@ Luke Maciak:
How long ago? A few centuries, or long enough for evolution to have taken place?

@ Mike:

Keep in mind that none of the humans are native to the island. They are all colonists that displaced the native population after arriving from elsewhere. The current territories have been shaped by where they established original colonies, and through armed conflicts, alliances and etc..

Nord ancestors originally landed in the North West corner of the island.

Sorry, a little late coming to your page, but if you’re still around checking this stuff, question.

Why’d you put the darkest skinned people in the frozen north? Biologically, ethnic groups tend to get lighter as you go north and darker as you go south for a reason. More melanin, less sunlight absorption. Too little sunlight, you end up with horrible vitamin deficiencies, too MUCH, you fry. So people living in cold regions far from the equator, with short days and long winters evolve light skin to make the most of the little sunlight available to them (aside from the inuit, who are SO far north that sunburn from light reflected off snow puts them all the way back around in the other direction), while people in tropical, warm regions with an excess of bright sunlight evolve dark skin to protect themselves from burning and associated cancers.

So, assuming that your humans are biologically…well…humans, as we are in the real world, we’d have the same biological tendencies, so you might wanna reconsider who goes where on the map.

@ Aaron:

I honestly don’t think this is an issue. In a medieval style setting you require two fertile people of opposite biological sex to bring a child into the world. If your society has monogamous marriages, then it doesn’t matter whether the mother or the father dies in battle – you have the same population replacement problem.

Consider this: our western societies had mostly male military, monogamous marriages and titles/privileges inherited down the paternal line. This meant that if a man died (in battle, or otherwise) before siring a son then that was the end of his line and clan. His widow could re-marry but her children would then bear a different name and title. And yet, aristocracies survived just fine.

If 10k people die in battle, this loss will be felt in the next generation regardless of gender. I mean, you can’t assume all these fallen men were married and had sons who could carry their name. Many of these men were likely unmarried, infertile, homosexual (and uninterested in procreative marriage) or otherwise unable to sire a male heir.

Same principle applies here. There is no reason to assume that most women on the battlefield would be childless, and it is safe to assume that they have plenty of opportunities to reproduce during peace time. Not only that, but in a matriarchal society the women warriors could potentially get pregnant “on deployment” or during a war campaign and still be able to claim that child as legitimate. On the other hand a child born to a woman whose husband was away on a military campaign was usually automatically seen as illegitimate. So I think female warriors actually have more “wiggle room” in this aspect.

Also, Imperials would not use men in battle for the same reason Western civilizations refused to allow women to fight: benevolent sexism. Imperial men are not considered “expendable”. Quite the opposite – they are precious. They are fathers, care takers and sexual objects. They are viewed as being too delicate, emotional and psychologically unprepared for rigors of battle. They have low pain threshold compared to women, they have short tempers and overblown libidos which would surely could their judgment. Plus you wouldn’t want pretty young boys to get damaged and scarred in battle. I mean, who would then marry them? It would just be cruel. :P

You know that kind of thing.

Since a male common infantry has no say in how the battle is actually fought, it respects the philosophy that “only people biologically capable of motherhood ought to to make decisions that will impact lives and livelihoods of others.”

While, enforcing have “have children first then fight” follows easily from: “only someone capable of bringing life into the world ought to be allowed to end one. “

@ Luke Maciak:

There’s also the issue that to ensure population continues to grow or maintain itself and that the nobility doesn’t die out, that each female warrior would have to have at least 2 children in her lifetime. That means at least 4-5 months of not fighting per child (last few months of pregnancy where they would be a nice target for the enemy and a short recovery).

Since having a lot of widowers sitting around at home not having children or titles doesn’t make sense, the women-as-warriors breaks down a bit when you take into account population replacement and the loss of foot soldiers in basic charges.

Losing 3,000 – 5,000 women or more in a single battle would definitely be noticeable in the next generation if they haven’t already had children (the Battle of Agincourt killed 7-10k for comparison).

However, since women have the power, it makes more sense that the low-level infantry would be common men. Since women hold power and individual men are expendable without effecting hereditary titles etc, it would make sense that they would be treated as easily replaceable. Because they are. Keeping individual women alive has an intrinsic value to the society but individual men are interchangeable.

