Guest_Faerunner_*
Thedas is based on Medieval Europe, correct? Medieval Europe didn't have indoor plumbing or public garbage disposal. Instead, they threw their waste out the windows into open gutters in the streets (or into cesspits within their own homes if they could afford it), and threw their garbage out the window for rats, dogs, and pigs to feast on (which in turn sh*t it out). Toward the end of the medieval era, most people also didn't believe in bathing since they thought it spread disease. Since this was before deodorant, people REEKED. (Think Con Funk, only much more potent.) Cities and towns smelled like sewage, garbage, unwashed masses, animal droppings, rotting carcasses (human and animal), and more. (While some basic attempts were made to improve sanitation and sewage odor during the 1500's, they weren't significantly reformed until the late 1800's, nor perfected until the 1900's.)
Now, does Thedas have indoor plumbing and/or public garbage disposal? Do they have sewage treatment plants and/or landfills to keep said sewage and garbage far out of smell and out of mind?
Because unless they do, Thedas cities should REEK, and Sera's constant complaining that Haven "smells of horse arse" or that the Dalish "squat in the woods an smell of halla arse," as though the city somehow smells better, should hold almost no weight.
Sera has also become the spokeswoman for anti-Dalish rhetoric, as people like to quote her saying, "[Elven] 'glory' squats in the woods and smells of halla arse." But you know what? Unless Thedas has indoor plumbing and public garbage disposal services to take their sewage and rubbish far out of smell and out of mind of the city, Thedas cities should smell FAR WORSE. A few dozen people occasionally taking a dump in the seclusion of the woods (where it can be buried in a hole and/or decompose naturally) before moving on would be downright FRAGRANT compared to the scent of thousands of unwashed people living in close quarters to each other for generations, dumping their daily waste and rubbish into cesspits and the open streets, and turning local rivers brown and slushy with their collective filth.
And you can't explain it with "It's a world of magic, so a mage did it" either because a) Andrastian human society is so mage-phobic that mages get locked up in Circles. b ) In DAO, Wynne complains of the Dog's smell, and if the Warden asks if she can't use use magic to zap the smell away, she gets stern and says something like, "That not how magic works, and you know it."
NOTE: I know that how people dispose of their waste isn't what most people want to think about when they fantasize about a medieval setting. I certainly don't. But if you're going to play the "Dalish elves stink because they squat in the woods" card, you better acknowledge that medieval city folk most likely don't have any more sophisticated sewage disposal than that, and that there are thousands of times more people to make the stench that much more unbearable. (Also non-pet animals inhabited medieval cities as much as rural areas; horses for transportation, cattle, pigs, goats, stray dogs, rats, etc. Some of which are seen in the City Elf Origin intro.)
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