the Drakes are the draconic forms of the elements on athas. also, the champions did not have the dragon king status til they offed rajaat, and then borys started their transformations. this links them to the elemental vortices, which gives them powers et al, but note they drew on that elemental connection when formed!
i think this is a large reason why they draw on a drake-ish appearance (because they are not of noteworthy size as i indicated in another post) and thus the dragon influence...but the elements! the connection is there! i can feel it! anyways this means 2 things:
1 they have an elemental connection, which goes a long way to establishing their sorcerous & divine properties (as if the cleric spells and wizard magic didnt give it away) and thus more of rajaat's nature-bender influence (they learned from the best)
2 new dragon kings would not take the draconic form of the elemental drakes, since they do not get new vortices (extinct or however that goes in the ways of plotlines).
What Borys did at the Pristine Tower didn't do anything to Hamanu, just the others, because Rajaat designed him exactly the way he wanted him .
This is not canon. It is from RaFoaDK.
what i really meant was that the conflict of rhulisti masters/benders way back in teh beginning seems to parallel the conflict now (pres/def) except this one is with magic, and the old was with, well, elemental lifeshaping, and i see elemental connection between the dragons and the drakes, which lends to the new incarnation of the age old struggle. the benders had evil elemental clerics too ^_~ just a thought!
well as i recall the ability of the SKs to give spells to their followers was through the vortices, being extinct now no new SKs will have that connection. i remember the line in DK too, thats a strike against >_<
I wonder about the dead SK's vortices, though. (Kalid-Ma's, and Sielba's; Tec's, Abalach-Re's and Kalak's, after PP.) The vortices may have become extinct, but these remain, I reckon. Perhaps someone may be able to tap into one of these vortices. (Sounds like an adventure hook.)
I'm toying with the idea of having one of my major NPCs gather the Orbs of Kalif-Ma, in my campaign. After collecting most of them, she'll gain the ability to grant magic to her followers (through Kalid-Ma's essence), even though she isn't an AB herself.
what i really meant was that the conflict of rhulisti masters/benders way back in teh beginning seems to parallel the conflict now (pres/def) except this one is with magic, and the old was with, well, elemental lifeshaping, and i see elemental connection between the dragons and the drakes, which lends to the new incarnation of the age old struggle. the benders had evil elemental clerics too ^_~ just a thought!
Indeed. The old feud between nature-masters and nature-benders seem to have survived in the form of the preserversXdefilers antagonism. Hadn't thought of it that way.
14th
Eric: Sadira's half-sister defiled a pool of water atop the Pristine Tower and a brownish color began to swirl around in it. Was this pool of water a remnant of the original ocean-water that the Blue Age halflings used for their bio-technology creations? Was the brown coloring a hint at the "brown tide" that the proto-halflings fought at the end of the Blue Age?
Troy: Sounds like something I'd do, doesn't it?
i see theres a connection between defiling magic's destructive effects today associated with the cataclysmic lifeshaping of the brown tide. this, to me, lends more to the idea that defiling magic is more an application of the ancient Rhulisti lifeshaping power to magic. preserver magic would be the traditional style of magery, or simply the naturemaster aspect of such application. rajaats discovery of magics principles + using the ancient's power through both lens and tower = new and unique forms of magic, akin to the ancient's style of shaping the very world.
---thus---
the Dragon Kings are indeed inheritors and the culminations of Nature Benders. and also that a nature bender was probably behind the accident that created the tide. of course its all speculation on an ambiguous line from an informal interview 3 years ago from work done 10 years before that...but still
This is not canon. It is from RaFoaDK.
While true, it is a nice idea all the same.
But, yes, it is a nice idea. I just happen not to like Hamanu. And Rikus. And Sadira...
I am totally unaffected by the Hamanu-Hype that seems to be so very common. He is not even one of my favourite SKs. So let me have my evil fun and always point out that there's nothing special about the Lion of Urik canon-wise.
But, yes, it is a nice idea. I just happen not to like Hamanu. And Rikus. And Sadira...
Actually, there is some canon material that does state that he is rather.... unique amongst the Sorcerer-Kings - the Crimson Legion, I believe, is where it is first pointed out - that he was made differently than the other Sorcerer-Kings.
