A recurring them in the 3.5e Eberron sourcebooks is that warforged are the objects of popular derision and, at times, outright prejudice in the Five Nations. (As evidenced, most prominently, by the appearance of the "Warforged Haters" artwork in the Sharn, City of Towers art gallery.) I feel compelled to ask: Why? Were this just a case of Fantastical Racism, it'd be water under the bridge. Except that Khorvaire's Galifarian civilization includes half-humans of several varieties, dwarves, elves, and gnomes, most of whom have separate cultural institutions, and none of them seems to befall the same kind of prejudice. Similarly, were warforged fairly new to the scene -- i.e. they only appeared in bulk five years ago -- prejudice might make sense. But the first warforged are over forty years old, with first sentient ones being over thirty. What shock there was at sentient constructs ought to have faded by now.
If I recall correctly, the stated reason is a derivative of the above: They're arcane abominations that make a mockery of organic life and should be purged for that reason. (Occasionally adding the Skynet Protocol of getting them before they get us.) But I am still obliged to wonder: Why? And I think the reason why I wonder ties into my second question, that of whether warforged wear pants. The question is not intended to be taken serious, being an abstraction of a question of the nature of warforged intelligence: To wit, are warforged basically humans in metal bodies, with all the messiness that entails, or are they fundamentally alien in their thoughts and motivations, more akin to robots than men? A warforged of the first type would probably wear pants: They are, after all, a statement of one's own individuality, as well as a necessity to conform with polite society, even if he does not necessary need them; a warforged of the latter sort would not, and probably wonders why the meatbags that built him need such things in the first place. (This is not to say that, if one adopts the former paradigm of warforged intelligence, that you won't get some of the latter types: After all, you can't run Eberron without the Lord of Blades.) If the general trend is the latter, then the Skynet Protocol actually begins to make sense, because warforged really are alien monsters who could be plotting to kill you in your sleep. But if's the former, of the pants-wearing variety...well, it just makes an organized warforged movement that much sillier. (The silliness is directly proportional to how much traction it gets in the wider world: If it's just a hobby of Sharn socialites, it's an awesome background point. If it's a continent-wide bias, I need to start reaching for the brain bleach.)
Though I'm sure others who have thoughts on this are yearning to chime in. And answer that all important corollary question: If warforged wear pants, do they also wear underwear?
It just makes justifying the fear and hatred directed at them make much more sense, even if the majority of warforged just want to have a purpose (they are machines, after all, and I'm fairly certain I read in one of the sources that warforged actually go crazy when they have no tasks to perform).
Juums, where did you read the whole arcane abomination/mockery of life thing? I own most of the books (and all the Eberron ones), but I've never seen that particular argument.
In any case. I get it that 'forged are quite alien in their thought patterns. I envision it as like the soldier who has only known military school as a youth, and service as an adult. Something like civilian life is....completely alien. That sort of thinking, turned up to 11. Despising civilians may not necessairly follow; not understanding them does.
Also, one of the Eberron books talks about the "lurid" depictions of Warforged in combat. I mean, if the media paints them as blood-drenched killing machines, would you want them next door?
Finally, there has to be a, "Dey Took Er Jerbs!" (They Took Our Jobs, from South Park) bit of thinking in there.
If I put a laptop on your desk and told you it was sentient and you should treat it with the same respect you would a human being... I get the feeling you wouldn't take me seriously, you would laugh at me. Laptops, sentient? Bull****. But then if The Law came down on you and told you "You have to treat that laptop with respect" well, you would, but you still don't see how a laptop can possibly be sentient--because it's a damn laptop! And the fact that legal means are being used to enforce that... well, that's indignifying.
Now imagine it even worse. You own a laptop when that law comes down and sets them free. You might have owned two or three! In the Eberron world, warforged were cheap (about 1,000 gp for a single unit, though normally sold in bulk), and while they were primarily made for war, there was no restriction on people buying them to clean rooms at the inn, or muck out the barn, or lift heavy equipment on the docks at Sharn. They were tools, and everyone had them at their disposal. Suddenly, after thousands of gold of investment (imagine if you owned a dozen of the machines, and your warehouse business was booming as a result) they were told that the warforged were sentient, free creatures and could not be property (suddenly, you have to let go of the machines, which means you just lost 12,000 in machinery and your business goes belly-up!)
Sadly, it's also the same argument and mentality used on blacks in the U.S.: they were once property, they were once what made business boom in the south (so much cheap labor!). Then, suddenly, the north declares that all of those black businessmen who invested so much in their black laborers have to give up their laborers without anything in return, and also because of this great loss their businesses were going to crash at great personal expense. Add that to the fact that the South generally didn't even consider blacks to be human (not 'sub-human' or 'lesser human', but simply not human), and trying to convince them to go through with letting go of their slaves--and trying to make them not resent it afterwards (which I think is relevant here)--is quite a task.
