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[SixOfSpades]

Yes, that falls under "intentionally limiting the offspring of one's own species".

[GoblinCookie]

That depends on the wording of the original wedding vows. If Sally swore to take both Jake and Steve as her lawfully wedded spouses, forsaking all others, then yes, marrying Brian later on would be a violation. But if there was no clause prohibiting additional spouses, she's legally free to play the field and still be considered faithful.

We are talking more about categories than we are about law.  If Jane takes advantage of the lack of an explicit clause to cheat on Steve, that does not exactly count as being monogamous, even if it is legal. 

Okay, so let's consider the common human behavior of unmarried sexual promiscuity. As you say, those who participate in it do not intend to reproduce thereby, and as well, society does not approve of it--in fact, society will usually exert pressure on those participants (who thus conceived a child) to marry each other. As this kind of promiscuity would be neither [REPRODUCTIVE] nor [CULTURAL], by your definitions, could a creature thus flagged against promiscuity still engage in it? If not, by what tags would you describe the current human model?

That is an example of a clash between the cultural system and the actual system, the kind of thing I was talking about.  The cultural norm (what determines the laws) clashes with the actual behavior of certain creatures and the law attempts to force them to follow the cultural norm.

The total set of behaviors are defined at a creature level and exist regardless of what the culture they are part of thinks.  The culture however may not adopt as normative any behaviors defined as non-reproductive at the creature-level. 

Your stubborn unwillingness to admit fault continues to be a defining trait of your character, sadly. But at least you mention the capacity to respond with respect; let's work on that. You may or may not have a single gram of humility about you, GoblinCookie, but you could at least pretend. You can do THAT much, I am sure.

Now, you do have a point about mob rule and being shouted down: The truth is always the truth, no matter how many people say it ain't so. But that's not what I see when you take one of your stands: I usually see you starting from a rather inexplicable conclusion, and awkwardly reaching for arguments that only tenuously seem to support your claim. Meanwhile, a handful of other posters collectively say, "WTF, dude," and explain why they disagree with you--sometimes with links. You almost infallibly respond to their rebuttals only by trenching in deeper, and sometimes exploding with anger. Which, of course, accomplishes nothing.

I am nearly always right and the 'handful of other posters' are nearly always wrong.  That leaves me with only two options, either I am better than them or worse than them, naturally I prefer the former concept over the latter.  Humility is different when the only options on the table are better or worse. 

I only said I wouldn't respond to those points that I consider not to merit a response: If someone has mustered a reasonable counter to one of your arguments, I will consider your point conclusively disproved. No matter how many times you wish to bring it back up, I shall consider it dead, and usually not respond to it. Now, as why I do respond; To change you. To metaphorically look over your shoulder, and remind you that (so far) pretty much everyone who's weighed in on the issue being discussed disagrees with you. To, at the very least, make you angry, to make you angry when you are wrong, and thus condition you to hate to be wrong. With the ultimate goal being, of course, that you end up being wrong less often. You have the capacity to think, GoblinCookie, which is a valuable trait and not to be underestimated--but don't you overestimate it either. Being smarter does NOT equal being better, and simply thinking is NOT enough, particularly if you do your thinking and your speaking in the wrong order.

The problem is that I know very, very well exactly why I am right.  I have checked and double-checked everything I believe many, many times already in my head before any of your posters ever turned up.

Oh please. Unpopularity does not equal genius. It's a grievous fault to say that it does, and an even worse one to believe it for oneself.

It is true that unpopularity does not equal genius.  But it also the case that unpopularity is a necessary consequence of actually being a genius, at least unpopularity in some circles.  It is the main reason I generally hold the crop of official intellectuals of this civilization in such low regard, if they are held in such high esteem by this society then they are obviously mediocre at best; since if they were not they would have disagreed with the many errors it is so attached to.  Probably explains why tearing apart most such people's views is so effortlessly easy, they are basically one-eyed men in the land of the blind. 

This works because there are three basic ways to arrive at the truth about something.  One of those is evidence, the second is by using logical reasoning and the third is by analyzing bias.  Basically what I see with official intellectuals is a very large number of people who have basically chosen one of these means over the others and generally hold the other two methods in contempt.  But none of those methods work in isolation, it does not matter how good you are at one of those methods, it will never avail you in isolation. 

