Vadeli and Elements

From: Peter Metcalfe <P.Metcalfe_at_student.canterbury.ac.nz>
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 14:13:53 +1200


Sandy Petersen:

DC>>The restriction on elemental weapons - a bit strange.

> The Vadeli are an extremely ancient and peculiar race. All
>their customs and lore, and most of their history, is pre-Dawn.

I would have thought the Vadeli way was set down Pre-Storm thus by your theory, the Browns would be freely able to use swords.

[Why Browns can't captain ships]

>I only wish to point out that the Brown Vadeli existed throughout
>the First and Second Age, lived exclusively on islands, and yet
>were never heard of a bit in all that time.

IMO this can be easily accomodated by having them dominated by the Waertagi (who were allies of the Brithini during the War). I think the Browns failed to exploit whatever gains they could have made in the Second Age because they allied with Emperor Miglos in his invasion of Brithos and were virtually wiped out by the disaster.

In any case, the restriction that they can't captain ships (as opposed to boats) because it violates caste thus (presumably) they lose their immortality seems to me too reminscent of the Taboo-ridden Brithini and also highly artificial. I would try and look for some other reason why the Brown Vadeli aren't very good at producing captains.

As an example of what I prefer: the spells the Vadeli use to efficiently captain big ships are highly injurious to the constitution of the Browns and sends them inevitably mad over a period of several months before ending in a horrible death. Thus the Browns could produce captains and build ships if they wanted to, but they find it more beneficial to travel around in smaller boats.

> The Pelorians don't seem to think much about elements at
>all, but when they do they appear to think of them as being
>organized into a scale from best to worst, roughly descending in
>order from SKY > EARTH > WATER > STORM > DARKNESS, rather than
>rating them all as equal-but-separate.

The Cosmic Pillar does not include water and places Air _between_ Earth and Sky. Storm to them is Air that is under the influence of Umatum the Rebel. This is not Calm Air is Good, Thunder is Bad but more like 'Air gods who obey our Emperor are Good' and 'Air gods who don't obey our Emperor are Storm Gods and are Bad'. This system blind to whatever thunderous attributes the air god might have.

>The Lunar element stands apart from this system and if it were not
>for the insistance of Lunar Dogma, would probably still be considered
>no more than a Form Rune.

According to the Heartlanders, they would consider the Moon to be another Sky Rune rather than view it as a seperate element altogether. The belief of the Lunar Provinces that the Moon is a seperate Element comes from their failure to realise that the Moon rune is actually a modified Sky Rune according to (admitedly obscure) DH iconography.

If the Moon was looked at solely from Western Eyes, I believe that they would not use have come up with the Moon Rune but instead described it as Light - Sky - Darkness according to the God Learner Scheme of things.

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