a question of anthropological import

[divineshadow]

FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: The Priest
RECIPIENT: e v e r y o n e
WHAT: your weird cultural practices: explain them
WHEN: waggles hand; pre-Tevinter, perhaps
WHERE: whereveer
NOTES: pre-emptive warning for Priest's weird and offensive opinions about societal organization

Inquisition.

[The voice is hard to place, neither male nor female, lingering oddly over the syllables of the word--considering. An Inquisition, proper noun. What a thing.]

Your cities are infested with beasts. You keep them in comfort and guard jealously their welfare. A caste among you even exists to care for them.

Explain this.

Comments

[thunderproof]

Beasts? Like... do you mean pets, like dogs or cats ❰ or dragons... ❱ or beasts of burden, like horses or druffalo, or...?

There's different explanations for either type of animal.

[divineshadow]

"Pets." [There is a concept that goes with this word, to the Priest's surprise: It is not well-formed. The suggestion is enough for comprehension, however--]

All of these are required for comprehension. This is not known among the djur: Women are not made to serve beasts.

[thunderproof]

Well, we don't... I mean, I guess you could see it as serving, if you wanted to, but uh... Okay, hold on.

❰ a pause as adalia orders her thoughts. ❱

Okay, so, people keep pets because they give us companionship. Some pets are kept for purpose in addition to being kept for companionship, like a dog could be used to hunt or a cat kept to kill mice, but in order for them to be good at the jobs we give them we have to take care of them in return. It's less servitude and more... symbiosis? Kind of?

And then beasts of burden, we keep them mostly just for purpose. Like a cow gives milk, which we drink, or can be slaughtered for meat, druffalo can pull plows and carts, you ride horses to get there faster, stuff like that. In order for them to do those jobs we have to provide them with food and water and stuff, but that's less servitude, again, than... investment? If you want to get something out of your animal you have to make sure it's in a condition to give it.

Does that make sense?

[divineshadow]

You sacrifice for them. Space and food to keep them comes at cost to their keepers. Servitude is so.

[The Priest's tone is patient; I guess speaks of insecurity in understanding.]

Meat can be had from wild beasts. Horses are fragile and become sick to dying if they are fed wrong. A woman of the worker caste might pull a plow--and should. To put a druffalo in her place insults her purpose.

[thunderproof]

Everything comes at cost, but if the benefits outweigh those costs, people are willing to overlook that.

❰ castes, the fuck... ❱

Isn't it easier to get eat from domesticated animals, though? What we sacrifice in space and food we make up for in energy spent hunting. The domesticated animal is a guarantee, while a hunt may return nothing. Put in the effort to breed horses, and even if one fails you will have another waiting to be used just the same. And as we don't have castes here, no one's purpose is being insulted by getting a stronger animal to do work it can do easier than any person could.

It's about weighing cost and benefit. We've weighed our animals as being more beneficial than costly.

❰ which is all way more heartless than adalia actually feels about animals (two is her nephew and she loves him, best mabari) but it seems an unlikely idea to make sense to... whoever this is. ❱

[divineshadow]

This world is a chaos without well-defined purpose--but women across the face of it have weighed all the cost of keeping beasts and agreed.

[doubt]

[thunderproof]

I don't know all people, but you're the one who noticed the preponderance of beasts about. Have you seen anyone take umbrage with their existence yet?

❰ specific animals, maybe — strays can get in the way, an animal must be corrected if it doesn't listen — but their existence as a whole is more or less an agreed-upon neutral, so far as she's ever seen. ❱

[divineshadow]

No.

That does not make it considered, only accepted without consideration. Much of the same in this world you would not leave lie.

[thunderproof]

Then it must not be an actual problem, if no one's thinking about it.

❰ nnnnnn logical fallacy okay hold on. ❱

In order for the situation to have become what it is, right, someone, somewhere, at one point, must have decided "hey this is a good idea." And then other people most have observed them doing it, agreed that it was a good idea, and continued their practice. And that must have continued for long enough that now that's just how it is, and no one has to think about it. Our ancestors all collectively agreed raising animals was helpful, or we wouldn't be doing it, and enough people must still agree, because we've still got plenty animals around.

[divineshadow]

[with something like amusement,] Or those who object are not found among the Inquisition.

[sample size, and all]

An act that is habit is done without thought or continuous approval: It is done because it has always been done. So mistakes and misplaced effort become habits of a hive, to its woe. Removing such a habit may cost what a queen is unwilling to pay, until a Priest forces matters, so it continues unquestioned.

Custom is not a virtue. Enough people agreed here mages must not be free: Yet you seek to upend it.

[thunderproof]

❰ nnnnngh she has responses to this but it's so much effort, does she care enough about this weird rifter with their hive to keep going. ❱

Comparing keeping pets and systematically imprisoning and traumatizing thousands of people is where this conversation ends, I think.

We're not a hive. We don't do things like bees or ants might, because humanoids are sort of inherently illogical. If that bothers you, you're going to have a lot of trouble here. Have a good day.

[divineshadow]

[snort.

marked and noted.]

[shri]

[ PRIEST. ]

They serve many purposes, but some, are simply loved for what they are, and that is enough for many.

[divineshadow]

[QUEEN.

Something near fondness colors the Priest's tone:] They are...surrogates...for well-ordered affection. Is it so hard to love one's own kind, o queen?