Being actually wrong and incapable of ever arriving at the truth they can bask in popularity and advance their careers, but if they actually arrived at the truth they would bask in mass hatred and lose their careers.  So 'natural selection' favours the wrong official intellectuals over the correct ones does it not? 

That's true in some cases: I myself have noticed that if someone is opposed to the idea of women breastfeeding their babies in public, they will invariably say, "It's disgusting!" If you then ask them, "Why is it disgusting?" they will have no cogent response: They honestly don't know. There is a sharp disconnect between their Reason and Emotion, and they weren't expecting to have to bridge that gap. They have shot their wad, as it were, and have no continuation.
But that's not what I've seen happen here on the forum. Here, people who disagree with you, GoblinCookie, have had logical rebuttals in plenty: Because in fantasy literature, the concept of 'clan' is always associated FAR more closely with family than with government. Because to reduce an entire dwarf fortress to nothing more than a shop is a gross oversimplification. Because to give every dwarf in the fort the exact same first two names violates the very purpose of a name. Because the great Houses of Lannister, Stark, and Targarygen were NOT named after their goddamn buildings. And those are just the things that I've caught you saying. You are no Socrates, not by a damned sight, and it's high time you accepted that.

I see how we are moving from actual history to fantasy literature.  That is a problem because we are now hostage to the ignorance of the fantasy author rather than that of the historian.  It is however quite possible to tear apart the historian to get at the actual history behind the historian, but no such thing is possible with the fantasy author because there is no real fantasy world behind the fantasy author. 

But no, a household is not a house.  A household lives in a house and the house defines the household as a unit.  But if the household moves house then it is still the same household yes?  That is what I was saying, the noble houses are households in that sense, which is why they called houses. 

Anyway. There are no ornithologists among my circle of friends, but I do have a Riparian Analyst (specialist in rivers & streams and their associated wildlife), and that should be close enough. She mentioned, unsurprisingly, that one person watching one duck pond over one summer is not a significant sample size, and she also said that in general, intentionally limiting the offspring of one's own species (let alone one's own offspring) is practiced only by apex predators and other large carnivores--such as lions, wolves, hyenas, and some baboons. This usually takes the form of a social structure wherein only the more dominant individuals are allowed to mate--so if you were to claim that this gives authentic biological precedent for current Dwarf Fortress behavior, you would have to justify why those dwarves lucky enough to marry should be considered intrinsically "dominant". Meanwhile, in real life all prey animals, including ducks, generally try to increase their population as rapidly as possible.
She pointed me at some links: http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/top-predators-limit-their-own-numbers/
The wiki article on reproductive suppression has some interesting exceptions, and of course there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-reproductive_sexual_behavior_in_animals . . . which incidentally points at mallard ducks having a particularly high incidence of male homosexuality, thus probably helping to explain why so few of your females appeared to have a mate.

And that is hopefully all of this DuckTales charade that I will have to play.

Your friend seems like almost a test-case for the one-eyed man in the world of the blind claim.  Your friend knows that predators control their own population because otherwise they would all starve to death.  Yet there are good number of non-predators, elephants or rhinos for instance that are in the same boat at the predators are, not much eats a rhino or an elephant.  Yet despite the fact that same principle logically extends then at least to the nigh-indestructable non-predators, but still your friend can still claim that only predator animals do that?

It could well be the thing controlling the number of ducklings is the number of homosexual male ducks, that really does not matter one bit to my argument, since I never claimed to know what the mechanism was, only that there certainly is a mechanism other than simply predators eating ducklings and duck eggs. 

[KittyTac]

It could well be the thing controlling the number of ducklings is the number of homosexual male ducks

Sigged.

[SixOfSpades]

If Sally swore to take both Jake and Steve as her lawfully wedded spouses, forsaking all others, then yes, marrying Brian later on would be a violation. But if there was no clause prohibiting additional spouses, she's legally free to play the field and still be considered faithful.

We are talking more about categories than we are about law.  If Jane takes advantage of the lack of an explicit clause to cheat on Steve, that does not exactly count as being monogamous, even if it is legal.

Leaving out the "chastity clause" is shorthand for the civilization allowing polygamous partners (of at least a specified gender) to continue courting additional partners, perhaps even adding them to the harem. Depending on how common this marriage structure is within the civ, it's generally safe to assume that all partners are aware of this possibility, and therefore consented to it when they consented to the marriage itself. This style is neither monogamous nor cheating: it is faithful polygamy.
But suppose there's another civ, where the rules are slightly different: A polygamous wife may take another lover only with the specific consent of her existing spouses, or perhaps cannot take new lovers at all. In this case, Sally fooling around with Brian would be an instance of unfaithful polygamy, especially if Jake and/or Steve did not approve of Brian.

