. Meanwhile, the Missions continue, winning us hearts and minds. Alienages are now populated by people of all races. When you attack the Alienage, you attack more than just elves.
We encourage our tradesmen to organise into guilds. By working together instead of competing, even across cities, they will soon dominate their markets, but again, these guilds will be open to tradesmen of all races, and they will see that it is to their advantage to become members. That gets elves, dwarves, and humans coming together as smiths or tanners or cobblers instead. There will be opposition and they will need to be defended, both by guards and by the threat of the Irregulars.
We start encouraging our people to spread out. Get out of the Alienage, but go where you are likely to find friends. They know you, they work with you, they drink with you, they're not going to drive you out of their neighbourhoods. If trouble does come, you can probably count on their help, and we'll be watching out for you too.
And now we have enough political capital to make demands. We have people in political posts. 'We' are not even 'the elves' any more, we are 'the people'. Our children play together with no thought to their physical differences and have never known anything else. The Irregulars retire and turn to drink to try to forget the worst of it, and our Guard becomes 'The Guard', having replaced the old guard. If we're not too old yet, we can now start an anarchist revolution, or maybe we can leave that to our children.
Obviously it's a rough outline. 
Maybe we should stop feeding the trolls now. Evidently this gets us nowhere.
*snip*
Your first mistake is in assuming that the point of Dalish existence is to spite humans. That may be one of their rallying cries, but they exist to survive as a people. Humans are irrelevant to that goal.
The fact that the Dalish are hunted by templars and others has been well established in all three games.
No, I think it's very apposite, because if civilisation is only an illusion and we are all savage beasts at heart, then you are right about everything else. But if mutual aid and cooperation are evolutionary facts and people can ultimately be trusted to look out for each other in the end (with some bumps along the way), then I'm right. It's at the core of what you and I believe, which in your case seems to be a very low opinion of humanity as a species. I believe the opposite, I think that left to ourselves people will always come together and help each other.
Sure, people will help their in-group. That's basic survival. It entails a lot of going to out-groups to take their stuff, one way or another. One tactic a weak out-group can use is to beg the stronger to become part of their in-group. Maybe you'll even get to join them in taking others' stuff someday- if you survive the hazing rituals. This is essentially the city elves, and if we're honest, this is how most if not all of us live our daily lives- hoping to escape the notice of someone big and powerful enough to crush us like a bug. It's the compromise we make to survive. You can shine that up and call it "looking out for each other" if you like. That's an illusion.
In a video game power fantasy, then, I'm not going to default to that. Never. Rather, I'm going to live the dream that self-determination is possible.
Maybe we should stop feeding the trolls now. Evidently this gets us nowhere.
No we should not stop. It is not "trolls" It is a troll. One.
What are you? 12? Cuz your replies seems to look like that.
Sure, people will help their in-group. That's basic survival. It entails a lot of going to out-groups to take their stuff, one way or another. One tactic a weak out-group can use is to beg the stronger to become part of their in-group. Maybe you'll even get to join them in taking others' stuff someday- if you survive the hazing rituals. This is essentially the city elves, and if we're honest, this is how most if not all of us live our daily lives- hoping to escape the notice of someone big and powerful enough to crush us like a bug. It's the compromise we make to survive. You can shine that up and call it "looking out for each other" if you like. That's an illusion.
That's just not my experience of people, or how I read history. Let me share a little story with you:
I've been in one major disaster in my life, the '85 earthquake in Mexico City. Half the city just fell down, and for three days the authorities were paralysed. People were trapped, families were displaced, everything was in chaos, and there was no official response. But somehow, spontaneously, the people of the city got out there and began to sort it out. We all got out there and self-organised. Doctors, builders, students, shopkeepers, middle class, working class, we all turned up without anyone telling us to and somehow a rescue came together. It was all 'How can I help? What do we need?' A doctor says we need antibiotics and a group of students go and get them. An engineer says pull on the rope, and people come and pull on the rope. Shopkeepers turn up with food. Someone says look after these kids and I babysit the kids (I'm 13 at the time). Usually most of these people wouldn't even talk to each other, but right now, it's as if we're all one team; class and race distinctions disappear. We're the people of the city, period. I still tear up remembering it.
It came out later that the government was absolutely terrified. If the people of the city could handle such a major crisis without any help from them, we might start wondering whether we really needed them at all. So they sent in the police to stop us and finally got around to sending in the emergency services. Of course, many firemen and paramedics and so on had already been there with us, but they were out of uniform. Apparently, the uniform made all the difference, go fig. They spun the story that we had been doing more harm than good and a few people were identified and arrested, just to make a point. I was there and I saw what I saw, we saved a lot of lives and we helped a lot of people. Looking after children who had lost their parents may not seem like much, but I helped. We all helped.