An alternative would be to have your warriors go to war only after having children relatively young. Basically, you ensure your line continues then go and fight, and if you survive, you can have more down the line.

Misan wrote:

You need only compare the scores that male and female Olympic sprinters, weightlifters and swimmers post to come to the conclusion that men are substantially better at athletics than women at a level where body shame is irrelevant to the competitors.

One-on-one, and average human warrior in good physical condition of either sex is much weaker than a scrawny Orc with respect to how much they can lift, how much force per pound they can deliver with a sword. This does not make human warriors any less plausible.

Olympic performance is not a good measure because it is all about specialization. Over the last several decades the fierce competition in Olympic disciplines have really forced heavy preference specific body types. For example, athletes who need to jump in the air, are getting smaller and thinner every four years because at this point they have to push against limits of human physical ability to beat records. The extremely competitive nature of Olympic sports makes things like body fat distribution matter a lot.

In real life situations, these differences should not really matter that much. Wars are not fought one-on-one with the stronger person always winning.

Misan wrote:

The waif looking “warriors” in your concept art are really kind of absurd in the context of either being a realistic female warrior build or matching up to the subversive take on fantasy cliches that you’re ostensibly going for. The fact that this female warrior caste also borrows heavily from feudal Japanese imagery honestly ratchets the cheesy cliche factor to breaking point. Skinny katana wielding warrior women aren’t subversive, they’re a generic.

Yeah, I completely agree here. The concept art is basically what I was able to find out there. In reality I imagine the Imperial women to be built more like like Brienne of Tarth. Or like in that early TNG episode where they had a female dominated society and all the actresses they picked were like 6 feet tall, and the men were all really short and boyish looking. I think I mentioned above that both Armadans and Nords are actually on average shorter than Imperials. So if internalized preconceptions about gender prevent you from suspending your disbelief, how about we just say that Imperial women are just naturally taller and heavier than Imperial men because social pressures, genetics, etc..

But yeah, I really should learn to draw my own concept art. :P

Luke Maciak wrote:

@ David:
Samurai women is probably the least far-fetched idea in this whole series.

The reason that female warriors break suspension of disbelief, particularly a female-only warrior caste, is because while elves, dwarfs, dragons and gnomes are magic beings that can be implausibly fast or strong, boilerplate humans are just that… human. Furthermore, female warriors seem unlikely to the casual viewer because, and not to cause offense, in reality men genuinely are much better at any sort of physical activity due to their superior muscle to body-fat ratio and greater size in general. You need only compare the scores that male and female Olympic sprinters, weightlifters and swimmers post to come to the conclusion that men are substantially better at athletics than women at a level where body shame is irrelevant to the competitors.
Secondly, hand to hand combat absolutely favours the combatant with superior upper body strength, but more importantly it also strongly favours the combatant who is heavier, taller and has longer reach (which is why most competitive martial arts have weight classes). The waif looking “warriors” in your concept art are really kind of absurd in the context of either being a realistic female warrior build or matching up to the subversive take on fantasy cliches that you’re ostensibly going for. The fact that this female warrior caste also borrows heavily from feudal Japanese imagery honestly ratchets the cheesy cliche factor to breaking point. Skinny katana wielding warrior women aren’t subversive, they’re a generic. Also, matriarchal societies aren’t new to fantasy at all either (e.g. dark elves), I get that you’re trying to be different, but where you’ve ended up is pretty passe, sorry.

Also, this isn’t hugely relevant, but katanas are quite heavy as swords go and really don’t reward finesse over strength in quite the same way as weapons like rapiers or main gauche do. European fencing would be a lot more plausible for a female warrior caste than fighting with katanas and heavy armour, I think.

Again sorry, though all those concepts you refered too at the bottom of your reply are pulled entirly from fiction with the exception of bear calvary (bear calvary, loving it) and yet the basics of humanity especially those from the 3rd Empite are taken straight from reality, though I do agree with you whole heartedly @ Luke Maciak:

Truth man, you make some really nice points I was just wondering how the system would be based and was thinking ‘aloud’ if that makes sense. but I love the idea of differing societies to extremes such as these. Loving the Work@ Luke Maciak: