Crimson maidens

This is more of an inconsistency I noticed with the Crimson Maidens-

"Their society is almost entirely female, most of the males having perished in the last war they waged."

and

"They take little interest in affairs outside their wood, and only in the face of serious invasion do the Maidens assemble their dreaded Fire Legions and march to war. Every time they have done so, their enemies have run in terror after facing them in battle."

Let me put the problem closer together: " most of the males having perished in the last war they waged. ----- their enemies have run in terror after facing them in battle."

If the enemies of the Crimson Maidens run in terror from them, how is it that almost ALL of their males perished in the last war they waged? It seems rather contradictory to me.

I agree. Not to mention, if they spend most of their time secluded in the Crimson Woods, wouldn't the male ratio have risen? Surely they would have reproduced by the time of their last war. Then again, it hasn't been updated in God knows how long, and I'm not sure randomdude is even aware of the changes like higher average size.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

This is more of an inconsistency I noticed with the Crimson Maidens-

"Their society is almost entirely female, most of the males having perished in the last war they waged."

and

"They take little interest in affairs outside their wood, and only in the face of serious invasion do the Maidens assemble their dreaded Fire Legions and march to war. Every time they have done so, their enemies have run in terror after facing them in battle."

Let me put the problem closer together: " most of the males having perished in the last war they waged. ----- their enemies have run in terror after facing them in battle."

If the enemies of the Crimson Maidens run in terror from them, how is it that almost ALL of their males perished in the last war they waged? It seems rather contradictory to me.

I have to big time agree on this one here, this has been bothering me mind for some time because the logic behind it seems rather cheesy (I'll put it that way) but I think that like Sean said it could be due to the fact randomdude hasn't noticed any of the updates and the page itself hasn't been updated.

So if you ask me this has to be fixed up, I mean this should be fixed up.


Also I noticed something in regards to Rin the ice naga and Terra the naga's pages, especially after reading Rin's Adventures I saw this interesting line from Dryla the dryad “Well hello there. I’ve never seen a Naga as small as you in the swamps alone. Tell me, are you lost?”. Now I may be wrong here but from what I can tell this is clearly implying that Rin had to have met Dryla long before that dryad became friends with Crisis as she grew up. So I think that in truth the ages for Rin and Terra are off if for a fact Dryla did meet Rin before she met Crisis which could mean Rin could easily be older than Crisis but hey just putting my thoughts on the matters out there.

Mhh you are right about the crimson maidens, that's rather contradictory. Looking back at it I don't think they should be all-female society. It doesn't add much as a trait.

Then what would the guys be called anyway?

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Then what would the guys be called anyway?

Might I suggest something along de lines of Ruby Corsairs or Scarlet Brothers or something along those lines?

If anything, Crimson Maidens would be a tribe of Crimson Fairies were females have more status than males.

The problem is that "ruby corsairs" make them sound like a band of pirates, and "scarlet brothers" sounds like a band name or something.

Crimson Maiden sounds elegant and gives the feel for a group of fierce women warriors.

I'm trying to put together every synonym of "red" and "friend", but nothing sounds right

To bad WH40K has dibs on "blood wings" cuz that sounds pretty awesome. Or maybe I'm thinking of Blood Ravens. I get the feeling that "blood wings" has been used before.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Then what would the guys be called anyway?

Well after doing some research I learned that the word opposite to maiden is lord, so I'd think the males of the Crimson Maidens would be called Crimson Lords but that's just an idea of mine.

It would maybe just be easier to rename them Crimson Fairies so that way we all know there are both males and females.

This is something I typed up, and will hopefully be used in place of the current description. Its far longer and more detailed.


Crimson Fairies

Crimson Fairies are an isolationist kind of fairy, residing in the Crimson Woods. They are rarely seen outside their borders, the exception being younglings on a 'proving quest'. They also have a greater affinity for magic that all other kinds - specifically their mastery of fire. They're typically taller and thinner than most other types of fairies, have bright eyes and hair ranging from pink to blood red, which is a well known trait.

The Men are known as Crimson Lords, while the women are known as Crimson Maidens. Though due to the last war they waged, many Crimson Lords were killed and have spent a long time recovering, while in the meantime the Crimson Maidens have taken up the slack for the severe lack in men which slowly turned the society from a Patriarchal based one, into a Matriarchal based one. Men still aren't as common as they used to be, but the number is still quite low however, and they remain the dominant gender of Crimson Fairy society. Still, because of their isolationist attitude, they are mostly just seen in stories and legends near the city of Negav. However, the names "Crimson Maiden" and "Crimson Lord" garner a somewhat more alerted response as they are recognized throughout Felarya for being the most dangerous species of Fairy you could run into.

