Firstly, she was super-powerful, and it is not hard for super-powerful people to cower everyone else into submission, even if they are stupid. In addition to her own power she has an army of templars who are directly dependent on her for their power. These facts alone should mean she should have no problem with terrorizing the people of Raam into order if she so wished.
Secondly, Rajaat chose her from amongst the entire race of humankind to be one of his elite generals. He needed the best of the best to lead an entire army for centuries against a whole race. He needed someone who can inspire confidence, devise cunning strategies, change with the times etc etc.
Thirdly, she had to be extremely intelligent and extremely wise to handle high-level magic and psionics and become a dragon.
The idea that she is so drastically incompetent that she couldn't even manage to frighten a single city into outward obedience just seems very unlikely.
I prefer to imagine that, instead of being dumb, she just got bored of centuries and centuries of Athas remaining exactly the same and grew utterly indifferent to the day-to-day government of Raam, preferring to pursue her own personal explorations and experiments at its expense, disappearing for years on end and temporarily cutting off her templarate's spells supply without warning and so on. In addition, perhaps she found amusement in sowing disharmony in her city's society, whipping up animosity between factions, undermining her own templars and even stoking up rebellion against herself, only to reappear in force when things periodically bubbled over, delighting in killing and enslaving all those who had grown confident in their own power to bring down the apparently weak government.
Similarly I prefer to imagine that she had her citizens start worshipping the false god of Raam either because she needed a pact with a some demon-thing that needed worshippers, or because it amused her to force her city to worship something she found ridiculous and patently untrue.
/aside
Yes, we don't know exactly about the Green Age. Yes, Orcs might have been psionic hermits with a vow of non-violence. And groomed fur. But having no other information, I assume the Orcs of teh Green Age were mostly like the "ordinary" (D&D-)ones.
/end aside
And Abalach-Re finished her job. She wiped all Orcs out. She got this inner satisfied feeling being described in the Prism Pentad when a Champion finished his task. But after probaly several hundreds of year of warfare against worthy opponents, she is just not used anymore to a relatively peaceful life. Just when another, rare opportunity of battle with a worthy opponent presents itself, she shows her old self.
Remember, it was Abalach-Re who rallied the Sorceror Kings to kill Dregoth.
Abalach-Re was tasked to eradicate the Orcs, the race which excelled at warfare.
/aside
Yes, we don't know exactly about the Green Age. Yes, Orcs might have been psionic hermits with a vow of non-violence. And groomed fur. But having no other information, I assume the Orcs of teh Green Age were mostly like the "ordinary" (D&D-)ones.
/end aside
And Abalach-Re finished her job. She wiped all Orcs out. She got this inner satisfied feeling being described in the Prism Pentad when a Champion finished his task. But after probaly several hundreds of year of warfare against worthy opponents, she is just not used anymore to a relatively peaceful life. Just when another, rare opportunity of battle with a worthy opponent presents itself, she shows her old self.
Remember, it was Abalach-Re who rallied the Sorceror Kings to kill Dregoth.
Where is that pikáchu?!
The only way to get it back would be a custom avatar, but I do not have the energy to get one.
I prefer to imagine that, instead of being dumb, she just got bored of centuries and centuries of Athas remaining exactly the same and grew utterly indifferent to the day-to-day government of Raam, preferring to pursue her own personal explorations and experiments at its expense, disappearing for years on end and temporarily cutting off her templarate's spells supply without warning and so on.
Yeah, that's the route I'd go with. The adventure Forest Maker would seem to support this as well.
Alot of intelligent people are also quite stupid outside their area of expertise. Alot of computer type geeks I know can't really run a household but can programme a computer.
In games stats someone or something may be intelligent or powerful but it doesn't account for their personality which may have a flaw or two.
Plus I doubt any of history's poor leaders/great generals had both the wisdom of a great sage and near genius-level intelligence.
Also, in reply to earlier posts, Rajaat needed Uyness/Abalach to be the supreme leader of an army for many centuries. She wasn't like most real-world generals, who run the army (for a decade or two at most) but leave running the country to the senate or the king. An army that lasts for one and a half millenia is effectively a mobile kingdom. Don't forget that very few empires in the real world have managed to last for one a half millenia. So Uyness was chosen by Rajaat to be a supreme leader as well as a general. Rajaat's champions needed to be a band of Napoleans - excelling in strategy, leadership and governance.
Nibenay has been growing ever more removed in the affairs of his city, and this for at least a generation now. Now people are taking decisions in his stead, decisions he might not have taken himself were he more involved...
