It's the culture I'm taking issues with, and in specific their completely absurd and over the top attitude towards woman which serves no purpose but to em[hasize how evil they are to the players, as well as how contrived the entire situation is overall.
Just to be clear, I'm not complaining. However, I do wish to clear out the thought processes that made them what they are, both IC and GM standpoint.
It isn't contrived and is actually. The Forluc were regular misogynists due to having a male deity and warlike society, both of which led to them favouring males over females. During the Lowland Collapse, they had a misogynistic character as rolled up by a random character trait generator (according to my notes, Praden was analytical, sexism and perfectionist). Due to his biases, he imposed them into measures he used to save his civ from destruction which resulted in both a very misogynistic and perfectionist system. The system treats women terribly and won't stand up to anything that takes a blow it, but it is very efficient for getting the most numbers out of what you get. It also doesn't stand up to an major natural disaster or crises such famine or plague outbreak. Furthermore since the system was working and hadn't failed them, the Forluc haven't toned things back or been forced to tone things back. In fact, thanks to the system benefiting Nalnir, it has been encouraged and doubled down on.
It should also be noted that what I posted in the info post is just of right now and things were different and, morally-speaking, better in the past. For example, when you first discovered the Forluc, they didn't have things like the children quotas as that was introduced to improve their population size in order to match you. I would say that the Forloc have had two major points where they have gotten worse. First was when they survived the Lowland Collapse where they got their strict, elitist hierarchy and their misogynistic patriarchy as two of their major values. Since the system which got them those cultural traits worked and saved them and had yet to fail them, they didn't tone back their worse excesses, especially since the system benefited Nalnir.
When you came along and caused a societal crisis for them due to being superior to them, they decided to do what they did last time and effectively doubled down again. While this let them get more numbers out of their economy, it also made it fragile and brittle that any major blow could cause their total collapse. It also made them go from viewing women as being inherently inferior to seeing them little more than being good for breeding and sex as they forced their women to breed and have children to rapidly increase their numbers. They also double-downed on the privileges and rights of their priests and sacred warriors to make them stronger and to improve their military as their priesthood is responsible for their military.
Additionally, their double-down had other effects such as making them more xenophobia as they grew a hatred of you and anyone close to you while you got buddy-buddy with everyone else in the northern lowlands leading to the Forluc to hate anyone north of them and making how they treated captured or conquered foreigners even worse. Before they would just raid foreign villages for slaves and loot, but would leave them alive for future raids, but now they are super-xenophobic, they just enslave or kill everyone in the village when they win.
Additionally, there is the god factor as some posters have noticed. Nalnir is the centre-piece of Forluc society and the blatantly evil system is benefiting him in the short term so he has been actively encouraging and supporting the worst excesses of the Forluc as he doesn't have a problem with how evil they are and likes how he benefits from. And while these ways will screw him over in the long run, he isn't that far-sighted, especially as he has a blindspot regarding his own fallibility and how he could potentially not succeed or not be the best.
I might write an info post on Nalnir tomorrow so you guys can understand just how badly he has warped and pushed Forluc society to its current extremes. But for now, I am going to bed.
I really want citation on that.
These were my sources. The Ancient Greeks didn't treat women badly in the exactly the same ways as the Forluc nor did all of them treat women equally badly (Sparta as a lot better than Athens when it came to women rights), but when you remove the Forluc using magic to abuse women, I feel that some of the Ancient Greeks treated women just as badly as the Forluc if in different ways. For example, women in Athens weren't allowed to leave their homes and were treated little better than property or cattle.
Women and Misogyny in Ancient Greek Philosophy
Hipponax & Misogyny in Ancient Greece
Plus Klinker and Manus in the discord, but I don't want to drag them into this so I'm not tagging them.
