Green or purple?

But for politics.

I always felt this thing was more serious and sensible and B5 guys were just to ignorant about Drazi culture to understand

Rolled 1 (1d2)

Damnit, OP, this could have been simple.

Okay guys, roll a d2.

1 = green
2 = purple

If your post also gets trips, you are the leader for the color you chose. Combat starts when we have both a green leader and a purple leader. Combat will consist of contested, flat (unmodified) d20 rolls. Whoever rolls higher wins.

No, the Drazi explained it pretty clearly: the Drazi gather together all the Drazi, reach into a great big barrel filled with scarves, and then become either Green or Purple depending on which they get. Presumably they can't see into the barrel.

The leader of each faction is the one who lucks into drawing the special scarf with the star on it.

I would presume that, on the Drazi homeworld, this happens on a community-by-community basis and not with literally all the Drazi coming together into a single area. Combat, too, is likely just one community against itself, and not verses multiple communities.

There might be a broader backstory reason for this; maybe this is the Drazi equivalent of the Purge or something, a way to fight wars with themselves without anyone actually dying (remember that it's supposed to just be the two factions fighting each other hand-to-hand or perhaps with clubs, not lethal - it presumably only turned lethal during the events of Babylon 5 due to Shadow influence, as it seems like the kind of thing they'd do).

Oh, I forgot, combat lasts for a Drazi cycle. Remember that a Drazi cycle is not a Drazi week. A Drazi cycle is a Drazi year. One Drazi year is 1.2 Earth years, or 438 days.

We're going to be fighting until Saturday, June 16, 2018

>D2
It's called a coin ya dobber

Not according to the input field to roll it. dice+1d2.

Thanks Doc

Well you better get ready to roll for SAN loss

Oh, hey, an actual d2. Neat.

...

A Babylon 5 episode. The Drazi species divide themselves into blue and purple teams by randomly drawing scarves out of a barrel. Then the two teams fight until only one is left. It takes the station security chief most of an episode to figure out why they're fighting because they refuse to give anyone a straight answer.

Station Commander actually, and they give a perfectly good answer, it's just no one can believe it's just because "Green" and "Purple."

youtube.com/watch?v=AcBTOU7RvbU

(also maybe to give a reason for the character to get the Actress' broken foot)

>blue and purple
the fuck?

They give straight answers. Just too straight for future humans imagined in the multicultural tolerance lens of the early 90s.

>Can someone explain to me the issue here?
>...Green
>Purple!

Then they fight. Pretty straight forward. Its from when they were still doing some episodes with 'the space humans meet weird aliens' serialized format. Probably at the time a fairly heavy handed 'why can't we just get along/your differences are minor' sort of moral.

Don't forget how it actually is about the color of the scarf. When Ivanova dyes all the Green team's scarves purple. it ends the conflict on the station.

And even better, for the rest of the season and a good portion of the next one, all Drazi on the station can be seen wearing purple scarves. Babylon 5 was surprisingly good about continuity.

(Another example of this, though somewhat sadder, is that for many episodes after the Markab were wiped out, the League of Non-Aligned Worlds chamber on B5 still has a seat open for the Markab representative, and it's still clearly marked for the Markab, but it remains empty).

Good point. Its not symbolic. Its literal. Green sucks because it is green, not because it means anything.

Maybe even weirder in a fiddly way. Its literal and relational, green sucks because I'm purple.

Headlore wise it makes sense given how aggressive drazi are to just have a thing they can fight about that isn't connected to much cultural/social infrastructure. It keeps them from fucking each other up in ways that make it difficult to run a star-nation.

I don't think it's even a "green sucks" thing.

More, "I'm purple, so I have to fight the greens."

My appreciations doctor.

>there will NEVER be new B5 content

Life is a mistake

And that's the kind of thing they should have said when asked why they're fighting. "Green" and "purple" aren't reasons at all. The colors themselves are irrelevant; they were fighting just to fight.

Rolled 2 (1d2)

Why are we doing this though?
And why am I going along with it?

Rolled 13 (1d20)

Then you better bring your A game you Green sonuvabitch.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

That's a good point. It seemed like there was some sort of emotional content to green/purple, but they didn't really get into it. Like, it might be a feeling/activity mix that doesn't translate to humans well.

Its also pretty funny the ambassador/consulate didn't bother to explain it to the humans before hand. Drazi seem very results based. Or it just seemed similar enough to what they see humans do so they didn't think they'd have to explain.

Stop asking questions and reach into the barrel.

...

What happens if the reigning party intentionally distributes fewer scarves of the opposing color in order to rig the process?

There is no reigning party. The people on top are as beholden to the system as those on the bottom.

Wouldn't work as population/aggression control then. The fights have to be significant over the course of a year to keep everyone busy. If its too rigged it would be over too soon.

Rolled 16 (1d20)

Shit, I hope I do.

Then what if they drew the wrong colour from the barrel?

Why would you make it so that you could end up on the smaller side?

(It's not a party type thing. When it's not time for the civil war, there's no difference. Drazi are Drazi. And you never know which side you'll be on until you draw)

Given that once a Drazi cycle has past there ARE no more Green or Purple, just Drazi, I don't think it works that way.

The Drazi are also shown as being very beholden to the letter (if not the spirit, but again, that's probably the Shadows) of the contest in that as soon as Ivonova grabbed the Green leader's scarf, they all started obeying her because she had the Green scarf and therefore was now the Green leader.

youtube.com/watch?v=wFkZgxtlcws

Given the quality of the later stuff we should be grateful

>Probably at the time a fairly heavy handed 'why can't we just get along/your differences are minor' sort of moral.

Nope. No moral. Or rather the moral of the episode appears to be "stupid problems have stupid solutions that are so stupidly simple that a smart person won't even consider them."

Also known as "The SG-1 Principle".

Green and Purple fight. Solution? Get all the greens to dye their scarves purple. Done.

Thanks Doc.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

I can feel of the scarves overtaking me! It is a good fashion!

>Green and Purple fight. Solution? Get all the greens to dye their scarves purple. Done.
Why not purple to green? This is a big deal. We need to fight about it.

Then draw a scarf and declare yourself.

In that case it was because she'd grabbed the green leader's scarf, without realising what it made her.

And her only succeeding because I'm not sure they expected it (And not being part of the war anyway)

I thought it was a neat highlight of how its not even a species thing. Its just a colour on a scarf. Some mixing of old traditions with space travel too, might have been the first time anyone non-drazi even held one.

Well, no, 'cause the rules change is expressly being discussed, but it's held up in committee.

Likely what happened is some poor alien schmuck merchant on the Zhabar (the Drazi homeworld) happened to be wearing a purple or green scarf that they liked and then got beaten to within an inch of his life over it. The Drazi are now working on changing the rules as a result, but, well, you know how governments are.

Some additional tidbits:
- The Drazi ruling authority is the Shadak
- The ritual combat happens every 5 cycles, which conveniently enough is exactly 6 Earth years (discounting the extra day for a leap year in there).
- The winner of the ritual combat gets to select a new Shadak from within its own ranks.

So basically it appears that the Drazi Freehold is a parliamentary democracy, except instead of a bunch of parties they only have two, and instead of campaigning for votes they beat each other over the head. But on the bright side, since who's Green and who's Purple is random, this means that each side is statistically going to be made up of Drazi from all walks of life, meaning that neither Green or Purple is going to be dominated by any particular sector, and the new Shadak is going to as a result also probably be made up of a good balance of policies and ideas.

The Drazi are smarter than us, guys.

Rolled 2 (1d2)