> I'm sorry I don't place much stock in Greg sez hearsay.
Sure.
>> They did not continue the path to union with/dissolution in the >> Ultimate, or in other terms the path to full dragonhood.
> They were killed before doing so.
No disagreement there. We disagree whether that still was their intention during their term as leaders of the EWF.
>> With the EWF, the massive straying from the true path lies behind their downfall, so [deciding whether they were failures] matters there.
> How so? The precise nature of their downfall was that they were
> betrayed by Dragonewts and murdered by the Blue Moon.
That's only how the remaining leaders of the EWF died.
> How do you connect that to their alleged failures as draconists?
The dragonewts had been interested in guiding humans to dragonhood as they (the newts) knew it, and in Obduran they saw success. After Obduran's transformation, the EWF leaders began to depart from that path, probably to the bewilderment of the newts. When they saw only the equivalent of a rebirth as dinosaurs in the remaining participants of that experiment, they terminated both the experiment and its subjects. All that IMO, and of course the newts and their motivations are as unfathomable as the Ultimate, etc. - but this works for me.
>> Godunya is one who judged the EWF as failure.
> Not so. What it says was there was a schism between two draconic
> powers (those who accepted Godunya's teachings and those who
> rejected them) and that a true dragon came along and devoured the
> rejectors.
That's a compression of events (the assisted "utuma" of 1042 and the Dragonkill of 1120, both in a far away and insignificant country) in a similar way as the Sword Story is a compression of the slaying of Yelm and the Lightbringers' Quest.
> That's quite different from the fall of the EWF. The
> acceptors of Godunya's teachings cannot be the Dragonewts because
> he's a human and they don't believe Kralori claims of being aided
> by Dragons.
The dragonewts have accepted that a human's path to true dragonhood cannot be through cycles of utuma and rebirth as with the newts. Anything Godunya has to teach to humans is unsuited for newts. No surprise here.
> So if the EWF are flawed because Godunya condemned half of them
The other half being the Kralori?
> then isn't the Kralori Empire flawed because the Dragonewts don't
> believe their claims?
Did the Kralori claim to have been taught by dragonewts? I don't think so, Daruda came up with a different concept. The (early, at least) EWF explicitely sought the teachings of friendly newts.
> That's why I don't place much stock in
> allegations that other people are failed mystics especially if
> their source has an ax to grind.
Do you mean to say that the teachings of Shang-hsa-may-his-name-be-cursed are a valid path to dragonhood and only vilified by Godunya?
> > That's not part of the saga, which only deals with Ingolf's downfall. The text about Ingolf's (and Orlaront's) mystical school describes the various steps on the mystical journey, and I read this as using the draconic powers in this context was right and served self-advancement on that mystical path. Using these powers in other ways may have damaged them.
> But the text specifically says there "Ingolf squandered his powers
> trying to help others" [History of the Heortling Peoples p51].
Yes. That's what he did wrong, straying from the path of mystical self-advancement where he would have been in a state where that wouldn't have damaged him (or he wouldn't care any more).
Show me a friendly dragon, and I will show you a dinner invitation...
> And "Around 940 ST, Ingolf began teaching [...] it was not only
> acceptable but desirable for draconic persons to manifest their
> power in defense of the common world" [Ibid p52]. Helping others,
> not self-advancement.
Note that I didn't say self-advancement was wrong. Helping others was the entanglement that undid the mystical achievements, so Ingolf had to start again from zero. To his mystical credit, he did.
>> I don't have any statistics about these camps (how many, where situated, what attendance, who runs them), maybe the new chapters in the guide will provide some. As penal institutions, they have competition in exile to Ignorance and outright execution.
>> Monasteries can be self sufficient or even produce surplus if the monastic community pursues worldly activities, and be it by lay adherents or owned villages. I would still be surprised if even a productive society like the Kralori can afford more than 1 in 1000 people following a true mystic calling, whether in austerity camps, on mountaintop meditation spots or in special classes in the schools for the imperial bureaucracy.
> But Kralorela has a population of 11 million. That's a camp
> population of 11,000.
Do you suggest that all Kralori mystics pass through austerity camps? Come on...
> If only 0.5% of the camp population screwed up badly every
> year, that's 55 fractional Shengs running amok in Kralorela
> every year.
You have to screw up and survive both the experience and the scrutiny and corrective intervention of the overseers (like execution).
> The place is a such security risk, serious consideration should
> be given to nuking it from orbit.
Are we even sure these camps still exist after the failure of unleashing Sheng and his disciples?
Powered by hypermail