To me, it's also the same old argument that's been used against Data in Star Trek:TNG, or droids in Star Wars, or the Doctor in Star Trek
oyager. Sure, Data/R2D2/The Doctor might seem particularly clever, but mechanically there's nothing distinguishing them from an elaborate calculator. Nobody considers R2 special because he literally came off a factory press; the Doctor isn't special because he was designed to look clever and smart, and there are 10,000 other Doctors out in the galaxy (and even more more advanced ones), and Data is mostly easily-replaceable components, and that 1-season-doctor-forget-her-name would constantly mock him and treat him like just a fancy tricorder with no feelings because... well, that's basically all he actually is: a fancy heuristics machine made of off-the-shelf components, no different than a tricorder or replicator in terms of value. Try convincing the denizens of those universes that those individuals deserve the title of 'sentient being', while laying their factory specs on the table... it'll be a hard argument to win.Try doing it after their economies have received a hard blow after the warforged-slave sector has been suddenly deleted... well, at that point, resentments are going to run deep and they're going to stay there for a long time.
While this irks some of my regular players (who are of the political persuasion to draw something meaningful from the plight of warforged who seek "rights"), I always run them as completely alien. Not necessarily hostile, but they definitely don't wear pants.
It just makes justifying the fear and hatred directed at them make much more sense, even if the majority of warforged just want to have a purpose (they are machines, after all, and I'm fairly certain I read in one of the sources that warforged actually go crazy when they have no tasks to perform).
I believe the bit about them just wanting purpose stems comes from Races of Eberron, a factoid I dimly recall.
The primary reason that there is a great deal of prejudice against warforged is because they are reminders of the Last War. According to Eberron history, warforged were created for the sole purpose of fighting in the War. Yes, they had there uses elsewhere, but they were created to fight first and foremost. With the War over (at least in it's martial aspect), the warforged are trying to make their way in the world and they end up competing with organics for jobs and the like. As far as I have read, the prejudice is mostly confined to the civilized areas of Khorvaire. The rest of the world either doesn't care or wants to use the chaos for their own purposes. (This is from the Eberron Campaign Setting under the description of the warforged and the history of the world.)
Juums, where did you read the whole arcane abomination/mockery of life thing? I own most of the books (and all the Eberron ones), but I've never seen that particular argument.
I never liked the justification that it was the Last War that made the warforged hated, to the point that I had forgotten about it. And now you've dredged that back up. Hooray! (Do you have any idea how much brain bleach is going to be required to make it go away again?) I don't think it really works, myself: We're supposed to believe that in a world where a generation of conscripts have served in the trenches with warforged, that the warforged are hated for...their service in the trenches and the memories they arouse of them? That just doesn't jive with what else we know: If the performance of the warforged under fire was sufficiently poor to breed long-term resentment, one would think that such would have been noteworthy in Races of Eberron or Forge of War. If anything, the trend in the 3.x sourcebooks is towards warforged martial hypercompetency, which will likely annoy or irritate certain demographic subsets, doesn't strike me as particularly liable to breed general long-term resentment either.
Re: the arcane mockeries thing, I can't remember where I read it, so I might be crossing wires between groups that detest others for being different.
Also, one of the Eberron books talks about the "lurid" depictions of Warforged in combat. I mean, if the media paints them as blood-drenched killing machines, would you want them next door?
Finally, there has to be a, "Dey Took Er Jerbs!" (They Took Our Jobs, from South Park) bit of thinking in there.
Grognard rant time. Yay. One of the things that always irritated me about the notion of propaganda in this context was that sizable chunks of the population had lived next door, as it were, to a warforged. Once you get conscription of the general population, as is implied, if not stated outright, on a couple of occurrences, you're going to get large fractions of your 18-44 demographics passing through the military. After 966 A.K., they are going to spend their two or three or however many years their term of service is living and fighting next to the sapient varieties of warforged. This process is going to go on for twenty-eight years prior to the Mourning. You can make it an even thiry if one does not assume demobilization begins until the signing of the Thronehold Accords. All of this equates to a very large segment of the population that has seen warforged up-close and personal, and that they are not blood-drenched killing machines predisposed to killing meatbags for fun and profit. (Plus more than a few, "your grandpa would be dead were it not for Hammer's shield-arm!" stories.) Whatever the effect of propaganda, there ought to be a large counterbalance to it floating around in the ex-warfighting populace. (Though this can easily vary: Karrnath, for instance, probably lacks such, though the same dynamic applies to its undead.)
