Hm, that's a good point. 
I didn't even consider the possibility of RL cultural differences mucking up the localization of lore posts. As an American, when I read "battle," I think "combat." In Japan, that's not necessarily so.
I'll concede that there's probably a lot of ways that modern miqo'te can interpret the concept of "battle," and frankly, we don't know enough about historical ones to make a statement either way about them. We're seeing some examples of that in this thread, actually, as each of us bring our personal interpretations to the table based on what we want to do with our characters in their pasts and in their futures. Personally, I find the "red in tooth and claw" argument especially persuasive given what else we know about miqo'te (territorial, solitary, predatory, nomadic -- all things that don't really go with complex ritualized activity but instead with quick, brutal resolutions, IMO), but that's just me. I also find the "other challenges are okay, too" argument vastly less persuasive because of the effort the devs put in to explaining other ways to become nunh, for instance. If they really wanted to open the door to all types of challenges, they'd have said so. (We have to look at lore as both things the devs say, and also things they don't say. A dev never said that you can't transdimensionally port characters from City of Heroes into Eorzea, but that doesn't mean that's a grey area of lore and so it's cool to do so.)
Regardless of what the norm is (or whether you believe a norm can be determined -- I do, others don't, and without a dev saying, "By battle, we mean physical fights to the death," or, "We meant to permit all forms of conflict when we said 'battle'," no one has a monopoly on being right here ), you should come up with a reason why your tribe acts the way it does and be prepared for conflict with others on that basis.
Actually, that gives me an idea. Perhaps one of the reasons why tribes conflict is related to the nature of challenges. If one tribe uses, say, cooking to the death and the other uses violent battles of fists, the second tribe may actively seek to subsume the first because they're "weak." Of course, I'm getting off-topic with this line of reasoning.
I didn't even consider the possibility of RL cultural differences mucking up the localization of lore posts. As an American, when I read "battle," I think "combat." In Japan, that's not necessarily so.I'll concede that there's probably a lot of ways that modern miqo'te can interpret the concept of "battle," and frankly, we don't know enough about historical ones to make a statement either way about them. We're seeing some examples of that in this thread, actually, as each of us bring our personal interpretations to the table based on what we want to do with our characters in their pasts and in their futures. Personally, I find the "red in tooth and claw" argument especially persuasive given what else we know about miqo'te (territorial, solitary, predatory, nomadic -- all things that don't really go with complex ritualized activity but instead with quick, brutal resolutions, IMO), but that's just me. I also find the "other challenges are okay, too" argument vastly less persuasive because of the effort the devs put in to explaining other ways to become nunh, for instance. If they really wanted to open the door to all types of challenges, they'd have said so. (We have to look at lore as both things the devs say, and also things they don't say. A dev never said that you can't transdimensionally port characters from City of Heroes into Eorzea, but that doesn't mean that's a grey area of lore and so it's cool to do so.)
Regardless of what the norm is (or whether you believe a norm can be determined -- I do, others don't, and without a dev saying, "By battle, we mean physical fights to the death," or, "We meant to permit all forms of conflict when we said 'battle'," no one has a monopoly on being right here
), you should come up with a reason why your tribe acts the way it does and be prepared for conflict with others on that basis.Actually, that gives me an idea. Perhaps one of the reasons why tribes conflict is related to the nature of challenges. If one tribe uses, say, cooking to the death and the other uses violent battles of fists, the second tribe may actively seek to subsume the first because they're "weak." Of course, I'm getting off-topic with this line of reasoning.
The Freelance Wizard
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
