The burgeoning focus

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

When do dwarven children obtain their focus? It can't be a birth thing, because at the age of birth, the mind is not capable of even forming collective thought. So, when?

[Canadian Beaver]

Hmm, I always kinda like to think they'd adopt one of their parents focus and work towards it until something comes up to give them their own focus.

[Sintti]

My Dwarf saw something at the impressionable age of six, if I recall correctly. She decided: That is what I want. And that was it. Her focus was totally different from what her family was doing.

Every Dwarf is an individual, though. Some might know very early, some might take longer. Some might know why they picked just this goal, others might feel they were born with it.

[Larrath]

I view it like this:

As soon as a dwarf becomes aware of their surroundings (ages four-six, seven if they're dumb), they develop some yearning for a focus.

Some dwarves will immediately discover that their purpose in life is to make the world's best edible furniture, and thought about nothing other than that since they can remember themselves.

Some dwarves might take a bit longer to consciously look for a focus (finding the best/oddest/whatever focus IS a valid focus, don't forget), and then find a focus at some age.  It can be thirteen, it can be twenty six, it can be one day before they die.

In fact, a handful of dwarves may look for their focus for their whole lives and never discover it.

[X-D]

I think that dwarves develope focus FAR earlier, I'll explain.

First, Help files state that if a dwarf completes a focus then the next one will be something even harder to complete. And that a dwarf is NEVER without focus.

Taking that, it makes sense that early foci will be very simple, getting harder and harder as they go, the starting ones may not seem even like a focus but only normal growing up, much the same as a human or elf.

Learn to talk, learn to walk, find out how baby dwarves are made, etc etc.
Also, remember that dwarves age slower, so, age six might very well be still in the learn to control bladder time. Now, once that is all done, all the normal growing up stuff, then a "true" focus will develope, still something that will be achieved reasonably easily, Climb that wall, find a perfectly round stone, who knows, I think that by the time a dwarf reaches adulthood they will have completed 10+ foci and be getting into foci that start to involve much more time and planning. And thats how I play it.

[Marauder Moe]

Perhaps every dwarf's first focus is to find a focus.

I'm not sure that learning the basic skills of life is something a baby/child dwarf would normally pursue with focus-like tenacity.  If you had a baby dwarf with a focus of learning to talk, he/she might not stop until he/she has learned every language in the known world and might never learn to poop properly.

[X-D]

Sorta of a silly thought though, since a baby dwarf would have no clue that other languages existed, they would only know they wish to do what the other (mommy) dwarf is doing, whatever that is. You need to try and think a bit more like a child while at the same time adding in this focus thing. Like anything, personality, mind, body etc, a focus or even the need of a focus would need to grow and develope. Nothing starts full blown, one would even need practice in having a focus or the need to have one.

Of course some of this thinking has to do with the way you play a focus with your dwarf (if you have played any). Myself, my dwarves do not know of this thing "focus". If asked (and they have been) They normaly answer with something like "What the fuck are you talking about?" No, it is an innate drive to do this thing, whatever it is, it is normal, it plays into every action they take, but they do not think of it as "some force" driving them...see, thats the thing, they are not human, They do not have the ability to change their minds on this...quest......hhhmmm...Alright, try another tact here.

To me, there is no focus, I think it is a bad way to explain how the dwarf mind works, instead, a dwarf has a goal of some sort and the way his/her mind works is to put that task above all others in a compulsive fashion, so much that everything has to tie into completing this task. But everything a dwarf does will work in this fashion, even if it is not directly focus/goal related, they simply do not know how to give up, they do not understand the word impossible, they do not have a sense of fear for self, but do have a sense of fear for task. To not complete anything would be a source of emotional stress to a dwarf. A dwarf would kill his own mother without much thought if she was in the way of his focus and the only way he could see to fix that was by her death, other dwarves would think nothing of it unless her death impeded their focus or helped it.

Friendship does not work the same way with dwarves either, to them, a friend is somebody who in some manner is helping them to the goal, if they become unneeded for this completion he will basicly just forget about them, no matter how long they have been "friends".

