Exerpt from "Wisdom of Sorrow" re rhulisti & zic-chil - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

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#1 thebrax Oct 07, 2007 15:39:00	Nearly a decade ago, I started a project called "Wisdom of Sorrow," an in-house document containing Oronis' unfinished "history" of Athas, according to his own understanding and biases. We have no intent of publishing the whole thing, but a couple of projects have cited pieces of it as flavor text. Like the Wanderer, it's a useful & informed but subjective imperfect PoV. Over the years I've shared bits of it with the Dark Sun listserv, although much of that stuff has been rewritten. Given current arguments, I might as well show the same stuff here. Here's the beginning: WISDOM OF SORROW When I was young, my schooling as a noble youth included tedious readings called "histories." I cannot recall anything that was written (the matter of the disputes of my ancestors must have seemed of little consequence to me at the time) but I do recall the manner of writing: austere, anonymous, and asinine. Histories seemed to float without writer or reader; they pronounced the "facts" as if the past were a matter of simple observation, and as if everyone would see it the same way. Even as a child, histories struck me as pretentious. After thousands of years, I find it hard to be so sure about anything. So why in the name of Rajaat am I writing a history? Since I am not a practiced historian, I cannot speak or write to a void. I will imagine a reader, so that I can proceed. I picture you as a thief that has stolen into my tower, seeking treasure or knowledge. You are skilled; you have circumvented my templars, my guards, my wards, my illusions, my locks ... but you are disappointed. The shelves are less full than you had hoped. Surely Oronis king of Kurn keeps more than these meager belongings! Your eyes light upon an open book, upon a desk, inside a bare and empty room without windows. You step into the room, curious to see what spells I might be painting into my book. The door closes behind you, and you turn to see me between you and the closed door. The knowledge you have come to steal, I will force upon you. Sit, thief, and listen. ----------------------- Athas had a Blue Age when water covered much of the world. Rhulisti halflings were scattered on mountaintops throughout the world, since most of the world was covered in water. The area around the rhulisti city of Tyr'agi contained many peaks, and somehow became a center of culture. The earliest halfling histories begin suspiciously at "Year One" of the "First World Age.” I found no surviving documents that detail history before this worldwide unification of Halfling government, or that explain how Tyr’agi’s nature-masters came to dominate other rhulisti communities around the world. As rhulisti cities expanded into the depths of the earth and sea, conflict erupted between the rebellious group of "nature-benders," who altered themselves and other rhulisti, and the dominant "nature-masters," who created insentient life-shaped creatures and objects to serve rhulisti, and felt that alteration of the perfect halfling form was an abomination. Rhulisti histories wrote that this "First of Wars" led to the first proliferation of life-shaped weapons. ... I believe that these transformed leaders of the nature benders are the same creatures that the Tohr-Kreen of the Savannah plains refer to as the "zic-chil."
#2 terminus_vortexa Oct 07, 2007 16:14:37	The phrasing here clearly frames it as Oronis' conjecture. Very nice!
#3 thebrax Oct 07, 2007 18:34:06	The star wars race that you spoke of sounds like it combines both practices of life-shaping and of nature-bending. But in the DS sources, the separate terms, combined with the fact that all of the sources on life-shaping involve production of objects and alteration of non-sentient creatures, combined with the well-known chauvenism of halflings, suggested to me that this is exactly the line that would both distinguish LS from NB, and also explain why the two groups warred on each other in an otherwise peaceful time. Having made that distinction, I can't help but notice that the activities of the Zic-Chil really do sound like they'd fit under the term "nature-bending," and that we don't hear of any life-shaped objects made by the ZC. Given the similarities between the focus of the ZC discipline, and the term "nature bending", it seems likely to me that they had a common source. Your enzyme explanation makes it sound somewhat more plausible that the ZC would have been the initial discoverors, rather than a group of halflings. Speaking of which, do any of the original sources actually state that the NBs were halflings?
#4 terminus_vortexa Oct 07, 2007 18:45:19	I'll have to do some research, but the fact that Zik'Chil seem to only alter Kreen, and would have probably been doing things in a very primitive, almost instinctual manner during the blue Age, seems to at the very least imply it. About the Vong - They actually do not lifeshape sentient creatures. They augment themselves with grafts, but ...........waitaminit........There is one creature that could be considered a sentient construct, although I do believe their original home planet created them, rather than the Vong. It's called a Yammosk, and it's like a giant telepathic Kraken that coordinates warriors in the battlefield. Come to think of it, I'm having trouble finding the passages that say Nature Bending was the manipulation of sentient creatures.....Can you point me in the right direction? I'm pretty sure that it says somewhere that the NBs were a group of NMs that deviated from the values of the original group, but again, I can't remember the specific book or page.
#5 thebrax Oct 07, 2007 19:10:32	I thought you said that the Vong group enhanced their own bodies. LS grafts can be taken on and off, so it's not quite the same. Come to think of it, I'm having trouble finding the passages that say Nature Bending was the manipulation of sentient creatures.....Can you point me in the right direction? Like I said, that's not explicit in the source; I inferred it from the source facts that I listed above: (1) the names NM v. NB, (2) the fact that they warred based on that distinction, and (3) the well known chauvenism of the Rhulisti & Rhul-Thaun halflings. that NBs were a group of NMs Ah, now that's not something that I've ever seen before. I've certain that I've never seen anything before this LSH beta that treated the NBs as a subcategory of NMs. In fact, NMs are all rhulisti, and I'm don't think there's anything that even said that the NBs were rhulisti, but I'm less certain about that. Agreed that the NBs "deviated from the values of" the NMs. The distinction in names, master v. bender, suggests a practical as well as philosophical difference. The fan community on the listserv asked for ideas on how nature-bending was different from life shaping, and given the available facts, this idea of shaping yourself and creatures like yourself seemed to fit the bill. If you start with the parameters that nature bending is a practice that (1) involves something similar to but clearly distinct from life-shaping; (2) involves a practice that could reasonably be described as nature bending as opposed to shaping; and (3) involves a practice that would righteously tick off the rhulisti nature masters --- can you think of any practice that fits the NB description better than what I described?