"DEY TUK ER JERBZ!!!!111", as raised by you and sienn_sconn, is actually a good reason to not like the warforged. After all, they're tireless workers who have next to no overhead and are probably willing to work for slave wages. What's not to like about hiring warforged over meatbags?
My own warforged tend to wear pants. Even if most of them do not, in fact, have them on. A major theme of the setting, at least for me, is the exploration of warforged sentience, as they try to find their way in the post-war world. In order to really do this justice in a way that my players can appreciate, this means that warforged sentience is congruent with that of humans: Indeed, that it basically is human. This tends to mean that warforged are animated by the same sorts of things that animate men, be it pettiness, avarice, curiousity, wanderlust, altruism, or a thousand other things. It also, I think, is necessary in order to get the manumission of them in the Thronehold Accords: The more human warforged sentience is, the more indefensible treating them as property is. (One of my favorite NPCs that I've thrown at my party was a warforged priest of Onatar: He was one of first out of the creation forges, who gave his creators quite a fright when he started studying theology after being dissatisfied with House Cannith's responses to his questions about his place in the multiverse. Took his name from their response, too, running around forever after signing his name as Gad Zooks.)
The primary reason that there is a great deal of prejudice against warforged is because they are reminders of the Last War. According to Eberron history, warforged were created for the sole purpose of fighting in the War. Yes, they had there uses elsewhere, but they were created to fight first and foremost. With the War over (at least in it's martial aspect), the warforged are trying to make their way in the world and they end up competing with organics for jobs and the like. As far as I have read, the prejudice is mostly confined to the civilized areas of Khorvaire. The rest of the world either doesn't care or wants to use the chaos for their own purposes. (This is from the Eberron Campaign Setting under the description of the warforged and the history of the world.)
Juums, where did you read the whole arcane abomination/mockery of life thing? I own most of the books (and all the Eberron ones), but I've never seen that particular argument.
I agree with both paragraphs of this post.
And while I'm feeling pedantic, Warforged are organic. Their core is made of WOOD. They are also [b]living[/c] constructs. Being both organic and alive, they can't be a mockery of organic life.
And some warforged wear pants, some don't. Depends on personal preference.
A major theme of the setting, at least for me, is the exploration of warforged sentience, as they try to find their way in the post-war world.
For me, one of the most beautiful things about Warforged is that they can be used as a vessel to explore humanity. While this may tread a lot of ground already covered by Data in The Next Generation, it could still be an enlightening thing.
In any case. Juums, our concepts of frontline service in the Last War are apparently different. First of all, I do not think that many units would be mixed Warforged/humanoids. Mixing them dilutes the strength of the unit, IMO. Now, there MAY be a few 'forged tasked as bodyguards to important officers, or....maybe a liason? By and large, though, 'forged units would be separate from other units.
It is this separation that I feel would breed fear. Only rarely would men from other units interact with the warforged on any sort of personal level. Furthermore, men from other units would react differently to the warforged martial prowess. Sure, some might say, "Because of Warforged, I didn't die. I didn't have to fight in a suicide attack." or whatever story. Others, though, would see the shattered, routing remanants of the enemy, and say, "those poor bastards." They see the prowess, and fear it.
If you don't mind a bit of Yoda, fear leads to hate.
For me, one of the most beautiful things about Warforged is that they can be used as a vessel to explore humanity. While this may tread a lot of ground already covered by Data in The Next Generation, it could still be an enlightening thing.
I'd prefer to do it in such a way as not to make my PCs want to hang themselves, though. Which means Data allusions are a no-go. ;)
In any case. Juums, our concepts of frontline service in the Last War are apparently different. First of all, I do not think that many units would be mixed Warforged/humanoids. Mixing them dilutes the strength of the unit, IMO. Now, there MAY be a few 'forged tasked as bodyguards to important officers, or....maybe a liason? By and large, though, 'forged units would be separate from other units.
While I agree that mixed units dilute the theoretical efficacy of warforged, I think reality was always going to rain on that parade. While an all-construct formation offers incredible operational capabilities, the problem is that no formation would ever be entirely made up of constructs: The typical formation, as provided from the sourcebooks, would have human officers and perhaps even NCOs. Unless you trust your warforged enough to have warforged officers and NCOs, which none of the combatants seem to have, the meatbags will always slow down the mighty armies of robotkind. (In the game I currently run, Cyre's military culture had evolved that far, but the Mourning made sure such thinking didn't spread far.) In light of the fact that you're never going to get a pure construct unit, I'd wager practical considers would pressure the deployment of warforged down to the largest unit which can be used to gain the advantages of an all-construct formation. If you can't tolerate warforged NCOs, then you're stuck with using them in line formations as you would any organic, as you'll have no all-construct units. If you can tolerate warforged NCOs, then the unit would probably be a squad attached to a platoon to provide the platoon's commander with a highly mobile shock element. For my own purposes, this is what I always envisioned as the "norm" by the end of the Last War, which conveniently enough has lots of devolved warforged units having to, as a matter of procedure, camp with meatbags. And if you can tolerate warforged officers, well...the odds of prejudice against warforged are likely to be rather diminished in a society that trusts them to lead men into battle, which moots the whole point.