So, a baby dwarf would only be able to "focus" on a task limited by the knowledge they had, and that knowledge would be very limited do to inexperiance, comprehension and lack of advanced cognitive thinking abilities.

X-D, who has once again stayed up all night and is posting.

[Marauder Moe]

Well, perhaps I should clarify: I know a baby dwarf couldn't possibly have a focus to learn all languages.  However, my understanding is that a dwarf's current focus is usually related to a previously completed focus.  Thus, if learning to say "momma" was a focus, once mastered the dwarf might move on to "dadda" and so on until mirrukim is mastered, then move on to sirihish, and in adulthood have a desire to learn every type of spoken word.

Also I do understand that this focus mental mechanism is a subconcious and natural thing for a dwarf.  It isn't something that is taught or discussed, its just the way dwarves are.  The term 'focus' is completely OOC and is only used to help us understand how dwarven thinking differs from the typical Earth-human's thinking.

[jstorrie]

Dwarven foci, I would think, would grow exponentially more complex as they grew.  A human baby and a dwarven baby are probably pretty similar - their only focus is survival.  As they grow older, they way in which they act and think begins to diverge; the human begins taking on many complex goals at once, while the dwarf continues to tackle only one goal, but that goal itself becomes more and more complex.

[Anarchy]

Dwarven foci, I would think, would grow exponentially more complex as they grew.  A human baby and a dwarven baby are probably pretty similar - their only focus is survival.  As they grow older, they way in which they act and think begins to diverge; the human begins taking on many complex goals at once, while the dwarf continues to tackle only one goal, but that goal itself becomes more and more complex.

I tend to agree with this, o tend to feel a focus is inspired in a dwarves youth, much the same way as children, when watching a ninja fighting loose cannon cop arrest a big baddie and we gasp and mutter with each other then say "I want to be a cop when im older!" - while we humans tend to forget and move on once we understand its a pointless and unrealistic goal, i would feel a dwarf becomes obessed with it - and develops into a focus.

I also have to say this, i did give a small laugh when i read the post about a dwarf having the focus of saying "mumma" then "Daddy" A human baby begins to speak at about, mm, about a year old, give or take a few months, during that time they dont understand language, they dont think beyond the need for assistance, their brains are still developing - a first lanauge wouldn't be a focus, it would just be somthing that comes to them.

[X-D]

A human baby begins to speak at about, mm, about a year old, give or take a few months, during that time they dont understand language, they dont think beyond the need for assistance, their brains are still developing - a first lanauge wouldn't be a focus, it would just be somthing that comes to them.

Just pointing out a couple things, because it seems to be the biggest problem people have with these subjects, and that is thinking in human terms about a NONhuman. We know nothing about dwarven childhood, there are no docs on it, so, we can only speculate using the docs for the adult model. Hell, a dwarf might not start talking till 6 or 10 years old. Try and think with an obsessive mindset, not even about just certain things, but everything...sigh, hard to explain without making a HUGE post.

But think of this, with the dwarven mindset, it -might- be common for dwarves to not baby talk, to not even begin speaking untillfour, five, six years old, and then when they do, they may speak in perfect mirukkim.
Why? First, again, remember NOT human, second if the obsessive mindset of a dwarf developes early enough, he/she might simply not speak until untill they -know- how. Actually, I knew one human child that did that, did not do baby talk, or the mamma dadda stuff, parents were worried when at 16months old he was not speaking, had taken him in for hearing tests and other things to see what was wrong. At about 18 months he began speaking, and in sentances, from scratch, true, short simple sentances consisting of simple words, but shocking to the parents and people around him none the less.


Anyway, Jstorrie explained simpler and shorter then I did on how I feel dwarves grow.

jstorrie wrote:
Dwarven foci, I would think, would grow exponentially more complex as they grew. A human baby and a dwarven baby are probably pretty similar - their only focus is survival. As they grow older, they way in which they act and think begins to diverge; the human begins taking on many complex goals at once, while the dwarf continues to tackle only one goal, but that goal itself becomes more and more complex.