It taught me two things. First, that all authority is a scam. Sometimes they do their jobs and sometimes they don't, but either way we don't need them, and their worst nightmare is that one day we'll figure it out. And second, that people may treat each other like crap all the time, but when we're pushed to it, when it really comes to it, we come through for each other, because at heart we're not 'out-groups' and 'in-groups', we're all one people.
Now I've talked with some ancient fossils who lived through the Blitz as children, and funnily enough that's pretty much what they remember of it too. It wasn't the King's bloody speech that got them through it, it was the people of London working together at a time of crisis, with very little help from the so-called 'authorities'. There were some hoarders and some scammers, but they were the exception. It's those times that we see what people are really made of, and as it turns out, we're made of some pretty good stuff.
I really hope I can change your view of humanity. I know that it may seem at times like it's all 'dog eats dog', and cynicism sounds more 'realistic' than optimism, but it's just not so.
Or the humans need to acknowledge them as people.
If they want support, outside of the humans who regularly abuse them, often for no more reason than existing with pointy ears, the only people who treat them fairly besides other elves is the qunari.
I respect that the Qunari are quite likely the least racist group out of all of them in the dragon age setting, but it's a sad day indeed when the qun is better than every other society on a social issue.
Despite I like the Qunari, I still think they only help the elves for their own interest. They do not seem to be inclined to help any elf, I think they are more inclined to cease fire in Tevinter. In other words, if the elf want to convert, ok. Otherwise they do not care much.
Thanks, but none of what you said contradicts my view. And I am definitely with you that the so-called authorities are only authorities or useful when they occasionally feel like it. I can never understand how people want to invest them with huge amounts of power to achieve some middling social justice goal and then are shocked when they abuse the greater authority you've given them. Does it never occur to people that one is related to the other?I really hope I can change your view of humanity. I know that it may seem at times like it's all 'dog eats dog', and cynicism sounds more 'realistic' than optimism, but it's just not so.
Those who try to openly rebel often find themselves purged, like the Denerim Alienage under Vaughan and Howe, and the Val Royeaux Alienage purged under Celene during her power struggle with Gaspard. (3,000 elves cut down; that's nothing to sneeze at.)
It was Halamshiral alienage that was purged not the one in Val Royeaux.
Celene killed 3000 elves in Halamshiral more to save face than actually dealing with the rebellion.
And not that it changes much but I don't know where people get that 3000 figure. In the book it's either "a few hundred elves peasant" and "a few thousand elven lives".
So could be less or could be more. Or between the two.
Maybe we should stop feeding the trolls now. Evidently this gets us nowhere.
Yes, the killfile is there for a reason.
That's just not my experience of people, or how I read history. Let me share a little story with you:
I've been in one major disaster in my life, the '85 earthquake in Mexico City. Half the city just fell down, and for three days the authorities were paralysed. People were trapped, families were displaced, everything was in chaos, and there was no official response. But somehow, spontaneously, the people of the city got out there and began to sort it out. We all got out there and self-organised. Doctors, builders, students, shopkeepers, middle class, working class, we all turned up without anyone telling us to and somehow a rescue came together. It was all 'How can I help? What do we need?' A doctor says we need antibiotics and a group of students go and get them. An engineer says pull on the rope, and people come and pull on the rope. Shopkeepers turn up with food. Someone says look after these kids and I babysit the kids (I'm 13 at the time). Usually most of these people wouldn't even talk to each other, but right now, it's as if we're all one team; class and race distinctions disappear. We're the people of the city, period. I still tear up remembering it.
It came out later that the government was absolutely terrified. If the people of the city could handle such a major crisis without any help from them, we might start wondering whether we really needed them at all. So they sent in the police to stop us and finally got around to sending in the emergency services. Of course, many firemen and paramedics and so on had already been there with us, but they were out of uniform. Apparently, the uniform made all the difference, go fig. They spun the story that we had been doing more harm than good and a few people were identified and arrested, just to make a point. I was there and I saw what I saw, we saved a lot of lives and we helped a lot of people. Looking after children who had lost their parents may not seem like much, but I helped. We all helped.
It taught me two things. First, that all authority is a scam. Sometimes they do their jobs and sometimes they don't, but either way we don't need them, and their worst nightmare is that one day we'll figure it out. And second, that people may treat each other like crap all the time, but when we're pushed to it, when it really comes to it, we come through for each other, because at heart we're not 'out-groups' and 'in-groups', we're all one people.
Now I've talked with some ancient fossils who lived through the Blitz as children, and funnily enough that's pretty much what they remember of it too. It wasn't the King's bloody speech that got them through it, it was the people of London working together at a time of crisis, with very little help from the so-called 'authorities'. There were some hoarders and some scammers, but they were the exception. It's those times that we see what people are really made of, and as it turns out, we're made of some pretty good stuff.
