The question of whether halflings are capable of constructing empires, and what those empires would look like, is one which has concerned Western philosophy at least since Plato.
In this post, I mused briefly that:
[A halfling empire] would I think be the anti-empire, the empire of no empires, the empire of paradox, spreading its decentralisation and hairfoot-anarchism across regions, continents, the world...
The idea here is that halfling empire building is almost a living critique of the concept of empire itself - it would comprise what I suppose would have to be called imperialistic libertarianism or perhaps big Englanderism: the aggressive enforcement of quiet, homespun anarchism via conquest.
But let's tone things down a bit and come up with some ideas that are a bit more palatable and useful for gaming purposes. Are there plausible ways in which one could imagine halflings coming to run an empire, given the way they are described in D&D materials?
One obvious way is to posit a deus ex machina explanation: halflings are the only ones who can do some special sort of magic or psionics, which means they can boss around the members of other races; halflings have a symbiotic relationship with some very physically powerful race of beings (I would suggest umber hulks, but neogi have already bagsied those) who can do all the fighting for them; halflings have some special ability which the members of other races are willing to pay to have access to. These could potentially lead in interesting directions, but I think ultimately they cheat a little bit by bending the actual description of halflings as found in the source texts.
Another, less obvious cheat is to imagine that halflings are just really good at commerce (and there is, I suppose, some justification for this if we imagine halflings as, basically, the English: we are after all renowned as a 'nation of shopkeepers' whose own imperial adventures were generally motivated by commercial imperatives over the conquest of land per se). If you are really good at commerce you can pay other people to do things for you; imagine halflings as a race of merchants whose expertise in arbitrage alone allows them to dominate a vast and disparate region united by trade.
Of course, one could also think of halflings as being something more like Hutts - congenitally predisposed towards dastardly criminal enterprises and therefore presiding over a vast feudal anarchy: each halfling 'family' or clan essentially hoovering up taxes from the locals of other races and, in return, exerting a minimal form of stability and order through hired goons. Naturally this would make more sense if they controlled the trade in pipe-weed, though I think the license that this would give DMs to do hammy noo yoik or tutti frutti Napolitan accents means that it is an idea best approached with caution.
Or, a halfling empire is what occurs when the hippies become The Man. In fact, could it be that we are currently living through a halfling empire?
ReplyDeleteSenatus Populusque Hobbiton aren't wedded to the idea that they are revolutionaries, and so would be much more responsible than America's current governing class. In both cases though, our leaders are close to celebrating their eleventy-first birthday.
DeleteHa!
DeleteWhat if it is just that they are longer lived than humans? Their empire would better conserve investments in education and be guided by elders with more years of experience. (We can presume the benefits of longevity on imperialism follow a U shaped curve; humans have too little patience for it, elves and dwarves get bored and seek more lasting pursuits, halflings are just right.)
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought, which reminds me that I must finish off a long abandoned draft post on 'the philosophy of elves'.
DeleteI want to read your elven philosophy please.
DeleteGuns. No reason halflings can't be basically as effective as anyone else, once armed. If anything, they're smaller targets.
ReplyDeleteGuns, germs and steel. Maybe halflings also have immunity to some plague which affects the other sentient races.
DeleteFamine. The hobbit habit of two breakfasts followed by elevensies, lunch, dinner, tea, supper and probably a tiffin somewhere in there too is calibrated to build up fat stores in the good years to survive lean times. Plus, they probably hibernate in those houses, you can't tell me a smial isn't just a badger sett.
DeleteMan dies off, then the halflings (wake up the next year and?) drag the corpses onto their compost heaps for fertilizer.
Nice! This is a good one.
DeleteA clan of Halflings as the Sopranos of Waterdeep/Altdorf/Port Blacksand/Freeport/etc. is quite the enduring image.
ReplyDeleteOne way to establish a Halfling Empire could be that they've inherited control of another empire due to a specialised role in its administration. Perhaps they formed a courier or messanger caste, or a bureaucratic body, while other races handled the physical and leadership roles, and in time -- either organically or through deliberate manipulation -- they came to call the shots? Perhaps the empire of which they were part of partially collapsed, and they adapted quite well due to a penchant for localized community rule coupled with a robust courier system, and so became the lifeblood of the nation as it struggled to stave off complete collapse? In the process they became the ones essentially running things, but due to your "Big Englanderism" they tend to keep things stable without ever consolidating back into a centralised empire because that's not how they're inclined to do things? But some of the trappings of the old empire are still in use, creating a culture/power that's a blend of Halfling decentralised homeliness and imperial pomp?
ReplyDeleteYes, I quite like that idea.
DeleteI like this idea - generations of rulers who consider the halflings non-threatening and put them into bureaucratic and financial positions. Eventually someone looks around and notices that the bureaucracy of the empire can't be run without them. Maybe with a bit of late medieval flavor where the traditional landowning nobility thinks very little of them but is unable to finance their wars and extravagance without them.
DeleteI feel like there is precedent in this in a film, book or play... The real power behind the throne being the administration. There is Stalin, of course, but I think there is a better and more apposite fictional version.
