Re: The Dragon Betrayal of 1042 ST

From: Chris Lemens <chrislemens_at_umRNCrH8_TY18p-80Lz1qH-Ddwts42Pi2_6KtfxVXJbtA75w_WU3oXpeHtt9_Ts4>
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 07:48:32 -0700 (PDT)

Jorg:
 

> Still makes me wonder what brand of mysticism (or probably failed mysticism) Jaldon acquired.
 

I think he discovered some unities that led him to seeing lots of things as giantish (e.g., most of the Praxian great spirits and other legendary entities) and lots of things as draconic. I think that he was mostly right. (Which doesn't make him any more sane, of course.)
 

> As a Praxian, Jaldon was surrounded by mystical methods - EWF schools of draconic mysticism and short cuts,
> Kralori/God Learner schools of short cuts, Teshnan mystics, and Godunya for orthodox Darudism.
> Not sure whether Sun County had some brand of Solar mysticism available, too.

 

But he was also surrounded by giants. In the first age, there were lots of giants in and around Prax. That doesn't really change until Pavis defeats them. That's one reason why the foundin gof Pavis is such a watershed event in Prax: lot sof giants before, none after. Since Waha is also missing in action afterwards, what does that hint about his nature?
 

> Pavis City was fairly free of strong mystical activities. Judging by the role of e.g. Opili, the magical researchers there were strongly > into the Genert revival project, maybe with Tada as a side order.
 

Pavis's motives are obscure. They certainly did not include _freindship_ with giants. Since he was exposed to sorcery, I rather suspect he saw giantish powers as something to be exploited, much like the EWF exploited draconic powers. (He was originally from the EWF, after all.)
 

> I wonder what would become of the Praxian beast nomads if someone succeeded in returning Genert's fertility to the land.
> Would they become semi-civilized overlords of numerous agricultural people with Waha only a quaint survival cult of the ancestors?
> Those clans who settled in Dara Happa went the way of acculturation, except for the Sables of Kostaddi who had their carefully
> maintained chaparral reservate atop Hungry Plateau.

 

I think it is something that the characters get to figure out, so MGF is key. For one thing, there would be a struggle between the returning Tada-shi (who want to re-arrange the golden land) and the nomads. This would primarily be over magical resources like the 48 old ones. The struggles in the western US between fencing out and fencing in might be a good historical analog. Further, the Tada-shi have to figure out how to worship Genert. That is going to be a highly inefficient process at first. Do we sacrifice? Do we dance? Do we need a priest or a shaman? Even after resurrection, Genert is still trapped by time. And since he's a land god, he may be bound by strictures like those binding Pamalt. Or maybe he is subject to the strictures binding the earth goddesses.

As for me, I hope the nomads win. But there are very few historical cases of nomads successfully avoiding a conversion to settled agriculture.
 

> Back to Jaldon: he uses some tooth magic.
 

I think the right way to think about this is that it is an insight along the lines of butcher ==> eater ==> teeth. That makes it consistent with Praxian themes.
 

> Teeth remain a hot topic in Pavis afterwards, with Argrath of Pavis providing the tooth part for Argrath White Bull > (possibly the Jaldon of the Hero Wars) on his assault on Pavis.
 

I think this was actually draconic magic -- the whole dragontooth runners thing.
 

> male earth kings often are associated with inhuman practices, the more primal the worse.
 

Yeah! And since he's barely known even to the happy ancestors (who are so different from us that they are hard to understand), we have no way of knowing what kinds of things his rituals would demand. One hint might be that corn (maize for you furriners) comes from Ignorance. If you wanted to stretch things a little, you could say that corn was from the border of Genert's Garden, and that all his crops require similar rituals.
 

> Pamalt is different from Genert, he is the late-comer god-of-all-trades, comparable to Lugh Lamfada, a bringer of civilization - rather a Tada figure.)
 

I think Genert is more comparable to the namer figure in some mythology. Some of the "Old Man" creator myths among American Indians, for example.

> The power Jaldon brings is unknown (or forgotten) in Prax before 940. It is neither tied to Tada nor to the Black Eater.
 

Clearly correct about Tada and Black Eater. I think the power he uses is well-known: it is heroforming a giant. It is the same power that Waha's followers learned to use after the dawn, but couldn;t use after Pavis defeated him.
 

> If Jaldon is a mystic, he might be one of the sudden revelation types - meet the unknowable, and somehow survive it without going entirely mad.
 

I think that's right, but we have to remember that he still comes at everything from a Praxian perspective. So, how we think shapes what we thnk we are seeing. The links to familiar themes might be insane links (because it's Jaldon), but they will still be there. An example is buther ==> eater ==> teeth. No normal mind works that way, but you can see how a crazy man would get there from trying to link Waha the Butcher into what he saw on the Plateau of Statutes.
 

> Exposure to the statues may have triggered this. Gaining an applicable power from this may have been a different proposal.
> That may have been a process of either introspection or a series of additional confrontations (like Fantazadar, the last 7 stages
> of the Long Mountain Dragon school detailed for Ingolf's path to dragonhood, which gave Ingolf one-use dragon - or rather mystical
> - powers if used outside of the context of mystic confrontations).

I think he gained a mystical insight that allowed him to identify things as giantish and thus ignore some restrictions that had accumulated since Pavis defeated Waha.
 

> There won't be a school of mysticism founded by Jaldon. But it is possible that Jaldon underwent some mystical training after his revelation, > tutored by someone experienced. And Godunya probably is the single most powerful mystic known to have been in the region at that time.

I think that is right. But the Jaldon power continues after his death. I think that all of the Jaldons that keep popping up later are people using his power.
 

And someone asked what Jaldon rides. I think it is dead and draconic in nature.
 

Chris

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