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  1. #41
    Site Moderator geeman's Avatar
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    At 02:09 PM 12/24/2007, you wrote:

    >I also want to make another comment: some of the text given in the
    >aforementioned PDF seems to be contrary to the source material we
    >have. For one thing, Azrai seemed to be perfectly capable of
    >adapting to situations that crossed his path, so all that talk about
    >an instability seem very much presumptious.

    Azrai wasn`t so adaptable that he didn`t blow up just like the rest
    of the gods at that battle, and maybe it`s just me but exploding when
    one doesn`t want to explode strikes me as being a pretty good
    definition of "instability" for our purposes.... The text here is
    speculative in the first place because the idea that he controlled
    forces in the SW in a way similar to post-Deismaar source holdings is
    an extrapolation too. I don`t think that contradicts the existing
    material. I wasn`t trying to intimate that such a system would be
    unstable inherently, just that it is a possible explanation not only
    for his power but for the "exploding gods" phenomenon.

    > The other part that did not sit well with me was the idea of the
    > gods blowing Azrai up instead of themselves, as far as we know: we
    > know they sacrificed themselves, and I doubt they had to do so just
    > to make Azrai blow up on his own; the concept of them choosing to
    > destroy themselves so that Azrai could be destroyed seems a lot more plausible.

    If I`m right about the text you`re referring to it says that there is
    "a concurring theory [that] the Shadow Lord was unable to completely
    control the forces that he tampered with and that it was this lack of
    mastery the gods who opposed him at Deismaar exploited to create the
    explosion in which they sacrificed themselves and destroyed Azrai in
    the process."

    The gods still explode in that text. At least, I didn`t intend to
    change the nature of the explosion there. Rather, explain one
    possible way it happened. Was it another section you are referring to?

    Gary

  2. #42
    Senior Member RaspK_FOG's Avatar
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    The original deities of Cerilia were far more powerful than Haelyn and the rest; I don't see why they could not simply will themselves to detonate... In fact, what seems more plausible from what I read is that they did that in exactly such a manner (e.g. all six grabbing hold of him at once) that he couldn't escape exactly because he wouldn't anticipate something like that.

    The thing is, why come up with a completely new theory (since there is no definitive backing to what you suggest) rather than leave things vague and be done with it? What begs such definitive detail that even possible nontruths (campaign-wise) are better than a story of few details?

  3. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by RaspK_FOG View Post
    Did the elves of Tolkien throw themselves with wild abandon just because they knew the Halls of Mandos waited for them? No; in fact, they charged headlong in any circumstance despite the Halls of Mandos, as if "death" was of no consequence or substance anyway - not because the Halls held sweet lethe for them, but with a blazing passion for whatever they did.
    Ah, but to the Eldar, the Halls of Mandos are merely a waiting room with a revolving door! JRRT's letters explicitly state that the Glorfindel who died fighting a Balrog in Gondolin was the *same* Glorfindel who met Frodo crossing the Bruinen, more than 6,000 years later. Consider page 378 of _The Peoples of Middle-Earth_ (The History of Middle-Earth, Volume XII): "The Elves were destined to be by nature 'immortal', within the unknown limits of the life of the Earth as a habitable realm, and their disembodiment was a grievous thing. It was the duty, therefore, of the Valar to restore them, if they were slain, to incarnate life... When they were re-embodied they could remain in Valinor, or return to Middle-Earth if their home had been there."

    That is, it is the nature of elves to be resurrected just as it is for them to be passionate. They are threads of the same grand tapestry. In any case, I don't see why you get so upset that I think Sidhelien return to life naturally. If you don't like it, fine, but I don't have to agree with you any more than you have to agree with me. I think Birthright was designed with enough canon to give it structure and style, but leaving lots of room for individual DM's to fill in lots of things in their own way. In order to have a fully detailed BR campaign, DMs simply must make up some stuff for themselves, so the range of things spanned by campaigns of equal canon adherence is very large indeed. Heck, they violate their own canon right from the start, within the original boxed set: Rulebook p. 11 says only Anuireans and Khinasi may ever be paladins, but Ruins of Empire p. 74 profiles a Vos paladin.

    When I first fell in love with the idea of Cerilia's Sidhelien, literally the only "canon" I had to go on was pages 6 and 7 of the BR Rulebook, the Rhuobhe card, and the three elven domains in RoE. That leaves an awful lot of details to fill in, so it is natural that different people did it differently. When PSoTuarhievel came out, I had to retrofit it into the large amount of cosmology I had already created from hints, allusions, and stealing from other sources. =) The idea of Savane Mhoried sitting on the Thorn Throne immediately struck me, as it did almost everyone else here, as utter nonsense, but I did like the historical timeline (at least up until the birth of Fhileraene). Its first entry is, "Unknown: Elves spring from the union of earth, water, fire and air." I no longer remember exactly when or how I decided they were in fact still elementals, but it was a long time ago, and I like the idea so much that I am unlikely to give it up now, but feel free to ignore it as you wish.