I am nearly always right and the 'handful of other posters' are nearly always wrong.  That leaves me with only two options, either I am better than them or worse than them, naturally I prefer the former concept over the latter. . . .
The problem is that I know very, very well exactly why I am right.  I have checked and double-checked everything I believe many, many times already in my head . . .

So, in other words, "GoblinCookie knows all. Just ask him, and he will tell you." -- GoblinCookie

But it also the case that unpopularity is a necessary consequence of actually being a genius, at least unpopularity in some circles.

Buckminster Fuller? Issac Asimov? Carl Sagan? Jim Henson? Richard Feynman? All pretty universally liked, at least as far as I know.
(And yes, I can see that I need to bolster my list of likable geniuses with something more diverse than Dead White Guys.)

It is the main reason I generally hold the crop of official intellectuals of this civilization in such low regard, if they are held in such high esteem by this society then they are obviously mediocre at best;

I'll pass that on to them, though I'm sure they'll be devastated. 

Being actually wrong and incapable of ever arriving at the truth they [the geniuses] can bask in popularity and advance their careers, but if they actually arrived at the truth they would bask in mass hatred and lose their careers.

I'm just going to admire the staggering enormity of your arrogance for a moment.
Okay, that's long enough.

I see how we are moving from actual history to fantasy literature.  That is a problem because we are now hostage to the ignorance of the fantasy author rather than that of the historian.

Oh--are you referring now to the actual history of dwarves, crundles, foul blendecs, and bronze colossi?

Your friend seems like almost a test-case for the one-eyed man in the world of the blind claim.  Your friend knows that predators control their own population because otherwise they would all starve to death.  Yet there are good number of non-predators, elephants or rhinos for instance that are in the same boat at the predators are, not much eats a rhino or an elephant.  Yet despite the fact that same principle logically extends then at least to the nigh-indestructable non-predators, but still your friend can still claim that only predator animals do that?

As neither elephants nor rhinos tend to frequent the freshwater wetlands of the northwest United States, I can see how they might have slipped my Riparian Analyst friend's mind during her reply to me. But on her behalf, I might point out that both of these animals (as well as their American counterpart, the bison) "control" their own offspring primarily just by being more K-selected, as previously mentioned in the thread. They do NOT voluntarily practice chastity: Even the youngest and weakest bull elephants will try to mate, failing only when they are driven off by larger, stronger bulls. As I've said right from the beginning, by far the most common strategy in the animal kingdom is for all animals to try to produce as many offspring as they (safely) can. Of course there are exceptions, but they're just that: exceptions.
But I'll advise my friend as to your analysis of her ability to do her job. I'm sure your superior skills, experience, and of course sheer intellectual rigor would be of great benefit to her in the performance of her duties, and she should rightfully be grateful for any pearls of wisdom or advice you might deign to offer her.

But no, a household is not a house.  A household lives in a house and the house defines the household as a unit. . . .

Tell you what, I'll be frank. We all know that you're never going to admit to being wrong, certainly not to me, so I'm sure you can understand when I say that keeping this played-out thread alive solely to listen to you retcon your past misstatements into some tortured form of technical correctness is an idea that has remarkably little appeal for me. For all I care, you can continue to sit in your nowhere land, making all your nowhere plans for nobody.

[GoblinCookie]

It could well be the thing controlling the number of ducklings is the number of homosexual male ducks

Sigged.

.

Leaving out the "chastity clause" is shorthand for the civilization allowing polygamous partners (of at least a specified gender) to continue courting additional partners, perhaps even adding them to the harem. Depending on how common this marriage structure is within the civ, it's generally safe to assume that all partners are aware of this possibility, and therefore consented to it when they consented to the marriage itself. This style is neither monogamous nor cheating: it is faithful polygamy.
But suppose there's another civ, where the rules are slightly different: A polygamous wife may take another lover only with the specific consent of her existing spouses, or perhaps cannot take new lovers at all. In this case, Sally fooling around with Brian would be an instance of unfaithful polygamy, especially if Jake and/or Steve did not approve of Brian.