Assuming a bias in favor of segregation, though, I can't help but wonder how the vagaries of the front would play out. If we assume that the Eberronian battlefield had achieved a sufficient density of firepower to make the modern casualty maxim apply -- e.g. simple contact with the enemy will produce sizable casualties, and casualty rates increases geometrically as contact grows -- you're going to be under intense pressure to simply maintain segregation, due to the temptation to consolidate and reorganize extant front-line units to guarantee you the combat strength of the formations you've got. I also always saw it hard to maintain segregation due to the fact that warforged make ideal replacements for attrited units: Given that the average warforged is likely to be motivated and well-trained, sprinkling them in to create mixed units would provide a ready way for commanders to stiffen the spines of formations battered by defeat or exhaustion. Which would invariably increase contact between the rank-and-file and warforged.
So I think taking the military side of this is a non-starter, because that's not where the bulk of the prejudice lies.
As for WF pants, that lies with the individual. Some WF wear clothing, but those that do are usually those trying to focus on their 'living side'. As an aside, Azm, the iconic warforged on the cover of the 3.5 campaign setting, wears shorts. At least in that picture.
While likely a minority, I can also see religious/theological prejudice against warforged. Eberron might lack the deities in a role as creators, so there is nothing heretical about creating life, but Eberron is crawling with evil outplannar entities that usually have no physical bodies. The Silver Flame as a faith is all about protecting the world against such evil. A warforged body is obviously created, so what exactly is providing the sentience? Where is the animating spirit coming from? Are they elemental spirits? Or is there something more evil and insidious going on? Of course, others can hold the exact opposite reaction. It might be something good send to Eberron to face against something evil.
Note: I agree that most prejudice lies more with common workers who see their jobs being threatened or who remember horror stories about the battlefields of the Last War. War forged after all have been created specifically for those battlefields unlike the non-construct soldiers. Who is to say that they can actually adjust back to RL?
Who is to say that they can actually adjust back to RL?
To me, this is the big thing about Warforged. They have an increadibly hard time adjusting back to real life, primairly because for them, the Last War was their life.
Now, granted, Juums does raise some good points about the bulk of soldiers probably having some sort of familiariaty with Warforged. However, again, I'm having difficulty reconciling reactions of troops who fought alongside Warforged with troops who were themselves attacked (and perhaps overrun and/or routed) by Warforged. Sure, they might be like, "I'm glad they're on our side" after they watch 'forged crush the enemy, or maybe "those poor bastards." But after they were attacked by enemy 'forged? How do they react?
The primary reason that there is a great deal of prejudice against warforged is because they are reminders of the Last War. According to Eberron history, warforged were created for the sole purpose of fighting in the War. Yes, they had there uses elsewhere, but they were created to fight first and foremost. With the War over (at least in it's martial aspect), the warforged are trying to make their way in the world and they end up competing with organics for jobs and the like. As far as I have read, the prejudice is mostly confined to the civilized areas of Khorvaire. The rest of the world either doesn't care or wants to use the chaos for their own purposes. (This is from the Eberron Campaign Setting under the description of the warforged and the history of the world.)
Juums, where did you read the whole arcane abomination/mockery of life thing? I own most of the books (and all the Eberron ones), but I've never seen that particular argument.
I agree with both paragraphs of this post.
And while I'm feeling pedantic, Warforged are organic. Their core is made of WOOD. They are also [b]living[/c] constructs. Being both organic and alive, they can't be a mockery of organic life.
And some warforged wear pants, some don't. Depends on personal preference.
Frankenstein was made of flesh and bone and I'm sure his creation would qualify to many people as a mockery of life (organic or otherwise).
There's a reason that you hear so much hooplah over the mere mentioning of human cloning.
By the time the modern warforged were perfected, Breland, Cyre, and Thrane had instituted laws requiring military service from all of their able-bodied citizens, but these laws included the option of paying a substitute to serve in one’s place. The warforged were ideally suited to serve as substitutes. For the price of a single warforged soldier, an entire family (all the children of a single female) was exempted from the compulsory service. This legal loophole increased orders, thereby lowering costs, and brought a greater number of warforged troops into service, thanks to many wealthy families seeking to protect their children.