Crimson Fairies are also rather militaristic, and in the face of a serious invasion or severe threat they will ready and march their dreaded fire legions to war. Their Fire Legions wear special breastplates and greaves made specifically for Crimson Fairies that while having the protective benefits of normal armor, also naturally deflect magical attacks back at the caster and further augment their already heightened fire magic.

Their society has a strong central influence of a warrior based culture, aspects like honor and glory aren't uncommon. Masters of combat are quite frequent as well, in addition to having a thirst for knowledge most fairies already possess. Their arcitecture reflects their mentality in the building steps, huge archways, and statues of their revered leader, Alsherala.

Counter-intuitively survivors of these battles are quite common, because the enemies of the Crimson Fairies always end up fleeing from battle, traumatized from their enemy's lethality. However, in the last war quite a bit of men died though, but are slowly coming back, with the will to become even stronger...

_______
edit: I put a reason in the description as to why there are less males. To be fairly honest it's an incredibly weak point [regarding the low male population] no matter what you do. In my humble opinion I might just say screw the stories and change it to make more sense. I don't know many stories written about Crimson Maidens, but in this description they're still the dominant gender, and we know the writers of those other stories would have adhered to the wiki anyway and respected the gender issue.

That being said, I think unless the last group of people the Crimson Maidens went to war with cursed their species with a curse that caused the male/female birth ratio to tip severely in the favor of females [insert Krogan Genophage] was put in place I don't think it's easy to make it work, unless the males adopt a less dominant mindset after the war, or they're just slow at reproducing in general...either way could possibly work I guess. Your decision.

Thank you ^_^

Archmage_Bael wrote:

This is something I typed up, and will hopefully be used in place of the current description. Its far longer and more detailed.

Well nice work on it

However I'm really reluctant to change the name "crimson maiden" as it would impact really a lot of stories...
So maybe we could keep the fact their males have disappeared for the most part and this caused the militarization of their society as a result. something like that.

The problem is that the "all female" fairy sub-species seems tacked on. There was no proper justification given that males have disappeared, other than dying in a war, which makes no sense because more could be born. Plus, we don't know how far back that last war dates, so for all intents and purpose, a hundred years could have passed, and that's more than enough time to rebuild the male population.

Sean Okotami wrote:

The problem is that the "all female" fairy sub-species seems tacked on. There was no proper justification given that males have disappeared, other than dying in a war, which makes no sense because more could be born. Plus, we don't know how far back that last war dates, so for all intents and purpose, a hundred years could have passed, and that's more than enough time to rebuild the male population.

Sean does have a big point here if you ask me.

Karbo wrote:

Thank you ^_^

Archmage_Bael wrote:

This is something I typed up, and will hopefully be used in place of the current description. Its far longer and more detailed.

Well nice work on it
However I'm really reluctant to change the name "crimson maiden" as it would impact really a lot of stories...
So maybe we could keep the fact their males have disappeared for the most part and this caused the militarization of their society as a result. something like that.

Maybe something like "due to the period of time where there was a lack of men, the society has become more matriarchal, and the Crimson Maidens are still the dominant gender"

or something to that effect. I'll try to put that in somewhere if you think its a good idea.

Karbo, I don't want to sound mean, nor do I want to sound elitist, but it seems to me that your reluctance to change the name Crimson Maidens on the ground that it will impact a lot of stories, is an attempt to please everybody. You have to realize that this simply isn't possible. When it was decided to make the average giant predator, this impacted a lot of stories too, but it was done anyway, and they now feel even more gigantic and breathtaking than they used to.

The concept of the Crimson Maidens is flawed and there is no easy way to correct it. It simply isn't believable that an entire sub-species to be all-female, when the "main" species isn't. It would be somewhat more believable if these Crimson Maidens are crossbreeds between fairies and Fire Elementals, as reproduction is more magic based, but this is unconfirmed and still rather iffy as to why no males could be born.

I'm not sure why the male thing is such an important hinge to keep. I've always thought of the Crimson Maidens as Felarya's own Amazons, and if you know the mythos behind them you see how such a society would be capable of existing. It would even add more to their nature and culture.

Sean Okotami wrote:

Karbo, I don't want to sound mean, nor do I want to sound elitist, but it seems to me that your reluctance to change the name Crimson Maidens on the ground that it will impact a lot of stories, is an attempt to please everybody. You have to realize that this simply isn't possible. When it was decided to make the average giant predator, this impacted a lot of stories too, but it was done anyway, and they now feel even more gigantic and breathtaking than they used to.

err well you are mistaken here. I'm not trying to please everybody.
but I don't like to change a thing drastically when it has been established since so long and used in many stories, unless it's absolutely required.

And it's not comparable with the increase in size of preds. This one point is before anything else a false interpretation of english conversions from my part. I always meant Crisis an the others to be about 100 feet tall and they are drawn like that in most of my pictures. I just happen to have though for long that 70 feet was much bigger than what it actually is...

And coming back on Crimson maidens, personally I don't see them as much as a sub-species than a tribe. And the fact they would have an overwhelmingly female society isn't a sort of natural evolution where they would be unable to procreate or something, but more of a social adaptation to a certain event. However, I do agree this could use more development and it would be a good opportunity to put more about their culture too.

Alright, I edited my post from way back - here's the spoiler of it so you don't have to navigate much.

Spoiler:

There you have it. As you can see I put in a little about their culture too, or so far what would make sense. I really don't know much about amazonian culture, but concepts like honor and glory, and now since the last war the females are the dominant ones in society, not to mention that they like to build steps and huge archways (I imagine cathedral-like archways, where the top of the arch is pointed) and statues of Alsherala. (sp?)

That being said, I think unless the last group of people the Crimson Maidens went to war with cursed their species with a curse that caused the male/female birth ratio to tip severely in the favor of females [insert Krogan Genophage] was put in place I don't think it's easy to make it work, unless the males adopt a less dominant mindset after the war, or they're just slow at reproducing in general...either way could possibly work I guess. Your decision.

Though personally, now that I've said it, I rather like the idea of the last group of people they went to war with cursed their race to make it difficult for males to be born. Then a huge war broke out, the Crimson Maidens got more pissed than ever before, and to what can be seen - more or less wiped this "offending group" off Felarya (they could be elsewhere too though, but not that specific tribe) - these people would be why the Crimson Maidens don't have many men left, a lot of them died in this war because it was so bloody, and the hardest one they've fought to date. That's just an idea though.

My apologies, Karbo.

About the Crimson Maidens, even making them an all-female tribe would still require the rewrite of "all-female" tribe to more "dominantly female" tribe. Remember, the males died during the war, so it's impossible for them to be female exclusively, since they would have to search for foreign male fairies to mate with, which clashes with their isolationist mentality. The only middle ground is that males are present, but they're more like the house-keepers.

Sean Okotami wrote:

About the Crimson Maidens, even making them an all-female tribe would still require the rewrite of "all-female" tribe to more "dominantly female" tribe. Remember, the males died during the war, so it's impossible for them to be female exclusively, since they would have to search for foreign male fairies to mate with, which clashes with their isolationist mentality. The only middle ground is that males are present, but they're more like the house-keepers.

In no way Crimson Maiden are a all female society or a one gender society as it state clearly :

wiki wrote:

Their society is almost entirely female, most of the males having perished in the last war they waged.

It doesn't state all the male perished but a majority of them, and make the female are in majority so they are a female dominant society since the beginning but have been misinterpreted are a all female specie

Personally, I didn't think we had a problem. We don't know when the Crimson Maidens had their last war, we've got no idea how long a fairy generation lasts either. So having few guys after their last war never seemed like a problem to me. Maybe oddly revealing, but not troublesome.

It was ironic though that if the women do the fighting, the guys were the ones who got killed? I'm going to go on a limb here and guess that boys and girls don't fight side by side: they've got one-gender batallions, and the boys' teams drew the short straw a few times too many in their last war. If it were like with us, and only the boys fought, the tribe wouldn't be called the Crimson Maidens.

I say, as long as you find a better name than the Burgundy Bachelors for the boy legions, we should be able to make do.


Now, there's one thing that's been bugging me for a while... I figger it's about time to fix it. About my ol' cookie story, the humanity is supposed to be the reveal at the end, not a half-time intermission.

Revealing that the cookies are humans before the end of the tale kills the surprise before its time; I figure it'd be more powerful if we leave it to the end. I know, were it for me we'd be doing that with everything, so I'll just leave it here, okay?

Well, it's still confusing, and it sounds contradictory still. Especially because like I said, if enemies always run in fear from them, then how did they face such a catastrophe to nearly wipe out all their men? It needs to be explained, and the Crimson Maiden entry is very, very unpolished still (as nothing new has been canonized for it yet).

you are right, more precisions are needed.

Thanks for whoever moved the thread.

Also, as people may not have noticed, I edited my entry back there, so maybe some critiquing is in order? ; )

I hate to bump this thread, so I'll generally ask if anyone out there has any ideas of their own that could contribute to their development. Also, for any who's interested I've posted a new chapter in my stories that will focus around the Crimson Maidens. I will try to explore, and think a lot about their culture, since there's not much out there.