I am not sure if some of these arrangements get too complicated even for dwarf fortress, once we start to have hybrid systems in place the number of those systems gets very large, very fast.  The basic idea is that we have a number of different arrangements worked out as de-facto arrangements and then have the civilization invent forms of legal marriage and family structures according to the de-facto arrangement that it chooses to adopt as the proper one.  The other de-facto arrangements then continue to exist without recognition and partly determine the behavior of the actual creatures, they don't mix as such but rather run in parallel.  The civilization however mostly cares about only the one that it has decided to adopt as it's family/marraige/social setup. 

So, in other words, "GoblinCookie knows all. Just ask him, and he will tell you." -- GoblinCookie

You do understand that this whole sorry situation is your own doing.  Of course there are other posters that disagree with me, every poster ought to have other posters that disagree with him; I am not really special then am I?  You however decided to turn this into some kind of drama of GoblinCookieVSTheWorld, so naturally I played my part in the drama you created.

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.

Buckminster Fuller? Issac Asimov? Carl Sagan? Jim Henson? Richard Feynman? All pretty universally liked, at least as far as I know.
(And yes, I can see that I need to bolster my list of likable geniuses with something more diverse than Dead White Guys.)

I never heard of all but two of them and I know little enough about Carl Sagan and Issac Asimov.  The latter is a sci-fi author with a scientific background, which probably makes him smarter than Carl Sagan who is merely a scientist.  Indeed probably sci-fi writers that are also scientists will be the cleverest people about (for reasons described below). 

I'll pass that on to them, though I'm sure they'll be devastated. 

The problem with the present intellectuals is that most of them are too specialized and that makes them basically rather stupid.  There are three basic ways you arrive at the truth, one of them is empirically, the second is through logic and the third is through social analysis.  The first can be described as "what do we see", the second can be described as "what will also be the case if a certain thing is the case" and the third can be described as "does he have a reason to lie?".  Problem is that when taken together these methods are far more powerful (that is they multiply eachother's power) than any method is when taken apart.

But different intellectual fields are unbalanced in respect to these three elements.  The specialized intellectuals tend therefore to develop an unbalanced mind, for me to destroy everything they say is easy, I simply 'shift gears' from arguing on the basis of the overdeveloped capacity that their particular discipline has developed to arguing on the basis of one of the other two methods.  This is why I said that sci-fi authors with a scientific background are probably going to be the cleverest folks around in the 'list of official intellectuals', because writing fiction will potentially develop an understanding of the other two methods, while studying science tends to develop the first method to a high degree. 

Oh--are you referring now to the actual history of dwarves, crundles, foul blendecs, and bronze colossi?

No I am talking about the problem created when a fantasy author uses terminology without understanding their implications for the wider society and the world.  The problem is basically one of accidental authorship, the author has inadvertently told us something about the world they are creating that they did not actually intend to tell us and they are also unaware that they have told us that.

As neither elephants nor rhinos tend to frequent the freshwater wetlands of the northwest United States, I can see how they might have slipped my Riparian Analyst friend's mind during her reply to me. But on her behalf, I might point out that both of these animals (as well as their American counterpart, the bison) "control" their own offspring primarily just by being more K-selected, as previously mentioned in the thread. They do NOT voluntarily practice chastity: Even the youngest and weakest bull elephants will try to mate, failing only when they are driven off by larger, stronger bulls. As I've said right from the beginning, by far the most common strategy in the animal kingdom is for all animals to try to produce as many offspring as they (safely) can. Of course there are exceptions, but they're just that: exceptions.
But I'll advise my friend as to your analysis of her ability to do her job. I'm sure your superior skills, experience, and of course sheer intellectual rigor would be of great benefit to her in the performance of her duties, and she should rightfully be grateful for any pearls of wisdom or advice you might deign to offer her.

No, we don't control our population by being more K-Selected.  We control our population by having fewer babies, that is not called being K-Selected.  Being K-Selected means that you invest the same amount of resources into fewer offspring in order to increase the survival rate of the offspring in order to compensate for having fewer of them, the aim of the game here is to leave a competitive number of surviving offspring to what a more R-Selected strategy would result in.  Both R-Selected and K-Selected creatures populations have to be controlled in some fashion so that they do not starve to death, in both cases devoting more resources to reproduction results in more surviving babies. 