[shri]

[ She doesn't bother picking angrily, she understands him in her way, after all, he had thrown himself at her feet. ] I love many of my kind, but must I be limited? My horse died for me, just as my soldiers did, when I asked her too and for nothing in return but my love.

[ Somewhere, Kitty is rolling her eyes. ]

[divineshadow]

[Limited.

That is so strange a way to put it the Priest is a long time in replying, rolling the word over and over.]

Is there not one among your hive that went overlooked because you loved her?

[shri]

Perhaps, but never that I was told of, and I was renowned for my love of my horses.

[ All affection. ] I did my best to give myself to all of them, equally.

[divineshadow]

[So many more pieces that do not fit--but because a queen has offered them, the Priest must make more of an effort to find space.]

So a righteous queen must, if they give to her in equal measure.

[A long, puzzled silence follows.]

Are beasts then a lesser sort of person?

[shri]

[ And to her, there is no question. ] They are, and as worthy of love and loyalty for they give it tenfold without question.

[ but what good is telling him? ] Come to the stables.

[justnice]

Well... you can eat them.

[ nailed it ]

[divineshadow]

The pets are eaten, as well.

[is that humor]

[justnice]

[ he is probably the wrong person to ask ]

What else are you going to do with a dead mule?

[divineshadow]

[or possibly the best person to ask]

The idea implies otherwise: A pet is a companion as a person might be. A pet serves from love.

[wait, unless--]

Say whether you eat your own dead.

[justnice]

That's different. That's people. You don't eat people, that's... [ FUCKED UP BUDDY ] ...Well, it's probably blood magic, for starters.

[divineshadow]

If a loved beast may be eaten, then a person might be, without other differences. Say what they are.

[justnice]

[justnice]

People've got, I don't know, souls. Part of the Maker in us.

[divineshadow]

[whoa hang on]

Your god is a part of you.

[justnice]

He's a part of all of us. You too, I reckon. Whether you're a spirit or a person, or,

[ this not demons thing, it sits a bit wrong. he keeps his eyes open, he remember the sickness, the solution. doesn't understand it all maybe —

and still. ]

Anyway, we're all the Maker's children.

[misdirection_hex]

[Phrasing this imperious would ordinarily set Van on edge enough to respond in kind, had he not seen the curious softer side of it--and that in itself is the sort of thing that would want to make him react with spiteful entropic fury, given its reasons, but somehow the two reactions instead cancel each other out and he finds himself trying to hide the smile in his voice.]

A cat is the most effective bed-warmer you'll find in winter. I come from the desert. These things are important.

[yeah that's right, Priest, he lets the fanged clawed carnivore sleep in his bed whatcha gonna do about it]

[divineshadow]

[Divine Shadow, who watch over all the darks and deeps and tread between the dying stars--

If the Priest had not seen cats before to know exactly how small they are, this would be cause for considerably more alarm.]

Surely it is not so comfortable as a bedwarmer without claws.

[A male might have his eccentricities but this is weird.]

[sorcerised]

Sorry, what? What's to explain, we care about them.

[ ... ]

Well, all right, not everyone does, but people who keep pets certainly care for them, and people who keep livestock make a living out of it, too.

[circleprodigy]

...you do not have pets, where you're from?

[That's a new one.]

[whiskeyandbrimstone]

Which type of beast are ya taking about? Like, rats? or horses? I gotta figure you know what horses are. Gimme a hint. Is it bigger than a loaf of bread?

[foxsays]

Well I was given my fox as a girl to teach me to be responsible. Naturally I taught him to be my partner in crime, an extra set of eyes, a host of terrible habits. The nuggalope was...unexpected but I don't trust horses and I have short legs, Thedas has mountains, he is pleasingly roly-poly.

[And she stole one from Tevinter and demons ate it so that proves her point.]

And I have a very small escape artist who throws things or squirts water at guests. Who demands homage thinking he is lord of all he surveys. He's a lot of fun when he isn't being my most ill-behaved child.

[esquive]

[This really isn't a convincing point in the 'Rifters aren't demons, no really we swear' argument.]

We need them for work. [That doesn't explain keeping songbirds, does it?] --Mostly. And they mostly need things from us. A druffalo might get eaten in the hills and a farmer can plow a field faster with one pulling a plow.

[divineshadow]

So it has been said. [Keeping beasts. Blurring the lines between castes. And, now, speaking in many voices instead of one. Would whatever else the Priest has said not propagate to the rest of this--whatever the Inquisition is, surely not a proper hive.]

A farmer might also be helped by her kinfolk. To care for beasts, she foregoes care for her own.

[summerfae]

They're cute!

[ Bam, ur welcome. ]

[divineshadow]

Then they should be done away with, if they serve as decoration merely. [What an incredible waste.]

[summerfae]

You must be real fun at parties.

[crowncitizen]

You mean pets? Like dogs and cats? If that's what you mean, it's for companionship. Animals are comforting. They snuggle up with you, play with you, and unlike people, they don't judge you. They don't care what you look like or what you've done. You take good care of them, they'll love you no matter what.

[notacrow]

Who're you callin' a 'beast' huh? I'll peck yer eyes out!

[divineshadow]

Not you.

Beasts do not speak as women do.