Orcish fantasy world invades modern Japan

[Lord Revan]

I wouldn't be at all surpriced that he didn't think this thru, that seems to be a theme of his. That why we end up with "band-aid" solutions that make the OP even more absurd and stupid then it was before, because he didn't think thru what's needed for the OP to work to get his desired result.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the IDEA "savage fantasy barbarians have nonviolent slaves who craft excellent weapons and equipment for them" isn't bad, the problem is that he tries to make the slaves into these ultra-genius sorcerers whose skills are far beyond the reach of mere mortal craftsmanship. And he doesn't seem to comprehend just how totally out of proportion their magic powers are to real life, or just how MUCH magic it would take to duplicate the feats of modern industry.

[Elheru Aran]

And it begs the question of how the hell these Dwarves didn't just wipe out the Orcs to start with.

[Simon_Jester]

I think he's trying to make them utterly, insanely nonviolent, but it's just... making them more weird. It's like, they're so obviously devised specifically as an excuse for having a bunch of violent savages who don't know how to make anything, but have these special slaves to do it for them. How would a race that... wimpy... ever actually evolve or develop?

[Elheru Aran]

Nonviolence is not a philosophy which can function in a situation where you're trying to survive as a species. Unless it's some kind of peculiar situation where the Orcs conquered the Dwarves a long time ago when both of them were at a similar tech level, but for whatever reason the Dwarves evolved faster than the Orcs, while adopting a nonviolent philosophy, and the Orcs just remained brutish?

[Lord Revan]

Even that is streatching plausibility, the fundamental problem here is that Anarchist wants a certain result and he doesn't know how to make a scenario where that result is at least the most plausible result, so he throws "band-aid fixes" to the argument to try to block other paths but that only results in the whole house of cards collapsing as he doesn't think things thru and there's more fixes when the orginal fixes had paths that lead to undesireble results so the whole thing just collapses under its own weight.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Seen it before, in written and visual form. The JSDF repels the initial invasion with a few casualties, then proceeds to go through the other side of the gate and wreck face with its reserve kit. I see no reason why they couldn't do the same here.

A fight between the pseudo-Roman legions of Gate and the hypermilitarized orc society presented here would probably be a more interesting fight. Probably.

[Simon_Jester]

You know what might be a lot of fun?

What if Archinist started out with just a question, like "I want to imagine a scenario where credibly threatening fantasy monsters attack Japan and present real danger, what would they have to look like?"

And he could ask questions, and even if some of them were kind of silly like "what if someone made a giant rolling battle-fortress the size of a mountain," if he'd stop doubling down on "this stupid plan would actually be a really smart plan" and things like that, it'd be a lot more fun to participate in.

[Lord Revan]

Indeed, it still might still be silly and absurd but it would be the fun kind of silly and absurd.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. It's like, I wouldn't mind explaining to him, say, why militaries don't build gigantic gun turret/emplacements or why police response to an emergency is usually sensible and well organized. I mind him assuming he can just pretend everyone's a total idiot because he doesn't know how real people react to real situations.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Okay, so the Starship Enterprise being constructed in a few days was a massive exaggeration, let's say something much more reasonable, such as a group of 200 dwarves being able to construct a 1970s era space shuttle in 3 months the first few times, and then 2 months after that, if given all resources and basic metalworking, mechanical and minor electrical tools. Given proper modern factory tools and equipment, they could get it done in 1.5 weeks.

Um, how long do you think it takes to build a space shuttle in real life? It took 5 YEARS to build the Discovery, for example. The Atlantis was closer to 6.

[Simon_Jester]

Also that's with all kinds of very large tools to hold things in place and assemble complicated sub-assemblies that are themselves very much larger than a human, more like the size of a truck or something.

[Lord Revan]

Also we kind of knew (we as in the human species) what to do there, we aren't going from bronze age to very modern tech even the Shuttle's aluminium frame is a big deal simple due to how bloody huge the thing is and that's just the base frame ignoring the heat resistant tiles or avionics both which aren't that simple either and it's not like there's that big a room for error just look at what happened to the Challenger (oh and Soviets tried to make shuttles but they were never able to develop one that didn't blew up on the launch pad so they abandoned that research, though as far as I know no cosmonauts were thankfully lost there as all the Soviet shuttles were unmanned test models I could be wrong though).

[U.P. Cinnabar]

What is wrong with people believing that the emdrive thing might be successful? Surely it's not your business to go out of your way and strongly argue against them and attack them for their beliefs on such a light issue? I mean it's not even religion or politics, or even your favourite football team. It's just a prototype engine that is supposedly being made for more efficient space travel.