And considering that all SKs, to one order or another, let bad and uncontrolled stuff happen in their city for entertainment purposes (you know...to break the tedium of millenia and all that), I imagine there is a reason - or multiple reasons - one could come up with (besides stupidy or incompetence) to explain why Abalach-Re let things spiral out of control in her city. And out of control is never quite right for an SK: Like it was mentionned earlier in this thread, things are never quite out of control for a SK, if he puts his or her mind and might to it.
Has anyone else thought of the implications of using the Skull of Dorag Thel to become a an avangion without having to be a high level preserver/psionicist (I dont like psions or the 3rd edition psionic rules which turned psionicists into sorcerers who dont use arcane energy, but the effects and class features all all pretty much the same)...I think that would be kinda cool....
Theres plenty of examples IRL of former generals/guerilla leaders being awful politicians despite being quite intelligent.
Alot of intelligent people are also quite stupid outside their area of expertise. Alot of computer type geeks I know can't really run a household but can programme a computer.
In games stats someone or something may be intelligent or powerful but it doesn't account for their personality which may have a flaw or two.
AMEN to that...my brother is 31, still lives at home with mom and dad, and has very little life outside of Evercrack; but other then that he is super smart about computers and taught himself everything he needs to know about them.
Abalach-Re obviously needs Raam as much as it needs her - Raam protects her from enemies and offers a level of comfort she's gotten used to - but doesn't want to be perceived as the power on or even behind the throne. So she casts herself as a naive, bumbling ruler who tries to hide behind a deity she created herself. Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if she's seeded agents and double agents in the ranks of those who oppose her, even started a few rebellions herself.
Read up on Discworld's Patrician to get the wheels-within-wheels feel I'm trying to sketch here. Basically, Abalach-Re is the spider in the chaotic, interlocking webs of Raam. Even those webs that appear to be in each other's way.
I disagree.
Rajaat's purpose in selecting Ablach-Re and the other champions was not just to exterminate the Champions' selected races. It was also to help weaken the human race to the point where they could be easily finished off.
To accomplish that complex purpose, Rajaat needed some competent generals, to go against the tough or organized races, like dwarves, elves, Giants, etc. But he also needed some incompetent generals, to bring the human race to the brink of extinction. And he needed all of his generals to be too suspicious of each other to put the pieces together before it was too late.
The incompetence was a key aspect of the evil.
Abalach-Re obviously needs Raam as much as it needs her - Raam protects her from enemies and offers a level of comfort she's gotten used to - but doesn't want to be perceived as the power on or even behind the throne. So she casts herself as a naive, bumbling ruler who tries to hide behind a deity she created herself. Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if she's seeded agents and double agents in the ranks of those who oppose her, even started a few rebellions herself.
Read up on Discworld's Patrician to get the wheels-within-wheels feel I'm trying to sketch here. Basically, Abalach-Re is the spider in the chaotic, interlocking webs of Raam. Even those webs that appear to be in each other's way.
Yeah that's pretty much how I see her too.
Ah... Brax is back.
The possibility of awakening the Brax did cross my mind actually since I randomly remember from years and years ago that he took the Wanderer's Abalach-Re-is-incompetent line.
"Secondly, Rajaat chose her from amongst the entire race of humankind to be one of his elite generals. He needed the best of the best to lead an entire army for centuries against a whole race."
I disagree.
Rajaat's purpose in selecting Ablach-Re and the other champions was not just to exterminate the Champions' selected races. It was also to help weaken the human race to the point where they could be easily finished off.
To accomplish that complex purpose, Rajaat needed some competent generals, to go against the tough or organized races, like dwarves, elves, Giants, etc. But he also needed some incompetent generals, to bring the human race to the brink of extinction. And he needed all of his generals to be too suspicious of each other to put the pieces together before it was too late.
Unless Athasian orcs were radically different from other settings, they were still very tough, prone to being gathered into devastating hordes by evil warlords, and completely eliminating them would have been a gargantuan task. Even if they were all weak and disorganized, rooting them out of every last underground nook and cranny in the world would require formidable organizational skills in itself. Much more so than sitting in a city and killing people whenever they rebel at any rate.
Also, how would having an incompetent general weaken the human race? She would be less able to defeat pro-demihuman human civilizations and be unable to persuade them to join the crusade. She would likewise find it more difficult to defeat them when forced to fight them. Worst of all, she might end up letting slip the link between all the champions and encourage a united alliance of all nonhumans and good humans against all the champions. All this would mean a stronger human race, not a weaker one, not to mention making the rather difficult task of completing the Cleansing Wars even more difficult.
I agree that Rajaat needed to weaken the human race though. As I imagine it, Rajaat told his champions that to bring about the new purified age of humankind, all the corrupted technology and culture of the Green Age would have to be forsaken. Therefore the champions should not establish great empires of their own and should destroy all artifacts/technology not directly useful to fulfilling their missions. This would also help explain why so little Green Age technology has survived and why the SKs have been reduced to one city each.