I can't think of a worse creature to prove your point than an elephant.  Male elephants and female elephants live apart except when they come together to mate.  Therefore it is silly to talk about how none of the male elephants chose chastity because none of the male elephants that 'turned up' intend to that, that is why they are there in the first place.  Any weaker male elephants that did not intend to reproduce would simply not be there in the place in order to get beaten by the stronger elephants over the right to reproduce.  We cannot assume that just because there is a fighting among those who intend to reproduce that all individuals in the population even wish to reproduce at that time at all; it is a total non-sequitor. 

To produce as many surviving offspring as you can is not going to work; I have spent several pages explaining with fairly basic math why that is so and do not wish to do so again.  Predators also do not work to control a population in a situation where creatures produce as many surviving offspring as possible.  The reason is that predator populations are subject to fluctuations caused by things independent of the population of prey; for instance the influence of their *own* predators or diseases.  Also, recall that because the number of predators is smaller, it is more likely to be effected by basic random factors than the large population of the prey is. 

Say we have your mythical ducks reproducing as fast as it is (duckly) possible to do.  That effectively means a population increase of 300-400% every year, considering that there are an average of about 10 ducklings per brood, about half of ducklings don't make it to adulthood and half the ducks are male.  Then we have a bunch of duckeaters that eat so many ducks that it does not matter that their numbers increase by such an astounding degree.  Then along comes the Great Duckeater Plague and nearly all the duckeaters die; what happens now?  The few duckeaters that remain cannot increase their numbers quickly enough to keep the ducks from starving to death and with no ducks around, all the duckeaters starve to death as well. 

Tell you what, I'll be frank. We all know that you're never going to admit to being wrong, certainly not to me, so I'm sure you can understand when I say that keeping this played-out thread alive solely to listen to you retcon your past misstatements into some tortured form of technical correctness is an idea that has remarkably little appeal for me. For all I care, you can continue to sit in your nowhere land, making all your nowhere plans for nobody.

I was always correct, it is just you did not understand what I was saying.  I actually don't really blame you since the concepts are so slippery.  It is however not the topic of conversation of this thread at present. 

[SixOfSpades]

I am not sure if some of these arrangements get too complicated even for dwarf fortress, once we start to have hybrid systems in place the number of those systems gets very large, very fast. . . .
The civilization however mostly cares about only the one that it has decided to adopt as it's family/marraige/social setup.

You just answered your own objection. Did you even mean that as an objection? It doesn't matter how many potential variations on family structures there are, as each civilization will only end up with one. (Heck, let's spice it up a bit, and allow civs the ability to recognize multiple marriage types if they "want" to.)

Drama
geniuses
blah
blah
fantasy
pretending to know biology
blah blah
supercilious boasting

Yeah, sure. Whatever. 

[GoblinCookie]

You just answered your own objection. Did you even mean that as an objection? It doesn't matter how many potential variations on family structures there are, as each civilization will only end up with one. (Heck, let's spice it up a bit, and allow civs the ability to recognize multiple marriage types if they "want" to.)

No, it's just that is just too complicated to discuss complicated hybrid systems *here* until we have an agreement as to what the basic systems are and how they work.

To wisely leave behind the whole off-topic discussion about biology and whether GoblinCookie is/is not an intellectual demigod, I though of something about names.  We could use different names for what is objectively the same relationship in terms of basic mechanic, three names in the fact.  One of these is for the officially legally recognised name, the second would be for a non-formal but tacitly accepted relationship and the third would be for a illicit relationship.  For instance, for a monogamous/polygamous relationship we could use the following setup.

Wife/Concubine/Mistress. 

[FantasticDorf]

'Lover' already covers both mistress and concubine in a capacity without any specific links, though elaborating on them would just explain the commitment (or lack of it) to each other that they have. You could say a night troll & their abducted victim are 'Troll and spouse', but its probably not so much the reality unless we reason away that its not a mutually receptive relationship least until the spouse is too converted into a monster.

Grudging/decay in the relationship with the person, or personality changes conflicting each other with the new memories system may be a motivator for infedility leading eventually into divorce, jealousy, tantrums and seeking new partners when the dust settles providing the fighting couple havent yanked furniture out of the floor and started throwing it at each other.

10 years is very restrictive, i agree that dwarves should have some sort of preference depending on factors we can see, seeking people like themselves if they are intolerant of others (as is already the case, dwarves are a tiny bit racist in preferences) and based off real world psychology that people seek each other if they have similar traits, such as sometimes hair color, nose curvature etc, shared interests.