It's that mix of resentment and gratitude that makes them so interesting across the breadth of Khorvaire.
Frankenstein was made of flesh and bone and I'm sure his creation would qualify to many people as a mockery of life (organic or otherwise).
There's a reason that you hear so much hooplah over the mere mentioning of human cloning.
Cloning has a few additional philosophical and ethical implications beyond the creation of sapient life. A bette comparison in RL would be the idea of creating true sapient AI which while somewhat feared (considering movies like Terminator and I, Robot) is not nearly as open to debate (although admittedly that might also be because it is a but further out of reach than cloning). It is also good to remember that in RL the majority of the world belongs to a monothis religion that places the ability and right to create life in the hands of a single deity - which was certainly the driving factor behind novels like Frankenstein. Eberron lacks this belief completely. The gods did not create life, so what is wrong with humans creating life?
While this irks some of my regular players (who are of the political persuasion to draw something meaningful from the plight of warforged who seek "rights"), I always run them as completely alien. Not necessarily hostile, but they definitely don't wear pants.
It just makes justifying the fear and hatred directed at them make much more sense, even if the majority of warforged just want to have a purpose (they are machines, after all, and I'm fairly certain I read in one of the sources that warforged actually go crazy when they have no tasks to perform).
I always assumed the reason was twofold:
1) They are living, breathing (technically speaking...) reminders of the War. Until the war ended, their only purpose in life was to be military units and many people might remember that their cousin/brother/father/friend's unit was wiped out by an unrelenting assault from a unit of Warforged. Remember the war only ended five years ago (unless something changed in 4e - I'm coming back to the game after a year so forgive any inconsistencies with what I say); the wounds from what, almost 100 years of war still is fresh in people's minds. Imagine if World War 2 lasted for 100 years before ending (since the Last War is meant to be similar to both World Wars), and then imagine life five years after it. Now imagine if the USA, Britain, Japan, Germany and the USSR had employed artificial soldiers during the war, and these artificial soldiers were being assimilated into society and were demanding rights as human beings. How would you feel, seeing something that was created to kill others walking around and trying to socialize? How about if one of those artificial things killed your friends or even family, or even just people you knew (neighbors, the local butcher who always gave you the choicest cuts of meat, that nice man who helped get your cat down from the tree when you were 5, etc.)?
2) They don't need to eat, or sleep so there's the whole "They took our jobs!" thing as well. I can easily see people resenting the Warforged when the WF will work down at the docks or in construction or anything else for essentially nothing except possibly shelter, whereas a human or dwarf would need room and board and would probably want some kind of compensation. Not to mention that a Warforged would essentially be an indentured servant.
Remember that returning soldiers are often discriminated against in real life. A lot of it has to do with how the war they fought in was viewed. If I’m remembering my high school American History class properly, veterans of WW2 were seen as heroes because it was a “good war”; Hitler was basically evil incarnate. Vietnam, on the other hand, was a “bad war” – there was never really a clear reason for it in the first place, there were a huge number of casualties, it stretched on and on and on and there was never any sense of victory.
That’s what the Last War was like, but it lasted an entire century and physically destroyed Khorvaire. In the minds of many civilians, the warforged symbolize the horrifying memories of the war, and every time they see one all of those memories come surging back. It doesn’t help that warforged are, literally, living weapons created for the sole purpose of murdering people. No matter how gentle a warforged may act now, people will always assume that there’s a chance they might suddenly go on a killing spree. That’s what they’re programmed to do, after all.
Even worse, the warforged are also seen as responsible for the financial collapse of the Five Nations. Like several people have mentioned, the place of warforged in society is very similar to that of African-American slaves immediately after the Civil War. At one point they were the backbone of the Khorvairian economy, and were thought of the same way as a horse or an ox. When the warforged were emancipated, lots of people had their property forcibly taken from them and were thrown into poverty.
To add insult to injury, people are now being out-competed by that lost property. Warforged have no to buy food or drink, don’t really need a roof over their heads, are incredibly strong and don’t sleep. Since their needs are so few, warforged can be paid next to nothing to do harder, more dangerous work for longer hours. They’ve more or less taken over many of the more physically demanding jobs, which have forced already-struggling unskilled laborers into homelessness.
It’s no wonder they’re hated so much, really.
Now whether or not this applies to Eberron I don't know. There are scientists who think that the 19th century attitude towards war in Europe had to do with the surplus of young men at the time. I am not sure that after 100 year of fighting, that would still be true with Khorvaire ;)
That said, echelon_house, what do you know of how WWII veterans were treated in Japan and Germany by the populace? Here's a hint: Take how 'nam vets were treated in the US, and remove....um....stuff specific to Vietnam, pretty much. Read about it in Military in Nontraditional Roles class. I can try to dig up the titles if you're interested in the reconstruction of Germany and Japan.