    What I am adamant about is that a campaign in which Sidhelien are literally elemental nature spirits who reincarnate easily is just as true and valid and canon a version of BR as a campaign in which they aren't, don't or both. The original materials leave plenty of room open to have it go either way, or do something else entirely, just as long as they look like elves, hunt humans and don't have priests.

  4. #44
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    ryancaveney schrieb:
    > This post was generated by the Birthright.net message forum.
    > You can view the entire thread at:
    > http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=4096
    > ryancaveney wrote:
    > ...
    > What I am adamant about is that a campaign in which Sidhelien are literally elemental nature spirits who reincarnate easily is just as true and valid and canon a version of BR as a campaign in which they aren`t, don`t or both. The original materials leave plenty of room open to have it go either way, or do something else entirely, just as long as they look like elves, hunt humans and don`t have priests.
    >
    If they "reincarnate easily" then the problem arises both in the novels
    (in Greatheart the sidhelien mourn the loss of even small numbers of
    sidhelien as a grieveous blow) and that sidhelien realms are declining
    even after Deismaar. Reincarnating might be a possible option - but it
    should not be easily nor without any loss.

  5. #45
    Senior Member RaspK_FOG's Avatar
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    You may be forgetting that Tolkien changed a lot of his material - in other passages the above is subjected to change, and the official line is that the spirit may be restored, but not as the same individual; more of a reincarnation than a restoration, that is. Also note that the only two such instances are Glorfindel and Olorin, the latter being a very, very special case and not an elf by any means. Finally, Tolkien gave the clue that the Eldar would be remade along with the world, whereas the fate of humans was unknown, again something that differed from texts of other times.

    And I am not trying to say you are wrong; rather I do not find it productive to suggest that something which is biased (and again, these are your words) from personal preference to come in on a discussion relating to what the given material is and what we can deduce from it. I can accept a mistaken contradiction produced by an editing error such as the above, since it's a mistake; to dub this reason enough to allow similar contradiction and extrapolation on our part is a strawman fallacy.

  6. #46
    Site Moderator geeman's Avatar
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    At 01:43 AM 12/25/2007, RaspK_FOG wrote:

    >I don`t see why they could not simply will themselves to detonate... In fact, what seems more plausible from what I read is that they did that in exactly such a manner (e.g. all six grabbing hold of him at once) that he couldn`t escape exactly because he wouldn`t anticipate something like that.


    I don`t think gods can do a sort of explosive "final strike" at will. At least, I`ve never heard of such a thing in any other mythology before, and in the context of the BR background I don`t think it makes a lot of sense. If the gods could will themselves to detonate (kind of an odd, 20th century tactic, really...) Azrai would have had the same ability, woudn`t he? Presumably, he`d know that both he the other gods could blow themselves up at will, and that such an explosion could kill him, so it`d have been pretty foolish of him to enter into open and direct battle with them at Deismaar.

    There could be any number of explanations for the actual explosion at Deismaar, and those presented are just one set. However, I find the
    idea that the gods are self-destroying bombs that can destroy themselves at will and that they used this ability to jump on Azrai at Deismaar in a dogpile of detonating divinities less significant than the idea that they may have found a way to exploit a weakness in his power or that the will in the SW that is the equivalent of the Land`s Choice in the world of light rebelled against his manipulations to be more interesting.

    >The thing is, why come up with a completely new theory (since there is no definitive backing to what you suggest) rather than leave things vague and be done with it? What begs such definitive detail that even possible nontruths (campaign-wise) are better than a story of few details?

    The ideas expressed are described as speculative, scholarly debate, and in some ways they contend with one another, so while I find them
    more plausible than the idea of "divine suicide bombers" expressed above, they aren`t meant to be definitive. They are in the same flavour as the elven speculation about their own elemental origins, the POV biases in the Atlas or several other speculative materials in the BR documents. In fact, such speculative material is a standard of the setting....

    As for why having it in there at all, for the most part it`s there to address issues having to do with the nature of the SW. In fact, the whole opening section of that text is meant as an introduction to the balancing of energies and the role of death in the BR cosmology. The
    death of mortals and journey of the soul is justified by the connection of the SW to the death of the gods. Death as a final adventure is pretty conceptual, so the introduction is there to give the idea some verisimilitude, and tie it into campaign specific background material. Some discussion of the role of death in the BR pantheon is necessary as an explanation for a few BR specific issues like the fact that there is no god of death, the role of the split between light and shadow, and how those things relate to the fundamental background events of the setting. So from a thematic sense, the idea is to express death in the setting`s most grandiose and fundamental terms and then tie that to the specifics of death as a final journey (adventure) to be conducted by the DM with as much rationale as possible.

    Could the material exist without it? Sure. Would it be as believable? ...

    Gary
    Last edited by Thelandrin; 12-28-2007 at 01:38 AM. Reason: Vertical space and clarity.