#6 xlorepdarkhelm_dup Oct 07, 2007 20:56:19	I've seen the distinction between NM and NB to be like..... Cloners vs Geneticists/genetic manipulation. Well, sort of. The NM's were like cloners, except that rather than cloning an existing creature, they designed a totally new DNA sequence that would build into a specific creature that fit their very specific needs. The Yuuzhon-Vong from Star Wars use very, very similar ideas (which there is no wonder, since that's where a couple of Dark Sun's writers went to, if memory serves). The Rhulisti Nature Masters, and their kind, were extraordinarily vain -- they considered themselves the highest kind of creature in the world. The Nature-Benders were... another faction which would modify, augment, or rewrite the genetic sequences of existing creatures, potentially including themselves, but did not create entire new species of servent lifeshaped creatures. The Yuuzhon-Vong from Star Wars are less like the Nature-Benders, as they didn't modify their own genetic code (but, at the same time, they did modify other species, like they did with Vronskirs and the like). I honestly think that the fight between the Nature-Benders and the Nature-Masters was on ideological grounds. I think they both thought themselves as "right". The Nature-Masters believed themselves superior and above self-modification, and the highest form of this chauvenism was that they'd simply create new species of creatures designed exclusively to work for them. The Nature-Benders (a term I think which was given them by the Nature-Masters, as it implies a derogatory sentiment, "bending" nature rather than "mastering" it, I'd think they might have called themselves something else, like maybe the Masters of Change or some such) may have believed that creating entire new species was wrong... maybe they believed such creatures were against the very essence of nature itself, maybe they belileved such creatures to be soulless husks and revolting to use.Their superiority came from their knowledge, the ability to manipulate and mold creatures to their will and design, to manipulate what already existed, and moreso, to make modifications to themselves to gain enhancements to their capabilities above and beyond "normal" (inferior) Rhulisti. The two groups would be somewhat diametrically opposed, on almost religius grounds, drawing a line between the two factions. The problem the Nature-Benders had was... the Nature-Masters drew more support, had larger numbers, and was able to overwhelm the Nature-Benders. The war between the two factions may have lasted years. The end result was that the Nature-Benders were forced out of the Tyragi region, exiled from their homes, families, and all they knew and had. What is known is that the Tyragi region is now known as the Tyr Region, or the Tablelands. Exile would have sent the Nature-Benders away from the "center of civlization" into the wilds. West is as likely East, North, or South. Speculation is free to run rampant here, there is literally no accounting for the appearance of the Zik-Chil. They couold be an offshoot species of Kreen. They could be another species alltogether that shares a common ancestor as the Kreen. They could be from another world all together, or they could have been modified by the Nature-Benders, or even be what's left of the Nature-Benders themselves. On Athas, there is one notable thing in modern-day Athas which is remarkably similar to Nature-Bending, at least what we know of Nature-Bending... The Dragon Metamorphosis (and subsequently the Avangion Metamorphosis). It is a transformation, on a basic level, rewriting the very nature of the creature into something else. The Dragon and Avangion metamorphoses do this through a series of complex psionically-enhanced magical rituals. The end results are something rather "larger than life" and extremely different. But I'd say it is a bit naive to believe that there was no influence in the Dragon Metamorphosis design by some ancient Nature-Bender knowledge. Now, in a more micro-scale, a group of Rhuslisti Nature-Benders, forced from Rhulisti society, could have easily stumbled upon the "proto-Kreen", a species not too unlike the modern Trin, intellectually I'd figure -- more animalistic/predatorial than intelligent, but with a lot of potential. At the same time, the Nature-Benders may have considered the every forms, nay, very nature of Rhulisti to be "unfit" for them any more -- after all, they were exiled, and lost the war, and had the means to change themselves potentially into whatever they wanted. I'd say there may have been casual observation at first, studying the proto-Kreen at a distance, seeing what they could or couldn't do. But eventually, there could have been manipulations. I actually see it as something akin to an abduction scenario -- the captured/abducted proto-Kreen is taken off, unconscious, to a NB "lab", and modified, then put back into the population. The Kreen develop intelligence rapidly, entire generations quickly advance, giving the NB's an insight into the insects' genetic memory. The NB's couold easily have become somewhat infatuated with their new "lab rats", and even decided that they'd want to more closely watch/monitor the new Kreen. So, they modify their own genetic structure to become Kreen-like. I'm not saying that they are Kreen in appearance only, I'm not talking some kind of plastic surgery here, but that they genetically manipulated themselves to become what is now known as the Zik-Chil, and then slipped into Kreen society, mostly undetected. They could have easily started with their Nature-Bending capabilities, given themselves bodies that can somewhat assist with this, as they guide the Kreen. They gave themselves the same genetic memory, no longer needing to spend years on training/teaching successive generations of NB's, they simply are born with the knowledge of their parents. These new creatures literally are genetically, very simplar to the Kreen they admire now, but still somewhat separate, and apart. What they didn't account for during this were two things -- the insectiod instincts and nature, and the somewhat innacurate nature of the genetic memories. Over the centuries, they ceased being Nature-Benders completely, and fully became the Zik-Chil, the "Priests of Change", a semi-religious, and very secretive group/species that is incredibly Kreen-like, which is also considerably smaller in population. They forgot most of the details of their Nature-Bending, and only use what is reembered through the genetic memories, enough to do minor modifications to themselves and the Kreen, to produce the Zik-Trin.