> Dwarves already have a low level of genetic diversity leading them to look alike because often any 1st or 2nd generation dwarf from worldgen will have 2 screens of cousins constituting the entire outward growth of the civ because of their long lifespans. Goblins and elves are even worse in this respect because of immortality.

[SixOfSpades]

We could use different names for what is objectively the same relationship in terms of basic mechanic, three names in the fact.  One of these is for the officially legally recognised name, the second would be for a non-formal but tacitly accepted relationship and the third would be for a illicit relationship. . . . Wife/Concubine/Mistress.

In many cultures, having a concubine was actually a quite formal arrangement. They had no family power and their children could not inherit, but they lived in the same house/palace and were under their master's complete control. I don't really like the word "mistress," partly because it has no masculine equivalent and partly because it's too specific: There should be a word for a secret lover that does not imply one is already married. For example, you could live in a society where homosexual or interracial relationships are forbidden, or you're a Montague & they're a Capulet, etc. Sadly, English doesn't seem to have a word that fits this broader definition, so I'll settle on "Illicit Lover" as my suggested replacement for "Mistress". Theoretically, one could even be an "Illicit Spouse", in fact if an individual travels a lot (working a trade caravan, for instance), he could have multiple illicit spouses, each in a different town: If each wife was kept a secret from the others, they should all be considered Illicit.

'Lover' already covers both mistress and concubine in a capacity without any specific links, though elaborating on them would just explain the commitment (or lack of it) to each other that they have.

Eeehhhhh, mostly. I'd prefer to move "Lover" to its modern usage, meaning a romantic/sexual relationship that has not yet progressed to either of the more specific steps of fiance or concubine. "Boyfriend/Girlfriend" should be brought in to indicate a romantic relationship that is not yet sexual.

I agree that dwarves should have some sort of preference depending on factors we can see, seeking people like themselves if they are intolerant of others (as is already the case, dwarves are a tiny bit racist in preferences) and based off real world psychology that people seek each other if they have similar traits, such as sometimes hair color, nose curvature etc, shared interests.

Yes, and also to be considered is dwarves intentionally changing their own preferences, or at least trying to, to better match the desires of their intended. Similar to a guy who doesn't like poetry for himself studying poetry because that's what his crush is into, which is reasonably likely to have short-term rewards for him, but it could backfire a few years down the road when he no longer needs to pretend to like poetry. Of course, this kind of complication would require dwarves to have emotional attachments that, unlike the current system, are not always mutual.

[GoblinCookie]

'Lover' already covers both mistress and concubine in a capacity without any specific links, though elaborating on them would just explain the commitment (or lack of it) to each other that they have. You could say a night troll & their abducted victim are 'Troll and spouse', but its probably not so much the reality unless we reason away that its not a mutually receptive relationship least until the spouse is too converted into a monster.

Grudging/decay in the relationship with the person, or personality changes conflicting each other with the new memories system may be a motivator for infidelity leading eventually into divorce, jealousy, tantrums and seeking new partners when the dust settles providing the fighting couple havent yanked furniture out of the floor and started throwing it at each other.

10 years is very restrictive, i agree that dwarves should have some sort of preference depending on factors we can see, seeking people like themselves if they are intolerant of others (as is already the case, dwarves are a tiny bit racist in preferences) and based off real world psychology that people seek each other if they have similar traits, such as sometimes hair color, nose curvature etc, shared interests.

The key thing here that you seem to be missed is that the Wife/Concubine/Mistress are actually the same basic thing and should not be confused with a less developed relationship such as that of the present lover.  They are not about the relationship between the couple but instead what the social status of that couple is in society.  This social status then reacts with the general laws/ideology of the society in question, to determine the degree to which this is considered illicit and what rights they have.

In the most recognized case (wife) and in some societies that have extended legal recognition to the middle-case (concubine) it becomes possible for relationships to exist in law and in society that really don't actually exist in reality, having broken down or having been entirely cynical to begin with.  The provides a basis for divorce to be developed legally and consequences for those who refuse to believe in divorce (a whole raft of entirely imaginary marriages).

Relationship breakdown itself should be defined at a creature level.  Some creatures should have a definite timer by which relationships automatically end after a certain fixed period, to represent the penguin-type situation where the creatures get together only for a period to raise an offspring to a certain age and then separate.  This should be separate from the general relationship decay value which would have functionally similar ultimate effects but would be more random and unpredictable.  If a society adopts their own legal marraige definition based upon a creature token for temporary monogamy then the marriage agreement will last for about as long as the creature raw token defines it will, but if creatures are instead prone to random relationship breakdown they will instead end up getting divorced easily. 