), Daskinor is off by himself, and Abalach-Re doesnt debut really until Forest Maker. so you have here the only Dictator Of The Lands* (seriously). he's the only SK to have taken on another, and wiped a city from the map. he is the terrirtorial empire-expansionist. his is an army of prominence. and he is the most identifiable villain of the series, since his ambitions are what are core to Urik and Hamanu's personality. giving him sepcial lineage seems akin to just icing on the cake (aka "why him?"). and, of course, he's based on creature nonexistent to Athas' setting, the only sorceror king with style!* Despite their less-than-noble intentions, the various SKs have their ways of rationalizing their positions to their multitudes in servitude.
Andropinis: democracy (told you it doesnt work)
Tec: i am a god, of blood! and moons. and more blood! but mostly a god.
Kalak: contender, before he bit the big one.
Oba: kind of benevolent for a NE dragon lady, seriously. tree huggers
Shadow King: who's that?
Daskinor: dont fear me...well do, and fear everyone else!
Hamanu: worship me or die. also fear and respect me.
Abalach-Re: worship my imaginary diety. and please dont trample the templars.
Hamanu is just the personification of what SKs wish they could be. after all, fast talk difficulty chart lists him on the -6 to impersonate (why would you impersonate any other? ^_~ )
[snip]
---thus---
the Dragon Kings are indeed inheritors and the culminations of Nature Benders. and also that a nature bender was probably behind the accident that created the tide. of course its all speculation on an ambiguous line from an informal interview 3 years ago from work done 10 years before that...but still
Interesting connecting of the dots. It is very much similar to the kind of linking my brain was doing when I read the Prism Pentad at what must have been the 5th time. The reading this time was purely for research purposes as I was scouring the PP to piece together some sort of comprehension of Troy's cosmology.
Anyway, one of the ideas I was coming up with about this bit originally was simply that arcane magic simply existed before Rajaat "discovered" it. This would imply that Rajaat simply took credit for it. It may mean that after the Rebirth, the proto-halflings did their best to bury all traces of their skills.
Of course, this would call into question why the Jagged Cliffs halflings of today have a talent distinctly different from spellcasting.
So something I was working out was just where life-shaping and nature-bending fit in Athas' cosomology. We know arcane energy is fueled by the life energy of entities. We know that life-shapers' talents can reshape (and create?) living matter into forms seemingly limited by imagination. So there seems to be a strong cosmological connection between the two, stronger than links between any other forms of "spellcasting".
To further try to explain how they just may be connected cosmologically, I thought about imagining life energy as sort of existing within a metaphorical "shell". It continues like this: Life-shapers learned how to use the life energy to manipulate (reshape, the way a potter shapes clay) the shell without causing any damage to either the life energy or the shell (the physical matter). Nature-benders discovered how to "crack the shell" to get at the pure life energy with which to alter (the way a chemists creates new molecules) the physical matter.
Rajaat discovered this buried knowledge. With the proto-ocean that life-shapers would use now no longer the same, he discovered he could use the nature-bending secret of "cracking the shell" to tap life energy on any living entity. Rajaat was not able to re-engineer the methods of shaping or altering living matter that the nature-benders and life-shapers once did, but in trying to reengineer, he was able to fashion methods of taking the life energy and do something with it. Arcane spellcasting. Preserving is arcane spellcasting that takes the life energy and puts it back, defiling takes the life energy and doesn't go to the effort of returning it.
Rajaat became fascinated, even psychotically obsessed, with the Blue Age and his inability to duplicate either life-shaping or nature-bending. He viewed the whole world around him as expendible as it was merely a corrupt version of the Blue Age he was obsessed with. By returning to the Blue Age all the corruption would be gone, and Rajaat would be able to bring back life-shaping as it was once done. So he was determined to return the world to the Blue Age. With a return to the Blue Age, exploiting the nature-bending technique of "cracking the shell" could be used to cleanse the corrupt Athas, especially via defiling. Defiling, in this philosophy, functions as the cleansing by destroying the corrupt life forms of the current Athas. It makes sense why Rajaat would reserve this technique (defiling) for his inner-most selectively chosen favorites.
IMO, Raksasha's proposition that Dragon Kings are a devolved sort of Nature Benders seems an understandable take.
Regards,
Eric Anondson