DeleteYes, (Prime) Minister?
DeleteI think what Tavis said, alongside the fact that they're amazing at hiding. Infrastructure would exist in places that seemed to have none at first glance...and these infrastructures would in turn, be host to generational networks of relationality.
ReplyDeleteSuch initially unnoticed networks might include arrangements with powerful local entities (treants, powerful wizards, nature spirits, fey, druid circles, petty gods), robust trade agreements, festivals ( what if halflings throw the best parties? The LL class compendium has a feast master halfling that would be VERY influential. Imagine powerful halflings as being more like Gordon Ramsay than Julius Caesar ) and decent taverns each with loyal groups of adventuring parties/warrior bands who use the places as bases.
As a brief example, I can see a large pond near a human village (Let's call it Greenpond) as being a place where humans fish. Nearby is a halfling burrow, mostly missed by human eyes, spoken of in tales to children, the elders nodding and saying "'tis true". The local naiad of the pond is their ally, they also have an agreement with the fish there, ensuring they are in control of exactly how many fish allow themselves to be caught.
Once a month there is a great party The Full Moon Dance, and all are welcome to join and drink/eat and make merry with the halflings---so long as they each bring something of worth for the festival pot. The Inn of the Prancing Trout is a place for travellers to stop by, it's halfling proprietors are well loved and served by a bunch of dwarven slayers who grew accustomed to the ridiculously excellent ale and use the place as a base.
This halfling group has connections with other groups across the landscape. It is a pattern repeated over and over --- Greenpond is one amidst many. It has been this way for a long, LONG time.
If you wanted to throw in unscrupulous elements, like the presence of unscrupulous Sackville-Baggins types, one could do that also.
So looking again at what I've written, it's about these hidden people's hidden networks, and ultimately controlling other's relationship with food/ local ecologies. A lot more to be said here, but I best do some work!
THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE. Is what you could call it.
DeleteIt's a entity that holds up other empires, the invisible empire of wee folk...if it withdraws its bounty, the surface human empire collapses. I can't see hobbits enforcing things in a direct fashion, but I can see them being the glue that binds and being willing to exercise that power.
DeleteI think part of the issue here, is that Tolkien's hobbits are anti-empire in the sense that they're small and unimportant and not interested in the the hollow greatness of imperial ambition. They're the epitome of local and the truths arrived at through contemplation of the small. Sauron barely registered them until he was undone... this was their true strength and I think a message regarding the goodness of common people vs the arrogance of empires.
DeleteWe can go this way and that eg. Look to Dark Sun for it's Blue Age halfling psionic overlords. But what do we mean when we say halfling? For me, ot comes down to 'LotR'. I think more than any other D&D entity, halflings owe they're identity to that great work.
(That anon was me replying to my reply, btw)
DeleteTwo thoughts:
ReplyDeleteFirst is that a Halfling Empire could be the Mandarinate of a precursor empire leveraging their place at the centre to manipulate the Ogres, Barbarians and other assorted legbreakers the 'Dark Lord' accumulated. This sounds a little like the latter days of Rome, but that might just be because I've been reading Gibbon.
Second is that 'Jovial' refers to Jupiter: in the Medieval imagination, the influence of Jove was both kingly and prosperous. See CS Lewis in The Discarded Image, Ch. V "We may say it is Kingly; but we must think of a King at peace, enthroned, taking his leisure, serene. The Jovial character is cheerful, festive yet temperate, tranquil, magnanimous."
That's not perhaps imperial as we know it, but it is Halfling-like. Certainly, the distribution of wealth, favour and 'places at table' is part of power structures, as much as arms, laws and ranks. I'm reminded writing this of the many scenes of dinner and food in gangster films - certainly, just one of many appetites gratified, but this is not a coincidence.
Both make sense - certainly I think the halflings would be highly manipulative of 'the muscle'.
DeleteMaybe the precursor empire had a ceremonial language in which all official documents were written, and only the halflings retain the ability to read it.
It's not a centralized, monopolistic state as we usually think of empires (or government generally) but a radically decentralized, informal network of villages, shires, and townships, with defense provided by loose alliances of village militias. And virtually everyone, man, woman, and child, owns a bow or sling and can shoot the lights out with it. Imagine the frustration of an invading force fighting an endless guerilla war against bands of slingers and archers who can vanish into the brush in the blink of an eye and have no formal capital or central government to conquer. Plus, they trade freely with anyone who asks halfway politely, so spending gold and lives conquering their territory for the sake of resources is largely a fool's gambit anyway.
ReplyDeleteBut how does it expand?
DeleteI imagine it would be a sort of passive expansion, with people on the borders of neighboring lands seceding and joining the halfling alliance. It might require that the neighboring land be in some sort of crisis for them to secede without reprisal -- maybe there's a war with the kingdom on the opposite border, or a peasant uprising in the capital, or something of that sort. It wouldn't be a rapid process, but expansion by attrition, absorbing territory and population from sick and infirm kingdoms, as it were.
DeleteOr maybe they expand simply through being pleasant - people join because it seems so nice.