  7. #47
    Senior Member RaspK_FOG's Avatar
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    I can more readily accept that (and I am accustomed to material being "in universe" and speculative, but I am not too fond of it in adventures), but you seem to have misunderstood my words (or that I mispoke, at least): I did not mean that they had some sort of "ability" that allowed them to go off; rather, that it was within their power to unmake themselves and release all of that energy, thus killing Azrai. My point is that this is as much possible as any other similar solution, and Azrai would certainly not anticipate them practically dragging him along to extinction.

    As a friend once said: "Very few people can ever expect others to kill themselves in order to kill another."

  8. #48
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    Gary schrieb:
    > At 01:43 AM 12/25/2007, RaspK_FOG wrote:
    >
    >> I don`t see why they could not simply will themselves to detonate... In fact, what seems more plausible from what I read is that they did that in exactly such a manner (e.g. all six grabbing hold of him at once) that he couldn`t escape exactly because he wouldn`t anticipate something like that.
    >
    > I don`t think gods can do a sort of explosive "final strike" at will. At least, I`ve never heard of such a thing in any other mythology before, and in the context of the BR background I don`t think it makes a lot of sense. If the gods could will themselves to detonate (kind of an odd, 20th century tactic, really...) Azrai would have had the same ability, woudn`t he? Presumably, he`d know that both he the other gods could blow themselves up at will, and that such an explosion could kill him, so it`d have been pretty foolish of him to enter into open and direct battle with them at Deismaar.

    The final strike reminds me of some wizard staff which could explode as a last resort. I don´t remember the exact D&D book.

    About Azrai: Not necessarily. Azrai was the god of evil and corruption. The god of selfishness. It could perhaps never have come across his mind that some other (immortal) being would sacrifice it´s own existence to destroy it´s enemy. And certainly not that all other human gods together became Kamikaze to nuke him. And to conclude that Azrai must have the same power as the others (perhaps only the others together and not alone) just because he also has been a god is not a given. Gods share some powers but some are different from god to god.
    Last edited by Thelandrin; 12-28-2007 at 01:41 AM. Reason: Vertical space and so forth.

  9. #49
    Site Moderator geeman's Avatar
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    At 10:37 AM 12/25/2007, RaspK_FOG wrote:

    >I did not mean that they had some sort of "ability" that allowed them to go off; rather, that it was within their power to unmake themselves and release all of that energy, thus killing Azrai.


    I`m not getting the distinction between an ability and "within their power" but it strikes me as being a pretty thin distinction anyway, so
    whether it`s one or the other doesn`t seem to me to make much of a difference.

    So, if the question is still, "why bother including such material?" then my answer would be that I find the idea that it was within the power
    of the gods to destroy themselves in a massive explosion, and it was within Azrai`s power too, yet he failed to anticipate or believe that they would do such a thing less satisfying than other possibilities like those expressed in the Death: The Final Adventure document. At least, I find that explanation less inspirational for adventures and creature write ups for the purposes of that document.

    Michael Romes wrote:

    >The final strike reminds me of some wizard staff which could explode as a last resort. I don´t remember the exact D&D book.


    The last resort strike has been a feature of a few D&D staves going back to 1e.

    >About Azrai: Not necessarily. Azrai was the god >of evil and corruption. The god of selfishness. It could perhaps never have come across his mind that some other (immortal) being would sacrifice it´s own existence to destroy it´s enemy. And certainly not that all other human gods together became Kamikaze to nuke him. And to conclude that Azrai must have the same power as the others (perhaps only the others together and not alone) just because he also has been a god is not a given. Gods share some powers but some are different from god to god.

    It`s possible. Personally, I have more trouble with the idea that Azrai would not have anticipated such a thing than the gods somehow
    exploiting a weakness of his or coming up with something entirely new. As an explanation for background material for a fantasy setting that works better than simple hubris.

    Gary
    Last edited by Thelandrin; 12-28-2007 at 01:43 AM. Reason: Clarity and so forth.

  10. #50
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    While there are certainly other possibilities, geeman, it is pretty standard mythological fare for an evil god or being to not anticipate selflessness to be his undoing. Even if Azrai could have destroyed himself, he certainly would never have done so, as it is against his selfish nature.

    As to the elves, I have suggested the belief in some form of life after the physical death of their bodies. Rasp's? logical construction of my argument is, I think, errant, because belief in an afterlife does not necessarily follow fear of death. Instead, fear of death would be a possible and likely result of the belief or reality that life ends utterly at death. As ryan points out, the stakes are much higher for elves, so this equation would weigh more heavily upon them, passionate or not.

    I love making the Sidhelien of Birthright very rich and different from humans, but I resist making them too alien, because they become unplayable from a game sense. Too-flighty, impassioned, rash, extremely-individualistic elves cannot be played at the realm level. There would simply be no realm cohesion, no such thing as acting in concert at the ruler's wishes. Remember, the Sidhelien of Aebrynis are less chaotic than the Seelie, and the Seelie seem to have some form of kingdom as well.

    Much of Tolkein's thought was inspired by angels, so his re-incarnation is more in that sense. That might work for Sidhelien, over a long period of time (outside normal game time frames).

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