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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
The Possible Racial Contentions of Verra
Mionikoi
Member, Alpha Two
Hello everyone. Today I would like to try to broach the topic of fantasy races in video games butting heads and even going so far as to war, steal each other's territory, and a long list of other things.
In my opinion, I believe this can be handled maturely and make a world feel lived in. An avenue that provides political struggles, biases and history in an ever growing cycle.
Overall, I think it is a topic worth talking about.
Why do the races HAVE to get along? Can they? Do they? Have they always? How do they conflict?
I think a great example to approach this subject, especially in writing, is to make everything FAR from clear cut. No real good guys. Just people getting by with their own quirks. Often times screwing each other over in the process.
An example of such a thing being The Elder Scrolls series and the lore and history that you can dig up.
Ultimately, I have found that there are no 'good' people on Nirn. People that are just trying to live? Sure. But everyone to some capacity has been a jerk to another or worse to some extent, one way or another.
And on a surface level, you could say for example the Nords are just isolationist elf haters... Then you start learning about the elves. From the time of the Ayleids to the modern Thalmor and the Dunmer house of Dres. Yeah...
And it makes you wince. Because everyone has motivations. And no party mentioned are totally nice innocent sweethearts. Not the Nords. Not the beast folk. And not the elves.
So what about Verra? Frankly, I could see all of the races having some kind of beef with one another. The Tul'nar seeing everyone as invaders, the Dunir dwarves seeing Empyrean elves as aloof, haughty and unapproachable knife ears. Pig nose orc, arrogant humans, and you name it.
Dirty kidnapping goblins? Check! Demon worshiping minotaurs? Maybe. Flesh eating nuckelavee that ravage the countryside and terrorize all of known civilization at large? One could hope.
There is a countless amount of possibilities for tension, reactions, culture friction and overall dialogue. From civilized races to the more monstrous.
What do you think? Please keep the conversation civil and be mature about it. This subject is about a fictional world that is not our own.
MY Own NIckle Co-operates with an EYE. -Mīonikoī.
4
Comments
tell that to some people in this forum xddd
I think you would get along well with the Bosmers. I wonder if that could be a thing where some or one of the other races will eat a fallen player's corpse.
Edit: 🤔 Maybe that could also be a Py'rai thing. Or not. Or not
Role-playing goals.
I look forward to experiencing an insult to dwarves that is not generic ie: Short comment, smelly bc of digging in dirt, or booze related. So rare to find someone that can come up with a new insult and it is rather boring.
It would be something if dwarves tell a tul'nar player to 'tuck their tail between your legs and go back to the underdark where you belong!'
...
Tul'nar will have tails, right? Right?
I'm pretty sure the AI is not going to be so robust that the NPC reaction states change enough to refuse to do business based on reputation - except while characters have Corruption.
Thank you! Correct; It does NOT equate to IRL racism, as some of our resident snowflakes would like to believe.
As someone who hopes to run for a Mayorship one day, I approve this message....
In all seriousness? SS and IS have been purposefully tight-lipped about a LOT of the lore-to-be, thus far; They want us to experience it for the first time, in-game. Yours truly suspects that we really won't the the races' disposition of each other until we login to Sanctus (or the Underrealm, for Tulnar).
I'm presently suspecting that the hardship of the Exodus will have at least initially made the races quite interracially tolerant, having undergone unspeakable disaster, together.
However?
Enough millenia have passed on Sanctus for some of the races to split into sub-races, from the ones that initially left Verra. We also don't know the conditions they found, upon arrival; You can only live for so long on the natural, un-cultivated resources of the land. There may well have been tensions and wars and conflicts between the people of Sanctus that we will have no inkling about, pre-launch.
I suspect there will probably have been both secular cities/nations that will have formed, as well as mixed-race civilizations/cities on Sanctus. Probably there won't be a lot of racial tensions, though, given that we're sharing the Divine Gateway to Verra.
Maybe hundreds of years in Sanctus might have also made the peoples more ornery due to crowding and lack of resources. Or fun. Or loud music. Or any number of reasons that could compound over time making it a place to desperately want to escape...
Walking ale-barrels,
Ore-hogs,
Ore-meisers,
Stone-bedders,
Dust-breathers,
Waist-high stone-splitters
Hard not to relate them to height or mining.
For the TULNAR? Well, that's a little easier....
Un-bathed gophers,
Hole-digging in-breeders,
Cavern-trash,
Animal-humpers,
Fur-faces,
Tail-waggers,
Cat-eyed monstrosities,
Hide-covered mutants,
Mushroom-housers,
Scale-skinned weirdos,
Claw-fingered untermensch,
Portal-dodgers,
Whisker-faced freaks,
Ground-scum,
Were-people,
Fungi-feeders,
Horn-ed rats,
Sunless under-dwellers,
Root-fed pests,
Up-right stripe-ed beasts,
Wing-ed creeps,
Mole-people,
Cage-free fowl,
Dog-toothed fuglies,
Worm-eating belly-crawlers,
Dung-structure builders,
Leash-less pet-store escapees,
Hoof-ed (hooved?) dirt-miners,
Beak-mouthed insect-peckers,
Soil vampires,
....and last but not least? Snake-hole squatters - because you know they didn't dig all those tunnels and caverns by themselves!
I’m gonna find it funnier when I loot your skulls and mount them on my wall.
Encourage griefers to make a Tul'nar character. Encourage justification against the races that fled to Sanctus. Write it all off as roleplaying. Also war against nodes tsken over by other races.
Race wars achieved. It is still all roleplay in a fantasy MMORPG.
Tell them that their mothers look like hamsters,
And their fathers smell of elderberry.
And their food tastes of oatmeal mixed with tofu.
One of the *VERY* few bits of lore that we have on the Tulnar (or the game, for that matter), is that immediately after the cataclysm, the Tulnar were sealed away in the depths of the Underrealm. Only very recently did the ground shift, un-sealing their caverns; their return to the surface-world of Verra happens to coincide with *our* return. It's unclear yet if that happened during the 1st group of settlers/explorers through the portal, or with ours - but they have NOT had access to the surface, while our people have been gone.
You're not gone, you're an entirely different group.
The four main races split into either two sub ethnic groups or stayed on Verra with the rest of the sentient races and became Tulnar.
One is either native to Sanctus or native to Verra.
And only Tulnar are native to Verra.
I'm not really into the racey roleplay stuff others are, I'm just into respect. You either respect Verra and respect the fact Tulnar never left or you do not.
Verra is big enough for many different peoples, that's the Tulnars lineage. What Verra isn't big enough for, is some Sanctus native, born on Sanctus walking through the portal, "AH FINALLY WE'VE RETURNED." No, no you haven't.
It should be, "Hopefully I can make Verra the home and hold a greater respect than my ancestors ever could."
Tul'nar: You defaulted on that when you left.
Dunir: Beer and whiskey!
This seems fairly accurate