We're supposed to believe that in a world where a generation of conscripts have served in the trenches with warforged, that the warforged are hated for...their service in the trenches and the memories they arouse of them? That just doesn't jive with what else we know: If the performance of the warforged under fire was sufficiently poor to breed long-term resentment, one would think that such would have been noteworthy in Races of Eberron or Forge of War. If anything, the trend in the 3.x sourcebooks is towards warforged martial hypercompetency, which will likely annoy or irritate certain demographic subsets, doesn't strike me as particularly liable to breed general long-term resentment either.
I think the problem is that you're assuming utter, detached rationality on the part of the fleshborn troops fighting in the war. Look at it this way.
You're fighting in the most horrific war anyone's ever even heard of, watching your friends die all around you. Suddenly they cart in a bunch of newfangled golems to fight. Nobody even mentions the possibility that they have souls. Just the same, they don't quite act like proper golems. They're a little too autonomous. Every once in a while you'll catch one staring at the clouds, as if it were actually thinking. It's eerily unnerving because it's just a little too human.
On the other side of the coin, these things kill with ruthless efficiency. They don't hesitate, they don't show mercy, they don't even show fear. They don't have the human experiences which can temper a soldier's actions in battle. Just as an example, if a soldier comes across an unarmed and wounded enemy in uniform helping a civilian child get to safety, that soldier might very well look the other way. A Warforged, following its training and lacking the social experiences that teach non-combat morality, would likely hack the soldier to pieces and leave the child alone and covered in her rescuer's blood. That doesn't make for good PR, especially when you see the same behavior coming from the other side's Warforged as well.
Even ordinary military action sees a lot of killing, killing that leaves fleshborn beings shaken to their very cores. When Johnny Breland is sobbingly praying to the Sovereign Host for forgiveness for killing people, he looks over and sees the company's Warforged; 'it' spends every moment of its down-time staring unblinkingly at the battlefield and never washes the blood off of the blades it has instead of hands. It doesn't seem to feel the remorse that Johnny does, and so Johnny envies it, and so Johnny vilifies that stoicism in order to defend his own reactions. There's no doubt that it's a cold, unfeeling killing machine. It can't have a soul because anything with a soul would weep at the things it's seen and done.
Maybe this analogy will help; when my dad's driving and sees someone driving badly, he doesn't make any guesses as to the nature of the driver. He waits until he sees them and then attributes their driving to whatever demographic they happen to fall into. 'Yep, it's a woman.' 'Figures it's a kid.' 'Damn old people shouldn't be driving.' Etc. He doesn't see the driver's behavior as being the action of the individual, but instead counts it as confirmation of his preexisting bias toward their group. The only time he'll judge the driver's actions as reflecting on the individual is when it's a male of his age. I'd imagine a lot of the same happened in the Last War with the Warforged. When a fleshborn soldier leaves a mortally wounded ally on the field it's accepted as a judgment call that nobody should have to make. When a Warforged does it it's seen as typical of those heartless monsters.
Sure, rational people can avoid this kind of lazy, prejudicial thinking, but even in normal circumstances most people aren't that rational. In the middle of the most brutal war in recorded history I'm not sure anyone is that rational. When you dedicate half your conscious mind to the murder of your fellow sapient beings and the other half to not going insane over the murder of your fellow sapient beings, I'm not sure you've really got much sense left over to wonder whether you're really giving what you're told is a piece of equipment a fair shake.
1) A fun fact for Madfox, and Ogiwan, for that matter: Proportionally, the Napoleonic Wars and World War I consumed equal percetanges of Europe's military-aged manhood in terms of dead and wounded, roughly one out of every five men between the ages of 18-44. The key difference being that the former last twenty-five years while the latter a mere four. If we assume that the Last War was equally bloody, it makes the demography rather interesting, given the more active phases of the more would have consumed truly staggering quantities of men while casualties plummeted during the quieter times. Or that the prevelence of magical healing allowed a larger proportion of those wounded to eventually return to line service and thus blunt the impact upon the real demography of the combatant powers. Either way, a rather interesting new lens with which to view the Last War.
2) MrCelsius, I think you've nicely encapsulated the popular conception of warforged circa 970-975 A.K. My problem with that view is the notion that it'd hold for another twenty-five years. Could it hold, for that matter? As Khorvaire is home to what we would characterize as a developing mass media, it seems doubtful that the inevitable stories of warforged displaying conspicuous gallantry to save meatbags, be they civilians or fellow soldiers, would not reach the ears of the various broadsheets. One of whom would invariably run with it, precisely because it is so contrary to the images in the popular imagination about warforged that it would be shocking news. Sooner or later you'd amass a critical mass of primary and secondary sources so that it becomes impossible for a reasonable observer who's not already predisposed to the SkyNet protocol to deny that there's more to the warforged than just cold-blooded battlefield slaying and that they're rather more similar than dissimilar to their creators. I always put that date around 985 A.K., myself.
