color and dwarves

From: Peter Metcalfe <P.Metcalfe_at_student.canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: Tue, 05 Dec 1995 15:22:55 +1300


Andrew Behan:

>Does anyone know anything about Vormaino colour magic and it's relation
>to Kralori Mysticism?

Well I do know a little having had a natter with Alex, Sandy and Jim Catel earlier this year. The Color Magic System was synthesized by the Imperial Vormain Mystics in the Second Age from imported Kralori Wisdom. This was a result of complicated political circumstances. In short the mystics were Imperial Nobility who had nothing else to do when they were excluded from Power by a new government.

We tossed out Newtonian Optics and came up with the following model. The Vormaini believe that there are five Colors. They manipulate the Colors by Color Skills which are akin to the Kralori Mysticism Skill except that each have a much narrower focus. Together these skills or lores if you prefer are held to describe the fundamentals of the universe by the Vormaini. Their list of colors are:

WHITE: Valzain's Color. I think of Valzain as a God of Metal. His Steadfast Rule helped Vormain survive the Catalysm of the Gods War.

RED: Shukan's Color. He was a former East Isles God. His Isle betrayed the cause of the East Isles and joined the Vormaini c. 700 ST. This betrayal helped sink the Fabled Isle of Tamanjary and earns his cultists the undying hatred of the East Isles and the Ratuki Shark People in particular.

GREEN: Zaktirra's Color. Zaktirra represents poison.

YELLOW: The Sun Goddess. I forget her name. Connected with Fertility and all that.

BLUE: Telask's Color. He represents Sea. Storm is merely seen as an effect of Sea from the Vormain point of view (all storms come from over the Sea).

'SAPPHIRE': Alatin's Color. Although this actually makes six colours, the Vormaini insist that Alatin represents the Power of the Void (not Chaos). So his spells would be Drain and not Tap. And since 5 + 0 = 5, the Vormaini say there are five colors.

Telask we felt is not a color god. He is however the son of Shukan and from what I have heard, he also appears to be worshipped by some East Isle dudes.

As to how the colors were used, we never actually hammered a consensus or even wrote any rules. IMO, there are two poles of color magic use.

The first is to select a Color God as a personal Patron. The quality of a magic is dependant on how good the color skill is. The God worshipped via the color lore is little more than an abstraction of the normal cult he has elsewhere.

The second is to use the Colors as akin to Runes and believe that they are the building blocks of the universe. This is a more mystical path and is potentially much stronger. A mystic seeing a magical effect could replicate it given sufficient time and study. Normally because of the insularity of Vormain, these mystics generally only find Vormaini magic to duplicate. The main use of this path however is to gain enlightenment.

Each way has tradeoffs. Worshipping Skukan via the Color will allow you to learn Beserk much easier than trying to duplicate it via the School of Five Colors. But you will be limited in the effects you can achieve. And worshipping two colors will be less effective than following the School of Five Colors. Normally many color schools adopt a mixture of both ways.

Now all this is not to say that every Vormaini uses Color Magic. The Gods actually have seperate cults beyond their Colored conceptions and these are worshipped to some extent all throughout the Vormaini Social Hierachy. There are also Martial Arts Monk Type dudes and other wierd mages. The Color magics are simply the most prominent magic philosophy and one that tends to catch the foreigners eye most often.

Mind you, a list of names was developed making the whole thing sound more exotic. It's buried among my notes and I haven't gotten round to sorting them out yet.

Erik Sieurin:


>>>Thus, in an octomonist council which lacks a True Mostali
>>>for one of the seats, the seat will simply be vacant.

I disagreed pointing out that:

>> The True Mostali are very rare, rarer than the Diamondwarves IMO
>> and nobody can make them anymore.

Erik:

>I have no trouble
>seeing there being say 45 TM in the world, and even less trouble
>having 8 (or 6) of them in Diamond Mountain. All IMIHO.

45 True Mostali is far too many IMO. I only know of about 10 and there could be another 10. Furthermore there are some metals for which the original True Mostali no longer exist. As for your figures, why does Diamond Mountain get more than its fair share of True Mostali compared with much grander places like Nida or Slon? It's hardly its devotion to Octamonism as True Mostali are not known for treading the Orthodox line (The Gods War scarred them terribly you see).

Known True Mostali and their suitablility for Diamond Mountain Council Positions are:.

ROCK: Flintnail Hardeye. Whereabouts unknown. Left Pavis with no forwarding address. Thought to be totally unfit for duty.

COPPER: None known.

LEAD: Several are known to live in Slon. Perhaps one _could_ be persuaded to act as lead spokesman for Diamond Mountain. But these Lead Dwarves actually like to rule humans which conflicts with the principles of Octamony.

BRASS: Martaler of the Blazing Forge. Rules Gemborg. Also known as Greedy. His lust for Diamonds make him unsuitable for duty as he would never give them up.

QUICKSILVER: Isidilian the Wise. Rules Dwarf Run. His Openhandist Philosophy is known to be inconsistent with the Octamonist principles.

TIN: None known.

SILVER: None known.

GOLD: None known.

>> I don't think the Dwarves become more mineralic and machine-like
>> physically as they reach Diamondwarf status although they certainly
>> do so mentally.

>According to ES, Diamonddwarves get "mechanical" apparatus growing on
>them (wedges, hammers, etc) and accquire other machine-like physical
>abilities - this does not have to be interpreted as I did but the
>interpretation is a valid one (IMUIHO, of course).

It's stated that the appendatures only appear when the dwarves want them to. It's a bit inconvient having tools for hands all day long. Watch 'Edward Scissorhands' for proof. I don't see how this conflicts with the spiritual mineralization. IMO it's akin to a Gorgorma Cultist's Second Mouth or a Krarsht's Tongue.

>Furthermore, the
>Individualists said about Chark the Deliberator that he was so pious
>that his body (or was it his bones?) turned to stone.

His bones turned to stone. Chark the Liberator cannot have been Pious according to Orthodox Mostali and so I assume that his bones turning to stone means something else. In the Haunted Ruins there is mention of a corpse with some sort of stone organs and some weird comment was attached to this saying that it was the remains of a HeroQuester. I presume Chark did something similar.

Nick Fortune:


>I thought of two possibilities. The first was that the gypsy people of
>Fronela and Ralios were Praxian Horsemen who fled from the devil and
>kept on westward for a long time.

Some Pentish Horsemen, I think, did flee westwards after the disaster of Argentium Thi'rile. Your gypsies could still say they could have fled from the Devil. After all, RW gypsies claimed to originally be Egyptains whereas their language is actually closely related to the Indo-Aryan Tongues of North India.

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