> On Jul 30, 2015, at 4:16 AM, Greg Chalik <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: > > I really reject canon on Aslan males. There are human males that go from childhood to a professional military officer without ever having to undertake business activity or sophisticated financial operations, but it doesn't mean they are "incapable" of doing this. In fact the very consideration of finding and acquiring a mate would require SOME financial planning, or at least the seeking out of a financial planner to entrust one's finances to, which aslo requires some conception of what liquid assets one owns. Yeah, GDW pretty much tried to smoosh together “Pride of Lions”, “Bonanza" and “Tokugawa-era Samurai” and simplified horribly. The ‘unable to do business or finance’ sounds as if it were stolen from Japanese history where the samurai class were forbidden to undertake certain professions. This might actually helped make the Aslan story a little more believable if they’d indicated in the rules that high-status males were forbidden/socially discouraged from doing those things: one of the ways you maintain high status was to be openly dismissive of the cost of things, claim to have no head for commercial figures (although a high ranking military strategist could no more be ignorant of math and the business of supply and logistics than he could be ignorant of which end of a sword is which). Some more judicious borrowing from Tokugawa era Japan could have been used to present a more nuanced version of the race: It’s not only grazing land that is important to maintain status, but the higher your status, the more lavish (and supportive of vassals) your ‘ranch house’ must be. Don’t forget you have summer pastures an winter pastures, so you need to maintain multiple lavish residences. I could even see some sort of analogy to having to maintain a residence in Tokyo for the daimyo to show their loyalty/provide hostages to the Shogun (and not incidentally keep them spending yen on building and maintaining castles instead of building and maintaining armies…:-) -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs
