Re: Sorcery not malkioni ?

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_...>
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:07:24 +1300

On 2/25/2013 9:14 PM, jorganos wrote:
> Peter Metcalfe wrote:
>
>> The EWF was not a pyramid scheme. It did not exhibit any
>> features of a pyramid scheme and was no more fraudulent than
>> Kralorela.
> Yes it was - the outlying provinces were drained of magic, and all of that piled up in the draconic heartlands.

Source for the outlying provinces being drained of magic? And even if true, this just means heavy taxation which is not by definition a pyramid scheme.

>
>> The cause of the unrest was the disparity between those who had
>> been in the EWF at the beginning and those who had newly joined.
>> But in a pyramid scheme those who had newly joined won't be trouble
>> by such a disparity because they believe the money will be coming
>> in anyway. It is when the money stops coming in that pyramid
>> scheme collapses whereas with the EWF, it was betrayed by the
>> Dragonewts.
> The "money" stopped coming in when the outer provinces were lost, due to agents like Alakoring or the Sairdites.

Alakoring was killed in 940 ST. The EWF by that time had lost Dara Happa and other places. Despite the lack of money coming in, they still had enough for a great counteroffensive that took them to the gates of Alkoth in 947 ST. The EWF then lasted another hundred years before the Dragonewts killed them. That is not by any definition a collapse of a pyramid scheme.

> As a result, the understanding with the dragonewts that extended the Draconic Dream across all the heartlands of the EWF was betrayed, and the newts retaliated. It is purely racial loyalty that pictures the EWF leadership as victims of the betrayal rather than as perpretators who found their justice.
The Draconic Dream is your interpretation, okay? Please could you confine the debate to what's actually in the sources and so we don't get upset in unnecessarily trashing pet theories. Secondly the Inhuman King decided that his secrets weren't being used properly - nothing about any betrayal of the alliance which seems to me to ascribe rather human motivations onto the Dragonewts.

Secondly racial loyalty is quite a loaded charge to be throwing around. You don't have any evidence that the EWF leadership weren't blameless and you fail to consider a third possibility, hinted at in King of Sartar.

         The Dragon Emperor of humans was confronted by an evil spirit called utuma who slew him.

         King of Sartar p188.

I can't say outright whether the EWF was right, wrong or a mixture of both. What I do feel is that

1. labelling the EWF failures involves making a value judgement which isn't present in the sources and doesn't seem to me to add anything to our understanding of draconism or the EWF,
2. describing the fall of the EWF as a collapsing pyramid scheme distorts the meaning of pyramid scheme well beyond its understood meaning,
3. there seems to me to be an assumption that the EWF weren't true draconists because they were defeated by their enemies. Well Orlanth slew Aroka and Sh'hakazeel but nobody denies they were dragons for their failure. There the EWF was destroyed is not evidence that it was a failure or even untrue to its draconic heritage. All that can be said is that the meaning of its end is counched in metaphysics.

  --Peter Metcalfe

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