In any case I think my other arguments are more compelling: that all dragons and high-level psis/wizards have to be very intelligent and very wise and that even stupid people can easily overawe a city-state when you're super-powerful and have an army of loyal warrior-spellcasters.
"Secondly, Rajaat chose her from amongst the entire race of humankind to be one of his elite generals. He needed the best of the best to lead an entire army for centuries against a whole race."
I disagree.
Rajaat's purpose in selecting Ablach-Re and the other champions was not just to exterminate the Champions' selected races. It was also to help weaken the human race to the point where they could be easily finished off.
To accomplish that complex purpose, Rajaat needed some competent generals, to go against the tough or organized races, like dwarves, elves, Giants, etc. But he also needed some incompetent generals, to bring the human race to the brink of extinction. And he needed all of his generals to be too suspicious of each other to put the pieces together before it was too late.
Welcome back, my friend. You were missed.
I think if an evil leader leaves the management of resources to more competent underlings, a city-state could manage to survive.
The possibility of awakening the Brax did cross my mind actually since I randomly remember from years and years ago that he took the Wanderer's Abalach-Re-is-incompetent line.
Yes, I do tend to take The Wanderer as a more credible source than the sourcebooks of other settings when it comes to understanding Athas.
Unless Athasian orcs were radically different from other settings, they were still very tough, prone to being gathered into devastating hordes by evil warlords, and completely eliminating them would have been a gargantuan task.
Even if that was universally true of orcs in other settings (it isn't; IIRC there's a peaceful farming orc in some FR or GH monster tome), I would not extrapolate from other settings to second-guess the Wanderer.
Even if they were all weak and disorganized, rooting them out of every last underground nook and cranny in the world would require formidable organizational skills in itself.
She had a very long time. And if Athasian Orcs were like you assume them to be, then they would have had other enemies, who would have assisted the massacres and/or alerted Ablach-Re wherever they showed up.
Much more so than sitting in a city and killing people whenever they rebel at any rate.
Ablach-Re's kuotoga don't sound particularly incompetent. Her incompetence is in creating the conditions for rebellion to foment in the first place. Fact is that she did successfully sit in the city and kill people whenever they rebelled. She wasn't taken down by a rebellion.
Also, how would having an incompetent general weaken the human race?
Check "Picket's Charge" in the wikipedia.
She would be less able to defeat pro-demihuman human civilizations and be unable to persuade them to join the crusade.
You think? Consider that Americans were willing to work with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Picture a happy gnome village, and a band of orcs have just made their nest 10 miles away, and are demanding tribute. Why would the gnomes NOT send a message to Ablach-Re?
She would likewise find it more difficult to defeat them when forced to fight them. Worst of all, she might end up letting slip the link between all the champions and encourage a united alliance of all nonhumans and good humans against all the champions.
Assuming that she perceived a link in that sense. RaFoaDK suggests that the Champions saw each other as competitors at best, enemies at worst. And the quasiofficial timeline suggests that most successful champions just settled down and didn't assist the others.
All this would mean a stronger human race, not a weaker one, not to mention making the rather difficult task of completing the Cleansing Wars even more difficult.
Don't quite get how incompetence could the human race stronger. Individual survivors might gain levels after a picket's charge, but then those individuals die of old age.
that all dragons and high-level psis/wizards have to be very intelligent and very wise
In terms of stats, sure. But wisdom in D&D has more to do with perception than competence. Competence and arrogance and megalomania isn't something that we can rule out with ability scores.
and that even stupid people can easily overawe a city-state when you're super-powerful and have an army of loyal warrior-spellcasters
True
No doubt she is planning yet another way to speed up her transformation. The Skull of Dorag Thel is now in the hands of the Urikian Veiled Alliance, Jaggo to be exact. The PCs got rid of it just in time. Ab Re just located it and she wants it back! Obviously, she is not dead in my Dark Sun but her reckless ways may change that shortly. Ahem!
Anyway, I would agree she is very distracted.
/spins a lot and turn into a puddle of water
She may be very powerful personnally, but it takes more than that to run a city-state.
If Abalach-Re were incompetent, Raam would be dead long ago due to food production collapse. She might have been not too sane in her last years, but quite competent nevertheless.
Actually that could have been her problem. When official government systems fail to provide for the people other systems establish themselves to fill the void. a blackmarket or shadow government.
Maybe Abalach-Re neglected food production for too long. Either the merchant houses or the noble houses stepped in to organize it and keep the food growing. After a few years, the nobles and or merchant houses controlling the food production would have gained positions of power. And then perhaps they let that power go to their heads and let them think they could challenge Abalach-Re or each other to gain more power over Raam.
Of course it all could have happened another way.