RE: Aldryami

From: Lemens, Chris <CLemens_at_exchange.webmd.net>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 17:43:08 -0500


>>Chris Lemens
>Peter Metcalfe

>I don't think there are any "sorcerous" Aldryami. That there are
>sorcerous plants is a given (just as there are sorcerous animals)
>but they are not in the Song.

I'd have said the same about theistic trees before Greg said they exist within the song. If theistic plants can be inside it, why can't sorcerous ones? (I'm willing to accept either position, but I'd like to have a reason for it.)

>There are mystics who engage with
>the world rather than deny it. That said a mystic tree is a solecism
>as all worldviews have some measure of transcendent consciousness.

Hey, no fair using your degree in philosophy. What does this mean in smaller words? All trees are mystics?

>>I wonder if Elves & Trolls suffer an Alien World penalty if they stray
from
>>the Underworld to the Godworld.

>I think they do _if_ they are attuned to the animist path.

Fair point. Greg said that they worship using spiritual practices. So, there are (a) no alien world penalty in the Spirit and Under worlds and (b) alien world penalties in the God and Sorcery worlds?

>>If so, I wonder if there are areas in which
>>neither Elves nor Orlanthi suffer Alien World penalties - a kind of border
>>region of overlap.

>The Land of the Dead.

Hmm. I kinda thought (after reading GRoY too many times) that Underworld = Land of the Dead. That is, if you are in the Underworld, you're dead by definition. Simon Hibbs (see below) thought so also. If so, why would Aldrya stay in the underworld after the world returns to life? Several sources say that she gathers the spirits of departed plants to her after they die. That seems to place her location in the underworld, but I also thought that the spirits just kinda hung out in their own Forest in a disembodied way.

It would make a lot more sense if the equation were more like (Land of Dead) + (Aldryami otherworld) + (Uz otherworld) = Underworld.

>Simon Hibbs

>Remember that everything in the underworld is dead. A thing that is
>alive can change, grow and transform itself. Dead things are fixed,
>defined and unchanging (at some fundamental, archetypal level).
>Sorcerous, spiritual and divine power are agents for change in the
>mundane world. Things and beings of the underworld can manifest
>animist, sorcerous or divine attributes, but they are not dynamic
>in the same way.

I agree that everything in the Underworld is incapable of self-directed change. I disagree that anything in the spirit, god, or sorcery world is capable of self-directed change. Only things on the inner world can cause changes in any of the otherworld. I thought it was pretty much universally accepted canon that (for example), people can go on quests to the god world to change the inner world by changing the god world, but that the gods (through the great compromise or whatever) are stuck in a permanent rut.

Chris Lemens


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