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

thebrax

Oct 07, 2007 15:39:00

Nearly a decade ago, I started a project called "Wisdom of Sorrow," an in-house document containing Oronis' unfinished "history" of Athas, according to his own understanding and biases. We have no intent of publishing the whole thing, but a couple of projects have cited pieces of it as flavor text. Like the Wanderer, it's a useful & informed but subjective imperfect PoV.

Over the years I've shared bits of it with the Dark Sun listserv, although much of that stuff has been rewritten. Given current arguments, I might as well show the same stuff here.

Here's the beginning:

WISDOM OF SORROW
When I was young, my schooling as a noble youth included tedious readings called "histories." I cannot recall anything that was written (the matter of the disputes of my ancestors must have seemed of little consequence to me at the time) but I do recall the manner of writing: austere, anonymous, and asinine. Histories seemed to float without writer or reader; they pronounced the "facts" as if the past were a matter of simple observation, and as if everyone would see it the same way. Even as a child, histories struck me as pretentious. After thousands of years, I find it hard to be so sure about anything. So why in the name of Rajaat am I writing a history?

Since I am not a practiced historian, I cannot speak or write to a void. I will imagine a reader, so that I can proceed.

I picture you as a thief that has stolen into my tower, seeking treasure or knowledge. You are skilled; you have circumvented my templars, my guards, my wards, my illusions, my locks ... but you are disappointed. The shelves are less full than you had hoped. Surely Oronis king of Kurn keeps more than these meager belongings! Your eyes light upon an open book, upon a desk, inside a bare and empty room without windows. You step into the room, curious to see what spells I might be painting into my book.

The door closes behind you, and you turn to see me between you and the closed door. The knowledge you have come to steal, I will force upon you. Sit, thief, and listen.

-----------------------

Athas had a Blue Age when water covered much of the world. Rhulisti halflings were scattered on mountaintops throughout the world, since most of the world was covered in water. The area around the rhulisti city of Tyr'agi contained many peaks, and somehow became a center of culture. The earliest halfling histories begin suspiciously at "Year One" of the "First World Age.” I found no surviving documents that detail history before this worldwide unification of Halfling government, or that explain how Tyr’agi’s nature-masters came to dominate other rhulisti communities around the world.