But then, I'm very much on the warforged-wear-pants side of the spectrum in this debate and that Galifarian civilization is sufficiently sophisticated that it can deal with warforged sapience in an ethical and equitable manner. I've always rolled the warforged manumission movement having been born the day the first sentient one emerged from the creation forges, starting with Aaren d'Cannith and then spreading to the four corners of the Five Nations. As, really, you can't get to the Thronehold Accords without something analogous to the American slavery abolition movement of the 1830s-1860s or the Russian serf abolition movement of roughly the same time period: As there has to be a good deal of preparing the ground intellectually and morally for a a society's elite, if not the wider society, when it comes to these sorts of things. (The American abolition movement was a fair bit more successful on that count than the Russian one.) One can't just have the powers go to Thronehold, agree to manumute warforged on the fly, and then expect such to stick back home without at least some rumblings of open revolt in, say, Thrane or Aundair about the decision.
MrCelsius, I think you've nicely encapsulated the popular conception of warforged circa 970-975 A.K. My problem with that view is the notion that it'd hold for another twenty-five years.
In my opinion twenty-five years is a ridiculously short span in which to expect much social change at all, especially when it comes to matters of prejudice. Look at the history of black people in America. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery in 1865. It was smooth sailing for them by 1890, right? Yeah, not so much. In point of fact black people still don't get a fair shake in America nearly a century and a half later, and the only thing differentiating them from the majority demographic is the color of their skin! Imagine how diminished the advancement of the civil rights movement would be if they were so different as to not only be a different species but an entirely different type of life-form!
A person may change zir mind quickly, but a people take a very long time to do so. In a span of twenty-five years you've got people who, as children, were told as absolute fact that Warforged are nothing but soulless killing machines. The vast majority of people don't ever question these fundamental 'truths' that they learn at an early age. That generation is only now coming of age, and only a very small number of them are only now just beginning to question these matters which they 'know' are facts. It'll take several more generations for the notion to become popular and a good many more before the old notions have truly lost their grip on the culture.
Twenty-five years is enough time for the first stirrings of change to begin, but I'd say it'd take closer to two hundred and fifty years to see true equality for the Warforged.
In my opinion twenty-five years is a ridiculously short span in which to expect much social change at all, especially when it comes to matters of prejudice. Look at the history of black people in America. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery in 1865. It was smooth sailing for them by 1890, right? Yeah, not so much. In point of fact black people still don't get a fair shake in America nearly a century and a half later, and the only thing differentiating them from the majority demographic is the color of their skin! Imagine how diminished the advancement of the civil rights movement would be if they were so different as to not only be a different species but an entirely different type of life-form!
I would note that your historical analogy collapses on itself because there is nothing analogus in Eberron either to the Reconstructionist governments which were erected by de facto military occupations and the post-Reconstruction governments that were animated by the passions which were forcibly repressed by said occupations. It also breaks down because of causality knot posed by the Southern radicalization on the slavery issue in resposne to pressure from Northern abolitionism and, more generally, prevailing views on the subject of race. Given that Galifarian culture is a technically advanced society written from a modern perspective for a modern audience, baked into the cake is some degree of adherence to modern moral thought and prevailing social norms. (After all, the nations of Khorvaire don't bat an eye about inducting women into their front-line armed forces, even though this poses very real material and morale issues as the Israelis discovered in the Eighties.) Which means that the trajectory of black America is the improper one to study, unless you refer to the desegration time-period from, say, 1945-70, which takes us from a segregated army to the near-zenith of the Warren court's imperial overreach on all matters race-related. So, yes, lots can happen in twenty-five or thirty years: Heck, to return to the pre-Civil War period, the abolitionists affected a sea change in Northern society, at least, to bring a majority around to the proposition that slavery and indentured servitude were morally repugnant. (The average voter in Pennsylvania in 1835 would have, in all likelihood, scoffed at the notion that in thirty years time the Constitution would be amended to prohibit slavery.)
A person may change zir mind quickly, but a people take a very long time to do so. In a span of twenty-five years you've got people who, as children, were told as absolute fact that Warforged are nothing but soulless killing machines. The vast majority of people don't ever question these fundamental 'truths' that they learn at an early age. That generation is only now coming of age, and only a very small number of them are only now just beginning to question these matters which they 'know' are facts. It'll take several more generations for the notion to become popular and a good many more before the old notions have truly lost their grip on the culture.
