"Learn the art of paraphrasing" - heck, I got misunderstood enough in my original postings in the last time. Remember, not everybody was raised on Tradetalk...
[deleting lots ]
Peter:
> It depends on what you think the compostion of the Malkioni population
> of Fronela at the Dawn was.
At the Dawn there was Brithini-ruled Sog City (one of five Gloranthan cities like Byzantium), and there were other city-states or whatever one calls these districts inhabited by mortal descendants of the Kingdom of Logic.
The Malkioni and even the Brithini had experienced death and old age during both Greater Darkness and Gray Age. (My definition of the end of the Greater Darkness is the I Fought We Won battle, after which chaos still was a threat, but not an overpowering one. All pre-Dawn events "after" IFWW are the Gray or the Silver Age, depending on whom you ask.)
Funnily, to the Westerners the Greater Darkness is the time of trial in which Malkion the Prophet himself led them, until he achieved Solace through his participation in the IFWW. The Gray Age afterwards was a time of largely meaningless existance - people would die, and would hope to reach Solace after vanishing without a trace from this world, but there was no real Salvation, and mortality was perceived as kind of an inherited sin committed by ancestors who were not clear about when and how they had sinned. (I wonder whether this had to do with the Spell Forbidden by Urostio?)
Anyway, the Malkioni Akemites were not a feudal culture, but rather similar to the Spartan civilisation - well-defined castes with well-defined tasks, a standing army of footmen, but with the add-on of a separate wizard caste, and a ruler/trader caste reminding more of Athens than Sparta.
They seem to have managed survival trough the Gray Age quite comfortably, compared to the grub-eating Dara Happans and other peoples, and to have had time to worry about philosophy when the theists were as bereft of their gods (most of them being dead themselves) and the warm comfort of getting direct answers to their prayers. But then these had coped better with mortality than the haughty Westerners, who still had these oh so righteous immortal Brithini before their door. The main question must have been: "What are we doing wrong? They don't do anything different from our ways, yet _they_ don't age." Little wonder they had grown cynical and bitter.
Were there other civilised peoples in pre-Dawn Fronela? Apart from the Blue People of the Sweet Sea (and likely the upper Janube) and occasional Waertagi visits, I don't expect any. Most of middle Fronela (from Zoria to Timms) must have been densely forested, with aldryami roaming wide, and Hsunchen filling the niches. I doubt that there were any Orlanthi-like peoples in Fronela this early; Talor was credited with bringing them to Fronela (at least to Oranor), if not the Theyalan missionaries penetratd beyond the alliance of the six beasts during the reign of Nysalor (a time not covered by any source except FS and Arkat's trail through Genertela described in G:CotHW, limited to Dara Happa or wherever Arkat campaigned).
So the Akemites are caught between savages or their moral (?) superiors, the Brithini. They did trade with the Waertagi, harvest their crops, and hold off the sub-humans from the east. Their magicians provided them with enough magic to subside through this period of hardship.
Then (after breaking every caste restriction, and even consorting with the Vadeli) Hrestol comes to Sog City, and is trialed and convicted by the Brithini lords of that city. Somehow his death wasn't that bad, though, and the more impressionable mortal people of Malkion are inspired by this. The more realistic/cynic/bitter ones go on living their quite meaningless, but since the dawn also quite comfortable and even luxurious, through the trade with the Waertagi.
Unlike Seshnela, Akem did not (yet) face a major threat from the savages. The Ygglings did not rule the sea between themselves and Akem, and the Fronelan Hsunchen lacked the organisation the Basmoli of Tanisor had found. Thus they had not yet the need for the knights Hrestol invented to free Seshnela.
Breaking Brithini caste laws without more punishment than they were bearing anyway may have had appeal to the cynics among the Akemites, but this required at least one generation of Hrestoli idealists dying happily - the martyrium of Hrestol wasn't that inspiring for hardened cynics, really. As usual with such philosophical/religious struggles, some of the temporarily suppressed faction would pack their belongings and start a new life in the outback - in this case upriver of the Janube. If these were Hrestoli in the beginning, later they were of the Old Malkioni persuasion, IMO. Out there, they either adapted and adopted native concepts, or they hardened even more and kept the ideals they had left their homes for. This way a patchwork of extremist colonies of the most different kind grew along the Janube. Think of the hard-headed attitude towards marriage Nick's Syanoran and Arrolian churches displayed...
Even when "chivalry" caught on in Akem as the Janubian colonies taught the savages how to cope with the Westerners, the Hrestoli did not hold sway further upriver where the forest was the prime enemy of the mounted knights. The cultivated lands of Akem were a good battleground for them, though, so they were strong in their own lands.
Peter himself said that the Old Malkioni did not uniformly accept the new creed.
Immortality:
IMO the mortal Westerners had experienced several generations already before the Dawn. They knew that even strict adherence to the rules of Zzabur [sic] would not stop old age, but that certain magic would.
While this spell was not part of Zzabur's repertoire (unless to treat favoured pets with it), Zzaburi life magic needed only some scientific adaption to provide the spell to slow the process of aging. That a morally pure life did not save from aging was the main source of dissatisfaction among the Malkioni...
pre-God Learner Westerners in Pamaltela: If there were colonies, they must have left as much influence with the natives as the people of Sog's Ruins did in Prax.
[people the proto-Carmanians would feel the need to demonstrate their difference to:]
> We are talking about the time of the
> God Learner Intervention which is 200 years _after_ Arkat, so the
> pre-Arkat Henotheist Janubians are long since _dead_!
Why? Arkat never came to Fronela. The Hrestoli from Akem/Loskalm did not necessarily conquer as much of Fronela as the God Learners did. The Janubian city-states had a proud history of following their own ways.
> Secondly why did
> the pAHJians not accept the message of 'Joy of the Heart' the definition
> of Hrestolism?
No reason why not to accept the message, and still keep on worshipping the visible gods. Hrestol himself seems to have been quite tolerant except towards the sacrificial marriage of his father (robbing himself of his inheritance) and the strict Brithini adherance to outdated restrictions.
> Thirdly surely these pAHJians main sin was henotheism by
> which the proto-Carmanians (if they were monotheists at the time) would
> have descibed the pAHJians as _pagans_ and themselves as _Malkioni)? And
> if the proto-Carmanians _weren't_ monotheist at the time the pAHJians
> still lived, then surely the proto-Carmanians _are_ the pAHJians!
AFAIK Syranthir was from Jorri, right in the middle of northern Loskalm. At least part of the 10,000 would have been "orthodox" Loskalmi Hrestoli when they started their treck.
I'm not even sure that the label "monotheists" was meaningful before the Return to Rightness philosophy was forcibly spread in Fronela - the Malkioni were as much Ancestor worshippers (after all, Malkion founded the castes everybody descended from through his sons, and yes, I think that caste membership implied descent from one of these sons, although otherwise from name- and ancestorless residents of the Kingdom of Logic) as they were Atheists. (Note that the strict Daka Fali adherents might be called atheists as well, at least they worship none of the gods they know and may even have met. Yes, this builds upon the obscure mention of the Seshnegi in Cults of Prax, but all mentions of Seshnegi in RQ2 products except RQ Companion tell us the same. RQ Companion has the obscure mention - recorded by 3rd Age Kethaelan Lhankor Mhytes - that "the Seshnegi" erected temples to Orlanth and Magasta in Hrelar Amali when they conquered the land. Does this mean the God Learner empire with seat in Seshnela? The inclusion of Magasta makes this likely, and no other Seshnegi power ever conquered parts of Safelster before.)
Ok. All rules obeyed?
Powered by hypermail