As rhulisti cities expanded into the depths of the earth and sea, conflict erupted between the rebellious group of "nature-benders," who altered themselves and other rhulisti, and the dominant "nature-masters," who created insentient life-shaped creatures and objects to serve rhulisti, and felt that alteration of the perfect halfling form was an abomination. Rhulisti histories wrote that this "First of Wars" led to the first proliferation of life-shaped weapons.

...

I believe that these transformed leaders of the nature benders are the same creatures that the Tohr-Kreen of the Savannah plains refer to as the "zic-chil."

terminus_vortexa

Oct 07, 2007 16:14:37

The phrasing here clearly frames it as Oronis' conjecture. Very nice!

thebrax

Oct 07, 2007 18:34:06

The star wars race that you spoke of sounds like it combines both practices of life-shaping and of nature-bending.

But in the DS sources, the separate terms, combined with the fact that all of the sources on life-shaping involve production of objects and alteration of non-sentient creatures, combined with the well-known chauvenism of halflings, suggested to me that this is exactly the line that would both distinguish LS from NB, and also explain why the two groups warred on each other in an otherwise peaceful time.

Having made that distinction, I can't help but notice that the activities of the Zic-Chil really do sound like they'd fit under the term "nature-bending," and that we don't hear of any life-shaped objects made by the ZC. Given the similarities between the focus of the ZC discipline, and the term "nature bending", it seems likely to me that they had a common source. Your enzyme explanation makes it sound somewhat more plausible that the ZC would have been the initial discoverors, rather than a group of halflings.

Speaking of which, do any of the original sources actually state that the NBs were halflings?

terminus_vortexa

Oct 07, 2007 18:45:19

I'll have to do some research, but the fact that Zik'Chil seem to only alter Kreen, and would have probably been doing things in a very primitive, almost instinctual manner during the blue Age, seems to at the very least imply it.

About the Vong - They actually do not lifeshape sentient creatures. They augment themselves with grafts, but ...........waitaminit........There is one creature that could be considered a sentient construct, although I do believe their original home planet created them, rather than the Vong. It's called a Yammosk, and it's like a giant telepathic Kraken that coordinates warriors in the battlefield.

Come to think of it, I'm having trouble finding the passages that say Nature Bending was the manipulation of sentient creatures.....Can you point me in the right direction?

I'm pretty sure that it says somewhere that the NBs were a group of NMs that deviated from the values of the original group, but again, I can't remember the specific book or page.

thebrax

Oct 07, 2007 19:10:32

I thought you said that the Vong group enhanced their own bodies. LS grafts can be taken on and off, so it's not quite the same.

Come to think of it, I'm having trouble finding the passages that say Nature Bending was the manipulation of sentient creatures.....Can you point me in the right direction?

Like I said, that's not explicit in the source; I inferred it from the source facts that I listed above: (1) the names NM v. NB, (2) the fact that they warred based on that distinction, and (3) the well known chauvenism of the Rhulisti & Rhul-Thaun halflings.

that NBs were a group of NMs

Ah, now that's not something that I've ever seen before. I've certain that I've never seen anything before this LSH beta that treated the NBs as a subcategory of NMs. In fact, NMs are all rhulisti, and I'm don't think there's anything that even said that the NBs were rhulisti, but I'm less certain about that.

Agreed that the NBs "deviated from the values of" the NMs.

The distinction in names, master v. bender, suggests a practical as well as philosophical difference. The fan community on the listserv asked for ideas on how nature-bending was different from life shaping, and given the available facts, this idea of shaping yourself and creatures like yourself seemed to fit the bill.

If you start with the parameters that nature bending is a practice that
(1) involves something similar to but clearly distinct from life-shaping;
(2) involves a practice that could reasonably be described as nature bending as opposed to shaping; and
(3) involves a practice that would righteously tick off the rhulisti nature masters ---

can you think of any practice that fits the NB description better than what I described?

xlorepdarkhelm_dup

Oct 07, 2007 20:56:19

I've seen the distinction between NM and NB to be like..... Cloners vs Geneticists/genetic manipulation. Well, sort of. The NM's were like cloners, except that rather than cloning an existing creature, they designed a totally new DNA sequence that would build into a specific creature that fit their very specific needs. The Yuuzhon-Vong from Star Wars use very, very similar ideas (which there is no wonder, since that's where a couple of Dark Sun's writers went to, if memory serves). The Rhulisti Nature Masters, and their kind, were extraordinarily vain -- they considered themselves the highest kind of creature in the world.

The Nature-Benders were... another faction which would modify, augment, or rewrite the genetic sequences of existing creatures, potentially including themselves, but did not create entire new species of servent lifeshaped creatures. The Yuuzhon-Vong from Star Wars are less like the Nature-Benders, as they didn't modify their own genetic code (but, at the same time, they did modify other species, like they did with Vronskirs and the like).

