Aldryami empire

From: Lemens, Chris <CLemens_at_...>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 15:17:29 -0500


Gianfranco Geroldi
>BTW were these Aldryami empires political realities in human
>terms or in Aldryami terms (not that I have a slight idea of the
>difference, but maybe some of you have).

Jeff Kyher
>We don't know much about that Empire, really. And it seemed
>more like a merging of existing forests under a new form of
>tree-leader.

Their neighbors certainly viewed the Jungle as a political reality. Errinoru was highly concerned with protecting his borders. He subjugated weaker neighbors (dwarves and trolls) to make them into buffer states and dealt from a sufficiently strong position that the Doraddi acquiesced in his reforestation of part of Jolar. He also dealt firmly with human interlopers on the Onlaks peninsula. (This is not contrary to Peter Metcalfe's assertion that Errinoru's empire was largely founded on unifying Forests. Errinoru's apparent external concerns were not with imperialistic expansion, but with securing borders to allow essentially internal efforts. This is quite different from the concerns of, say, the current-day Winterwood Aldryami.)

I think that the formation of the Errinoru Jungle seems not so much a merging of Forests as the creation of a new thing, the Jungle, that did not replace or supersede the old thing. Compare to Sartar. He did not merge tribes; he created a new thing that was a higher order organization. Like Sartar, Errinoru's Jungle seems not to have lasted long beyond himself (except in name). In some way, the Jungle has to be incompatible with the way Aldryami work because, if Aldryami got the same sort of Elfsense communication through the Jungle that they get through their Forest, the Jungle would have been permanent as a politco-magical organization, as its component Forests are. Further, if the Jungle were a merger of Forests, all the Aldryami in the Jungle would know the truth of whether or not the Great Tree in Jhostobbios/Dinal is truly Aldrya Herself. To me, this indicates that Errinoru (a) was himself the magical link between the Forests (unlike Sartar, who used roads) and (b) had no fear of retribution from the Great Tree in Jhostobbios/Dinal (who presumably would have objected if She thought he was supplanting Her). For this reason, I think that Errinoru's relationship with the various Forests of the Jungle was similar to the relationship of mistletoe to a tree.

David Dunham suggests that Errinoru must have ruled humans, since the Enkloso Forest did so around the same time. I don't know of any textual support for the comparison. Umathela has had human storm-worshippers living in it for a long time (hence the name). The only humans living in the Errinoru Jungle (outside of a few walled colonies on the coasts) are the pygmies. The Enkloso Aldryami have the Woodland Judgments (formalized structures) to handle their relationship with humans, since Aldryami have no clue how the walking meat think. The Errinoru Jungle has no equivalent institution, though I suspect that they require the pygmies to eat only meat and have taught them how to sing (badly) to the spirits of any plant that they harm.

Chris Lemens

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