You're failing to grasp the nature in which warforged were rolled out. Immediately after their appearance, warforged would have been relatively few in number and something of a battlefield rarity due to the simple fact that not many had been delivered by House Cannith. Because of their newness to the battlefield and their relative rarity, this would have provided ample ground for rumormongering and propagandizing: After all, since most line troops had never seen the infamous metal monsters and their cold-blooded efficiency, there were few ways of refuting wild-eyed stories about horrible constructs that craved blood for the Blood God. As the war progressed and warforged usage expanded ever more, the simple fact of the matter is that large masses of troops on all sides would come face-to-face with warforged both behind their own lines and across no man's land: This simple familiarity should be sufficient to disabuse most who served of any misapprehensions about the warforged. Those least biased would be those in the youngest conscription classes, who had grown up with the warforged being simply a part of life as they know it. It's entirely possible that someone might come to hate them after their time in the army is up: But such would ultimately be but one individual reaction along an entire spectrum of possible reactions ranging from pernicious to benign.
Twenty-five years is enough time for the first stirrings of change to begin, but I'd say it'd take closer to two hundred and fifty years to see true equality for the Warforged.
The goal isn't "true equality", for that is something that's sufficiently nebulous and Orwellian as to best left alone. Getting away from "herp derp da metal menz iz da EB1L because dey'z iz metal!!1111" is a better starting point, which is reasonably achievable depending upon what characteristics you ascribe to the intelligensia and political elite of Khorvaire. An optimal end-goal is equality of opportunity and before the law, which one can reasonably argue has already been mandated by the Thronehold Accords.
An optimal end-goal is equality of opportunity and before the law, which one can reasonably argue has already been mandated by the Thronehold Accords.
Point of Order: Warforged in Karrnath and Thrane are "indentured servents," which makes me question as to if you can really claim there to be equality. Furthermore, goblinoids are regarded as second-class citizens in Breland, the most cosmopolitan nation. I wonder how they are regarded in other nations, and if a societal history of such discrimination makes Warforged the newest object of hatred and fear, thus relegating them to second-class citizens as well.
edit: Oh! Or is the relegation of "monsterous" creatures to the second (lower? whatever) class(es) a result of cultural beliefs on the part of the monsters? Thus, a rich goblin is a bit of a freak who doesn't hold the same socio-cultural norms as others of his race?
Or that the prevelence of magical healing allowed a larger proportion of those wounded to eventually return to line service and thus blunt the impact upon the real demography of the combatant powers. Either way, a rather interesting new lens with which to view the Last War.
This is definitely true. With House Jarasco you already have a Red Cross like institution, which might actually be even more protected due to its commercial position especially due to its connections with the other houses. What is more, magic healing is vastly superior to anything humans had available in the 19th century. In fact, it is fastly superior to what we have now ;)
Warforged don't have childhoods, or parents, or social circles, or even the same instincts and reactions to pain and fear that humans do. They just don't have so many things and experinces we take for granted. They don't even have the same goals or motivations.
Violence is a norm in the Warforged state of mind. Which isn't to say they are all random serial killers or that they solve every problem with violence, but it isn't something they abhor or avoid at all costs like any decent human would.
A Warforged doesn't even have face, just a mask. That ALONE would make people uneasy around a Warforged.
Of course, there are always extrodinary indivduals that break out of the mold, but as a whole, Warforged are strange, dangerous, unrelatable 'people'.
While other conventional races all have their own racial clashes, they have been integrated within the 5 kingdoms long enough to minimize those biases. Warforged are much different (as pointed out above by Sturmvogel) they look extremely different and as a group have a very different cultural experience (Built on an assembly line, trained, equipped and likely considered for most of their lives "en-mass"
This naturally harbors suspicion and resentment. When you combine that with a collective cultural belief that they were "merely machines" product, property or items only 5 years prior, people just haven't had the time to adjust their thier new status.
To the upper levels of society, they are a grotesque reminder of the war and the horrors and savagry that accomanied it. To the lowest levels of society, they are the cheap labor who has depressed wages and stolen jobs. A lot of people will also see them as unthinking thugs or grunts, and treat them as such.
As you role play your character, and the DM controlls NPCs, everyone should have an attitude towards everyone else, and a reason for it. Be them Warforged, Elf, Dwarf, Gollith, Deva or Dragonborn.
Relevant to this particular discussion: #19 Feet of Clay, #33 Going Postal and #36 Making Money might be profitable reading for DMs or players who want to play Warforged. There are some interesting parallels between Discworld's golems and Eberron's warforged.