I honestly think that the fight between the Nature-Benders and the Nature-Masters was on ideological grounds. I think they both thought themselves as "right". The Nature-Masters believed themselves superior and above self-modification, and the highest form of this chauvenism was that they'd simply create new species of creatures designed exclusively to work for them.

The Nature-Benders (a term I think which was given them by the Nature-Masters, as it implies a derogatory sentiment, "bending" nature rather than "mastering" it, I'd think they might have called themselves something else, like maybe the Masters of Change or some such) may have believed that creating entire new species was wrong... maybe they believed such creatures were against the very essence of nature itself, maybe they belileved such creatures to be soulless husks and revolting to use.Their superiority came from their knowledge, the ability to manipulate and mold creatures to their will and design, to manipulate what already existed, and moreso, to make modifications to themselves to gain enhancements to their capabilities above and beyond "normal" (inferior) Rhulisti.

The two groups would be somewhat diametrically opposed, on almost religius grounds, drawing a line between the two factions. The problem the Nature-Benders had was... the Nature-Masters drew more support, had larger numbers, and was able to overwhelm the Nature-Benders. The war between the two factions may have lasted years. The end result was that the Nature-Benders were forced out of the Tyragi region, exiled from their homes, families, and all they knew and had.

What is known is that the Tyragi region is now known as the Tyr Region, or the Tablelands. Exile would have sent the Nature-Benders away from the "center of civlization" into the wilds. West is as likely East, North, or South.

Speculation is free to run rampant here, there is literally no accounting for the appearance of the Zik-Chil. They couold be an offshoot species of Kreen. They could be another species alltogether that shares a common ancestor as the Kreen. They could be from another world all together, or they could have been modified by the Nature-Benders, or even be what's left of the Nature-Benders themselves.

On Athas, there is one notable thing in modern-day Athas which is remarkably similar to Nature-Bending, at least what we know of Nature-Bending... The Dragon Metamorphosis (and subsequently the Avangion Metamorphosis). It is a transformation, on a basic level, rewriting the very nature of the creature into something else. The Dragon and Avangion metamorphoses do this through a series of complex psionically-enhanced magical rituals. The end results are something rather "larger than life" and extremely different. But I'd say it is a bit naive to believe that there was no influence in the Dragon Metamorphosis design by some ancient Nature-Bender knowledge.

Now, in a more micro-scale, a group of Rhuslisti Nature-Benders, forced from Rhulisti society, could have easily stumbled upon the "proto-Kreen", a species not too unlike the modern Trin, intellectually I'd figure -- more animalistic/predatorial than intelligent, but with a lot of potential. At the same time, the Nature-Benders may have considered the every forms, nay, very nature of Rhulisti to be "unfit" for them any more -- after all, they were exiled, and lost the war, and had the means to change themselves potentially into whatever they wanted.

I'd say there may have been casual observation at first, studying the proto-Kreen at a distance, seeing what they could or couldn't do. But eventually, there could have been manipulations. I actually see it as something akin to an abduction scenario -- the captured/abducted proto-Kreen is taken off, unconscious, to a NB "lab", and modified, then put back into the population. The Kreen develop intelligence rapidly, entire generations quickly advance, giving the NB's an insight into the insects' genetic memory. The NB's couold easily have become somewhat infatuated with their new "lab rats", and even decided that they'd want to more closely watch/monitor the new Kreen. So, they modify their own genetic structure to become Kreen-like. I'm not saying that they are Kreen in appearance only, I'm not talking some kind of plastic surgery here, but that they genetically manipulated themselves to become what is now known as the Zik-Chil, and then slipped into Kreen society, mostly undetected.

They could have easily started with their Nature-Bending capabilities, given themselves bodies that can somewhat assist with this, as they guide the Kreen. They gave themselves the same genetic memory, no longer needing to spend years on training/teaching successive generations of NB's, they simply are born with the knowledge of their parents. These new creatures literally are genetically, very simplar to the Kreen they admire now, but still somewhat separate, and apart. What they didn't account for during this were two things -- the insectiod instincts and nature, and the somewhat innacurate nature of the genetic memories. Over the centuries, they ceased being Nature-Benders completely, and fully became the Zik-Chil, the "Priests of Change", a semi-religious, and very secretive group/species that is incredibly Kreen-like, which is also considerably smaller in population. They forgot most of the details of their Nature-Bending, and only use what is reembered through the genetic memories, enough to do minor modifications to themselves and the Kreen, to produce the Zik-Trin.