Because it has not only been scientifically unproven, the basic principles are unfalsifiable, that is to say, impossible, because no experiment can be conceived to either prove or disprove it.

And, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, it's the business of every sophont to fight the advance of psuedoscience and willful ignorance, no matter how painful it might be.

[Lord Revan]

pardon my ignorange but what the fuck is an emdrive?! is it EM as in electro-magnetic?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Nonviolence is not a philosophy which can function in a situation where you're trying to survive as a species. Unless it's some kind of peculiar situation where the Orcs conquered the Dwarves a long time ago when both of them were at a similar tech level, but for whatever reason the Dwarves evolved faster than the Orcs, while adopting a nonviolent philosophy, and the Orcs just remained brutish?

Perhaps they're all loyal to Princess Orc White.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Also we kind of knew (we as in the human species) what to do there, we aren't going from bronze age to very modern tech even the Shuttle's aluminium frame is a big deal simple due to how bloody huge the thing is and that's just the base frame ignoring the heat resistant tiles or avionics both which aren't that simple either and it's not like there's that big a room for error just look at what happened to the Challenger (oh and Soviets tried to make shuttles but they were never able to develop one that didn't blew up on the launch pad so they abandoned that research, though as far as I know no cosmonauts were thankfully lost there as all the Soviet shuttles were unmanned test models I could be wrong though).

You're correct. All of Interkosmos' shuttle experiments were with unmanned craft.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

pardon my ignorange but what the fuck is an emdrive?! is it EM as in electro-magnetic?

This, even though I was actually talking about this, and my reply to Dumber Than Parrots applies equally to Alcubierre's work.

[Tribble]

With Archinist's Dwarves, building the Space Shuttle wouldn't be that much of an issue:

Provided with the correct resources, a single dwarf could produce 1 latest-model family sedan from hand in about 2 hours, with no machinery involved and from purely raw, unrefined resources with greater precision than an actual machine.

Combine that with their ability to understand any tech at a glance and the Shuttle should be capable of being produced very quickly.

According to wiki the average car is ~2 tons while the Space Shuttle at launch (boosters, orbiter, fuel tank, fuel etc) is ~2,200 tons. This means that 1 Space shuttle is worth ~1,100 cars worth of material and would take ~2,200 Dwarf hours to complete.

Assuming that Dwarven production scales up (that is, 200 dwarves working together on one product will produce it at least 200x faster than doing it individually), this means that provided they have enough raw resources 200 Dwarves working on a Space Shuttle simutantelously would have a Space Shuttle ready for launch within 11 hours. As this is an Archinist Scenario, I am assuming that all 370,000 Dwarves are construction workers, just as all of the Orks belong to the military. They would be able to produce... quite a lot, should they put their minds to it.

Presuming we are aware of the Dwarves, converting them to our side should be pretty easy. According to the OP they are enslaved and not very happy being under the Orks, and are likely getting the bare minimum needed to survive. Plus they don't actually like what they are producing. Just bringing them to our civilization should be sufficient to convert most of them; why would they want to be stuck with the Orks and building steam punk crap compared to all the things we have to offer? Their abilities + our technological knowledge could usher in Earth's Golden Age, so it would be worth a shot.

[Lord Revan]

I'm sure we'll soon get a reason why dispite all the "dwarves" are fanatically loyal to their slavers so we can never turn them to our side as they're essentially a dues ex machina and not even a good one at that.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. As noted, they're a crude attempt to handwave the question "how can homicidal savages be a credible threat to people with technology, when in real life no amount of warrior spirit lets a screaming horde overpower a bunch of guys with modern rifles, let alone tanks and airplanes?"

So they basically exist to be enslaved by other, more vicious beings. Despite being so ludicrously skilled that they should easily be able to defeat any military threat to themselves or just end any being that bothers them by (ab)using the same powers they use to magically construct large objects. And being so bizarrely incapable of protecting themselves that it's hard to imagine them ever surviving on their own long enough to build a civilization, or long enough to have all this amazing craftsmanship.

It's one thing to picture enslaved dwarves who just churn out masses of battleaxes and suits of armor. We can imagine such items being made by slaves who work for warrior-aristocrats, because that's pretty much how it worked in real life societies.

It's another thing to attribute to those same dwarves the ability to replicate tanks or fighter jets. Because no civilization has ever had heavy weaponry mass-produced by slaves on a reliable basis.

