So, this was my first play through with Rayya’s Children, the people of the sand. I’ve spent many hours trying to get my town up and started, when I came to a quest. This quest asked me to build a monument in order for my town to get upgraded. So, I checked out the requirements, I like to make things, so I planned to be a crafting town. I checked out the requirements for that monument and I was ready to build. But I got a little curious about the other options and came across the option to focus on religion. I would have to build a ‘Monkey Shrine Monument’, for this one.
So, umm, two things came to mind at this… First, was ‘Why a monkey shrine?’. There are no monkeys around, so why would they worship them? Even if, A deity that took her form as an monkey, there are still no monkeys around. Is she a deity of prosperity? Is she a Goddess from their origins? And if so, why not bring any monkeys with them as companions, if they mean so much? Why not a shrine of an animal people would think they would really find in the desert? A scorpion, maybe? Desert spiders? Lizards? Or how about making up one?
I know there are monkeys that live Desert areas in the world, but… this leads me to the second thing.
Well, how do I put this?
With no real content to explain the shrine, it seems a bit racist. Rayya’s Children -->People of the sand --> Brown people --> (here in the Great U.S.A) People call other people from those places; Sand Monkeys or/and Sand ('N’word) as racial slurs.
The whole thing just broke my immersion with the people I was playing as.
Solution: I suggest to either put in more content to explain the shrine or change the shrine.