Nick asks:
> Bees, caste-bound creatures of Darkness making the golden food of
Light, are probably VERY important to some Carmanian heresy: all these
repititions make it practically essential! Anyone got any ideas?
Excellent thought and two ideas spring to mind. One is that the symbol of the bee would be associated with some noble family. All the local villages of this family keep bees and pay part of their feudal obligations in honey and mead. Their local chapel/temple may be a beehive shaped structure. And, of course, their colors are black and gold.
A second idea is that one of the Carmanian schools of wizardry (or perhaps the wizards/viziers of the aforementioned nobles) practice magic based upon the image of the bee. The school or the noble's keep is the hive and it is protected by layers of defensive spells and enchantments (perhaps in honeycomb style patterns). The wizards/viziers don't use Protective Circles or pentacles, but use hexagonal patterns in their spell castings or enchantments. They may use enchantments that cause foes to be swarmed upon by controlled spirits or clusters of spells cast at once. I'm sure here are other possibilities.
Erik asks about dwarfs:
> Why are dwarves supposed to be greedy and selfish? As I see it, most
"normal" dwarves live (and sometimes die) for The Machine (ie the
Decamony, or whoever rules their dwarven stronghold).
Obviously, this is the opinion of that inferior species called humans.
> How does that compute with general selfishness?
Because dwarfs horde the knowledge of The Machine and all its parts.
> What use does a normal dwarf has for gold?
Several possibilities spring to mind. It can be used as an object of trade with humans who value its glitter in order for dwarfs to "buy" back parts of the Machine when they cannot be regained in any other way. It is extremely maleable so it is used as in parts of the Machine which require such metal. It does not tarnish, so it can be used to plate over other metals which might otherwise suffer from metal 'diseases'. Perhaps Iron Dwarfs plate their iron with gold to conceal from trolls the true nature of the weapons they use. I'm sure the dwarfs can find plenty of other uses.
> In some earlier contributions I suggested that their is a thriving
black market within dwarven strongholds
I'm not sure how extensive such a market would be or if it really would exist in a true dwarf community. Sounds more like an aberration of apostate dwarfs who have spent too much time with humans.
> maybe they use some kind of coinage
My belief is that the dwarfs carry around 'coinchangers' and coins in different metals and shapes. These are not actually coins (though humans believe them to be and value them as such because they are regularly shaped, sized, and contain standard amounts of metal), but they and the 'coinchanger' are in fact elaborate counting devices (similar in purpose/function to an abacus) which dwarfs of any caste would find useful for performing their calculations for the Machine. This is one reason why humans believe dwarfs (no matter their function) are rich and greedy, hoarding coins. The dwarfs who use these counting machines have no desire to turn over these coins since that would make their counting devices incomplete.
> Is all this talk about "greedy dwarves" and "dwarven riches" only so
much poppycock from humans who are used to treating any metal as _very
valuable_, while dwarves have these things in abundance?
Yes.
Harald
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