> Dwarves already have a low level of genetic diversity leading them to look alike because often any 1st or 2nd generation dwarf from worldgen will have 2 screens of cousins constituting the entire outward growth of the civ because of their long lifespans. Goblins and elves are even worse in this respect because of immortality.

The basic genetics problem is how civilizations are created 4X style from the growth a single small population rather than being formed from a large number of nomadic/primitive groups of their race that join the civilization gradually and set up new settlements for it.  The first settlement of the civilization should not literally be the grandparents of the whole population of a typical civilization.

In many cultures, having a concubine was actually a quite formal arrangement. They had no family power and their children could not inherit, but they lived in the same house/palace and were under their master's complete control. I don't really like the word "mistress," partly because it has no masculine equivalent and partly because it's too specific: There should be a word for a secret lover that does not imply one is already married. For example, you could live in a society where homosexual or interracial relationships are forbidden, or you're a Montague & they're a Capulet, etc. Sadly, English doesn't seem to have a word that fits this broader definition, so I'll settle on "Illicit Lover" as my suggested replacement for "Mistress". Theoretically, one could even be an "Illicit Spouse", in fact if an individual travels a lot (working a trade caravan, for instance), he could have multiple illicit spouses, each in a different town: If each wife was kept a secret from the others, they should all be considered Illicit.

Indeed, the concubine is the middle ground between the three extremes, that means that some societies can give concubines legal rights.  Illicit was intended to mean 'not legal' rather than 'bad or persecuted', though that should often be the case, but yes the word has other connotations so sorry for not being quite clear.  Concubine (or whatever we call it) was intended to represent a state where there a public recognition and social acceptance of a marital-like relationship between two people but the two people are not technically married against a situation where it is invisible and known to only a few.  Being illegal or persecuted enforces a mistress status on a relationship, but it need not be the case that said relationship should be actively persecuted in order to have the third setup. 

In effect until a society formally invents marriage the only distinction is going to be between concubine and mistress.  Again, the distinction is not what the couple feel towards each-other but what their society considers them to be.  As I told Fantastic Dwarf, once a society has come up with legal definitions for marriage and/or concubinage it becomes possible for the definition to exist on paper even when the actual dwarves have separated.  The other thing is that the marriage and concubinage definition can be based upon different systems, so we could end with the Chinese situation where we have one actual wife but a number of subordinate concubines.  This is done by having the society's concubinage defined as a polygamous system and the actual marriage being defined as monogamous.  We could also have a monogamous concubinage system, where unmarried people can have one concubine, you would not end up with both one wife and one concubine because each system assumes the same logic applies to other systems even if it does not.

[SixOfSpades]

In effect until a society formally invents marriage the only distinction is going to be between concubine and mistress.

I agree with most of your post, but feel the need to stick my oar in on this point, because the differences between spouse / concubine / mistress predate society, history, and indeed even humanity. At its most basic level, a spouse is a female whose male partner plays an equal part in providing for/rearing the offspring, and there is often monogamy involved: The female does not mate with other males, while the male does not provide for or rear the offspring of other females. In the same vein, a concubine is a female whose male partner does not play an equal role in feeding/rearing the offspring, yet usually still has continued mating rights (which are frequently exclusive). And a mistress is an individual of either gender who secretly engages in relationships with others who are expected to be exclusive. These are of course biological definitions which can be applied to a great many animal species, and I don't see why they shouldn't work for dwarves.

Here's how I break it down:

Relationship: Legally Recognized: Socially Recognized (overt): Equal-status Partners: Full-status Offspring: Sexual: Emotional:

Spouse        Fiance        Concubine        Lover        Illicit Lover       ♂/♀  friend Yes Maybe Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Maybe Yes Yes Yes No Maybe No N/A Yes Maybe Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Maybe Maybe Maybe Yes

Notes: The "Illicit" description can be applied to much more than 1 category. A "Fortress-Mode" illicit relationship can take the form of either Lover or Boyfriend/Girlfriend, but can go no further due to the prying eyes of society, the law, and any primary bonds either partner may have. "Adventurer-Mode" relationships, however, can potentially also include Concubine, Fiance, and even Spouse, although the overt nature of these relationships means the "adventurer" risks their becoming known in other towns/forts.
The "Equal-status Partners" row indicates only inequality caused by the nature of the relationship itself, not any default gender bias stemming from the base society.
The "Full-status Offspring" indicates whether any children of such a union would be likely to be acknowledged and accepted as fully legitimate family members by the relatives of both of their parents.

we could end with the Chinese situation where we have one actual wife but a number of subordinate concubines.