DeleteChange through trade. A trading league of halfling guilds that have combined indomitable spirit with commerce. These enclaves are accepted (or tolerated) because of the prosperity they bring. Mercenaries throughout the continent prize the League's contracts, which are helpful for local tensions brought by culture, superstition, and decadence. The League emphasizes trade, but sometimes this requires compromise with immoral or amoral species/societies. Maybe they fail to realize the true cost of these arrangements? This might fit with the idea of a decentralized empire that others have discussed, as the enclaves may control their hinterland—perhaps reluctantly, ambivalently, or neglectfully? Maybe this is easier than change? An empire of inertia.
ReplyDeleteIt actually feels vaguely Vancian now that I think about.
DeleteHalflings kick ass in every D&D variant that I know. Bonuses to hiding, ranged attacks, and sometimes they are many levels ahead in saving throws too. The ultimate guerillas. Give me 30-300 motivated D&D halflings and I would be on the fast track to an empire.
ReplyDeleteTrue. However, it raises the question 'are halflings just the packet of bonuses we read in the character creation rules' or are we expected to bring something else to them? AD&D DMG 1e actually describes them as:
Delete1. Eating more and drinking less than gnomes.
2. Favour natural beauty and the outdoors more than their burrows.
3. They are not forward, but observational and friendly in company.
4. Get along with other races better than elves or dwarves.
5. See wealth as a means of gaining comfort only.
6. Honest and can be hard working.
7. Love stories and good jokes.
8. Can be a "trifle boring at times" (jeeze Gary, don't sell them too much!)
That's it! They just bore their enemies into supplication.
Delete"He looks more like a grocer than a burglar!" —Glóin, of Bilbo Baggins.
ReplyDeleteMaybe only we Old Ones remember, but the now-bankrupt onetime grocery behemoth A&P was originally the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Empires have been built on foodstuffs.
However, ultimately, I think halflings are not the makers of empires but the destroyers of them. I see a kinship between them and the Picts of Rudyard Kipling's "A Pict Song":
Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on—that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.
We are the Little Folk—we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you’ll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!
Mistletoe killing an oak—
Rats gnawing cables in two—
Moths making holes in a cloak—
How they must love what they do!
Yes—and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they—
Working our works out of view—
Watch, and you’ll see it some day!
No indeed! We are not strong,
But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we’ll guide them along
To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you—you will die of the shame,
And then we shall dance on your graves!
Yes - we're back to the halfling empire as the critique of empire.
DeleteHonestly, I think you could use hobbits/halflings to model the early Roman Republic pretty well. They get powerful by defeating their neighbors, in defensive wars, and weaving them into their social structure, like Rome did with the Latin league. But people keep attacking them, so they have to be defeated, and the Halfling League expands.
ReplyDeleteOn the theme of bureaucrats, the hobbit equivalent of my campaign, call the Visse which means servant, were created as servants for the Empire and have become the core of the Imperial, and many other, bureaucracies. At one point a splinter faction of the Visse plotted to overthrow the rulers but was betrayed before they could finalize their plans.
Interesting. You do have to wonder about this spin on Roman history, though. It's what the victors would say, isn't it? "We never unjustifiably made war on anyone. They just made war on us!"
DeleteGaz 8, the Five Shires has a take on halflings (Hin in the setting), where they're rapacious pirates as well as being Masterful druids. Though it's written by Ed Greenwood so everyone is a Mary Sue. Just make them more Dutch and addict them to something, like tea, or put them through a famine. If an army marches on its stomach, then they should be formidable soldiers.
ReplyDeleteThey would conquer with logistics and the strength of ants, I should think.
ReplyDeleteThe game puts forward halflings as being half as tall as a human and weighing a quarter as much. They require only half the rations and half the living space of a human and their equipment weighs half as much. But a halfling can carry three quarters as much as a human, suggesting that (much like like an ant or an orangutan), halflings are much stronger for their size than a human would be. And with each soldier effectively carrying 50% more without issue, a legion of halflings will have 50% more teeth per mile of tail on their supply trains.
The demographic information we get paints a similar picture in terms of populations. A human generation is on the order of 20 years, while a halfling generation is about 25. Halfling populations grow only a little slower than human ones, but they require half as much food per person, and thus can support twice the population on the same amount of land. And of course they stay young and fit for 50% longer, which translates into the halfling empire getting 50% more out of every month put toward training and education.
And of course their small size affords them yet another advantage: cavalry. A human knight wants to sit astride a warhorse, but a halfling could comfortably make do atop a pony. Not that I think they would. More likely, you'd see halflings on chariots. A single driver, just as with human designs, but three archers for every one that a human would field. Or perhaps two archers and a magic user, if they can field enough of them. And why shouldn't they, with twice the population?
The overall picture painted is one of an empire that can field a larger armies of better trained and better equipped soldiers than their opponents, with a larger percentage of their forces being active combatants rather than camp followers. They might not have the ancient wizards of the elves or the fortresses of the dwarves or the raw physical strength of the orcs... but a magnitude of military sins are washed away by a volley of three times as many crossbow bolts as the other side brought soldiers.