[Tribble]

Well, according to Archinist:

The dwarves cannot rebel against any race that is holding them, unless they are encouraged by another race/faction. Otherwise, they are forever loyal to that race/faction within reason. If the race/faction offers them extreme amounts of abuse, they will usually commit mass suicide instead of rebelling.

empathises mine

IMO it would be pretty easy to encourage them to switch sides. Pretty much anything would be prefereable to being slaves to a bunch war-mongering steam punk orcs, especially if we are doing most of the dirty work by wiping out the invasion force for them. Offer the Dwarves freedom, decent living standards and good paying jobs in highly complex fields, and I'm sure that they would be more than happy to come over. The trick would be making sure that they remain safe during all of this - they'll commit suicide instead of fighting back for... Archinist reasons... and the orks may start killing them en-masse if they suspect betrayal. Or even if they notice that we are trying to resuce them. The best thing to do would basically tell them "keep doing what you are doing for now, but don't worry because soon the Orks will all be wiped out, and you wob't even have to lift a finger... well, you may actually have some trouble doing that given that you have the approximate strength of an infant, but you know what I mean."

[Zeropoint]

How weird is it that I find the dwarves in this scenario . . . only slightly beyond plausibility? I'm thinking of the dwarves/dark-elves from Norse mythology, who were both a) crazy-awesome smiths, and b) kind of . . . weird. As a community, they deal with literal gods as equals (or at least near-equals). I wouldn't be surprised if they could tell you the exact composition of a piece of steel by tasting it. A fully equipped and staffed Svartalfar workshop . . . okay, building and assembling a car from scratch in an hour still seems a little much, but I wouldn't expect them to take more than a day to turn out something that small and non-magical. If they decided to set up an assembly line--well, OUR assembly lines spit out a shiny new car at intervals of less than two minutes.

As for why they keep working for the orcs, if you think of them as some variety of fae, it fits. The fae are often depicted as having strange and inhuman psychology, and some things that would be matters of law or custom to us are more like hard physical limits to them, such as being physically incapable of telling a direct lie. Maybe the dwarves signed a contract for services to the orcs, and unless and until the orcs breach the terms of the contract, the dwarves feel that holding up their end of it is Serious Business.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Dwarves have always been depicted as exceptional engineers and smiths, but hardly ever magically adept. I don't know if Icelandic legends consider them fae, but most contemporary fantasy, from Tollkien forward, doesn't. OTOH, I'm not up on fantasy, so, I don't really know.

[bilateralrope]

It seems clear that the limitation on how fast the Dwarves build things will be how fast the Orcs can get raw materials to them. Which is a major bottleneck.

Then there is the matter of using anything that gets built. The Dwarves are really good at copying, but that still leaves several problems for the Orcs:
- They have no idea how to operate human equipment. Remember how long it took you to learn how to drive, then consider that the Orcs won't have someone experienced with driving to teach them. Then there is the matter of learning how to fly a plane, which I know nothing about.
- Dwarves have shown no capability to adapt said equipment for Orc physiology. Will an Orc even fit in a fighter cockpit ?

Well, if we assume that the Dwarves abilities are as powerful as Dumber than Parrots described, they'd have to be incredibly powerful creatures. They'd have to have super-intelligence in order to read a schematic like the Enterprise and know how to instantly build one. They'd have to have super-speed in order to be able to build things at the rate described. And as the OP specifically stated that they do not use tools, due to their physical frailty they'd have to be using some kind of telekinesis with an incredible degree of precision. The Dwarves should be capable of destroying things just as easily as they are able to create things - if a single Dwarf is able to build modern car in two hours with better precision than any machine, what's to prevent them from using that abiltity to, ohh, kill anyone that threatens or annoys them? After all, living things are composed of matter, and the Dwarves are able to use whatever material that they come across as they please. They should be able to strip all the carbon out of you as easily as they can strip iron out of rock, for example.

It seems that the only thing holding them back is their mindset. They don't want to rebel.

Which makes me think they were constructed to be servants by a third race* and the Orks acquired them.

*Restrictions on the thought process of an artificial mind to prevent it rebelling are nothing new in fiction. For example, Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics".

Well, according to Archinist:

The dwarves cannot rebel against any race that is holding them, unless they are encouraged by another race/faction. Otherwise, they are forever loyal to that race/faction within reason. If the race/faction offers them extreme amounts of abuse, they will usually commit mass suicide instead of rebelling.

empathises mine

IMO it would be pretty easy to encourage them to switch sides.

Humans are likely to kill/imprison most Orcs before humans find out that Dwarves exist.

How humans treat the Dwarves after that is the more interesting question.