>In my campaign, one of the major themes is that the Hero Wars is a battle
>over the nature of change. Orlanth, amongst other things, is a god of
>change, and yet his worshippers are about as traditionalist and
>conservative as can be found anywhere. They hate the Lunars for their
>rigid bureaucracy, and yet the Lunars are in fact the more flexible, and
>therefore provide a better embodiment of change than the Orlanthi.
Yeah, but I'd expect every orlanthi who knows any Heortling history to be
aware of the difference between good changes and bad ones.
Lokamayadon instituted a bad change, this was corrected by the good
changes of Harmast and Alakoring.
The EWF was bad change. The Pharaoh was bad change (at least to
Sartarites). Neither of these were really corrected, but Sartar later
smoothed over some of it with his good change.
The really important examples here are Lokamayadon and the
dragonfriendship. Both of these were masquerading as good change, and I
wouldn't be surprised if 85% of the orlanthi were duped. (Though I'm sure
more than 15% of player-generated clans will claim to have been resisters
:-))
>Hence,
>Orlanth is losing - his worshippers resistance to change weakens his and
>therefore their magic.
My take is somewhat different: Orlanth is losing because his followers are for the third time being seduced by an evil novelty wearing the mask of a good one. This time around is slightly different because the mask isn't as convincing (too brutal, for one thing) and a few people (mostly older folks and Lhankor Mhy worshippers) can see the similarity to past disasters. But still a lot of heortlings see enough short-term benefits to collaborate at least in minor ways. And we know that a sizeable minority go so far as to convert.
>To win, the Orlanthi will have to embrace change, and in drastic
>ways. This is (part of) Argrath's secret.
Agreed. Argrath is casting himself in the role of providing positive novelty. He emulates Harmast, for instance. What's a bit fishy is that he also brings back draconic alliances. Also, he doesn't seem to know when to stop.
>The problem is, by the time they
>win they won't be themselves any more.
Hmmmm.... Perhaps _Argrath_ is really the third big bad change, and the Lunars are just his stooges?
A horrifying analogy just occured to me: what if Argrath is Palpatine and the Lunars are the Trade Federation? ;->
Powered by hypermail