I really hope I can change your view of humanity. I know that it may seem at times like it's all 'dog eats dog', and cynicism sounds more 'realistic' than optimism, but it's just not so.
I loved this, but of course, humans will always organise and then over-organise, it's unfortunately our nature as zoon politikon (ζῷον πολιτικόν).
And elves are no better, it seems.
And promote pogrom, which is what they do.
And promote pogrom, which is what they do.
Persecutions can be used to consolidate a revolution though... If you or your kids are going to be killed anyway, what do you have to lose?
Persecutions can be used to consolidate a revolution though... If you or your kids are going to be killed anyway, what do you have to lose?
Nothing, you need to believe that your sacrifice will not be in vain. Believe that a future can be built on top of the dead.
Shianni got off to a good start when she was named Bann of the Denerim Alienage. She needs to be at every Landsmeet and she needs a household guard, to which she is entitled. These guards will train and be well-armed. They won't start any trouble but neither will they allow any harm to come to the Bann or the Alienage. They will keep the city guard out of the Alienage, reminding them that the Bann has authority within, not them.
Shianni was already murdered, so that's out. I also think, though I'm not positive, that the Alienage bann would be subordinate to the arl of Denerim. Not to mention that there are already laws in place against A. elves holding weapons, and B. elves fighting humans even in self-defense, so you couldn't start with this; under Ferelden's current laws, all of the guards would have to be human. You'll need to fight battles in court to get that changed, and there's hardly any guarantee of it happening.
Then we open up the Alienage. We establish a Mission to help anyone who needs aid. Food, medicine, a place to sleep, a job, etc. Every elf is encouraged to contribute, but we open it to anyone, elf, human, dwarf, or misc.. Only the most desperate would come to us, but that's fine, that's exactly where we'll find friends. The Mission does not require that you worship any gods, but we invite the Chantry to send a priest to provide comfort to those who want it, as well as the dwarves and the Dalish. This serves a number of purposes: it shows good will, it preempts any claim that we are 'corrupting the faithful', and it provides protection, as any attack on the Mission would also be an attack on a member of the Chantry. Within a year, it becomes established in people's minds that the Alienage is a place for those in need to find friends.
You'll need to train your guards damn fast (and who would do the training?), especially since if you somehow did get the weapon ban overturned, you'd be harassed to hell and back by people who thought you were plotting an insurrection, and blood would almost certainly be shed.
We're still training guards to protect all of this, and they in turn start training civilians to protect themselves in the event of an invasion. We also start training Irregulars. Their job is to spy, ambush, and retaliate against anyone who fights elves or elf-friends. Nothing overt, and nothing that can be traced back to us: shoot them in their baths and run out before anyone sees them. Drop Antivan fire through the windows and get out. That kind of thing. Never fight them on their terms, because that fight cannot be won. Just make it so that fighting us is more grief than it is worth.
The mindset of the enemy will already be paranoid at this time, and you'll have trouble enough trying to get the elves not be blamed for things they didn't do, much less the ones they did. And fighting internal rebellion is never more grief than it's worth for people in power who are afraid they might lose it; it's not like fighting foreign guerrillas who can wear down a country's appetite for foreign adventurism. The American Civil War happened primarily because most of the slave states were angry about the federal government not doing enough to protect slavery's legal status and quell slave rebellions.
We then start training 'Missionaries' to go out to other Alienages and show them how to organise as we have. They won't have a Bann, but they can name their own spokespersons to represent them. Keeping out the city guard is not an option for them, but their militia can guard the guards to ensure that they behave. When clashes inevitably happen and some of our people die, we take note of names, and those guardsmen and their leaders find themselves murdered in their beds by our own Irregulars. Meanwhile, the Missions continue, winning us hearts and minds. Alienages are now populated by people of all races. When you attack the Alienage, you attack more than just elves.
And any signs of your militia anywhere would lead to violent purges everywhere your group attempted to organize, with your solution apparently being some kind of assassin's guild that's been conjured out of nowhere, something that would lead to even heavier retaliation; even people who might have been sympathetic in theory to the elven cause aren't going to tolerate elves who have the idea that they can just kill human nobles. Not to mention that Alienages are already overcrowded, in addition to being very poorly off in general, so the number of people who aren't elves who'd live there voluntarily would be extremely slim, especially if they could go to these missions while still living somewhere else.
We encourage our tradesmen to organise into guilds. By working together instead of competing, even across cities, they will soon dominate their markets, but again, these guilds will be open to tradesmen of all races, and they will see that it is to their advantage to become members. That gets elves, dwarves, and humans coming together as smiths or tanners or cobblers instead. There will be opposition and they will need to be defended, both by guards and by the threat of the Irregulars.
Putting all the previous aside, how will they compete with the guilds already present?
Honestly, I don't think any part of this idea would work. It also does nothing at all to address Dalish concerns.