Or the even more confusing variation of (possibly) zero actual concubines, but simultaneous subordinate wives, wherein all the children were technically legitimate, but the 1st wife outranked the 2nd and her sons would inherit proportionally more. The 2nd wide and her children likewise outranked the 3rd wife and her offspring, etc. It's a good thing dwarves are currently communists, so we don't have to wrap our heads around this.

[GoblinCookie]

I agree with most of your post, but feel the need to stick my oar in on this point, because the differences between spouse / concubine / mistress predate society, history, and indeed even humanity. At its most basic level, a spouse is a female whose male partner plays an equal part in providing for/rearing the offspring, and there is often monogamy involved: The female does not mate with other males, while the male does not provide for or rear the offspring of other females. In the same vein, a concubine is a female whose male partner does not play an equal role in feeding/rearing the offspring, yet usually still has continued mating rights (which are frequently exclusive). And a mistress is an individual of either gender who secretly engages in relationships with others who are expected to be exclusive. These are of course biological definitions which can be applied to a great many animal species, and I don't see why they shouldn't work for dwarves.

Your reasoning is a bit monogamy-centric.  In a polygamous system a male partner cannot provide an equal role by the simple logistical fact that he has other wives and their children to also attend to while the wives only have their own children to raise. 

These distinctions do not exist for their own sake.  They exist in order to represent what happens when we combine a society that has one system of family with a creature whose behaviors do not align to those of the society, usually because they are different type of creature altogether.  In a promiscuous society all spouses of a monogamous creature are considered to be mistresses, this has nothing to do with the nature of the spouses actual relationship to each-other at all. 

The actual nature of the relationship is a completely different 'axis' as it were.  Spouse/Concubine/Mistress in my book are at the exact same point along the axis, the only difference is their social status and recognition.  That means that before you have laws establishing and regulating marriage, a society can indeed only have concubines regardless of how monogamous they are and how close the concubines are to each-other.  This is because wife is distinguished from concubine simply by the fact that the former has a formal legal existence, concubine is separated from mistress by it's public nature and social acceptance. 

Here's how I break it down:

Relationship: Legally Recognized: Socially Recognized (overt): Equal-status Partners: Full-status Offspring: Sexual: Emotional:

Spouse        Fiance        Concubine        Lover        Illicit Lover       ♂/♀  friend Yes Maybe Yes No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Maybe Yes Yes Yes No Maybe No N/A Yes Maybe Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Maybe Maybe Maybe Yes

Notes: The "Illicit" description can be applied to much more than 1 category. A "Fortress-Mode" illicit relationship can take the form of either Lover or Boyfriend/Girlfriend, but can go no further due to the prying eyes of society, the law, and any primary bonds either partner may have. "Adventurer-Mode" relationships, however, can potentially also include Concubine, Fiance, and even Spouse, although the overt nature of these relationships means the "adventurer" risks their becoming known in other towns/forts.
The "Equal-status Partners" row indicates only inequality caused by the nature of the relationship itself, not any default gender bias stemming from the base society.
The "Full-status Offspring" indicates whether any children of such a union would be likely to be acknowledged and accepted as fully legitimate family members by the relatives of both of their parents.

What you have written works well for the second axis, if you get rid of concubine and illicit lover, replacing the former with casual lover.  So the hierarchy goes.

Friend
Casual Lover
Lover
Fiance
Spouse

Concubine is a type of spouse, one that stands halfway between mistress and wife.  Illicit lover would be the bottom socal-wrung of lover, equivalent to mistress. 

Or the even more confusing variation of (possibly) zero actual concubines, but simultaneous subordinate wives, wherein all the children were technically legitimate, but the 1st wife outranked the 2nd and her sons would inherit proportionally more. The 2nd wide and her children likewise outranked the 3rd wife and her offspring, etc. It's a good thing dwarves are currently communists, so we don't have to wrap our heads around this.

Yes property has a lot to blame for making things complicated.  Much of how complicated things ought to get would be tied to to how far from Everyone is Communist the property/law/status/familyetc release takes us.