This seems like the best place to ask about race?

[Mega Fauna Blitzkrieg]

I mean it's irrelevant, but I think it is also something that is shaded largely based on your own opinions/experiences?

A number of peoples in this series are described as dark skin dark hair, and it's always kind of hard for me to tell if they mean New Jersey white folks with too much tanning cream, or different races?

It's basically irrelevant and has the potential to turn into some kind of issue so maybe I should just delete this while i'm ahead but...

How do people imagine the...people, of the land?
I kinda picture the Haruchai as either Asian or Italiany.
Ramen as Africanny.
Mithil Stonedown people are a big question mark for me, I got the impression Liand was black, but Trell and Lena get described as pretty clearly English or Irish.

Based on our earth, it would seem unlikely that you could have many varying races in such a relatively small area, since skin pigmentation is caused by exposure to sunlight and such, so maybe I should assume everyone is white in varying degrees of tan? Because The Land is...as big as the USA? Smaller? Slightly bigger?

Then again the land is also magic, and the Ramen for example, live out in the sun all day every day so...

So, opinions?




P.S. My communication skills are so...what is the opposite of clear? So I feel I should re-iterate, i'm not trying to start some offensive thing. Particularly when I called race irrelevant, like only a cracker can.

[Cameraman Jenn]

This is something that has been brought up in various threads. Yes, haruchai, stowndowners, woodhelvin, elohim, insequent etc are all of different races. A good amount of people, myself included picture the haruchai as being sort of Asian. The physical description added to the off the hook martial arts skills tend to make that a factor of influence. I've always pictured the ramen as being more native American but that is probably a bi product of my upbringing. Every other species/race of the land tends to be a variation on white to me. But that is just me.

[High Lord Tolkien]

To me:

Haruchai = African. Brown skin, short croppped curly hair and flat nose

Ramen = Native American

Land = European

[Mega Fauna Blitzkrieg]

Haruchai being Asian is definitely a knee-jerk thing. I mean, darker skin martial artists who wear short cropped tunics?! But since he describes them as being both fierce fighters and fierce lovers, I was kinda thinking Italian or Hispanic.

Native American definitely makes more sense for the Ramen, but I feel like there was something in the descriptions when he first gets to Ra in LFB that screamed black, the hair maybe?

The Haruchai I was also considering for black, because of the noses the skin the curly hair but...they are also short, or at the very least not tall.

What about the giants? Double sized Europeans? Sea-faring people are usually darker skinned, aren't they?

[Frostheart Grueburn]

Sea-faring people are usually darker skinned, aren't they?

Nnnnope.

Foamfollower was depicted to have a very fair skin.

The alabaster strength of his limbs looked as solid as marble; and except for a few recent scrapes received while scrambling from Hotash Slay to the Creche, even his old battle-scars were gone.

Added to this, we have had legends of heroic sea-faring giants centuries before SRD was even a spark in his father's eye. One of the most famous concerns (Soini) Kalevipoeg, who's the son of a Finnish giant and an Estonian giantess.

Here's his ship Lennuk ("Flight") journeying to the end of the world with the aid of Finnish wind-magic (see the standing noita chanting runesongs). (Eesti Kunstimuuseum)



Kalevipoeg (Oskar Kallis):





So my giants are stuck in the swamp of Nordic genes for good. Besides, appearances differ significantly between various types of Europeans (say, an Eastern Finn with widely spaced slanting eyes, wide cheekbones and flaxen hair compared to a Greek or an Italian person).

[shadowbinding shoe]

While modern day Indians rode horses, the traditional horse people come from central Asia.

To me the Stonedownors were African looking while the Woodhelvenin were European.

The Bharathair were Persian and the Giants were Moai-like (see Easter Island)

[Frostheart Grueburn]

the Giants were Moai-like (see Easter Island)

That's an interesting deviation.

And the rest from me:

Bhrathair: Turks or Hungarians (due to the "brackish" language)
Stonedownors: an admixture of Irish and Balkans (didn't Trell have red hair, while Liand had black/heavy eyebrows)?
Ramen: Scythian sans the weaponry
Haruchai: Siberian, or, after some research, Tibetan
Troy: African-American
Woodhelvennin: for some reason French or Dutch (?????)

[Mega Fauna Blitzkrieg]

Did I not include some sort of props to Vikings? I meant to. Historically though, most of the sea faring people are from Spain and east, I think. Like Africa and the Mediterranean. Not counting English people paddling their bathtubs on the pond to get to Ireland. Russians are land locked aren't they? China traveled but mostly to near by areas like other Asian countries.

What BC country had the ridiculous navy? Argh, this gonna bug me.

So what about the Braithar and Elohim? Elohim can be anything they want at any time right? They usually appear in the same form, but the Elohim the Theomach killed was said to take a different form to every challenger.

Braithar is a desert right?

Are there any other humanoids? I don't remember the second trilogy too well I guess.

Prothall belonged to some race that lives in the mountains, but they are probably just people from the center plains who never went back after the ritual of desecration?

[race2three]

"What about the giants? Double sized Europeans? Sea-faring people are usually darker skinned, aren't they?"


You mean like the English?

[peter]

This is going to sound terrible because I'm in no way a fascist right-wing nationalist, but I see all the peoples of the Land as white. I come from a predominantly caucasian area and when I first read the chrons the sight of any other skin color was a rareity, so I guess this just slipped unconciously into my mental picture of the books. The Haruchai are something of an exeption to this, and odd as it may sound I always saw them as slightly veering toward the illustrations we see of ancestral human types (perhaps because such illustrations are always devoid of any facial emotion whatsoever). The giants I see as red-haired viking nordic types, and the Ramen as small and olive-skinned with a mix of hair colors. The Lords and the rest of the Land's inhabitants (ie the stone-downers and wood-helvenin) I see as either shorter stocky dark-haired celtic types (stonedowners) or taller, finer types, almost elven (woodhelvenin). Brathair I never got to thinking about much and they became just typical city people. Since my first readings obviously the ethnic mix of my area has changed greatly, but the images ingrained by my first readings have for the most part stuck.

[sindatur]

Haruchai have always been Maori or Polynesian looking to me (I thought this was the prominent interpretation, but, judging from this thread, it is far from being so)

Hile Troy is Black

Bratharainians - Middle Eastern Looking

Ramen - American Indians

Everyone else, pretty much Caucasian

[sgt.null]

as much as I love Hile Troy I missed that he was black.

I really should re-read the books.