That's just not my experience of people, or how I read history. Let me share a little story with you:
I've been in one major disaster in my life, the '85 earthquake in Mexico City. Half the city just fell down, and for three days the authorities were paralysed. People were trapped, families were displaced, everything was in chaos, and there was no official response. But somehow, spontaneously, the people of the city got out there and began to sort it out. We all got out there and self-organised. Doctors, builders, students, shopkeepers, middle class, working class, we all turned up without anyone telling us to and somehow a rescue came together. It was all 'How can I help? What do we need?' A doctor says we need antibiotics and a group of students go and get them. An engineer says pull on the rope, and people come and pull on the rope. Shopkeepers turn up with food. Someone says look after these kids and I babysit the kids (I'm 13 at the time). Usually most of these people wouldn't even talk to each other, but right now, it's as if we're all one team; class and race distinctions disappear. We're the people of the city, period. I still tear up remembering it.
It came out later that the government was absolutely terrified. If the people of the city could handle such a major crisis without any help from them, we might start wondering whether we really needed them at all. So they sent in the police to stop us and finally got around to sending in the emergency services. Of course, many firemen and paramedics and so on had already been there with us, but they were out of uniform. Apparently, the uniform made all the difference, go fig. They spun the story that we had been doing more harm than good and a few people were identified and arrested, just to make a point. I was there and I saw what I saw, we saved a lot of lives and we helped a lot of people. Looking after children who had lost their parents may not seem like much, but I helped. We all helped.
It taught me two things. First, that all authority is a scam. Sometimes they do their jobs and sometimes they don't, but either way we don't need them, and their worst nightmare is that one day we'll figure it out. And second, that people may treat each other like crap all the time, but when we're pushed to it, when it really comes to it, we come through for each other, because at heart we're not 'out-groups' and 'in-groups', we're all one people.
Now I've talked with some ancient fossils who lived through the Blitz as children, and funnily enough that's pretty much what they remember of it too. It wasn't the King's bloody speech that got them through it, it was the people of London working together at a time of crisis, with very little help from the so-called 'authorities'. There were some hoarders and some scammers, but they were the exception. It's those times that we see what people are really made of, and as it turns out, we're made of some pretty good stuff.
I really hope I can change your view of humanity. I know that it may seem at times like it's all 'dog eats dog', and cynicism sounds more 'realistic' than optimism, but it's just not so.
The problem is that, while you might be right about major crises, those are all temporary. I admit that I haven't been to Mexico City, but I'm just going to guess that the feeling of camaraderie across race/class lines wasn't exactly permanent. Or that they've managed to come together again to fight off the drug cartels on any kind of lasting basis. "What people are made of" applies just as much to daily living as to major crises... and if you turn up the major crisis long enough and make them live in hell regularly, then that camaraderie will fade when the crisis becomes the new normal.
Also, when it comes to making lasting changes, like in the various racial struggles in America, authority to enforce equality is pretty damned necessary. Because when your enemy is other humans instead of a natural disaster, you have to stop their violent actions with your own violence or the threat of it.
A Foederati state is still their best bet IMO, particularly for the Dalish as they have warriors worth a damn.
If Tevinter's Archon could swallow his pride and offer the Dalish terms like "help us fight the Qunari and you get Seheron/some other corner of the Imperium"
Obviously this issue would be controversial in Tevinter because of their racist attitudes towards most elves, but we also see glimmers of "Imperium first, race second" in some cases which would be nice to play up.
A Foederati state is still their best bet IMO, particularly for the Dalish as they have warriors worth a damn.
If Tevinter's Archon could swallow his pride and offer the Dalish terms like "help us fight the Qunari and you get Seheron/some other corner of the Imperium"
Obviously this issue would be controversial in Tevinter because of their racist attitudes towards most elves, but we also see glimmers of "Imperium first, race second" in some cases which would be nice to play up.
Not to mention if the elves would put aside the fact that they were once enslaved to Ancient Tevinter (and that their people are still slaves there)?
Yeah too much bad blood. Even if more elves were allowed into the upper strata of Tevinter society like the Romans did with their foederati, there would still be the bitter historical hatred.Not to mention if the elves would put aside the fact that they were once enslaved to Ancient Tevinter (and that their people are still slaves there)?
A Foederati state is still their best bet IMO, particularly for the Dalish as they have warriors worth a damn.
If Tevinter's Archon could swallow his pride and offer the Dalish terms like "help us fight the Qunari and you get Seheron/some other corner of the Imperium"
Obviously this issue would be controversial in Tevinter because of their racist attitudes towards most elves, but we also see glimmers of "Imperium first, race second" in some cases which would be nice to play up.
The Archon would be assassinate for this choice.
its still probably their best bet, Tevinter is the only human nation that can spare the lands and needs the troops that badly.
An armed insurrection would only end like Halamshiral
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