[Marauder Moe]

I also have to say this, i did give a small laugh when i read the post about a dwarf having the focus of saying "mumma" then "Daddy" A human baby begins to speak at about, mm, about a year old, give or take a few months, during that time they dont understand language, they dont think beyond the need for assistance, their brains are still developing - a first lanauge wouldn't be a focus, it would just be somthing that comes to them

Exactly, it ties back to my original post about how focuses involving such basic skills of a dwarve's life wouldn't be very common.

[Avril]

The idea that dwarves can kill their own mothers, children, spouses or friends  doesn't work well with evolutionism. If dwarves truly are social creatures (and I know they are... Mirukkim wouldn't have survived as a cohesive language otherwise), they probably have an affinity towards some form of social order (at least among their own people) that keeps them from hacking at each other, at the very least.

Dwarven societies would have ways of ensuring that the foci of newborn children will develop in such a way that they will contribute to the welfare of society as a whole. If they didn't, they would quickly become extinct, along with the entire dwarven race. So why do dwarves have such different and seemingly irrational foci? Probably because they were moved away from their society and placed into a human environment. Just like a child left in a forest will grow up feral, these dwarves will grow up to develop a "wild" focus. Humans might not notice it, but some tribal dwarves might be surprised and sickened by the individualism of their city-dwelling counterparts. I imagine that in a tribe of dwarves, the survival of fellow tribesmen would be groomed into a focus. A dwarven weaponscrafter would want to make the damn finest longswords in the whole gol krathu region - they'd have to be made from gurth bones, sharpened with the kind of file his master uses and ~held by his fellow tribesmen~, because if these swords were bought and used by some city-dwelling taffer, they wouldn't be perfect anymore. It's like the tribesman's hand is the final ingredient, the icing of the cake, that makes the whole construction process all the more satisfying in the end. That's how a dwarven tribesman would be thinking, in my humble opinion.

Bottom line is, take society into consideration. Just like a focus shouldn't go against the dwarf's need to survive, it also shouldn't go against his social needs - in fact, these needs might very well determine his system of values, and implicitly, his focus.

Actually, I knew one human child that did that,

I was like that myself, by the way... It's a very common thing, especially for people with asperger's syndrome (a form of high-functioning autism), who supposedly understand human speech well enough, but just don't bother to do it until they're two or three years old.

[Vettrock]

Somewhat off topics, but I've always been bothered by the lack of dwarven communities.  There are elven, human, mantis, and gith communities.  Half-giants probably shouldn't be left unsupervised long enough to have a community (besides theirs would just be a copy of someone elses anyway)  But I think there should be at least one dwarven village out there.  Although I could just assume there are virtual villages, but its not really the same.

[spawnloser]

Vettrock, dwarves were primarily a slave race, unlike mantis, gith, elves and humans.  For the same reason, it is unlikely that you will see any Mul villages (though, that would be funny to see, not too mention short short-lived in the grand scheme of things).

[Krath]

Vettrock, dwarves were primarily a slave race, unlike mantis, gith, elves and humans.  For the same reason, it is unlikely that you will see any Mul villages (though, that would be funny to see, not too mention short short-lived in the grand scheme of things).

Without going too IC, you are wrong about one of those things in your post

[EvilRoeSlade]

Villages are created based on a specific economic need, not because a bunch of the members of the same race decide to leave Tuluk and build their own village.  It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that dwarves were used exclusively as slaves thousands of years ago.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

There are dwarven tribes.

[Vettrock]

If dwarves are primarily a slave race, why did they develop their own language.  This to me implies that there are, or should be dwarven communities/villages at least.

Muls are different because they are sterile, and bread as slaves, just like half-giants are different because they don't have a culture of their own.

[Marauder Moe]

Mirrukim predates the rise of human empires.

[Angela Christine]

The idea that dwarves can kill their own mothers, children, spouses or friends  doesn't work well with evolutionism.

Post-apocolyptic dying planet.  We're already dead, we just don't know it yet.  And once your society is in its death throws, evolution becomes almost meaningless because evolutionary advantages won't help your decendants prosper, it just means they may become extinct a little slower.

In DarkSun a magickal mishap actually turned their sun into a dim red star instead of . . . whatever it was before:  Hence the "dark" sun.  I don't know if something similar happened in Zalanthans or not, but calling it post-apocolyptic implies there was some sort of apocolypse.  Something REALLY bad happened, something that almost killed the world.  I assume it happened after the colapse of the old Council of Kings, durring the time of the Dragon, and that it was worse than merely introducing Defiling.

Personally, I like to think that Defiling does more than simply kill  a few plants and leave behind a little ash.  I think it leaves behind a more dangerous legacy, something like radiation storms, but no radiation that exists in our world.  This Magickal Radiation (MR) is rarely directly leathal, but it does have severe mutagenic properties.  Not just on organisms either, this stuff can mutate innanimate objects, alter weather patterns, change the very nature of matter and energy.  After particularily vulgar uses of Defiling, such as those the Dragon or other Sorcerers might use in times of war, storms of MR roll accross the land invisible to most.

These storms are capable of dramatic effects.  Not simply warping one creature, but by the principls of sympathetic magick warping many similar creatures as well, even if they are not in the direct path of the storm.  This allowed gigantic insects to exist, their chitin somehow strong and light enough to act as an exoskeleton without having them colapse under their own weight, and  simultaniously splicing in the resperatory system of another type of creature entirely.  Most of these dramtically mutated creatures were not as lucky as the gigantic insectoids, like the poor rodents that were stuck with the limbs and resperatory system of an octopus -- they died out pretty quick.

Of course these changes affected humanoids as well, because humanoids were usually at the center of the dramatic magickal effects that caused the storms.  Prior to the cataclysm the races of Zalanthas were very much like the typical Tolkienian or Forgotten Realms type races they share their names with.  Dwarves were short, stubborn and hairy.  Elves were graceful, enlightened, and lived fantastically long lives.  Halflings were comfort-loving farmers with a flair for sneakiness.  And so on.  In just a couple generations they changed radiacally.  Like other creatures, many humanoid lines were warped into something that could not deal with the changing environment.  The elves that were merged with polar bears and became yeti-like creatures soon died from heat stroke.  Some died out more slowly, like the tribe of humans whose female children started developing vagina dentata, making it very, very difficult for them to reproduce successfully.  :twisted:  

Dwarves were one of the races that recieved a mutation with the possibility to *slowly* drive them extinct.  Losing all their body hair and their beloved beards was a shock, and the lack of hair (including eyelashes and eyebrows) does cause some difficulty since hair helps to protect delicate bits from blowing dust and sand.  More damaging in the long run may be a subtle biochemical change in their brains that turned their stubborn nature into something dangerously obsessive.  In effect, all dwarves are now genetically predisposed to something very like a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  They don't want to abandon their children, kill their mothers, or sever all ties with their communities, and most of them don't.  I don't think they would drop their families on a whim or just because that family doesn't have any immediate effect on their focus, but if the family becomes an obvious impediment to their focus they will have an internal conflict as they try to reconcile the problem.  They might think up a new way to approach the focus that causes their family to not be a problem, or they might get rid of the family.  In the long run it isn't a good survival trait for the species, but there may not be a long run to worry about.



Angela Christine


PS.  I don't *know* anything, I'm just speculating in the way that I usually do.

[EvilRoeSlade]

I am so over Delirium now.

[Avril]

Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There -are- no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals. For instance, we can in theory splice the native plants' talent for nitrogen fixation into a terran plant.
Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "Nonlinear Genetics"

Alpha Centauri is one of the few games I truly admire, not so much for its gameplay (wonderful though it is), but for its cultural value... As this particular quote points out, it's not always the case that one gene corresponds to one trait, like social aptitude. In fact, that's very rarely the case. And before someone comes in and says that the creatures of Zalanthas might not even use genes... Let's pretend they do.

[Delirium]

I'd be hurt and insulted, but instead I think I'll fight with ERS over AC.

(Awesome post. But this entire thread should be filed under the 'you know you're obsessed when....')